Mobile and wireless haven't grown up as quickly as the cell phone, but a similar phenomenon is under way. All the elements are there: Technical breakthroughs have the price curve heading south while performance goes north, organizations are beginning to see bottom-line justifications for deploying mobile and wireless applications, and service providers are responding by building out the infrastructure needed to satisfy demand. The past year was hot. The coming year will be a scorcher.
While the terms mobile and wireless are often used synonymously, they're more cousins than twins. Explosive growth in the PDA market, where only a tiny fraction of the devices are wireless-data-enabled, clearly proves you can have a powerful mobile data platform without sending bits through the air. Likewise, one of the most significant wireless markets -- the fixed-access data-services market -- has nothing to do with mobility and everything to do with delivering high-speed data services to locations that lack wired broadband alternatives.
Of WLANs and WPANs
One technology that's finally grown up is the wireless LAN. Acceptance of the IEEE 802.11b/WiFi standard has given this market a boost. If there were ever a case study assessing the impact of standards on competitive pricing, this would be it. Just a few years ago, a 2-Mbps wireless NIC set you back about $500. Today, you get five times the performance for one-fifth the cost. Cisco Systems, Agere Systems and Symbol Technologies are slugging it out for dominance while hardware- and software-component providers are letting low-margin channel players, like Linksys and D-Link Systems, offer products at prices so low that wireless networking is poised to explode in every market imaginable. Thanks to low-cost mini-PCI NIC implementations, even PC vendors are offering notebooks with built-in wireless networking.
Lest you conclude that life couldn't get much better, understand that the wireless LAN highway has more than a few potholes. Security vulnerabilities are giving managers cause for reflection. Leading vendors tout proprietary authentication and encryption frameworks, or advocate wireless VLANs (virtual LANs) and VPNs as quick fixes, but the industry is at least a year away from effective standards-based, enterprise-class WLAN security solutions. The good news is that the IEEE 802.11e working group is completing plans for wireless security while crafting QoS (Quality of Service) enhancements that will make 802.11 a better platform for converged voice, video and data.
And there are other problems. First, while 5-GHz products based on 802.11a and HiperLAN 2 will emerge in the coming year, offering higher performance in a less-congested frequency spectrum, disagreements between the U.S. and European wireless communities over the best MAC (Media Access Control) specs could delay the development of a global standard. Second, the specter of high-performance, next-generation Bluetooth offerings is creating confusion. Advocates see Bluetooth as more than just a cable-replacement technology. While 802.11 is a comfortable solution for network engineers, Bluetooth may just have the ease-of-use attributes to make it a winner with the nontechnical masses.
Wireless DSL and Beyond
Even if I won the lottery and could buy the lakefront mansion that I've always dreamed of, I wouldn't do it unless I could get high-speed data services. The same is true for business. No high-speed data, no relocation. In the past, high speed meant fiber. Tomorrow, fixed-access wireless solutions may be a viable option.
It's already begun in some markets. Sprint Corp. and WorldCom have bought up wireless spectrum in nearly every major market, and their broadband wireless data services, which promises DSL-like performance, have been well received by some customers, despite technical glitches common to new technology. Likewise, Teligent has achieved some success delivering enterprise-class wireless services to urban businesses. Also, smaller ISPs using unlicensed radio systems from BreezeCom and Wave Wireless Networking have been successful delivering cost-effective Internet access. However, these point-to-multipoint services require line of sight, a constraint that limits coverage and complicates installation. By 2002, you'll read about new technologies that overcome line-of-sight restrictions, though the build-out costs due to smaller cell sizes will require a considerable investment by service providers.
Other, more focused markets for fixed-access wireless services shouldn't be ignored. Most wireless LAN vendors offer point-to-point Ethernet bridging solutions that provide cost-effective interbuilding links in campus- and metropolitan-area environments. High-end wireless point-to-point vendors, such as DMC Stratex Networks, Proxim and Western Multiplex Corp., are pushing the limits of spectral efficiency for customers who require even faster performance. And don't write off satellite. New technologies are making satellite services viable options -- or at least redundancy solutions for organizations demanding the highest possible reliability.
Is That 2.5G or 3G?
It's been nearly 100 years since my grandfather migrated to the United States, making me a third-generation Italian-American. In the digital age, technology generations are much shorter, but some of you may be asking if it'll take 100 years before we see viable 3G wireless data services. The answer, fortunately, is "no." Despite the slowing global economy, service providers are anxious to recover the extremely high licensing costs associated with 3G spectrum, and the quickest route is to build out an infrastructure and offer services.
It can't come soon enough. Despite successful application deployments in niche markets, today's 14,400-bps circuit-switched wireless WAN data services lack credibility as strategic network platforms. We'll see some significant improvements later this year in the form of so-called 2.5G services in the United States, Europe and Japan. Two alternative technologies are also being advanced: CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) 2000 1X and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service). Both provide packet-switched downstream data rates in excess of 128 Kbps. That's not exactly earth-shattering, but a 10-fold improvement in performance, coupled with a packet-based infrastructure, will enable plenty of new applications. How quickly will financially strapped carriers roll out services, and how will they charge for those services? Let's hope the answers are "quickly" and "with flat-rate pricing."
Third-generation services will begin making their way into the market sometime in 2002 or 2003, starting in Europe and Asia and later in North America (where spectrum hasn't even been allocated yet for 3G services). A battle is brewing between competing standards -- CDMA 2000 3X and W-CDMA (Wideband CDMA). In the United States, we'll probably have to live with both. Of course, given the current multitude of digital technologies that dot the U.S. cellular voice market, this is nothing new.
While the big cellular carriers get most of the attention, there are alternatives for high-speed wide-area data services; offerings such as Metricom's Ricochet2 may find a significant market niche. Ricochet2 provides 128-Kbps data service in 13 major metropolitan markets at flat-rate pricing (approximately $80 per month). MobileStar Network Corp. and Netway, both of which are hard at work building out wireless LAN infrastructure in airports, hotels, convention centers and, yes indeed, Starbucks coffee shops, have a similar target in their sights. For mobile road warriors who have come to depend on fast cellular service, it's as sweet as a double latte.
Send your comments on this article to Dave Molta at dmolta@nwc.com.
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