Parallel Roads

The pot at the end of the rainbow is not 3G data; it's data ubiquity, and although at times it may seem like you can't get there from here, Bell Atlantic Mobile (BAM) CTO Dick Lynch not only is a staunch believer in data, he contends that there is more than one road to the prize. BAM plans to be aggressive about future data technologies, but not at the expense of current ones.

This philosophy makes a lot of sense when you consider that BAM has invested several years and millions of dollars nurturing its CDPD services. Although it is mum on just how many CDPD customers it supports, BAM probably has the lion's share of the 50,000-to-60,000 total CDPD customers, said Howard Waterman, staff director, public relations.

The majority of these customers fall into vertical markets, such as police departments, utilities and even a Manhattan, NY, Burger King, which uses wireless point-of-sale, credit-card verification. The owner says wireless point of sale fits the bill because many out-of-town customers come in who don't like to carry cash. Plus, people tend to spend more with credit than they do with cash. He's even thinking about taking wireless point of sale on the road by hiring a delivery person, Waterman said.

Plunging modem prices may continue to fuel CDPD growth. Modem prices have dropped from the $600 to $750 range at the beginning of the year to less than $300. Although Waterman said the fastest-growing CDPD customer segment is the mobile professional, many of those new sales likely will be in vertical markets. The horizontal market remains elusive.

RITE OF PASSAGE"The dilemma we have in getting to a huge market today isn't the willingness or unwillingness of a customer, it is the lack of understanding of what wireless data can do," Lynch said. "Our inability as an industry to achieve mass-market awareness is probably the biggest single obstacle to widespread utilization of these data services."

The solution? Time.

You only have to look at the long evolution of cellular voice to see that the industry already has been through the process once, Lynch said. The industry will go through much the same process with data.

The key is gaining a foothold. You've got to have potential customers seeing other customers using the service, Lynch said. Then, let the snowball effect take over.

The situation also is one of perspective, however. As Lynch pointed out, the industry is starting from a different point with data service than it did with voice. BAM doubled its data revenue and customers last year, Lynch said, but data starts at such a small number compared with the millions and millions of voice customers that the numbers' significance can get lost.

"You're talking about tens of thousands of data customers as opposed to millions of voice customers, but that same rapid ramp-up is occurring in data," Lynch said.

VIRTUAL PACKETCircuit-switched CDMA deployment will help ramp up data, Lynch said. BAM plans to offer circuit-switched data by the end of the year, followed by CDMA packet data in 2000. Why bother with circuit-switched at all? Why not skip straight to packet?

The answer is twofold. One is that the applications are different for each. The customer who wants an always-on connection likely will stay with CDPD, Lynch said. The customer who normally dials up, downloads his information and then goes away will migrate to circuit-switched.

Lynch said the second reason is that circuit-switched CDMA is easy to do.

"The only thing I have to do to turn that phone into a modem is to take the vocoder out of the way and plug my serial port from my computer right into it," Lynch said. "With virtually no change to the network -- with an enhancement to the software and a very small hardware change to the phone -- circuit-switched CDMA is easily enabled."

However, some modification to the network will be necessary for BAM to provide QuickNet Connect (QNC), which is a packet-like simulator of circuit-switched data. It will allow the subscriber to get on and off multiple times as his computer senses the need.

"While it is still circuit-switched, it will give them a virtual always-on connection," Lynch said. "To do QNC, we have to add some additional infrastructure to the network, essentially a router at the switch."

The jump to CDMA packet data will require more engineering because the radio-channel access protocols are set up to lock up a voice circuit for the duration, and circuit-switched CDMA essentially is locking up a path for the duration. With true packet, you have to have a way to grab the necessary radio resources for a short period, connect to the proper modem at the other end, drop the connection immediately and come back and do it again the next time either end needs to talk, Lynch said.

"A certain amount of radio-control protocols need to be enhanced to provide true packet," he said.

DIFFERENT, YET THE SAMEBAM will venture beyond 2G in late 2000 with its 21/2G offering -- 1XRTT. Lynch said from a data perspective, 21/2G involves nothing different from 2G. The circuit cards that are plugged into the cell sites have different bandwidths, and they process the calls in a slightly different fashion using different specifications. He said 1XRTT really is one third of 3G in terms of spectrum width. It uses different coding techniques and different modulation techniques, and other than those kinds of things, it is just like 2G.

"Conceptually it is identical," Lynch said.

The story changes when you get to 3G. The minimum bandwidth on 3G technology is three times the 1XRTT bandwidth, and essentially you have 5MHz-wide channels instead of 11/4MHz-wide channels. Still, even with the changes 3G will entail, he expects it will be a fairly straight shot.

"I don't think I'm going to have to put in brand-new cell sites and brand-new switches," Lynch said. "I think it's just a continued evolution of what I've already got."

There is still much uncertainty with 3G, even considering the forward strides such as the 3G harmonization effort.

"Harmonization says that the carriers now can be assured that whatever they buy is going to do either W-CDMA or cdma2000," Lynch said. "That's where the Toronto meeting comes into its own. We finally seem to have gotten past this; it has to be one or the other."

Nevertheless, Lynch doesn't believe harmonization will speed 3G along. In his estimation, by the time all of the pieces are put together, from finishing the specification to marketing and selling handsets, it's going to be 2003.

"All of that assumes that we know what we're going to do with 3G, and we don't," Lynch said. He said nobody really has an application or service to offer on 3G that can't be offered on 2G today.

"They'll talk to you about video this and video that and high-speed imaging, but ask them to show it to you," Lynch said. "There isn't anything yet. I'm saying that realistic business perspective says that 2003 is the earliest you're going to see 3G out there."