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F E A T U R E

2003 Survivor's Guide to Mobile and Wireless

December 6, 2002
By Dave Molta

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Wide Area Wireless Real but Shaky

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	In this article
	Introduction
	Too Many Wireless Data Standards
	Wide Area Wireless Real but Shaky
	Comanies to Watch
	Web Links

By the end of 2003, all the major cellular phone service providers will have nationwide packet-switching IP data networks. We're not talking multimegabit broadband service, but getting 30 Kbps to 50 Kbps performance while driving down the interstate isn't half bad. At those speeds, you can get some serious work done, and it opens up new opportunities for mobile applications.

Alas, while the news is mostly positive, many questions will need to be answered during the coming year. While we've been pleased with the performance of early GPRS and CDMA2000 1XRTT service offerings, we're concerned that performance will decline once the subscription base goes up. Most carriers have extremely limited per-cell bandwidth available to support both voice and data services, so when overall usage heads north, performance will surely fly south.

A cynical perspective is that you don't need to worry about reduced performance because the prices these carriers are charging is sure to keep usage levels to a minimum. Of all the major providers, only Verizon has an unlimited service option which, at $99 per month, may be tough for many business users to justify. Other vendors seem intent on charging by the byte, a strategy almost certain to fail.

Some analysts feel that WLAN hot spots hold more promise because their performance is so much better and their infrastructure costs are lower. There's some truth to both those assertions, but today's hot spots provide very limited coverage, and while a small proportion of mobile professionals may be willing to schedule their client meetings at the local Starbucks to take advantage of high-speed data services, that's not really a model that appeals to the masses (or the caffeine-averse). In short, 2003 could be a bust-out year for hot spots, but for that to happen, coverage needs to be broad enough that you can take the existence of a nearby hot spot for granted, and all the roaming issues need to be adequately addressed. We'll be keeping an eye out--but we're more likely two to three years away from ubiquity.

Breakthrough Technologies

U.S. National Wireless Service Provider Stats

click to enlarge

Are breakthrough technologies coming in the wireless space? Absolutely, but it's difficult to predict how long they'll take to make the jump from the research lab to the enterprise. This transition is both a technical issue and a market issue. Even if you could introduce a new WLAN technology that blows the doors off 802.11, it's questionable whether you could easily overcome the market momentum of Wi-Fi. For many vendors looking to increase profitability, it's all about tweaking existing technologies and enhancing capabilities while maintaining backward compatibility.

Despite the negative effects on innovation attributable to market inertia, there are indeed some interesting new wireless technologies worth watching in 2003. Look for smart antenna technology to make a splash, enhancing the range and scalability of both WLANs and cellular data services. You can also look forward to technical improvements that will help overcome the line-of-sight shackles that have dampened enthusiasm for fixed wireless as a last-mile broadband access solution. And UWB (ultra-wideband) technology, with its promise of 100-Mbps-plus performance, may eventually supplant Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for some limited-range applications.

In sports, certain barriers seem almost impossible to break, like throwing a baseball faster than 100 miles per hour or running a 40-yard dash in less than four seconds. You can have the best conditioning program around, but limitations of human physiology get in the way. In the world of wireless, limitations are tied to physics, and while there are plenty of physical laws that limit the potential of wireless communications, we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of most wireless communication technologies. That will make for some interesting possibilities in 2003 and beyond.

Dave Molta is a senior technology editor of Network Computing. He is also an assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and director of the Center for Emerging Network Technologies. Molta's experience includes 15 years in IT and network management. Write to him at dmolta@nwc.com.