Don't underestimate the value of COMS without Palm.
3com.com
By
Bennett Cardwell, Director
Product Management, Wireless Carrier Systems Division
3Com Corporation
Advances with CDMA networks and mobile subscriber devices are delivering wireless data applications to mainstream Internet/intranet users. These trends are creating significant new revenue opportunities for PCs network operators and Internet service providers.
Executive Summary
Wireless data has long been successfully used in many vertical market applications, such as trucking, customer service dispatch, and public safety. Historically, organizations with significant mobile requirements in these areas have tended to design specific applications optimized to run on a single wireless data network based on proprietary protocols. For niche applications used by a defined community of users within an enterprise, these custom solutions have been humming steadily along for nearly 20 years.
Until recently, however, growth in the horizontal business and consumer markets for wireless data has been stunted by several factors. These have included the weight, size, cost, and battery life of mobile devices; conflicting network standards that limited a given subscriber's coverage area; and the comparatively high price tags associated with wireless network services and associated roaming charges. The 8- to 14.4-kbps speeds of mobile data networks has also been an issue, particularly for companies wishing to extend access to certain bandwidth-intensive client/server applications or graphics-rich Web files to mobile workers.
Now, the factors are finally falling into place to topple these barriers and reinvigorate interest in wireless data. Personal communications service (PCS) operators are in a position to add new, enhanced services to their portfolios. For example, they can become wireless Internet service providers (ISPs). In addition, by providing secure links to third-party networks using special tunneling protocols, they can extend corporate virtual private networks (VPN) to mobile subscribers.
Industry analysts who had all but given up on the proliferation of wireless data in horizontal markets during the years following the 1995 U.S. PCS spectrum auctions are now predicting a surge of wireless data subscriber numbers within the next two years. For example, the Boston-based Yankee Group predicts that the number of North American mobile data subscribers will triple between 1999 and 2002, growing from 3.38 million to 10.64 million during that time period. International Data Corporation says that today, 15% of the 64 million U.S. mobile phone customers use their devices for data—a number the worldwide researcher expects to soar to 70% of 108 million users by 2002.
Among the reasons behind this newfound bullishness on wireless data are the following:
• The popularity of the Internet and IP-based corporate intranets/VPNs and the requirement for "anytime, anywhere" access to these networks. In the way that users in the '80s were able to leverage their cellular phones to avoid missing urgent voice mail messages when away from the office, the mission-critical nature of e-mail is now driving the same interest in wireless data for text-based applications.
• Improvements in the weight, size, and battery life of "smart" phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other mobile subscriber devices that enable "Internet-in-your-pocket" communications
• The development of the Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) standard, which streamlines Web-based information so that it runs more efficiently over lower-speed links and smaller displays
• Lower prices for mobile devices and services and the elimination of roaming charges by some carriers
• The widescale popularity of the 3Com® Palm® Pilot, which is wireless ready
• Efforts by Microsoft Corporation with its Windows CE handheld operating system and through partnerships with wireless data vendors and service providers to enable wireless extensions of groupware and Internet resources
• The availability of wireless gateway equipment that enables Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) PCS network operators to quickly become Internet access providers and add Internet usage revenues to their bottom lines
• Packet-switching CDMA equipment under development that brings four-fold higher speeds and network efficiencies to network operators and their subscribers in the near-term and new, worldwide standards that will bring100-fold speed increases in several years
The Opportunity: Enhanced Services for PCS Operators
During the time that has passed since the U.S. PCS spectrum auctions were concluded several years ago, the focus of PCS network operators has been to build out, market, and refine their voice and enhanced voice services. As of June 1998, there were about 61 million wireless subscribers in the U.S. alone, according to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA). Today, there are an estimated 176 million wireless phone users around the world. Many of these subscribers would also like integrated access to resources on the Internet or on a corporate IP network.
PCS providers collectively shelled out billions of dollars to gain access to the 1900 MHz PCS spectrum in various markets around the country. Then they had significant capital investments to make in building out their networks and acquiring customers. Payback on these networks has been slow.
A wireless data gateway, such as 3Com Corporation's InterWorking Function (IWF), and 3Com's patent-pending Quick Net Connect technology, enable these providers to quickly attract customers requiring wireless access to the Internet or their corporate intranets. 3Com's IWF, starting at about $100,000 and compatible with wireless networking gear from Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Inc., Nortel Networks, and others, allows providers to reap large returns on a small investment as they hop on the Internet revenue train.
What Is CDMA?
Commercial CDMA was invented by Qualcomm Corporation to increase the capacity of wireless networks. While three technologies—CDMA, GSM, and TDMA—competed for status as the PCS standard for several years, CDMA has emerged the clear winner.
CDMA is a wideband spread spectrum technology that spreads multiple conversations across a wide segment of the broadcast spectrum. Each telephone or data call is assigned a unique code that distinguishes it from the multitude of calls simultaneously transmitted over the same broadcast spectrum. So long as the receiving device has the right code, it can distinguish its conversation from all the others.
CDMA is the only technology that doesn't require frequency planning to efficiently utilize spectrum allocation and offer service to many subscribers. All users on a 1.25 MHz-wide channel can share the same frequency spectrum because each user's conversation is differentiated utilizing CDMA's unique digital codes. That same 1.25 MHz of frequency spectrum is re-used in all sectors of each cell in the network. This technique is the primary reason that CDMA offers such a large capacity increase (3- to 10-fold) over analog and TDMA technologies.
In addition, CDMA is the first technology to use a technique called soft handoff, which allows a handset to communicate with multiple base stations simultaneously. The system chooses the best signal in order to provide the user with the best audio at all times.
As of December 31, 1998, there were 23 million global CDMA subscribers, according to the CDMA Development Group (www.cdg.org). Nearly 7 million of these subscribers are in North America.
Mobile Devices Become More User-Friendly
From the subscriber perspective, wireless services are becoming more attractive for a variety of reasons. One is that the mobile devices subscribers use—smart phones that integrate voice and data services such as Web browsers, PDAs, personal information managers (PIMs), and the like—are getting smaller, cheaper, and more feature-rich. In addition, battery life has been extended to nearly a month on some models, a real coup for the wireless data industry. PDAs or phones that continually needed recharging were long a source of frustration and a large impediment to wireless data's success.
3Com's Palm Pilot, for example, has seen unprecedented popularity, and a new version under construction in cooperation with CDMA inventor Qualcomm will enable the device to attach to CDMA PCS networks for wireless data applications. Called the pdQ Smart Phone, the device enables users to download applications or enhanced features from the Web.
The weight of smart phones has dropped from about 9 ounces to 5 or 6 ounces, allowing them to deliver "Internet in your pocket" capabilities. Prices have plummeted from about $1,000 to as low as $200, and improvements in handwriting recognition mean that some devices have gained additional utility and value.
In addition, increases in processor power, memory and display density are expected to soon evolve today's handsets into fully capable computers able to run both local and network-based applications.
Wireless data has also received the full support of industry leader Microsoft Corporation, which is working with the hardware and software communities to develop the tools needed to deploy wireless services effectively from handhelds that run its own Windows CE operating system and other devices. In fall 1998, Microsoft announced support for Internet standards for wireless communications and introduced the development of the Windows CE Microbrowser. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft and Qualcomm announced a joint venture, Wireless Knowledge, a company focused on the convergence of wireless communications access and information technology.
What Are the Applications?
Wireless data is finding a number of applications for general use, many of which represent extending wired network capabilities to untethered users.
E-mail. Extending Internet-based email to mobile users is becoming a compelling horizontal application in the way that voice mail has helped drive sales of cellular telephones. In addition, work is afoot to build unified mailboxes for IP networks, so that users can gain access to their email, faxes and voice mail all from a single interface.
Access to information updates. Subscribers can use CDMA-enabled smart phones to access news clips, stock market quotes, and travel information that can help them keep up with tasks and information-gathering while in airports, taxis, hotel lobbies, and other locations.
Fax. Using 3Com's IWF, a subscriber can plug a CDMA-enabled phone into a laptop computer for an all-digital connection through the wireless access network to the PSTN. Users can send and receive faxes from their laptops wirelessly using these linkages.
Wireless VPNs. Combining the smart phone with a laptop computer also enables the wireless extension of a corporate VPN to mobile users for full use of the company's client/server applications when there is no RJ-11 phone jack handy. For example, traveling salespeople can tap into the inventory databases at their companies to check product availability and pricing. The support of Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) and Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) in 3Com's IWF enables companies to extend their VPNs securely to wireless users.
What about bandwidth? Text-based applications at this juncture work best over the circuit-switched 14.4-kbps CDMA airlink, although these connections use v.42bis compression to achieve up to a 6-fold increase in throughput. Text is highly compressible, though graphics achieve less benefit from v.42bis, since they tend to be compressed already.
A word about WAP. For graphics-rich files such as Web pages, the Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) represents a combination of features from several vendors (Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, and Unwired Planet) to strip out the graphics in a downloaded file and deliver text only for increased throughput over the airlink. WAP runs on top of CDMA in subscriber devices and generates a simplified, text-only interface suitable for a monochrome LCD screen 16 characters wide and 4 lines deep.
3G Networks and Packet Switching
The forthcoming third-generation (3G) worldwide PCS standard (CDMA2000) is based on CDMA (also called CDMAOne) technology, and current CDMA investments are transportable to these newer networks. CDMA2000 is the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) standard for third-generation PCS technology, which offers a seamless migration path that economically supports upgrades to 3G features and services within existing spectrum allocations for both cellular and PCS operators. The network interface defined for CDMA2000 supports the second-generation network component of all existing PCS infrastructures, regardless of technology (CDMAOne, TDMA, or GSM).
With the development and buildout of a global 3G/CDMAOne standard, subscribers will be able to use their wireless devices as they roam across multiple countries. Today, they must use different phones and modems that support the type of network technology used by the country they are visiting.
CDMAOne networks are circuit-switched, but more efficient packet-switched networks will begin emerging next year. 3Com is already developing a packet-switched version of its IWF wireless gateway that will support subscriber speeds of up to 64 kbps. It is scheduled to ship to wireless OEMs and service providers late this year.
As with landline networks, packet-switching offers significant efficiencies that enable greater network scalability and support larger volumes of customers than circuit-switched networks. Instead of nailing up connections between two points and leaving bandwidth idle during periods when no transmission is taking place, packet-switching allows full use of network bandwidth. It does so through the use of statistical multiplexing, which separates packets and disperses them to fill the entire transmission link, then reassembles them at their destination. In addition, users do not have to manually set up and tear down phone calls to communicate using packet-switched networks. Instead, they can be "always connected," much as users on a local-area network are continually online.
In about three years, 3G packet-switched networks will enable wireless data speeds to increase by 100-fold to as much as 2 Mbps. This is made possible by an evolutionary maturation of CDMA RF technology that increases spectral efficiency through the use of faster power control, revised modulation techniques, and decreased protocol overhead.
The Enablers: 3Com's IWF and Quick Net Connect
3Com's IWF is a module for the company's Total Control™ Multiservice Access Platform that acts as a gateway between wireless CDMA networks and wireline PSTN/packet data networks. It provides the interworking and protocol conversions required to deliver circuit-switched data capabilities to mobile users. They can access e-mail, the Internet and on-line services, send and receive fax messages, as well as get remote access to corporate resources and secure connections to private intranets using L2TP and PPTP tunneling technology.
The CDMA gateway connects to an IP network service using secure tunneling protocols, which enable network operators to extend their customers' VPNs over wireless networks to mobile subscribers.
IWF supports multiple protocols and standards, which ensures the highest throughput possible over a CDMA network. Total Control also benefits CDMA mobile network providers by offering flexibility and investment protection through fast, easy software upgrades.
The IWF enables PCS operators to combine the delivery of voice, data, and fax services on one commonly managed network infrastructure. By connecting directly to telephone companies' Class 5 switches, the IWF directs modem and fax calls to the PSTN. It routes native IP data calls directly to the Internet or corporate intranet, enabling PCS operators and subscribers to bypass PSTN access charges. It supports all V.XX modem protocols, IP, and L2TP and PPTP tunneling protocols.
3Com's patent-pending Quick Net Connect feature enables users to plug their CDMA phones directly into a laptop computer to communicate directly with the wireless network without requiring a separate modem. Customer access times are 3 to 6 seconds, compared with 20 to 40 seconds for an analog cellular connection
What's On Deck for the IWF?
Later this year, the IWF will support higher speeds—to 64 kbps—and the Mobile IP protocol, which will enable full mobility management and push services. For example, traveling subscribers will be able to have their e-mail pushed to them automatically—without having to dial and check—regardless of their physical location. Mobile IP enables users to roam within and outside their enterprise networks while maintaining their home IP address.
Mobile IP, based on IP tunneling, is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) proposed standard protocol (RFC 2002) that enables transparent routing of IP datagrams to mobile users despite their physical movement. Valuable data can be forwarded to mobile users wherever they roam. Packets originated by a mobile user can either be sent normally, without a tunneling requirement, or they can be forwarded back to a user's enterprise for increased security. The benefits of Mobile IP include transparent mobility and low per-packet overhead, which make this solution very attractive for wireless applications
Mobile IP allows users to gain access to their enterprise networks and the Internet in the same way no matter where they are geographically. Mobile IP software automatically notifies the home gateway if a user changes location. In this way sessions can be seamlessly maintained despite movement.
Conclusion
The time is ripening for the adoption of wireless data access by the masses of mobile workers. Mobile devices at the right price, weight, and footprint for mass consumption are arriving, and wireless data networks are getting faster and cheaper.
Wireless network operators are looking to recoup their significant investments in PCS spectrum, infrastructure, and customer acquisition. Increasing the number of minutes of usage on their networks by offering wireless IP services is an important strategy for boosting revenues and reducing customer churn, since the more services a customer has tied up in a given carrier, the less likely that customer is to change providers.
As the rest of the pieces fall into place for extending wireless data services to subscribers other than the traditional dispatch and public safety users, network operators and customers alike will have a rich set of revenue-generating and productivity-enhancing alternatives at their disposal. |
