Nov 1, 2005 12:00 AM

The 2006 Wireless Industry Technology Preview

The technologies to watch in the year ahead look a lot like the ones we've been watching for a while — 3G, so-called 3G alternatives, mobile video and others. Many are poised for major market breakthroughs that will fulfill long-held hype, while others are significant for how and why they continue to fall just short of their promise. Here's 10 technology segments set to shape the wireless world in the year to come:

1 The long wait for 3G

2 The ‘alternatives’ to 3G

The first thing to know about alternative 3G technologies is that they don't consider themselves alternatives.

“We are a 3G technology,” said Madelyn Smith Orfitelli, marketing director for IPWireless, maker of a TD-CDMA system already deployed in Europe and Asia and in trials with Nextel in the U.S. “We are part of the 3GPP body of standards.”

Flarion, one of the players in the FLASH-OFDM arena, is offering a proprietary solution, but one that is openly licensed, much as Qualcomm once licensed its CDMA technology, said Ronny Haraldsvik, vice president of global communications and marketing for the company. It's an especially apt analogy now that Qualcomm is acquiring Flarion.

Both companies have recently completed nationwide networks — IPWireless in the Czech Republic and Flarion in Slovakia — and can point to multiple commercial operations as proof of their technology and its business case.

There are a number of other players in the “alternative” space, which is also sometimes dubbed 4G — including Navini, ArrayComm, UT Starcom and Broadstorm. Most of what they are offering is here-today technology that delivers high-speed wireless signals over the wide area to mobile users.

“We've had some pretty substantial deployments,” said Orfitelli, “including with Woosh in New Zealand, which is building out a national network and using VoIP to offer both data and voice services. No other technology in mobile broadband has had commercial users for more than two years. Mobile WiMAX hasn't even been ratified as a standard.”

FLASH-OFDM holds the promise of being a packet-based network that can support more customers and deliver greater bandwidth cost effectively, Haraldsvik said.

“There's been a lot of talk about WiMAX and what it is going to do as soon as you have a solution available, but it needs to be tested for 18 to 24 months before it is deemed viable on a nationwide scale,” he said. We have already gone through that process.”
— Carol Wilson

3 Mobile video's big close-up

Last month, Paris' Forum des Images hosted a screening of hundreds of short movies and videos produced by the European film community. That might not sound out of the ordinary — until you find out that all of these mini-movies were shot for the screen of a mobile phone.

Mobile video has, quite simply, become a monster, with everyone from entertainment conglomerates to sports franchises to film auteurs experimenting in the medium.

The problem is finding a way to distribute that content when those content providers want to move from experimentation to commercial release. The bandwidth of today's networks — even the 3G ones — can't support more than a handful of users on the same sector with today's unicast technologies. That's where multicast comes in, and in 2006 the first commercial multicast networks will launch, using a hybrid of digital television broadcast and cellular technologies.

The two big technologies out there are Qualcomm's Forward Link Only (FLO), a proprietary but robust system, and digital video broadcast-handheld (DVB-H), a more technologically limited but standards-based system widely embraced by the GSM community. Both are expected to launch commercial trials next year, offering dozens of channels over separate frequencies and networks, and with no limit to the number of users watching simultaneously.

Both technologies have been attracting the interest of carriers, but those same carriers don't want to wait around for the networks to be ready. They have powerful video capabilities on their 3G networks in place and want to use them. Idetic Chief Operating Officer Paul Scanlan said that Idetic's MobiTV has already attracted more than 450,000 paid subscribers over much slower GPRS and CMDA 1X networks. While the multicast networks do have some appeal, there's a lot that can be done with 3G connection.

“We're agnostic when it comes to what network technology we use — we'll incorporate whatever networks they are building,” Scanlan said. “Our hope is that we don't create a fragmented approach to the market by making all these different types of networks.”
— Kevin Fitchard

4 Wireless VoIP: A modest debut

At September's Voice on the Net show, many of the most progressive applications had some form of wireless element to them. So one might expect wireless voice over IP to be ready for a major growth explosion in the 2006, right?

Well, not exactly, according to those in the business. Instead of ramping up to millions of users and moving into the mass market, wireless VoIP is expected to start down more of an evolutionary path over the next 12 months, with most of the adoptions happening in the business market. Part of the reason for the slower rollout than expected is businesses still have yet to see a significant financial advantage in migrating to wireless VoIP.

“Our research says that they may not be ready to take the double hit of writing off their current equipment, and then investing in new IP PBXs,” said Kent Hellebust, chief marketing officer of AccessLine Communications, which provides hosted VoIP services and this year started marketing a hosted wireless VoIP application.

Cost also presents a major barrier to wireless VoIP jumping from interesting technology project this year to mass market in 2006. While several models of dual-mode Wi-Fi/traditional wireless handsets will be in circulation over the next year, consumers simply won't replace their existing equipment fast enough to make a major dent. In the enterprise, the cost of converting handsets has been a lot closer to $200 than the $700 most currently cost, said Howie Fritsch, product manager for UTStarcom, which has developed a low-end consumer phone that can used with Vonage's VoIP service. The company is taking a bit of a lesson from competitors that were in the business market earlier.

“There's a lot of people that they tried to sell to and they got a lot of interest but at $700 a phone, it's not that interesting,” he said. “At $200 per phone, it's a lot more interesting.”

By the end of 2006, some handsets could be in that range, but they may not have all of the functionality users desire. However, according to Mike Lauricella, senior product marketing manager for Broadsoft, wireless VoIP decision-makers linitially will be sold on price.

“You start with the economic benefits and then you migrate to the features and benefits,” he said.
— Vince Vittore

5 Forcing the E-911 issue

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is sticking to his guns regarding the deadline for compliance by voice-over-IP providers with E-911. However, wireless operators are petitioning once more for flexibility in their compliance requirements. By this time next year there could be a wide and inexplicable gap between the haves and have-nots of E-911 service.

Today, less than half of the nation's public safety answering points (PSAPS) are receiving wireless E-911 Phase II location information. Those that are receiving Phase II information are clustered into densely populated areas as only 38.9% of counties accounted for those PSAPs as of September, according to the National Emergency Number Association (NENA). Only 62% of counties receive Phase I information.

The upside to that is that 82% of the population is covered by Phase I-enabled PSAPs and 59% is covered by Phase II. If you live anywhere in Maryland, you're covered. The whole state is now Phase II compliant. If you live in Montana and are concerned about wireless E-911, you might want to move.

Stephen Meer, chief technology officer at emergency systems solutions provider Intrado, recently said that the wireless E-911 implementation has been somewhat laisse faire and prolonged.

That may continue through next year. Last month Alltel said it will not meet the FCC's end-of-year E-911 handset deadline and joined Sprint Nextel in requesting an extension until June 2007.

If the rule of compromise holds, 2006 should be the year Phase II wireless E-911 sees its last deadline. Some organizations such as NENA claim that the issue is less technical and has more to do with the $250 million in funding for PSAPs that Congress appropriated in 2004, but is still sitting in its coffers. If funds are released, vendors should be ready. Next year could be a busy one for purveyors and implementers of wireless E-911 solutions.

In the meantime, PSAPs could follow the lead of the E-911 Uniform Emergency Telephone System Division in Pawtucket, R.I., and begin building a physical map of their communities with the help of companies such as MicroDATA GIS, which is managing Rhode Island's 911 system.
— Tim McElligott

6 The mesh that binds us

Wireless mesh networking rode into the spotlight within the last year as a technological footnote — albeit an important one — to the very controversial issue of municipal broadband networks. In most cases, Wi-Fi mesh technology has been used as the network undercarriage for these projects. More large and small municipalities are embracing public availability of wireless Internet access within their boundaries, and regardless of whether municipalities, carriers or other third parties build and manage these networks, the use of mesh networking technology as the backbone appears to be the one commonality that all of them have.

After an initial few years in which mesh networking was mostly invested indirectly by municipalities, wireless ISPs and enterprises, it's the impending market opportunity of large carrier and network operator deployments that has some vendors like Firetide most excited.

“We see network operators like The Cloud in the U.K. who want to migrate from a strategy of operating Wi-Fi hot spots to managing Wi-Fi hot zones,” said Barbara Cardillo, vice president of marketing at Firetide, a mesh vendor.

In a recent market research report, Norm Bogen, senior analyst at InStat, said the market for wireless mesh infrastructure will be worth $974 million by 2009. Dozens of municipal networks scheduled to be built out in the next year will do their part to help the mesh networking market close in on that figure. Meanwhile, several vendors have announced plans for next-generation mesh products, many of which will use dual-band radio architectures that decrease the potential for interference, and some of which will incorporate WiMAX for mesh network backhaul.
— Dan O'Shea

2005 WORLDWIDE Wi-Fi HOT SPOT GROWTH
Jan.	57,271
Feb.	60,130
March	61,152
April	64,378
May	64,799
June	68,644
July	69,859
Aug.	72,360
Sept.	76,987
Source: JiWire

7 Well, WiMAX, of course

In a comprehensive look at the most important technology segments in the year to come, you can't ignore WiMAX. And, with all the hype of recent years, we haven't been. At this point, WiMAX product certification is a topic that has been scoured for virtually every last crumb of useful information, and the ongoing focus on how certification works, how long it will take, and who will have certified products first obstructs our view of what might really happen with this technology in 2006.

The WiMAX Forum has claimed that there are now more than 100 trials of pre-WiMAX technology. In the year ahead, carriers such as Sprint Nextel, AT&T and Covad Communications are expected to make great strides in their WiMAX trials. Because the initial WiMAX frequency most applicable for U.S. deployment (5.8 GHz) is unlicensed, commercial deployments more likely will be limited to independent wireless ISPs. There should be much more action overseas, with the licensed 3.5 GHz band also in the WiMAX Forum's initial certification plan. Also, deployment of WiMAX sibling WiBro should begin in Asia in 2006.

Meanwhile, don't look for Mobile WiMAX anywhere next year. The 802.16e standard is due to be ratified by the IEEE any day now, but most market projections for implementation are no earlier than 2007.
— Dan O'Shea

8 Job security in security

This quarter, chief information officers will be hiring full-time IT staff at a pace that hasn't been seen since the third quarter of 2002. One of the top three reasons for doing so is to satisfy the need for support in wireless network management. And one of the greatest concerns around wireless network management is security. Give those new recruits one quarter to settle in and the rest of 2006 should be an active year for management and security in wireless networking.

The Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Index and Skills Report, which came out in September, predicted a net 12% increase in fourth quarter hiring for companies with 100 or more employees. The report identified networking skills as the specialty most in demand.

Corporate expansion was cited as the primary reason for growing IT staffs and although 81% of chief information officers said Microsoft Windows support was their greatest need, wireless network management at 49% was nearly as important as SQL server management at 51%.

Rogue access points on wireless LAN networks and wireless devices and handsets are cited by a recent Yankee Group study by director Philip Marshall to be among the chief security concerns.

“In addition, removable memory and profiles, the user interface, and the physical size and variety of data stored on wireless devices create increased security risks that enterprises and service providers are not adequately addressing,” the report said.

However, many vendors are trying. The report cited companies such as Research in Motion, which addresses mobile e-mail security through their network operations center. Nokia offers integrated VPN clients on their handsets. Companies such as Columbitech, NetMotion and Padcom also offer VPN solutions and others, such as Bluefire Security Technologies and Intellisync, have tailored security for specific devices. Still others, such as Qpass and GoRemote offer managed security solutions.

The problem, Yankee says, is that these solutions are fragmented. Solutions are needed that integrate device security into broader based security management and enforcement solutions. This is what many of those new IT folks will be working on in 2006.

Not everyone agrees that wireless security is in such dire straits. Andrew Seybold, founder of Outlook4Mobility, said in a recent column that, “In reality, the issue of security, at least in the wide-area arena, is one of perception versus reality. Today's wireless data networks are inherently secure in themselves. When virtual private network and/or SSL encryption is implemented on top of the networks, they are more secure than most wired solutions that touch the Internet today.”

But most experts, including Seybold, agree that Wi-Fi poses a significant security risk and that it will be network managers' jobs to mitigate that risk before its too late, like in 2007.
— Tim McElligott

9 A true need for management

We've all had this experience: While talking to someone on a mobile phone, they interrupt the conversation to warn us that they're entering a patchy area for mobile coverage and may be scratchy or cut off. Imagine the world in which the phone senses the patchy area approaching and eliminates it.

This is just one of the more far-flung applications being pursued with the help of over-the-air device management technology (OTA DM), which allows wireless operators to adjust and update handsets in the field.

Today OTA DM is used for less glamorous things, like correcting bugs in handset software, offering software updates or making sure the handset's settings allow for peak efficiency.

“Increasingly, mobile phone are taking on the capabilities of the PC,” said David Sym-Smith, senior vice president of marketing and business development for Innopath, which recently acquired Openwave's OTA DM business. “With that comes increased complexity that needs to be managed.”

In the near future, Sym-Smith sees broad opportunities for OTA DM in the enterprise space, allowing corporate IT managers tight reins and transparency on all employee handsets. MVNOs might use the technology to change out a handset's “look and feel,” from say, a Disney theme to a sports theme. Security is another fertile area, he said, since users who lose their cell phones might use OTA DM to remotely wipe clean any sensitive information.

“Think about Paris Hilton,” he said (the hotel heiress once famously lost her mobile phone and its who's-who phone book).

This year Innopath, in conjunction with antivirus expert McAfee, introduced an OTA anti-virus solution with which users can download the most up-to-date virus fixes. Brian Finnerty, Sprint Nextel's device development director, isn't as excited about OTA virus fixes, since his firm doesn't use the kind of open operating system that would run unwelcome applications like viruses.

But with handset memory banks climbing up into the mid tens of megabytes, Finnerty sees memory management as one of the primary pain points DM could address. With DM, operators could use diagnostics to proactively detect inefficient uses of memory and correct them. “If your memory management isn't done well, handsets could freeze, lock or otherwise become unstable,” he said. “That's probably the biggest hang-up we have.”

While all these innovations are promising, the likely chronology for their adoption is much less clear. The day when, as Finnerty suggested, phones sense black holes and patch them up proactively, is anyone's guess.
— Ed Gubbins

10 Enhancing the experience

One of the pervasive themes in the mobile content world is that content creators intend to reimagine any and all forms of entertainment applications for mobile distribution, whether or not they have the potential to sell. A more realistic notion is that wireless users still very much require pushing and prodding if they're ever going to become mass consumers of any mobile content at all, and that service providers need more tools they can use to push and prod.

To that end, many technology developers are focused on ways to make it easier for wireless consumers to find out about, retrieve and use mobile content, and for wireless service providers to make sure they can bill and collect for that usage. That effort starts at the point of content creation and extends all the way to the tactile elements of handsets that make mobile content usage easier, more appealing and thus even more likely.

At the front end of that process, for example, is software player UIEvolution, which makes a platform that helps content developers streamline the distribution of their applications to a more global range of networks and devices. Having rooted itself with a base of content creators, the company is now fostering a community of developers in hopes of facilitating the spread of its development platform within and beyond the mobile industry to include applications and devices like digital cameras and music players.

“We're not going to limit our developer community to just wireless,” said Chris Ruff, president of UIEvolution.

Another platform developer, Qpass, is focused on assisting wireless service providers with the business processes behind transactions for premium mobile content — particularly the processes that result in revenue for the carrier. Together with iGillot Research, Qpass recently estimated that revenue leakage with regard to mobile content is a $4 billion global problem — one exacerbated by customers going off-portal for apps.

“In many cases, billing events don't occur and there's no reconciliation,” said Steve Shivers, senior vice president of corporate strategy and development for Qpass. The company's platform is designed to help carriers address the issue without gutting their networks.

“All the business systems of mobile carriers are circa 1990, and all the growth is happening in premium services,” Shivers said. “We come in and say ‘you don't have to do a rebuild of your billing system.’”

For Digit Wireless, creator of the Fastap keypad technology that features raised letter keys on a standard 12-button keypad, improving the mobile experience is about ease-of-use. The company recently commissioned a study that showed the difficulty of entering text to be the number one roadblock to increased mobile data usage. In the U.S.-based survey, 43.3% of respondents said they would use text messaging if they had a direct-entry keyboard. Another 21.2% said they would do more picture messaging, 25.8% would use more games, 45.1% would personalize with things like ringtones and wallpaper, and 53% would use the address book entry more.
— Jason Meyers