On-Line

MICROSOFT JOINS THE DATA PARTY Microsoft made a fashionably late entrance into the wireless data gala earlier this month as it and partner Qualcomm launched WirelessKnowledge, the culmination of a year's worth of talks between the two companies. According to Microsoft President Steve Ballmer, the goal of the new company, which is headed by John Major, is not simply to push Windows CE as the backbone for handsets but to step forward and support wireless data applications. The idea is to increase the awareness and popularity of wireless data by making it easy for carriers to offer data services. To this end, Wireless-Knowledge is promoting its airlink independence and supporting Internet standard protocols.

WirelessKnowledge consists of a central network operating center to which carriers will link. It will provide the back-end transaction processing for those carriers that have not already set up such systems. It also will act as a systems integrator for IT departments in conjunction with carrier sales and technical support forces.

This service-bureau format will help the smaller PCS carriers because they won't have to make an up-front investment, said Ray Jodoin, In-Stat senior analyst. But Jodoin said what concerns him is the lack of a nationwide, cohesive network.

"You can have all of the technology in the world ... but if those doing the transmissions can't form a cohesive network that allows people to roam, the only thing you have is a method of transmitting data from one part of town to another, or one part of the network to the next, depending on your geographical footprint," Jodoin said.

WirelessKnowledge will act as an OEM to the carriers. Although the company plans to market and publicize wireless data and its advantages, carriers will sell the services. But at what price? Both company executives and carriers have danced around the issue, saying only that it will be up to the individual carriers to determine pricing, and pricing probably will be by the packet instead of by the minute.

"I told John Major that if you let the carriers bring this out as a $14. 95-a-month option the way they do everything else, you've just screwed yourselves to the wall," Jodoin said.

The key, he said, is for carriers to give away the service. Think of a Polaroid camera, Jodoin said. If you give away the camera, you make a fortune on the film. The same thing goes for this service. If carriers give away this service, they get back their investment through airtime.

"That's what the whole name of the game is, airtime cash flow," Jodoin said.

At the outset, the cash flow will come from corporate clients, but WirelessKnowledge plans to branch out to small office/home office (SOHO) and individual users quickly. Such services level the playing field for SOHOs, said James Hobbs, BellSouth Wireless Data vice president. Small offices can have all of the bells and whistles without the IT departments and servers.

Service trials begin this month, and the company expects to see initial roll-outs with carriers in April.

-- By Ellen Jensen, Technology Editor

IRIDIUM SEEKS TRUE GLOBAL COVERAGE After $150 million in R&D, 11 years of development and more than $5 billion in start-up costs, Iridium commercially launched its global satellite communications system. But before Motorola executive and co-developer Barry Bertiger and his wife return to their Bahamas vacation and make that unfinished phone call, Iridium first must over-come regulatory and product issues to become a true global provider.

At the Nov. 1 start-up date, Iridium held regulatory approval in just over 130 of 238 total countries.

"Getting regulatory approval is still an issue for Iridium," Ovum consultant Alex Nourouzi said.

Iridium spokesperson Michelle Lyle said negotiations continue with the holdouts, but the process is an ordeal.

"We need an authorization from every country in the world where we want to provide service," Lyle said. "This can be a very long process, particularly in so me areas of the developing world and Africa where the PTTs are very regulated. In two or three countries, we were working with people and then the government changed, and we would have to start all over again."

Governments preferring to limit the number of foreign carriers in operation or the amount and type of frequency allocated for use also caused delays. France, India and Puerto Rico were among a number of countries that delayed approval over possible interference with radio astronomy observatories.

"They feared that eventually they would encounter a little interference from our system, so we also had to negotiate with the ITU, radio astronomers and so forth," Lyle said.

Gemini Consulting's Charles Gerlach and Nourouzai said that obtaining approval in all 238 countries will take some time.

"(Approval in all countries) is their ultimate goal, but they likely won't get there this year or even by the end of next year," Gerlach said. "It will be a gradual process."

It also is a necessary process, Gerlach said. Although the Iridium phone can operate in countries where Iridium does not have approval, the carrier still must make arrangements in order for it to do so. The Iridium system is designed to work in conjunction with local networks, but the ability to use the phone and permission to do so are two separate issues.

"The question isn't one of physical coverage but one of the business infrastructure and regulatory infrastructure," Grelach said. "You could use the phone, but you may be in a location where it may even be illegal to try to do so."

Handset availability also created difficulties, as only 5,000 phones were available to distributors and carriers before the network was activated. Iridium expects to receive more than 100,000 handsets from Motorola and Kyocera for distribution before the end of the year.

TABD RECOMMENDS OPEN STANDARDS CEOs from U.S. and European businesses, government representatives, and members of the European Commission (EC) addressed the third-generation (3G) standards debate at the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) conference. Although issues still separate opposing camps of W-CDMA and cdmaOne advocates, the gathering achieved a consensus against Europe's proposed move to a single 3G wireless standard.

"This was a joint industry and government meeting held specifically to discuss third-generation wireless standards," said John Wilson, Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) vice president of technology policy.

The group outlined a position that favored minimal government regulation in European standards, interoperability of networks, further government talks of frequency allocation, and licensing and greater reciprocal acceptance of standards developed by other regions.

The reaction from opposing sides was mixed, but Wilson said progress was made toward solving part of the European standards debate.

"Obviously, there are individual company perspectives on this issue," Wilson said. "But there also was a general sense that (the industry) wants to move rapidly toward a solution ... that serves both manufacturers and carriers."

The TABD group forwarded the resolution for EC consideration. Wilson could not predict if or when the commission would enact the resolution but said most TABD recommendations are enacted into policy. The endorsement of EC Commissioner Martin Bangemann, also present at the meeting, should provide extra weight to the motion.

Wilson said that follow-up talks are planned in early 1999 to ensure technology-neutral decisions on standards and licensing.

NEW TOOL DECREASES FALSE FRAUD ALARMS Several fraud-solution vendors announced a new generation of fraud-fighting tools at this year's Wireless Security conference in Orlando, FL.

Lucent Technologies' first foray into fraud fighting uses fraud signature algorithms from Bell Laboratories to score each call against a customer's fraud profile and then identifies calls that veer off the normal calling path. The algorithms are based on statistical and data-mining principles and create behavioral signatures for individual subscribers from call completion and call set-up information. With every legitimate call placed, signatures become more accurate. Lucent's new fraud detection and prevention products not only reduce the amount of false fraud alarms, but also decrease the number of analysts needed to detect fraud and the number of fraudulent calls it takes to an alert.

GTE TSI announced FraudX, which reduces fraud losses from home and roaming cloning fraud and subscription fraud. Similarly, the system applies knowledge-based technology to build a profile of typical individual subscriber activity and then compares the profile with current subscriber activity to identify suspicious behavior. The FraudX profiler performs advanced pattern analysis on incoming data from the MSN. It links MINs using the same dialed digits, allowing carriers to link known cloned numbers to additional cloned numbers. United States Cellular, which serves more than 2 million subscribers, served as the beta test customer for FraudX. The company has dropped fraud losses by 97% since it deployed the solution.

Systems/Link introduced Orion/Call Patterning Intelligence (OrionCPI), which is in trial with a major U.S. wireless carrier. With no fraud analyst intervention, OrionCPI has identified significantly more fraud with a higher rate of alarm confidence and fewer false positives than previous fraud-control tools. Like Lucent, Systems/Link uses proprietary algorithms to identify and learn calling patterns, allowing wireless carriers to detect fraud regardless of the criminals' methods of obtaining service.

How do these new solutions differ from earlier fraud profilers? Lucent said competing profile-based detection products have relatively high false-alarm rates, so direct intervention based on profiling is problematic. Additionally, subscriber profiling administers itself in Lucent's solution; there is no need to assign subscribers to categories, as required by other systems.

Diane Sammer, Systems/Link president & CEO, added that using dialed digits and link analysis to control wireless fraud can help a fraud analyst track down evidence of fraud, but current methods are laborious and error-prone.

-- By Betsy Reeves, Staff Writer

IN OTHER NEWS... * MobileStar will supply wireless Internet access to more than 100 Hilton hotels. Hilton guests can establish the uplink by inserting an Ethernet LAN PC card into their laptop computers, which serve as high-speed data links with access points in the hotel.

* Teligent introduced its fixed-wireless service in its first 10 markets, including Austin, TX; Chicago; Dallas-Fort Worth; Denver; Houston; Los Angeles; New York; San Antonio; Tampa, FL; and Washington.

* BellSouth Mobility launched wireless services in a 22-county area in Northwest Florida and Eastern Alabama. The carrier expects to create more than 400 new jobs to support the expansion.

* Lucent opened a 100,000-square-foot customer-training center in Altamonte Springs, FL, to educate communications professionals in Lucent's network technologies, products and services. Lucent expects the center will handle more than 20,000 network managers per year.

* GTE and Western Wireless will use holiday promotional materials including displays, graphics and in-store posters from NEC America to support wireless product sales.

* Sprint PCS opened a 75,000-square-foot customer-care center in Rio Rancho, NM. The facility currently has 700 customer service representatives but can expand to as many as 1,200.

* CellularVision shareholders approved the sale of 850MHz of contiguous LMDS spectrum throughout its licensed territory to WLL provider WinStar Communications. The $32.5 million in cash deal should be completed before the end of the year.

* Omnipoint launched service in the Great Lakes region, including Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids and Lansing, MI; and Toledo, OH. The expansion cost more than $100 million and should create as many as 100 jobs in Michigan.

CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION * New York's Lincoln Tunnel is 1.6 miles long, and the Holland Tunnel, also in New York, is 1.5 miles long. See the Oct. 15, 1998, article "The Trouble with Tunnels" for information on tunnel coverage.

* William A. Diaz is Omnipoint's director of network engineering and operations. See the Nov. 1, 1998, article "The Growth Period" for information on maintaining reliability.

* The Nov. 15 Final View suggested that wireless has penetrated only 1% of the U.S. population. In reality, it accounts for about 22% penetration. However, wireless transmission represents only about 1% of the total minutes of telecommunications talk time, which leaves a lot of room for growth.

* The 800 number for Comserve was printed incorrectly in the 1998 Wireless Review Buyers Guide. The correct number is 800-523-8983.

Establishing its global presence may be a primary concern for Iridium, but the carrier also must resolve several obstacles that affect its service on a more terrestrial level.

Yankee Group Analyst Philip Redman said price remains the biggest barrier for wireless subscribers. Although this may not deter the highest-tier users, others might hesitate at the prospect of $3 per minute of airtime and $3, 000 handsets.

"There is a segment that will pay for the phone no matter what, but that is a small base," Redman said. "And even corporate users still need to justify the cost."

Gemini Consulting's Charles Gerlach said profitability also remains a concern. Iridium had more than 50,000 subscribers pending and 100,000 qualified leads when service began.

"That population itself is probably not large enough to repay a $5 billion investment," Gerlach said.

The best chance to achieve profitability would be to integrate Iridium service into standard wireless units for out-of-country travelers.

"When that day arrives -- and it may be four or five years down the road -- then you will see a real uptake in the population of users (and profit potential)," Gerlach said.

An Ovum report indicated other current and future factors that work against Iridium, including the rise of third generation and faster data rates, simplified roaming between multiple networks via the planned world phone, continued expansion of wireless networks worldwide and introduction of other satellite carriers over the next decade.

What will the work place look like in 2008? AT&T Wireless Services and six other entities are sponsors of Future@Work, which combines technology, telecommunications, furnishings and design. The display, a hands-on museum, opened in June 1997 in Seattle's Columbia Seafirst Center. Now in its second year, it has added the home office of the future.

"Collaboration, flexibility and mobility are the keys to the future, and wireless will play a big role," said Dan Youmans, AT&T Wireless Services cellular division media relations manager.

The 2008 office makes use of AT&T's wireless office service with voice and data networks that allow communications wherever employees may be.

Information about the exhibit is available at www.future-at-work.org.

-- By Marcia Martinek, Managing Editor

A CTIA report revealed that the wireless industry added 12,125,878 net new subscribers from July 1997 to June 1998 -- exceeding the previous year's growth total of 10.6 million subscribers. This brought the total number of U. S. subscribers to 60,831,431 on June 30, 1998 -- slightly higher than previous CTIA predictions. CTIA president & CEO Tom Wheeler also said that industry revenues reached $29.6 billion in the same 12-month period, an increase of more than $4 billion compared with the previous 12 months.

Dan Phythyon resigned his position as chief of the FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. Phythyon served as chief since 1997; prior to that, he served as deputy bureau chief of the Wireless Bureau. Phythyon did not announce his future plans.