Office Politics

Who can offer the best and the most cost-effective wireless office solution? That all depends on whom you ask. Carriers of all digital technologies say they currently are, or soon will be, offering wireless office applications. But according to Jerry Kaufman, Alexander Resources president, most of them are using the term very broadly for marketing purposes. Carriers are offering everything from a connection to an existing PBX, to adding additional repeaters to buildings, to no additional equipment at all. But they all have the same goal: retaining high-end business customers by offering one phone and service for private and public domain use.

SOLUTIONS AT WORK AT&T Wireless was one of the first service providers to market its wireless office solutions heavily. During first quarter this year, it announced nationwide strategic marketing agreements with companies such as Hughes Network Systems and Ericsson. Today, the carrier is offering wireless office solutions to businesses such as the Sony CD manufacturing plant in Oregon. Typically, AT&T Wireless integrates an office solution to the existing PBX, which allows customers to use wireless phones as an extension of the desk set in the campus/office environment and switch to a traditional wireless service offering outside. Customers receive the same features as their wired office phones.

The TDMA camp reportedly has said that its standard is the only one capable of offering true wireless office solutions today. This offers a clear advantage to TDMA carriers, according to Ken Woo, AT&T Wireless external communications manager.

"With IS-136, we're able to stack more cells on top of one another to get the office and campus coverage that you need," Woo said. "On the GSM realm and CDMA side, their tolerances are so fine that they probably can't do it at this time ... So the advantage right now goes to those on the IS-136 platform."

Because GSM is a form of IS-136, it would seem GSM carriers would have similar capabilities. But according to the UWCC, GSM's solution has limitations because the private office network is available only to employees and not outside users. The GSM camp had planned to address this issue in its 3G proposal, but it was dropped (Wireless Review, June 1). GSM representatives who were interviewed were unaware of these limitations or the 3G-related effort, and others were unavailable for comment at press deadline. However, Kaufman said he didn't know of any technical hurdles that would hinder GSM providers from offering office applications. In fact, one GSM carrier selected the GSM technology specifically because of its support of business applications.

Airadigm Communications has been designing its network specifically to support office solutions from the beginning because its goal always has been to differentiate itself by targeting the business segment. According to Bill Benson, director of sales for Wisconsin Wireless (Airadigm's parent company), the carrier has built out tower locations to have high capacity and high levels of in-building capabilities. Wisconsin Wireless offers a wireless Centrex solution instead of a PBX solution. With a PBX solution, the user has to have a main control unit interfacing with the existing PBX. Benson said it basically is a wired system with a remote cell unit so users have to put up units to cover a facility. Considering on-site equipment costs such as remote cell units, wiring and phones, the solution is cost prohibitive. According to Benson, Wisconsin Wireless has "leapfrogged" that process. It uses macro-level sites, which gives enough penetration in the facility to allow the carrier to do more without the infrastructure costs. If a building needs more RF penetration, the customer can purchase repeaters for the side of the building, but Benson said those costs still are minimal.

Wisconsin Wireless is providing this solution to more than 75 employees at Lindquist Machine in Wisconsin. Lindquist is charged a flat monthly rate per user (around $37), which allows any employee registered on the network unlimited usage of his phone whether he is in the building or outside. Wisconsin Wireless charges 10 cents a minute for all off-net calls (to anybody not on the private network) within the state of Wisconsin. Users receive a variety of desk-set features, including multiline capability and conference calling.

MUDSLINGING CDMA has received perhaps the most ridicule about its alleged inability to offer effective in-building solutions to the office environment. Alexander Resources' Kaufman said work needs to be done to make power control more sophisticated. With CDMA, he said, users are transmitting at the same time, so if a user is only one foot away from the receiver, the signal will block out other users.

David Brandos, Qualcomm infrastructure group director of product management, admitted that there was a "near far" problem with early CDMA systems, buthe said it was solved about two years ago, and today there are no power control problems.

"I don't know of any limitations from the specification standpoint," Brandos said. And, he added, it is only getting better. The next evolution of the CDMA specification will improve the speed of power control greatly, and increase efficiency and battery life. Although this was not done specifically for in-building coverage, he said it will improve office/campus environment applications.

According to Kaufman, base-station cost limits CDMA's ability to reach the office environment. CDMA base-station equipment is more expensive because it was designed to handle a lot of people, so it is difficult to scale down for a few users, he said. But Qualcomm spokesperson Michelle French disagreed. She said CDMA has come a long way in bringing the cost curve down.

"A couple of years ago when CDMA was a newer technology, certainly there were cost implications of being a less mature technology," she said, "but today we're very cost-competitive with other digital technologies."

A handful of carriers is setting out to prove that the technology offers effective in-building solutions. According to the CDMA Development Group, Canadian carriers have in-building trials under way. In the United States, AirTouch Cellular is developing a wireless office solution for its customers.

Like the Wisconsin Wireless solution, Peshavaria said AirTouch will not rely on a PBX connection to offer services; instead it will use microcells and adjacent cells to increase capacity and in-building coverage. Users will receive "all of the features of the wireless office," such as 4-digit dialing, call forwarding, call transfer, caller ID and voice mail.

DISPELLING MISCONCEPTIONS Understanding what each technology can offer isn't an easy task.

What makes an effective system just depends on what your customers' needs are. For example, connecting to a PBX is an attractive solution to many large businesses because they are willing to pay the extra money required for on-premise equipment. For this premium, they receive a solution that can handle the capacity and feature requirements of a large business.

However, relying on an outdoor cell site or Centrex service is an economical solution for small businesses that cannot afford the expense of on-site equipment, but only if the service can work effectively from a carrier's network. These solutions are easy to get and easy to provide. Carriers simply make software changes and identify certain phones with special billing rates and capabilities.

Qualcomm's Brandos agreed that carriers need to look closely before they assume one technology or approach is better than another. He said carriers shouldn't believe the claims about RF limitations. "I don't think that any digital technology has an RF efficiency limitation for these environments," he said. "All technologies must have the flexibility to offer products that will allow these services to work from an RF perspective."

The real challenges, he said, will be in other areas such as voice quality and features. The problems don't necessarily lie in technology standards but the actual products that are not available to support these applications. He said early efforts just "glued pieces together" instead of providing a "complete integrated solution."

As the market segment matures, more complete solutions will be available, but it could be awhile before that happens. Unfortunately, there are other more immediate concerns. The global marketplace has been such a fast-growing business that it has kept vendor focus away from other things. Also, the mobility market is growing 40% a year, and many licensees are just building out basic infrastructure. So even though there's an untapped market in the wireless office, the big players really haven't penetrated with complete solutions, Brandos said.

Carriers agreed that there are misconceptions about different capabilities simply because most campus/office environment services have just launched in the last year. Once products are available and more providers start offering solutions, actual commercial services will prove what capabilities really are possible.

According to AirTouch's Peshavaria, there has not been a lot of publicity about these services and what they can offer because corporate and medium-size customers are critical.

"It's not the kind of thing you want to publicize prematurely," he said. "Carriers are being cautious as they implement solutions for the campus and office environment and are just now moving forward."

Wisconsin Wireless' Benson agreed that over the next year, the industry will begin to see more examples of what various providers can offer.

"We're at the forefront of this technology," he said. "A lot of other (PCS) carriers are just focusing on the (PCS) phone as cellular replacement, but we understand the benefits of providing in-building solutions, so we're probably a year ahead of our time."

In the meantime, he said, all carriers should know that these applications are out there, they are working, and customers truly are using them.

"People are seeing a lot of benefit and value from it," he said.

The proof is in the pudding. Carriers report zero churn rates as well as high interest from prospective customers.

MEETING NEEDS As interest continues to increase, so does the competitive desire to win over customers. Kaufman said to determine if you have the best service, look beyond the technical specifications and evaluate what really matters.

"There are so many different flavors of wireless office, and carriers describe almost anything as being a wireless office solution," he said. "What we're really talking about is not whether it's CDMA, TDMA or GSM, but the real focus always should be how will this impact the user, and how will the user evaluate the capabilities and therefore want to or not want to buy the service."

That means making sure the service you provide truly can offer high voice quality and feature-rich capabilities. This digs much deeper than which standard you use. As Kaufman pointed out, no one ever has done objective analysis to prove whether one technology offers superior voice quality over another because so many factors such as network design and the human voice affect quality.

The actual features and design of the phone also will be a critical factor. For example, wireless office phones need to offer features (such as dedicated hold button, transfer, conference and provision for headset jack) not normally found on today's wireless phones but that are traditionally found on office desk phones.

"Some carriers who say they have a wireless office service might only provide little to no business features on the handset," Kaufman said. But the real winners in the office debate will be carriers that progress to offering full business feature-rich services with true dial-tone voice quality.