The Virtual Office

Practically every company fancies itself a data player, but then the competitive market has all but made it imperative to make a data play. Companies are rolling out their data wares, whether or not they truly believe flocks of users will be scrambling to sign up.

American Mobile Satellite (AMS) and BellSouth Wireless Data (BSWD) have shifted their focus to the mobile professional's world. Although both companies have been successful with vertical markets such as telemetry, transportation and field service, innovation has caught up with imagination, at least temporarily. Now, the tools are available to connect mobile workers with their offices, and that market has the potential to be a lucrative one.

"That marketplace is about 30 million potential users in the United States," said Janet Boudris, BSWD senior vice president of strategic marketing. "The field force, which is the technicians and the trucks, is about 10 million potential users. It has always been a challenge because the right form factors weren't there, and being able to access the information that they're seeking has been a challenge."

BSWD sells interactive paging service as a standalone service to that market, but Boudris said that many companies also ask for the ability to access their intranets.

To this end, AMS recently launched eLink, a 2-way messaging service with two levels: eLink Messenger includes a standalone e-mail address so customers can forward e-mail from their existing e-mail accounts to their devices; eLink Agent is a wireless extension to customers' existing POP3 Internet mail accounts. E-mail replies appear as mail from their POP3 accounts, and eLink includes personal-information-management (PIM) capabilities, such as address book, task list and calendar, from Research In Motion.

AMS has partnered with SkyTel, which plans to tie eLink Messenger into its paging service, and partner GoAmerica will offer its Go.Web and Go.Mail service and airtime over the ARDIS network. AMS will sell Go.Web as a value-added service to its existing eLink wireless e-mail service. Go.Web allows wireless subscribers to access corporate intranet information and personalized Web content.

Despite this new focus, neither company is about to forget its bread-and-butter accounts, which sometimes can open the door to the white-collar world. For example, BSWD's field-service and transportation accounts with companies such as GE and IBM give it the opportunity to reach deeper into corporations and market additional services.

"We're not walking in saying we have this brand new thing for you," Boudris said. "We have an opportunity to extend our position in Fortune 1000 companies from what historically has been technicians and trucks into another part of the company that before was unavailable to us."

AMS plans to introduce eLink to its vertical markets by using the same devices with different applications tailored for the field service or transportation markets, said Tom Cuthbertson, AMS director of product marketing.

"We can put an application down for the (RIM) 850 device, which has an ARDIS modem, and have forms and transactions set up that would be in tune with field service," Cuthbertson said. "'I've finished my call; I'm available for next service call.'"

FIERCE COMPETITION Both BSWD and AMS aren't alone in their data endeavors. Both have a whole slew of competitors that differ by market. In telemetry, they compete not only with companies such as Aeris and Cellemetry but also with private systems such as the mobile-radio systems that utilities often deploy.

"The thing about this market (is) it is volatile," Cuthbertson said. "As soon as somebody introduces a new hand-held device of some sort, somebody else is right there in the wings working on the next one."

Cellular and PCS carriers also are jumping into the data pool. However, one advantage that AMS and BSWD say they have is their ability to focus all of their energy on data.

"We are focused on just data: on continuously improving the features, the function, what you see, how you see it, how you experience it," Boudris said. "That's going to take some time for the wireless voice companies to come up to speed on that."

Providing additional features and functionality to that end-to-end solution is what keeps companies competitive in this arena, Cuthbertson said.

COVERAGE & CAPACITY Features and functionality go hand-in-hand with coverage and capacity. Although every carrier knows that coverage is important, few are as zealous about it as Boudris. She said BSWD has done surveys and focus groups ad nauseam over the past few years.

"The one key thing that the wireless-data users were adamant about, whether they are paging users, field force or white collar, is coverage," Boudris said. "If I don't have coverage, it's irrelevant to me the other things you say you provide because I can't get to (the information)."

Boudris said that BSWD will have 2,400 base stations within a year and a half. Starting in 4Q97, it added nearly a base station a day: 500 last year and another 300 so far this year.

"I can't tell you how difficult that is," Boudris said. "It is so competitive in today's marketplace to get a site, negotiate it and get the telephone facilities. It takes 6 to 9 months from the time you say you want to put up a base station to actually deploying one."

Cuthbertson is less concerned about the need for coverage. He said the current data network meets the needs of the segments that AMS serves.

"Like anybody, we are continually reviewing the network to understand the next set up of transactional requirements," he said. "We have applications that satisfy both satellite and terrestrial messaging, and we have products that combine both."

According to Donald Campbell, AMS director of corporate communications, AMS has about 1,750 base stations and plans to end the year with about 1,900.

Getting the signal to users in conference rooms and boardrooms is becoming increasingly important, and AMS considers in-building coverage to be its ace in the hole. The company uses single-frequency-reuse technology, which increases the odds of a device inside a building being able to receive the signal from the base station, said Dan Croft, AMS vice president of messaging services. The importance of in-building coverage is not lost on Boudris, either. She said BSWD increased its in-building coverage in New York by 50% last year.

Capacity and throughput also are issues. Boudris said BSWD is focused on anticipating a demand by working with its partners so it knows exactly where they are selling to ensure that it can keep up with that growth. The company also plans to increase the speed of its network through software over the next planning period. Because increasing the speed of the network decreases the coverage area, BSWD is looking at variable speeds in its network. The BSWD network currently runs at 8kb/s, but Boudris said plans are to boost that to 32kb/s over the next three years.

"We are always balancing as we deploy our network, as we look at speeds, how we can protect (our customers) in terms of ensuring they get the information inside a building even if we increase the speed of the network," Boudris said.

Finding success in the white-collar world is a balancing act, and it's too late to turn back now. For better or worse, AMS and BSWD have plunged bravely into this new world.