Not Ready for Full-Time Adoption

Is the success of this industry measured in how thoroughly wireless replaces the landline network? Nearly half of those whom BellSouth surveyed last spring revealed that they use their wireless devices as their primary business phones. The same number said they use their cellular phones more than their home phones.

That was clearly a more tolerant group than were the six Wireless Review writers who decided to cut the cord for a 7-day period last month. Let's not bury the lead in this story: At the end of 1998, wireless is not ready for full-time adoption. As champions of this industry, it pains us to admit it.

"With more usage, I noticed more flaws in my service." Karissa's observation was echoed all around. Frequent interference and the inability to connect reliably on the first attempt was an alarmingly universal problem. Although differing air interface standards resulted in unique quality issues, one thing was clear: Coverage concerns should dominate a carrier's agenda.

Consider Tim's sad story: "At home, my phone was virtually unusable. Attempts to call out frequently yielded: 'Call failed. Network busy' or 'Redialing.' Good thing I wasn't having a heart attack. On Saturday, I had to call the same person back nine times in 15 minutes because the calls kept dropping even though I was standing by an open sliding-glass door. The CSR's response? Fifteen courtesy minutes and the revelation that 'coverage isn't guaranteed indoors.'"

Of course, call quality becomes a secondary concern when you've got no juice; battery capacity was another recurring theme.

"I knew I didn't have the battery power to keep the phone on all day," Marcia admitted. "So at work, I let the office phone take voice-mail messages and then checked the messages by wireless phone and returned the calls." A roundabout way of saying that wireless couldn't do the job alone.

One morning, Karissa went to make a phone call and realized "I'd left my phone on all night and forgot to charge it. So I had to revert back to landline for a few morning business calls. Ahhh, the comfort," she said.

"Most aggravating was when the battery ran out in the middle of an important interview," Tim said. Incidentally, he was interviewing a senior engineer at a major vendor when this happened. "The battery won't run out on this one," the engineer joked when he called Tim back on his office phone.

In the midst of all of this grousing, is there good news for the wireless industry? Sure there is. "The phone was a timesaver at the office. I can do two things at once. I actually made phone calls from the fax machine," Karissa said. And Betsy echoed the convenience factor: "A few times I was expecting calls from people on the West Coast, but I'd gone home by the time they called. They were able to reach me even though I'd left work." These are familiar reasons for the value of wireless as a secondary communications tool, but they've already been exploited. The industry needs to advance in its master plan to replace landline.

Here are some non-traditional reasons for why the experiment was uncomfortable for most: Karissa surmised that all-wireless families must be multiphone families. (Hooray, cry the carriers!) "We currently have one home phone number," she said. "If we were 100% wireless, my husband would have had no phone at home to use unless we each had a separate phone with separate phone numbers. What number would our mutual friends and family call? And what would happen if we had children?"

Here's another unique, entirely legitimate concern: "For a lot of people, including me, using a wireless phone creates an uncomfortable situation because of the stigma associated with it," Betsy said. "I couldn't help but feel other people were staring at me when I made a call, or that they were thinking 'showoff,' no matter how discreet I tried to be."

And for all of those RF engineers laboring to further miniaturize the handset, here's a tricky issue: "It was impossible to take notes and messages while on the phone," Karissa observed. "It's much easier to cradle a landline phone between my shoulder and ear." Maybe it's time to seriously consider Christopher Galvin's ideas on installing components in our bodies, turning us into the hardware.

"This was the week, however, that I decided that it is time to go digital," Marcia concluded. But not the week for a permanent, 100% wireless conversion, we all agreed. We'll try again next year.