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Future capacity always affects current purchasing decisions. Here's a peek at the road map for wireless.
- WAP (Wireless Application Protocol): In the short term, WAP will be a dominant standard for data-enabled phones. Network-neutral WAP gateways should work over most current mainstream networks, and the huge potential market for data-enabled cell phones will drive WAP products and tools. However, applications that use more than minimal data will likely find the small form factor of most WAP-enabled devices to be constraining.
- GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution): These services will provide some interim solutions between the current patchwork digital data mechanisms and the third-generation systems being considered and planned for long-term implementation. GPRS' theoretical maximum data rate is about 171 Kbps when all available slices of bandwidth are used simultaneously, and EDGE's is similar. Interoperability is still a big issue, as is existing telco investment in current, incompatible technologies. For instance, many third-generation systems are CDMA-based for the most part. EDGE is GSM/TDMA-based, as is GPRS. Telcos that use existing non-GSM infrastructures will need to be convinced that migrating to EDGE- or GPRS-based solutions is in their long-term interest. For the foreseeable future, then, the patchwork state of wireless data is likely to continue.
- PANs (Bluetooth Personal Area Networks): Although this is not a wide area technology, the Bluetooth standard for PANs will make a significant impact in the wireless world, if it can move from a standard to an implementation. Intended primarily as a way to wirelessly connect disparate devices over distances shorter than 10 meters, Bluetooth could be the remedy for the inconvenience of having to connect everything with convoluted cabling, especially mobile/portable devices. With a bandwidth of 700 Kbps to 1 Mbps, a Bluetooth transceiver can be carried in a user's pocket, and can wirelessly transfer data to and from PDAs (personal digital assistants), laptops, printers and other Bluetooth devices on or around a mobile user.
One thing all these new technologies have in common is that they're packet-switched and IP-capable. Circuit-switched networking for data and non-IP-based paging networks, such as ARDIS and Mobitex, while they have served well in particular applications, are not going to be economically viable technologies for high-speed general-purpose wireless data. Look for technologies such as the packet-switched GPRS to be enabled over even traditionally circuit-switched networks, such as GSM.
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