2000: Making the Network Leap

Going The Way Of Wireless

by Bill Frezza

If the trends of the past five years continue, it's probably safe to assume that wide area wireless data will find its way into the mainstream of the network computing business the same way that wireline data did. Frustrating the best efforts of both the cellular carriers and the specialized network operators to introduce packet services, it is far more likely that the portable computer industry will proceed via the tried-and-true Fat Dumb Pipe (FDB) approach. Say what?

A few moments of reflection tell the story. We just had a great 15-year run as analog dial-up modems went through five generations of technology on the way from 300 bps to 28.8 Kbps. Having finally arrived at the end of this road, we've achieved a level of performance vastly exceeded by a twenty-year-old technology that the telecommunications carriers still haven't figured out how to market--namely ISDN.

How did this happen, and what does it mean for wireless? It's simple. The public telecommunications carriers don't understand the data communications business and couldn't market modems to PC users if their lives depended on it. Remember, these are the same folks who can't tell you how much of the wireline traffic they currently carry is data. Even the vaunted Internet literally snuck up on them, woven together by computer weenies on top of commodity Fat Dumb Pipes. Whatever deluded us into thinking wireless would be different?

The PC industry, for its part, doesn't know how to digest public telecom services that aren't t ransparent and nationally uniform. The major software vendors are not going to optimize their code for some esoteric network unless and until that network is both ubiquitous and provides a distinct cost/performance advantage. And the PC distribution channels won't carry products that can't be sold and used everywhere. This means that just about the only commodity that the PC industry can consume from the telecommunications industry is Fat Dumb Pipes.

So what is the Fat Dumb Pipe of wireless? Analog cellular pipe service (AMPS) service. It's everywhere. It's getting ever cheaper, likely dropping under a dime a minute by the end of the decade. It operates more or less transparently with the rest of the public-switched telephone network. Just as modem companies spent years perfecting products that can squeeze the most out of twisted-pair local loops, cellular modem vendors are learning to do the same for circuit-switched wireless connections.

This will, of course, be a bitter disappointment to those of us that have been breaking our backs to introduce new architectures. Still, hope springs eternal. Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD), RAM Mobile Data, Ardis and others will no doubt press on, carving out niches in a variety of vertical markets. Packet-switched CDPD may yet be the ISDN of the wireless business--a great concept whose time must someday come.

Meanwhile, CDPD's best hope is to proliferate in circuit-switched form, probably offered by mainstream internet service providers, not cellular carriers. These internet service providers can offer wireless as part of a nationwide integrated package, built on top of standard TCP/IP protocol suites bundled with their existing wireline access services. Rather than invest in infrastructure, they can just buy air time in bulk from the cellular operators, freeing these phone companies to do what they do best--depreciate their installed plant and take orders for Fat Dumb Pipes.

So rejoice. Wireless data will no doubt be standard fare by the time we welcome the new century. And what we'll get will be the same as it ever was.

Wireless Wondernets: What We'll Have In 2000 Start with a simple premise or two, unlikely perhaps, but possible. Then paint a picture of a future that could be.

Let me share a fantasy--a low-cost, frequency agile transceiver capable of operating in both narrow and broadband modes between 400 MHz and 4 GHz. It would be powered by a quantum breakthrough in battery technology, strong enough to blast transmissions out of even the deepest basement for a week at a time.

What a wonderful world it would be. Its central feature would be seamless promiscuity. Laptop, palmtop and PDA users would effortlessly traverse, sniff out and utilize a diversity of wired and wireless, public and private networks offered by an invigorated telecommunications market. Happy to carry whatever traffic comes within range, these networks would digitally bid for customers on a real-time basis. In the office, wireless LANs and cordless PBXs would scream "FREE, FREE, FREE," while outside wireless WANs would whisper "Psst--a penny a packet to Peoria," only to be upstaged by "Don't listen to them! We can do bulk file transfer at six cents per minute while you check your voicemail in the background."

Freed from the challenge of deploying nationwide infrastructures ahead of demand while simultaneously trying to bootstrap a mass market for new end-user devices, the telecommunications carriers could embark on a new competitive dynamic. Network entrepreneurs could launch regional and local initiatives, or even specialty networks, knowing that a large installed base of nomadic consumers could quickly graze on their wares.

New channel access protocols would be enabled by downloading software into sleek DSP engines that could synthesize any modulation scheme. The titanic air-interface standards battle that confounds the wireless industry today would become quaint anachronisms. Incumbents could never become monopolists knowing that their users could hop on a competitor's network at the touch of an icon.

The PC and consumer electronics industries would outdo each other vying for the real prime personal real estate--the belt, the shirt pocket, the purse, the briefcase. We would each own a variety of devices, all of which could synchronize their files over high bandwidth wireless connections whenever they came near each other.

Data would become voice as our e-mails are read to us while driving and voice would become data as selected replies are recognized and converted to text for more efficient distribution to our workgroups. (Fax would be history--a pox on scanned pixels.) The fools' dream of network-mediated, universal one-number access would never happen, superseded by an automated mobility manager that would run on our personal servers, trained to route, store or respond to a mix of incoming voice and data traffic as we move between home, office and travel locations.

The Web? It will never be far away, accessible from our pocket browsers at megabit speeds--once the TV broadcasters are hooted out of the fallow UHF spectrum they've kept locked away, lo these many decades.

Uh-huh. Dream on.

Bill Frezza is the president of Wireless Computing Associates and the chairman of the wireless modem standards committee of the PCCA. Bill can be reached anytime, anywhere at frezza@radiomail.net.

Millenium Prophecies

Don Soults, chairperson and CTO, Roadshow

Mobile data will be routine, but it won't be ubiquitous. We will routinely and casually use mobile data in an applications environment within five years.

Lars Ramquist, president and CEO, Ericsson

Mobile communication will still be the driving force in 2000. You may see the beginning of multimedia applications, but they still will not be in the number one position for the telecom market. Later on, you will see multimedia applications, meaning video and image in the public systems, and you w ill end up with video telephones.

Jeff Marshall, senior managing director, Communications Technologies Group, Bear, Stearns & Co.

Constellation technologies are going to play a very significant role by 2000 and fully develop into world applications by 2005. I don't think many people quite understand what low-earth orbit bandwidth is going to do for the bandwidth of tomorrow. It means getting wireless to work like relational networks do on the ground, so you have services off these constellations.

Tom Beaver, corporate VP, Motorola Semiconductor

Wireless will approach wired communications in terms of availability.

October 1, 1995