Hype Hangover

Third-generation wireless networks soon will be deployed by foreign and domestic carriers. By the time retailers stock their shelves for the 2003 holiday season, high-speed wireless data applications may top the wish list.

If that scenario doesn't play out as portrayed by starry-eyed marketers, the fallout could be worse than this year's tech-stock hangover. Reality bites, doesn't it?

Lately, wireless companies have become realistic about 3G data services. Ingenuity and reality have replaced wild abandon.

Hyping stratospheric throughput rates assured subscriber disappointment. Feeling taken, users shuffled back to voice land. Getting a second chance will require improvements to the user interface, applications and throughput rates.

Wireless insiders now talk “average” or “apparent” speeds. The message is clear: Reality-based marketing is in; overblown exaggeration is out.

Reality Check

Jason Guesman, Sprint PCS director (www.sprintpcs.com) of business marketing, said by mid-2002, Sprint PCS subscribers may access average speeds of 60kb/s to 70kb/s (peak is 144kb/s).

“It functions much like a cable modem would, very similar to how the Internet works today,” Guesman said. “You're connected, and your throughput actually varies depending on the other users on the network. It's a shared resource.”

Sprint PCS, along with most other major wireless carriers, uses network-optimization solutions to increase perceived throughput speeds. By compressing information, or stripping away unnecessary bits of information, throughput seems faster.

“We'll use compression and bandwidth optimization to raise the speeds as high as we can,” Guesman said.

Sprint PCS is using technology from BlueKite (www.bluekite.com) for optimization. Other options are available from companies such as Fourelle Systems (www.fourelle.com) and Speedwise (www.speedwise.com). (See “The Bare Essentials” on page 26.)

Within the next year, Nextel (www.nextel.com) will allow subscribers to download data applications — Java-based and others — over the network. Today, downloads are done via a cable connected to the user's PC. At the same time, such downloads will be taking place faster.

“We're running 14kb/s to 20kb/s, which is not 50, but it's fast,” said Greg Santoro, Nextel vice president Internet and wireless services. “Compression will be deployed about the same time as network-aware provisioning, which will give the appearance of a 50kb/s-average-throughput wireless Internet experience.”

Tweaking the network will smooth over bumps on the road to 3G, but real benefits will come with next-generation networks.

“Faster speeds will bring on a whole new dimension,” Guesman said. “What's been happening the past three years is an alignment of devices, networks and applications.

“On the network side, we made a big leap in 1999 when we moved to circuit-switched data,” Guesman said. “On the app side, there was a smaller step with WAP; (it) wasn't well-defined. We're now going to go through a big jump on the network side. I would argue that on the device side, the Kyocera (QCP 6035) smart phone (www.kyocera.com) is another big leap.”

Devices, networks and applications will continue to affect wireless data uptake. As Guesman pointed out, networks are just one part of the equation.

Using Voice to Sell Data

Both Sprint PCS and Nextel will use voice recognition to sell data.

Guesman said Sprint PCS is focused on usability and smarter applications for devices, and launched a voice portal through Hey Anita (www.heyanita.com).

Santoro agreed that voice-recognition technology is helpful but believes the quality's not yet up to par.

“Until there's seamless voice recognition, data entry will still take place on the keypad,” he said. “But if you improve the user experience with graphics, forms and other areas, that's a key component to increased adoption, just as important as speed.”

Voice recognition and faster networks are symbiotically linked. Better networks facilitate better voice recognition, Santoro said.

“It has to be responsive and clear,” he said. “We see integrated voice and data as very important. Once that happens, you'll see really creative applications. And faster speeds will move that process along.”

Bilingual?

New programming languages and platforms such as Java 2 Micro-Edition (J2ME) and Qualcomm's Binary (www.qualcomm.com) Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) have been flexing their marketing muscles in the court of public opinion to determine the future of wireless data application development. Although BREW-enabled devices can run J2ME applications, a device needs a Qualcomm chip to run BREW applications.

Regardless of technical differences, there are benefits to applications developed using both environments, and plenty of eager inventors hope to create the next “killer app.”

Case in point is 28-year-old David Fox, who in June won the Developer's Challenge — a contest co-sponsored by Motorola (www.motorola.com) and Nextel at Java One in San Francisco. Fox created a remote home monitoring application for wireless devices using J2ME. Contest rules called for developers to complete coding in six hours.

“We were so impressed by what he did from a home-control standpoint,” Santoro said. “It just goes to show what you can do with a rich environment to code in. There were icons for each room, then you could affect things in that room, such as a video camera in the nursery that would send stills every 15 seconds. Also, by using an X-10 network, you can control lights, the garage door and all locks from your wireless phone.”

Nextel announced its application-developer program six months ago. Since then, participation has climbed from a few dozen programmers to nearly 3,000. New wireless data applications will be launched as Nextel's network is upgraded to fully provision and support them, Santoro said. Customer sales channels and developer revenue deals still are being worked out.

“The first step for us is that we are now readying the network to accept network-aware Java apps. The current roll-out supports resident apps only,” Santoro said. “By the end of summer or early fall, we will allow network-aware apps to be run on the network and have the ability for any app to be loaded over the air.”

Sprint PCS' Guesman said the company was working with both the J2ME and BREW development platforms.

The Bare Essentials

Packing for summer vacation is never easy. What will actually fit and still leave room for passengers?

Sending data over wireless networks uses much the same principle. Carriers drive the car; subscribers are passengers, and their luggage is data. Most passengers would rather squeeze belongings into a smaller bag than leave them behind.

But drivers don't like that idea.

Fourelle (www.fourelle.com), BlueKite (www.bluekite.com), Speedwise (www.speedwise.com) and others have convinced carriers that compression is necessary, even with 3G around the corner.

“If you look at where the value is, it's either people compressing or caching data,” said Patrick Glenn, Fourelle Systems chairman & CEO. “Ultimately, what that does is take traffic off the network and enables the data to get there faster.”

Focusing on enterprise applications, Fourelle fought an uphill battle for market acceptance.

“People would not deploy wireless just to do it because up to that point (mid-1990s), it was a very expensive proposition,” Glenn said. “The price had to be driven down. Now, any user on any network can basically receive information.”

Fourelle's Venturi optimizes wireless-network throughput. Most subscribers don't know a throughput rate from a ring tone. They do know when they drop a data call.

“The user only cares if data is being delivered in a useful way,” Glenn said.

Fourelle works through carriers to reach business customers.

“We can help (the carrier) sell data optimization,” he said. “We know how to enable applications to work better on their network.”

Glenn predicts carriers and enterprise customers will use optimization solutions well beyond 3G.

“The question of whether there's value in optimization for 3G becomes about the conservation of a precious resource, which fundamentally is how carriers generate revenue,” he said. “It becomes irrelevant whether it's faster. It's more important that it's using fewer resources.”