The Titans 2001

Wireless Review identifies its picks of the year

Two years ago, Wireless Review selected its first Titans, individuals who stood out in the wireless crowd and provided leadership in technology and service deployment. The majority of the 10 honorees hailed from the world's largest wireless carriers.

Last year's Titans reflected the evolutionary changes taking place within the wireless world. Four of our Titan picks were not carriers at all. However, the impact and contributions of individuals from companies such as AOL (www.aol.com) and Phone.com (www.openwave.com) were undeniable.

This year, the evolution continues. Although carriers are on the front line and are most visible in showcasing wireless capabilities, other companies' contributions are just as noteworthy. Also, today's highly collaborative environment makes it more difficult to identify and credit individuals. Behind every successful CEO is a company rich with talent and shared vision.

Therefore, for the 2001 Titans, Wireless Review editors identified categories of significant development — wireless data, 3G, broadband, marketing and branding, customer service and wireless voice. We used those, as well as input from the industry, as the basis for making our selections. We picked suppliers as well as carriers because the achievements of each are dependent on the other.

Finally, to acknowledge the most resourceful wireless carrier, we named one dominant company as the 2001 Innovator. Read on to see our picks.

Broadband

Carrier
AT&T Wireless

Only a year has passed since the introduction of AT&T's fixed-wireless business (www.attws.com). The business provides high-speed Internet access to homes using PCS and WCS frequencies and a patented AT&T fixed-wireless technology. Starting small, AT&T Digital Broadband began with operations in Dallas and San Diego.

By late summer last year, the business had gained nearly 2,500 customers. Early this year, AT&T added Anchorage, AK, and Houston to its service areas. For 1Q01, the company reported 15,400 additional subscribers to the service and $2 million in total revenue for the quarter.

AT&T Wireless' fixed-wireless network uses orthogonal frequency division multiplexing to optimize spectrum use, and AT&T conserves resources by using many of its wireless sites for both its fixed and mobile units.

During a time when many broadband carriers are folding, AT&T Digital Broadband still is kicking, but the group's challenge is to ride out the current economic storm. Financially speaking, business is tough. However, things are looking up for AT&T Digital Broadband. The fixed-wireless group's first-quarter earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization was a loss of $68 million, compared to fourth-quarter losses last year of $105 million. The group attributes the losses to increased network and customer-care costs and an increase in subscribers.

Broadband

Vendor
ArrayComm

ArrayComm (www.arraycomm.com) has put a new twist on broadband data, enabling high data rates on laptops and PDAs. The system is not commercially available yet, but during technology trials at its San Jose, CA, facilities, the company reported sustained data rates of 1Mb/s on a fully loaded system, a phenomenal speed according to today's wireless-data standards.

ArrayComm plans to roll out its first commercial services in San Diego later this year and launch the product globally next year.

Adding to its appeal, i-Burst operates on time-division duplexed spectrum, using ArrayComm's smart-antenna technology, IntelliCell, to enable carriers to deliver data to thousands of customers per cell, thus optimizing spectrum usage.

Recently, ArrayComm purchased 3G spectrum in Australia's 1.9GHz auction. The company gained a 15-year commercial license for the spectrum, which covers a population of 14 million. The Australian government will release the spectrum in October 2002.

Customer Service

Carrier
U.S. Cellular

At the core of U.S. Cellular's (www.uscc.com) marketing plans are three goals: to penetrate its markets rapidly, increase consumer awareness of wireless service and reduce churn. In addition to traditional advertising and distribution approaches to achieve the first two goals, the company has set out to “satisfy” its customers in an effort to reduce churn.

U.S. Cellular plans to better satisfy its customers by offering better training for sales and CSRs, as well as implementing retention, churn-modeling and loyalty programs.

From Dec. 31, 1999, to Dec. 31, 2000, the company made several internal improvements in an effort to satisfy customers. These include expanding the company's WAN to handle internal functions more efficiently, such as over-the-air provisioning, ordering processing and credit validation.

During 2000, U.S. Cellular also reduced resume fees on delinquent accounts from $25 to $10 and prorated break fees based on the length of a customer's relationship with the company. John “Jack” Rooney, U.S. Cellular president & CEO, has said that he is working with his staff at every level to get feedback from them about what customers are saying they want. His emphasis has been on retaining existing customers, a strategy that appears to be working. For the 12-month period that ended Dec. 31, 2000, the company reported a churn rate of 1.8%, compared to average industry churn rates of 2% to 3%.

Customer Service

Vendor
Alcatel

Call centers receive thousands of inquiries and feedback from customers every day, and execs want to be able to record their companies' interactions with customers. The problem is that customers are contacting companies through various channels, including the telephone, e-mail and fax machines. Today's challenge is to integrate customer information from all of these channels and make the information available to the appropriate CSRs when it's needed.

Alcatel (www.alcatel.com) has taken a holistic approach with its contact-center products for medium and large enterprises. The company's software addresses a range of call-center issues from intelligent call routing to workforce management.

The company's recent acquisition of Genesys Laboratories (www.genesyslab.com) software has enabled it to create new call-center software, which can be used in multisite and multimedia call-center operations and can be integrated with traditional and IP-based call-center products.

Sprint PCS uses the Genesys software to route its calls. When the call is routed, the CSR also gets pertinent customer-profile information. The software also gives Sprint PCS the ability to create CSR profiles so that callers' needs can be matched to CSRs' skills and routed appropriately.

Alcatel continues to create alliances to integrate its contact-center software with e-business platform and application vendors. In February, the company announced strategic relationships with both SAP and Siebel.

Marketing & Branding

Carrier
Cingular

If you don't know “Jack,” you haven't watched television for a while. Jack is the little orange stick man that is Cingular's logo (www.cingular.com), and he's been all over the small screen since early this year.

Cingular advertisements feature various people expressing themselves in unusual ways. In one of the commercials, a disabled painter draws with a brush attached to his head. In another, a group of football players learns how to perform a touchdown dance from a ballet teacher.

Cingular's advertisements are innovative because they go beyond simply publicizing the company's wireless services. The ads are geared toward establishing an image of Cingular as a company that promotes the American ideal of individualism.

Kicking off its advertising campaign in January, Cingular unveiled a 12-story, 28,000-square-foot building wrap on its corporate headquarters in Atlanta. The wrap contained photos and quotations submitted by many of the company's 29,000 employees in answer to Cingular's question to them and the tagline of its ad campaign: “What do you have to say?”

Marketing & Branding

Vendor
Motorola

Recently, a visitor to teen-focused Web site Ice Lounge.com dubbed Motorola's V2397 handset the “Carson Daly phone,” making reference to the MTV veejay that serves as Motorola's spokesman in several advertisements. Motorola began wooing teenage customers in late 2000 with commercials featuring Daly and has succeeded in marrying the teen idol's image of cool to the phone.

In its quest for the teen market, Motorola also has affiliated itself with Web site Thirsty.com, which targets 13- to 22-year-olds. Motorola gave away 50,000 pagers to new site registrants during the site's September launch. The company also invested in Talking Drum, a wireless network created for the teen market.

Although Motorola might have been one of the first handset manufacturers to market to teens, others have been quick to follow, said Knox Bricken, Yankee Group (www.yankeegroup.com) analyst. She expects the youth market for wireless services to be big and said that carriers are pressuring handset manufacturers to create devices for the youth market.

However, whether youth marketing among handset manufacturers is a big trend or not, Motorola's foray into the market, particularly the choice of Carson Daly, is notable.

3G

Carrier
Sprint PCS

Sprint PCS (www.sprintpcs.com) gets the foresight award for the careful planning of its 3G migration path. According to the company, its migration path will be simpler, less time-consuming and less expensive than that of many of its competitors because it has constructed a nationwide network that operates on one frequency with one air-interface technology. Sprint plans to have its cdma2000 1X network available nationwide in 2002. The network is expected to offer peak data rates of 144kb/s.

The Overland Park, KS-based carrier plans to spend about $800 million to roll out its cdma2000 1X network nationwide. Peak data rates on Sprint's network will increase to 307kb/s by early 2003, if the company remains on schedule. By late 2003, the company plans to reach peak speeds of 2.4Mb/s.

“The bottom line is that Sprint saw the vision of wireless voice and data services years ago, acquired spectrum at comparative rock-bottom prices and designed its national, all-digital network with 3G services in mind,” said Charles Levine, Sprint PCS president & COO, in an announcement about the company's 3G plans.

3G

Vendor
ViAir

A major goal of wireless data is to enable people to transact personal and corporate business anywhere, anytime. Mobile e-mail access is crucial to this goal.

There are a number of wireless e-mail platforms and applications on the market. But the most useful wireless e-mail applications are accessible from various devices and are capable of accessing existing corporate or personal accounts, rather than using wireless-only addresses exclusively, said Warren Wilson, Summit Strategies analyst (www.summitstrategies.com).

Although ViAir (www.viair.com) is only about a year old, it has distinguished itself with a messaging platform and e-mail applications that allow users to, in one click, import critical personal information such as address books and calendars from the computer desktop. With ViAir's system, users can access 10 existing e-mail accounts via wireless devices. Carriers such as Nextel, the vendor's first major wireless-carrier customer, can choose the vendor's hosted applications or license the software.

Wireless Voice

Carrier
Verizon Wireless

Wireless data may be the industry's future, but voice is its present. That means that voice clarity and coverage efficiency are crucial.

Verizon Wireless (www.verizonwireless.com), the largest U.S. carrier with more than 26 million subscribers, has both of these areas covered. The carrier's network covers 96 of the top 100 U.S. markets, and its digital networks cover about 90% of the nation's population.

As the company grows, it's continuing to upgrade its networks and has added network-monitoring technologies.

For instance, Verizon recently enhanced digital coverage in several of its New York areas by adding additional cell sites or increasing capacity at existing sites. Likewise it upgraded its network in Las Vegas, including installation of in-building coverage in its fourth casino and hotel, the Venetian.

The company also recently announced that it would use Agilent's (www.agilent.com) acceSS7 product to monitor calls, service and customer activity on the network, troubleshoot and alert network administrators to problems.

In addition, Verizon has accelerated the digital migration of its subscribers and ended 1Q01 with approximately 16.3 million digital subscribers, according to the company's most recent quarterly report. This number represents a 65% increase in digital customers since the first quarter of last year.

Verizon also increased its penetration of covered POPs by 13.3% during the first quarter, compared to last year's figures.

Wireless Voice

Vendor
BeVocal

Less than three years old, BeVocal already has made a name for itself in the voice-recognition arena. BeVocal (www.bevocal.com) is delivering the platform and applications for Sprint PCS' Voice Command service, a voice portal that gives customers access to location-based and travel services, weather, traffic reports and information services.

In addition, BeVocal is positioning itself as a pioneer of the voice-activated Web. Last year, the company unveiled a library of eight vocal suites for developers. The suites, available online, are intended to help developers create customized applications for specific business models such as banks or location-based services.

Early this year, BeVocal received CT Labs' (www.ctlabs.com) highest ranking for its VoiceXML development platform and voice-hosting service. CT Labs tested BeVocal's platform and services along with those of HeyAnita (www.heyanita.com), Tellme (www.tellme.com) and VoiceGenie (www.voicegenie.com). CT concluded that BeVocal's platform makes application creation easy and that the ability of BeVocal's server to read ASCII text to callers was better than that of the other companies' servers.

“VoiceXML is the first step toward carriers starting to integrate voice with their data offers,” said Mark Plakias, Kelsey Group senior vice president (www.kelseygroup.com), communications and infrastructure.

BeVocal's market advantage, according to Plakias, is that it's carrier focused. But the company will have to go head-to-head with incumbent wireless software vendors.

“Here's a bunch of very good software people out in Silicon Valley now finding themselves competing with companies like Comverse (www.comverse.com), Lucent (www.lucent.com) and Nortel (www.nortel.com),” Plakias said, adding that to compete with these incumbents, BeVocal will have to become familiar with issues relative to integrating its systems with surrounding wireless technologies.

Data

Carrier
Nextel

With a recently introduced Java phone and a blossoming developers program, Nextel (www.nextel.com) is moving deeper into the enterprise data market. It recently introduced the Motorola (www.motorola.com) i85s phone. The Internet-ready phone is preloaded with Java applications such as business calculators and an expense pad. Additional Java applications can be downloaded.

The company has been offering Internet services for just over a year and is continuing to promote the development of new WAP and SMS enterprise applications through its developer program.

This year, Nextel has introduced several enterprise applications for specific industries. As a result of alliances with DST Innovis (www.dstinnovis.com) and PeopleSoft (www.peoplesoft.com), the company now offers tools for customer-relationship management to mobile sales reps, field technicians and dispatchers.

Nextel's alliances with Airput (www.air put.com), @Road (www.@road.com) and ClickSoftware (www.clicksoftware.com) allow it to offer applications that let users manage time sheets, communicate with and manage transportation fleets, and transmit schedule information from remote locations.

Data

Vendor
Openwave

Although technically a newcomer, Openwave (www.openwave.com), the product of a merger between Phone.com and Software.com, holds the lion's share of the global wireless browser market. To date, more than 100 million phones have been shipped with Openwave's browsers, and the company provides mobile software infrastructure to 85 wireless carriers worldwide.

Openwave is not resting on its laurels. It recently introduced a suite of Mobile Internet software, including gateway and browser products, as well as software to enable location-based services and provisioning.

According to Michael King, Dataquest analyst (www4.gartner.com), Openwave's business-expansion strategy is a good move.

Programming languages such as J2ME and BREW will widen Openwave's competitive landscape by making it easier for programmers to create wireless applications and ultimately decreasing the need for wireless browsers.

In addition to creating new software, Openwave is future-proofing by developing strategic partnerships. The company recently teamed with Network Appliance (www.networkappliance.com) to create a messaging platform that stores large data volumes. Openwave also has allied with Cisco (www.cisco.com) to make a VoiceXML-based platform, with Certicom (www.certicom.com) to build authentication into its browsers and with Portal Software (www.portal.com) to build enhanced billing capabilities into the UP.Link server.

2001 Innovator Award

Sprint PCS

Rolling out new data services has been a major focus for most North American carriers, but Sprint has taken the effort to the next level. In March, Sprint announced that it's on schedule with 3G and plans national deployment of its cdma2000 1X network next year.

The company also has continued to increase its wireless Web offerings. It has about 80 content partners, and its Web services run the gamut from simple information services such as news, weather and sports to location-based and voice-activated services. With Sprint's recently introduced Voice Command service, customers can store up to 500 names and 2,500 phone numbers to be activated by voice commands.

Current partnerships appear to land Sprint squarely in the youth market. For instance, a partnership with Hithive (www.hithive.com) enables Sprint to offer streaming music to subscribers, and the company recently began offering Samsung's Uproar MP3 phone (www.samsung.com). Sprint's partnerships with gaming companies such as JAMDAT Mobile (www.jamdat.com), Boxerjam (www.boxerjam.com) and Unplugged Games (www.ungames.com) give its subscribers wireless access to multi- and single-player games.

Despite a slowing economy and a stock price that has fluctuated between $15 and $65 during the past year, Sprint PCS reported a 6% increase in ARPU during 1Q01 — bringing its monthly average to $60 — and a 68% increase of operating revenues during the quarter from $1.22 billion a year ago to $2.05 billion. Sprint PCS also reported a 75% increase in its business-customer base, which the company attributes to its wireless Web service for enterprises.