Remote Control

For all the questions about the security and reliability of wireless data, it's ironic that many of its biggest users are those for whom dropped calls and packets can be a matter of life or death.

Take STATmail!, which provides home-health nurses with secure, remote access to an intranet. From their patients' homes, nurses use laptops equipped with wireless modems to review notes from previous visits. Nurses also can upload information such as vital signs to the intranet, which physicians and insurers can access via wireless-ready laptops, making them available to patients nearly anytime and anywhere.

"It's chopping days of communications backlog off of home health," said Bill Okonak, STATmail! vice president of operations. "Physicians can sit in the ir library or anywhere and review home-health notes."

That's a real vote of confidence for wireless data.

"We're as reliable, if not more so, as any LAN or WAN the health system would have set up," Okonak said.

STATmail! uses a virtual private network (VPN), which provides secure, remote access to a private network via a public network, such as PSTN or the Internet. Landline voice VPNs have been used widely for more than two decades, and their popularity is due partly to their use of the existing PSTN infrastructure. VPNs could help boost data traffic on wireless networks by offering users a package that combines proven, familiar computer technology with wireless' mobility and convenience.

Definitions and applications of data VPNs vary, but the common denominator is that they typically use the Internet to transport encrypted packets with the added safeguard of authentication. For landline voice, VPNs are a cost-effective alternative to leased lines because they use the PSTN to connect remote offices. The Internet provides a similar cheap and ubiquitous highway for data traffic.

Although wireless VPNs do not offer the bandwidth necessary yet for linking an entire remote office, that may be moot because the definition of office is changing. Most police cruisers now are equipped with data terminals for accessing records, and the Philadelphia Police Department uses Bell Atlantic Mobile's AirBridge CDPD service to link officers' laptops to central databases.

"So we've equipped their (cruisers) to look just like their office if they had a desk job," said Bill Davidson, vice president of wireless data marketing and sales.

Currently, one-third of the U.S. work force is spending at least 20% of the work day away from its primary workplace, according to a January 1998 study by The Yankee Group. The study also predicts that by the year 2000, 33% of large U.S. corporations will provide their field-service and sales personnel with wireless intranet access.

The future for wireless VPNs looks bright. The total VPN market was valued at $205 million in 1997 and is projected to grow to $11.9 billion by the end of 2001, according to Infonetics Research.

"I think there is a good opportunity there," said Michael Feinstein, vice president of Bay Networks' Access division. "It's a fairly new market in the grand scheme of things. It's really taking off now."

A Common Language Internet protocol (IP) is the standard for routing messages across the Internet's networks. When wireless uses IP, it improves its chances of being implemented for data.

"You're talking the same language to network managers that they're already used to working with," said Roberta Wiggins, a Yankee Group analyst who specializes in wireless data. "It's just adding in wireless."

Besides familiarity, IP also helps reduce implementation costs because users can continue to run applications such as e-mail and FTP. Bell Atlantic Mobile's CDPD system is IP-based, and spokesperson Maggie Rohr said that ease of implementation is key to attracting users.

"They can use an off-the-shelf e-mail package or an off-the-shelf office-manager package or do minor customization of a program that's already written."

That's not to say IP doesn't have its shortcomings. For one, it's better suited for landline connections than wireless, where drops in signal can result in lost packets. For another, IP is chatty: It continually acknowledges the connections by sending packets in addition to those carrying the data.

One solution is Nettech Systems' Smart IP, a robust and more efficient version designed for wireless applications. Reducing IP overhead is important because wireless doesn't enjoy the same bandwidth as landline.

Security is another issue. Because any VPN links a private network to a public network, firewalls are necessary to protect against breaches. VPNs also usually use authentication and encrypted packets as additional safeguards.

Wireless also must continue to allay fears about eavesdropping by showcasing high-security applications. Bell Atlantic Mobile and Transaction Network Services, for example, have teamed to offer merchants a wireless replacement for leased lines used for point-of-purchase credit-card processing. And in June, Gooitech began reselling BellSouth's Intelligent Wireless Network as part of its wireless applications for the banking and finance industries.

Bell Atlantic Mobile's Davidson sees law enforcement's use of wireless VPNs as another vote of confidence.

"If the police are using this to access state and national crime databases and message back and forth to one another, how can you have proof for it being any more secure than that?" he asked.

A Good Fit for Business Wireless VPNs could be a hit with business users because they help companies accommodate societal and workplace trends such as telecommuting and day-extending.

"The whole definition of mobile work force is evolving and doing so rapidly," said Tom Langan, BellSouth Wireless Data vice president of wireless access devices and systems.

Wireless VPNs can grab that market by offering mobile workers convenience and cable-free connectivity. Multinational companies should find VPNs attractive because using the Internet gets around additional charges for distance.

The downside to using the Internet as a backbone is its speed, which can be unacceptably slow for business applications. Wireless' limited bandwidth compounds that problem. But users still might be won over by the ability to check e-mail and download small text files, even at 19.2kb/s.

As a result, carriers that offer wireless data and VPNs see them as remaining vertical markets for the near future. Wireless can't match landline's ability to supply the bandwidth necessary to connect, say, a remote service center to company headquarters.

"I don't see people using wireless as their backbone anytime soon," said Bay's Feinstein. "The need for overall bandwidth is going to grow so high that I think people are going to put cables in the ground."

Instead, wireless VPNs will serve individual mobile workers. Business travelers, for example, could be won over by the ability to access their office intranets without the hassles of cables and connections.

"If wireless is an attractive and reliable option, then I think people will take advantage of it," Feinstein said.

Ready for Prime Time? America's love affair with e-mail and its need to keep in touch on the go don't show any signs of subsiding, and there's still plenty of room on the Internet bandwagon. But for wireless VPNs to succeed, several issues need to be addressed:

* Awareness. "We need to talk more about our successes as an industry," said Bell Atlantic Mobile's Davidson. "When we go to a trade show and demonstrate our Internet product, most people say, 'We didn't even know you could do that. We didn't know you guys had this.' So we have an awareness issue out there we need to solve."

* Better distribution. Partnerships with computer makers and retailers could be key in reaching important demographics such as business users, who were early adopters of cellular.

* Turnkey solutions. "In order for the market to pick up quickly, service providers need to offer turnkey VPN services to their customers to make it easy for them to move into this area," said Bay's Feinstein. "That's just starting to happen. I think that's where the wireless piece fits in because there are wireless providers that are focused on wireless networks, and they'll be able to offer customers wireless options for their VPNs."

* Flexible, customizable software and hardware that give users the ability to switch providers.

* Improved client devices, such as smart phones and laptops. Everyone agrees that battery life must continue to improve, but whether price cuts are key to stimulating implementation is debatable.

"I could argue that the person who just spent $4,000 on their new laptop is willing to spend $699 with me on a modem that is CDPD-capable, circuit-switched-data-capable and landline-capable," Davidson said. "So I think thechallenge is, how do we get that customer buying the laptop to buy the modem at the same time rather than trying to make it an add-on in a whole other process?"

Smart phones are another option, but features such as keyboards add bulk. That criticism might be moot, however, because even the largest smart phone is still smaller and lighter than a laptop.

But the future of wireless data VPNs hinges just as much on selling wireless data to carriers as to the public. One potential selling point is how data became an increasing percentage of landline traffic and revenues.

"There's absolutely no reason why the same sort of growth in terms of percentage of total revenues shouldn't occur in the wireless arena as well," Davidson said.