Cracking the Safe

Some people think Internet access is the killer application that the wireless industry has been looking for to kick-start the elusive data market. It seems the web is doubling in size every few weeks, the stores are full of portable PCs, and even your grandmother is surfing the net on weekends.

Some predict that in a few years the only wireless phone you'll be able to buy is a smart phone -- a combination of computer and phone. Analysts' opinions vary widely on what form factor that device will be. If you're "PDA-centric," you think that the phone of the future will be a portable PC that also is capable of relaying information via a built-in wireless radio. If you're "phone-centric," you think that the smart phone will look no different from today's wireless phone. Finally, there is an emerging group that is "device-centric," who believe that each consumer device will evolve to its optimum form factor without taking on additional functionality, but that all of the devices will communicate with one another locally to share one another's resources. (This is the driving force behind Bluetooth.)

Two fundamental applications have driven the success of the Internet: e-mail and web browsing. Both are standardized technologies, as is the transport (IP). With only minor annoyances, people can use just about any e-mail client to read their e-mail messages and any web browser to view web pages written in HTML.

Everyone's a Critic

You would think that by offering a wireless replacement for a landline modem, you would enable the wireless Internet market. After all, people already own laptops, and their favorite applications already are installed. In fact, some reports say there are more laptops being sold today than desktop PCs. Unfortunately, that hasn't been enough to kick-start the market, as only about 200,000 cellular modems have been sold, and far fewer actually are in use.

Critics said that the reason analog cellular modems never took off was performance, reliability and cost. They noted that travelling professionals would prefer to use wireless access to get to their Internet resources but just couldn't do it technically, hence the birth of CDPD.

How could it be any easier to access the Internet than with CDPD, which is on the Internet automatically when you turn it on? Although the cost was high at first for both service and devices, it has come down significantly, and still it doesn't sell. There are likely no more than 30,000 CDPD radios in the market, and no more than a third are being used for e-mail and web access.

Critics said the reason CDPD never took off was that it didn't have a national footprint, and the form factors were wrong. So then came the Unwired Planet browser phones, with a charge led principally by AT&T Wireless under its "PocketNet" brand. Using CDPD as a transport, the browser phones are a subset of the previously mentioned 30,000 CDPD radios in the market.

Critics said browser phones didn't take off because the interface was too clumsy. Others believe they would be a big success if they worked on airlinks besides CDPD. Time will tell whether they're right.

Offer a product with a larger display that looks more like a phone, works on the most common air interface on the planet (GSM) and that can view any web site, and you'll have a category-killer wireless Internet phone. Well, not exactly, because you just invented the Nokia 9000, and it's not selling either.

If you listen to the 3G people, they say it's all about access speed. They're promising wireless connections that are 50 times faster than we're getting today -- 384kb/s. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait about five years for that to happen.

Internet Access

So what's the story? Does anybody want wireless Internet? The industry is spending a fortune trying to get it right so it can meet the market demand it's sure is out there. So far, however, there has been just one misstep after another.

Of course, that's what they were saying about the PDA market a few years ago. The term PDA, after all, came from Apple Computer, which tried to hang on to the Newton long enough to see something happen. One by one, PDAs fell while industry critics complained that there was no market.

And then came the Palm Pilot. The wireless industry needs just such a killer product of its own.

A few months back, fellow wireless data pioneer Bill Frezza described the data issue this way:

"Wireless data riches lie behind a bank vault protected by a 10-way combination lock. One by one we step to the vault to take our turn at the combination - 28 Coverage - 14 Data Speed - 63 Size - 35 Capacity - 18 Market - 11 Cost - 49 Airlink - 51 Battery Life - 4 User Interface - 39 Weight ... and we pull."

Despite much critiquing, speculation and grumbling about wireless data's future, there is no turning back. Too much has been invested for data to fail, and companies have turned to partnerships and alliances in an effort to find the right combination of products and services. Groups such as Symbian and the WAP Forum are working hard to promote the wireless data initiative. Microsoft and Qualcomm's joint venture, WirelessKnowledge, was created in much the same spirit, and it has attracted multiple carrier partners as well. The fledgling WirelessKnowledge has joined yet another wireless data alliance -- WirelessReady -- which is a group of mobile computing hardware vendors, software developers and carriers that share the goal of accelerating the mobile computing adoption rate through compelling wireless data solutions.

The alliance provides members wireless data industry news as well as wireless-related sales, marketing, technology and product support. Members also can submit prototypes for compatibility testing, leading to pre-launch design validation and eventually "WirelessReady" certification.