Wireless cable leaps into Internet fray >BY SHIRA McCARTHY, Associate Editor-News

As cable TV operators debate whether to use the telephony return path for Internet access, wireless cable companies are starting to jump on the Internet access bandwagon as well.

CAI Wireless Systems announced last week that it has received approval from the Federal Communications Commission to roll out commercial Internet and intranet services to as many as 500 subscribers in Rochester, N.Y. CAI started testing Internet access over its multichannel multipoint distribution service (MMDS) network in Washington, D.C., earlier this year. CAI plans to deliver data at 10 Mb/s over its analog MMDS system in Rochester, using telephony for the return path.

CAI also filed a request with the FCC last week for one- and two-way use of its wireless spectrum in Connecticut, which would expand the array of services the company could offer.

At the same time, wireless cable company American Telecasting Inc. announced that it would team with MCI to test Internet access over its MMDS system in Colorado Springs later this year.

The trial, initially targeting business users, will be jointly financed by ATI and MCI, said David Sentman, senior vice president and chief financial officer of ATI. MCI would contribute its billing systems to the trial, while ATI would provide service support and the radio frequency installations, he said.

But an MCI spokesman said the interexchange carrier and ATI have only a proposed letter of intent for MCI to provide a dedicated T-1 circuit to its Internet backbone for the trial.

Sentman did not return calls requesting clarification of the discrepancy.

A funny thing happened to the wireless industry on its way to becoming a 40 million-customer business: The obvious safety of having a wireless phone while on the road-being able to call a tow truck for a stalled car or phone the police after an accident-suddenly became a major factor in many customer buying decisions. Purchases driven by safety, security or convenience are responsible for the better part of the industry's subscribership boom during the past few years.

As many as 80% to 90% of wireless users bought their phones for safety reasons, according to various sources.

The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association has reported that about 18 million 911 and other emergency calls are made from wireless phones each year, which translates to about 50,000 per day.

It seems surprising then that despite the wireless phone's changing role from a luxury or business device to a lifeline device, carriers have done little to promote the establishment of wireless 911 standards and have not progressively deployed location technologies to enable their networks to pinpoint the origin of wireless 911 calls.

"Because of the critical nature of most 911 calls, the method of making these calls from wireless phones must be better," says Tandem Computers' Jerry Earle, vice president for the communications industry and service providers.

Carriers may not have had the time or financial resources to improve wireless 911 services. Coming into this decade, many were still suffering losses from network buildouts, and there was never much money to be made in wireless 911.

Also, there were several technological approaches to wireless 911 call location, management and billing, yet no standards to speak of. As of about two years ago, the issue seemed to be dying on the vine.

Vendors and technology developers that had counted on the emergence of a wireless 911 equipment market were having a similar experience. For years, they had been grappling with the development of reliable solutions to improve the wireless 911 situation, but when they went out to meet the market, the market was not around to meet them. Except for isolated tests by vendors and occasionally carriers, these technologies languished, and some vendors dropped out of the market altogether.

"We just couldn't sit around any longer when we weren't making any money," says a source from one major equipment vendor. "Carriers were interested in what we were doing, but it was not a high priority for them."

The other shoe dropped The wireless 911 market was calling for help, and finally, in June of this year, the Federal Communications Commission culminated a long deliberation process by adopting a report and order establishing rules governing wireless 911 service implementation.

Within 18 months from June 1996, phase 1 of the order requires all cellular licensees to implement wireless 911 services that are similar in capabilities to wireline 911. Carriers clearly must begin exploring technologies to determine a caller's location.

As part of the order's second phase, the FCC also ruled that carriers must demonstrate within five years that they can meet a standard of spotting 911 calls within 410 feet of the origination point at a 67% accuracy rate.

"We liked the order. It came at a good time," said Louis Stilp, vice president and general manager of The Associated Group, which makes the TruePosition cellular location system. He is optimistic that the FCC's ruling will jump-start the market. "This is the difference between just having a technology and having a product. Now we have a product." Carriers remain less positive about the order. Some already have filed comments with the FCC criticizing the order's rule that requires transmission of 911 calls from non-initialized handsets without establishing an accompanying cost recovery mechanism for carriers. Allowing 911 call connection from non-initialized handsets encourages customers to buy phones for security and safety reasons but not to buy service.

Carriers and vendors alike have proposed that this rule be eliminated from the order.

Carriers also want indemnity from the consequences of dropped calls, something the ruling does not afford them.

Locating solutions Once carriers go looking for wireless 911 solutions, they will find several ways to approach the issue. Among the primary location technologies are time distance of arrival (TDOA), global positioning system (GPS) and angle of arrival (AOA).

The Associated Group's TruePosition product uses the TDOA method, which calculates the time difference between a call signal's arrival at several different cell sites. It is based on the fact that these signals travel at the speed of light, providing a fixed figure for calculations.

The GPS method relies on a 24-satellite network deployed by the U.S. Department of Defense for military purposes. Because the satellites have a fixed path, the positions of several satellites receiving a signal can be correlated to determine the relative location of a 911 call.

The AOA method involves measuring the strength of a call signal as it reaches fixed cell sites or antennas.

All three methods have been proved to work in some situations, but there may also be disadvantages. Both TDOA and AOA have been known to be affected by signal reflection-or multipath-interference. However, Stilp believes The Associated Group has spent much time optimizing its TDOA technology and has improved its consistency.

The company is about to enter a field trial of its TruePosition technology in New Jersey on Comcast Cellular's network using the 911 system operated by that state.

In another trial, TruePosition will be deployed by Houston Cellular Telephone, jointly owned by AT&T Wireless Services and BellSouth Cellular.

A different disadvantage hounds GPS: It requires a clear line of sight between satellites and the device originating a call, which means tree coverage or man-made structures could impede its effectiveness. A standard has not yet emerged.

Software platforms Several software platforms and management offerings are emerging to help carriers deal with the wireless 911 issue.

Seattle-based Xypoint offers a connectivity platform that includes a gateway server, databases of public safety answering positions (PSAPs) and customer names, and necessary connectivity to mobile switching centers and PSAPs.

Xypoint provides automatic location identification, database maintenance and 10-digit number translation. The company will act as a neutral technical liaison between wireless carriers and PSAPs to ensure that the correct data is delivered to PSAPs (Figure 1).

"We can provide connectivity between the wireless network and the 911 infrastructure that bypasses 10-digit translation by a LEC," says Ken Arneson, president and chief executive officer at Xypoint.

At last month's PCS '96 trade show in San Francisco, Tandem Computers, SignalSoft Corp. and SCC Communications launched their Wireless Location Services (WLS) platform (Figure 2).

The WLS platform was developed by SignalSoft for deployment on the Tandem and Motorola off-switch home location register platforms, both based on Tandem's Intelligent Network Server product. SignalSoft's products allow more efficient integration of wireless calls onto the wireline network. WLS integrates with SCC's call routing system and database services platform.

The Tandem/SignalSoft/SCC platform is not a location finding system, but it puts intelligence close to a network switch, 911 PSAP or tandem to compensate for the fact that most local network nodes are, in effect, dumb. The problem with most PSAP nodes is that they are not outfitted with display screens. Also, most 911 tandems do not accept 10-digit phone numbers because they have always been deployed on a local district basis.

The new software platform could be integrated with a location overlay such as TruePosition to create a comprehensive wireless 911 architecture.

"It's inefficient to have only an overlay system for location finding," says Mark Flolid, vice president of sales and marketing at SignalSoft. "The solution must be something that's close to the switch."

"We're trying to be independent of location technologies like voice mail," says David Hose, president of SignalSoft.

The offering is not yet for sale but is now being tested with a network operator.

The company has also been talking to manufacturers about location finding solutions and may sell its software to these manufacturers.

There may be other ways, however, to confront the dumb node problem. With the help of switch manufacturer Rockwell and the state of New Jersey, 911 PSAPs and tandems involved in the New Jersey trial have been modified to work with TruePosition technology, says Stilp.

But, he adds, in other places around the country, it's almost impossible to fix these problems because manufacturers usually take their time upgrading old nodes, and quick fixes can be expensive.

Still, other sources familiar with wireless 911 issues question the long-term validity of software solutions that inject intelligence into switches externally. It contradicts the notion that switch manufacturers will eventually upgrade their PSAPs to accept 10-digit numbers, according to one source who requested anonymity.

Is the market ready? The validity of some location technologies and software systems still may be unclear. But carriers now have an impetus for investing in these products, which will finally begin to pump life into what had been a bedridden market.

Several issues still are up for debate. For instance, many companies oppose the FCC's suggestion for a further rulemaking that would pare down 911 call location requirements to 40 feet with a 90% accuracy rate. They say technology will not be able to accomplish that in the foreseeable future.

Still, the establishment of reliable wireless 911 systems will likely open up a wide variety of potential business opportunities for carriers. The location technologies being considered would be able to support location-sensitive billing, which could be a powerful service differentiation. They would also make it easier to manage trucking fleets or other teams of mobile workers.

In addition, intelligent location systems probably could contribute to the detection of fraudulent calling activities.

With such opportunities available, it seems that it is definitely time to wake this sleeping giant.