The W-Internet Initiative

Service providers are outlining the parameters for their wireless-Internet visions.

Admittedly, the wireless Internet (W-Internet) has consumed the thoughts and dreams of many a service provider. Likewise, it consumes the waking moments of chairmen in boardrooms and attendees at conferences around the world.

Simultaneously, people invoke the name and character of 3G. Yet, the Internet's development will require much more than just upgrading today's radio networks for Internet-like speeds.

This early in the Internet initiative, it's difficult to find the visionaries who have all of the answers. In lieu of this, service providers have amassed current concerns and begun gathering and sifting through data for possible solutions. Yet, the questions persist. What are the base requirements as wireless pushes toward the Internet? What are the issues that demand resolution? Can the W-Internet rival the wired one? Better yet, can it replace it?

"Content"-ious Two camps emerge regarding content. Do you leverage today's Internet experience, or do you create something targeted for mobile applications? With today's user interfaces and limited speed, a service provider would tread on lunatic fringes to try simply to move Internet offerings straight to wireless devices. In today's space, stripped-down sites and feeds are required in order to deliver information without emphasizing the general lack of speed.

But once providers unleash the speeds of 2.5G and 3G, and devices begin sporting larger viewing areas and input capabilities, it's more likely for the content to look and feel like the wired Internet.

"It's a new medium, not a replacement for the wireline Internet," said Arun Sarin, InfoSpace CEO. "It's something completely different."

Sarin explained that in time the Internet could eat into the success of the wired Internet. It would do so not through mimicry but by offering access to information that is more tailored for the customer wherever he is.

Others, however, suggest that certain applications will have to copy the context of the current Internet. Elda Davis Rudd, Nortel director of marketing-wireless solutions, said e-mail, as one application, must emulate the wired experience. Today's ability to view only subject lines and partial messages is unlikely to be acceptable for the user experience, she said.

Another consideration is the novelty of connecting in an unwired world.

"The wireless Internet is so young today that people are thrilled to get connected," Sarin said. "But what will be essential will be to make it one click, personalized and synchronized across all devices."

Click Ease In a mobile environment, users don't want to click through 15 pages in order to reach the page listing the movies and movie times, for example. According to Mike Walters, Nokia Networks system marketing manager for North America, what is acceptable for the experience is service delivery that is timely, simple, relevant to location and personalized.

The service, with the aid of location-based technology, needs to be contextual. It has to ask and answer: Is the user at work, home or traveling? Does the user want to be interrupted? If so, when?

Dave Murashige, Nortel vice president of mobility, wireless solutions, described an optimum scenario. In the business context, he should be able to receive a reminder across his wireless devices of meetings and travel. Likewise, if he is due to fly out of Dallas at 3 p.m., he should receive a flight update prior to departure indicating if the flight is on schedule or delayed.

"The applications and services will need to be just-in-time, role-based, device-independent, presence-based and integrated," said Marge Breya, iPlanet chief marketing officer, "That's a tall order."

All of which begs the WAP question: Does WAP have the legs, or will something else replace it? WAP was designed based on what was and is available in current devices and networks. As a result, some have questioned if it has the growth potential and endurance to carry out expected content needs. According to Nick Jones, a Gartner Group analyst, WAP's content-browsing capability won't provide the firepower needed for sophisticated mobile consumer and business applications. However, he suggested that Java will fill that need.

According to Jones, Java interface sophistication and inherent usability will scale nicely with these future applications. Java is one of the top three programming languages for new development. Jones expects that in the next five years, WAP deficiencies combined with the requirements of future mobile applications and games will accelerate the use of client-side Java as the implementation technology of choice for non-trivial mobile applications.

3G Unleashed In order to deliver the data content that industry representatives envision, infrastructure considerations unquestionably make up a huge portion of the planning. Currently, service providers are running their 3G trials and experimenting with data rates, throughput speeds and related performance factors. Regardless of the RF technology, providers are conducting trials to evaluate and optimize the speeds of networks.

Verizon Wireless recently completed its 3G over-the-air trial of high-speed data transmission and voice calls using cdma2000 technology. This trial was conducted in Columbus, OH. Verizon's 1XRTT phase of cdma2000 is designed to double voice capacity and support data-transmission speeds up to 144kb/s. In commercial application, Verizon plans to provide its subscribers with enterprise and consumer applications requiring more bandwidth, including personal-information management, telemetry, corporate intranet access, video conferencing, gaming and music on demand.

A major challenge during the field trial was to process both voice and data calls between three active cell sites. Implementation of 1XRTT allowed Verizon to increase voice capacity while supporting data calls simultaneously. In other words, Verizon verified that it could support voice and data without allocating bandwidth specifically for data. As customer demand requires it, Verizon will evaluate adding providers.

All Networks Besides performance-based factors, a fundamental network consideration drills deeper than 3G speed requirements to next-generation all-IP-based networks. Not only will users be able to access the Internet anytime and anywhere, but they also will expect access to all of their applications and services continuously across terrestrial and wireless IP networks. For example, if a user has a schedule on Outlook, he should be able to view and update entries and have those changes automatically appear across all devices and appliances.

Nortel and Sprint PCS are collaborating on answering some of these questions. Besides offering secure, anytime, anywhere Internet and intranet access, this network trial features an application server with session initiation protocol (SIP). The SIP allows the user to initiate real-time, multimedia voice, data and video sessions such as call management, service customization and multimedia conferencing, regardless of the user's access method.

"Participating in this trial will help us better understand how to deliver the next generation of voice, information and Internet services over wireless IP core networks with cost efficiencies for our customers," said Oliver Valente, Sprint PCS CTO.

In similar efforts, Korea Telecom Freetel (KTF) is using a packet backbone network from Ericsson to evolve to a W-ISP.

"We are leading up to these build-outs of large-scale multi-service voice/data networks with Internet offload capability in 2G wireless systems, as well as our current trials and deployments of GPRS," said Alan Raderman, Ericsson spokesperson. "We have also deployed numerous solutions for customers like BT (British Telecom) where we have moved large-scale voice traffic over ATM packet infrastructures - again in the line of the movement toward next-generation, converged networks."

Still, It's Voice Voice places special demands on quality, and until now the challenge has been to achieve high enough voice quality over a multiservice fixed IP network. A number of service providers are experimenting with voice over IP. For example, this past summer, Ericsson and Japan Telecom completed their field trial of voice over IP over W-CDMA. The field trial, conducted at Japan Telecom's network center in Chiba, Japan, proved that voice can be transported over an IP-based mobile network. The trial tested the air interface and mobile terminals for full quality-of-voice service as well as other service features such as data, all without losing capacity. The trial was made over Japan Telecom's W-CDMA experimental system. As part of the trial, Japan Telecom used Ericsson's header-compression algorithm, called Robust Checksum-based Header Compression (ROCCO), which currently is undergoing standardization within the Internet Engineering Task Force.

"The trend in today's telecom industry is toward all-IP transport networks," said Hakan Eriksson, Ericsson Research vice president and GM. "Operators want to be able to use the same network for all services: data, voice and video. The field trial conducted together with Japan Telecom has proved that it is possible to transport voice over an IP-based mobile network, without compromising quality or system performance."

Tetsuya Yuge, Japan Telecom vice president of Information and Communication Lab, agreed. "I believe that the success in this trial gave us further breakthroughs in the future mobile Internet that requires high-quality and broadband all-IP needs."

Spectrum In roughly 18 months, the FCC will conduct the auctions for 3G licenses.

Nortel's Murashige predicted the 3G-spectrum auctions will prompt resurgence of competitive activity. He suggested that the introduction of new players will challenge today's incumbents to raise the bar again. But that won't come without a price.

According to CTIA estimates, service providers spent roughly $70 billion to build out their 1G and 2G networks. Some estimates suggest that it could cost more than twice that to build 3G systems. Certainly, the auction bids for 3G spectrum will account for a large part of the provider's tab.

The U.K. and German 3G spectrum auctions netted roughly $36 billion and $45 billion, respectively. And if you use the U.S. 2G spectrum rush as a primitive indicator, the 3G opportunities easily could turn into a bidding free-for-all.

The Walled Garden Regardless of how providers deliver the Internet to subscribers, huge Internet-related issues exist. Latency and integration with corporate intranets present formidable challenges.

The always-on capability and speeds of 2.5G systems will mitigate some of the latency concern. However, a more formidable challenge involves the potential clash of RF engineers and IT managers in the corporate intranet environment.

According to Jim DeBelina, Motorola Communications director of enterprise solutions, "IT managers built a wall around servers and said no access. Then wireless entered the picture and wanted inside those walls."

Although this potential culture clash will cause some growing pains, DeBelina said enterprises understand completely what they can do at the office. The challenge they'll put to their IT managers will be how to achieve that anywhere, anytime ability. Like it or not, the enterprise environment is forcing a change within its own walled garden.

Handy, Handsome, & Then Some As providers iron out the technical components of delivering W-Internet solutions, device vendors are trying to conjure the magical handset formula.

"To be successful, devices must be supported by an overall value proposition that is satisfactory to the end user," said Rich Luhr, Herschel Shosteck Associates director of technology strategy.

"The value proposition is a combination of device, wireless network, and content and services," he added. "This implies that mobile-Internet devices cannot define applications, nor can Internet content and services define devices. Instead, the design of devices, content, services and networks must respect the capabilities of each other, and the value of each must be considered."

The company suggests that future wireless phones have a unique opportunity to become "gateways" for other wireless-capable Internet devices.

As service providers eye the prospect of the W-Internet, they continue to sort through the myriad challenges. All of the early signs point to one certainty. It's not your father's Internet anymore. The idea of the service provider merely providing the conduit for a wired-Internet copycat is absurd.

"Carriers will benefit from `wired' lessons, and sure, AOL and Yahoo came into this space early on," InfoSpace's Sarin said. "Unless carriers misplay their hands, don't count on them becoming dumb pipes."

M-commerce-specific help and information is available online through the Global Mobile Commerce Forum (GMCF) at www.gmcforum.com. GMCF includes a diverse group of companies from around the world that want to enable the delivery of services and information directly into the hands of consumers, wherever they may be. It links to the Wireless Data Forum in the United States. Specific GMCF groups deal with m-commerce issues in the areas of banking and finance, ticketing, contracts and insurance, and information services.