Fringe benefits

One of the first things I noticed when I arrived in Seattle for the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association's Wireless Apps '97 show last month was a mini-billboard inside Sea-Tac International Airport advertising flat-rate wireless Internet/intranet/e-mail service from Metricom, a company that has made great strides in bringing mobile computing to the masses. Good karma for a wireless data event, I thought, figuring the rest of my stay would reveal an industry sector that was similarly flourishing.

Not so. The event provided no more answers this year than it did over the past three years as to why data can't seem to find a firm place in the wireless scheme.

Where the blame lies depends on whom you ask. Most carriers operating digital networks do possess the ability to deliver data over them in some form, and some of them are. But most will say they are waiting for the vendor community to produce some real marketable applications that will put those networks to good use.

Infrastructure vendors generally defer to their software counterparts. Most of the larger network vendors have some kind of third-party development program in place intended to foster development of applications that can be run on their networks. Again, many interesting services are being produced and many of them are being actively tested in labs and on carriers' systems, but all of that effort has yet to produce any obvious winners.

The problem, and possibly the solution, may lie in the business community. Business markets have long been lucrative spots for wireless voice applications, and recent technological and market shifts have made them even better. The challenge for carriers-and all of the various system and software vendors backing them up-is to channel some of that voice enthusiasm toward data services.

People used to talk a lot about making the whole Internet wireless, but I no longer buy it. Granted, the Internet concept is familiar in business circles, and many people use it for varied purposes, but to attempt to wirelessly extend the whole thing is neither cost-effective nor logical. For whatever reason, cellular carriers have not been able to price service over their cellular digital packet data networks at a level conducive to wide-open, flat-rate wireless Internet surfing, and the popular opinion seems to be that few people want to do that anyway.

The real opportunities for wireless data exist deep within the Internet, in the niche applications that the popularity of data networking has created. Tapping into that vein-allowing wireless users to access e-mail and their corporate intranets-will require software applications that package that kind of information appropriately for wireless delivery and allow it to be done at a reasonable cost.

Business customers want to be able to use their laptops and digital handsets or modems to check their e-mail during a 30-minute cab ride to the airport and not have the cost of the transmission equal their car fare. They want to be able to tap into their corporate intranets in Chicago during a meeting in New York and not have to pay airtime charges equal to the cost of their flight to get there. Like all the marketers are so fond of saying, customers want to be able to get to their most important information quickly, cheaply and easily no matter where they are.

Smartphone services like PocketNet from AT&T

Wireless Services just miss the mark. They are limited because they only provide access to information that has been formatted specifically for them, which puts the onus on an entire corporation or e-mail provider to adjust the way they do things rather than an individual user or business group. And let's face it: Business customers use laptop computers. No matter how you spin it, the form factor of a wireless handset is never going to be conducive to much more than voice.

The wireless data sector is still young, so perhaps it is a little premature to say that it is failing in its efforts just yet. But wireless voice has become a hotshot in the business world, and now it's time for data to climb the corporate ladder.