Vodafone Rallies Global Team To Develop Portal
By Peggy Albright
So you want to create a worldwide wireless Web and dominate the business? You've already got the largest wireless network
in the world, the most subscribers and the desire to make it happen. Great ideas happen all the time. The real question is, can
you make it happen?
Vodafone AirTouch announced earlier this month that it is developing a global Internet portal, and it has brought in some of the
top wireless and computing firms to help.
Whether or not the carrier reaches its goal remains to be seen. But both competitors and potential partners await the outcome
of the project, which Vodafone calls groundbreaking in its scale and its "pan-technology" vision.
Vodafone says it will offer the portal worldwide to its own operators and license the service to competing firms in markets
where it does not do business. The carrier aims to give wireless Internet access to anyone who wants it, via traditional wireless
phones, personal digital assistants or laptop computers.
This requires creating a system that runs over different networks. This one, as envisioned, will do just that by working with
Vodafone's chosen network technologies, CDMA and GSM, as well as public switched-telephone networks. The service will
accommodate different Internet-access "languages," such as short messaging services, the Wireless Application Protocol, Java,
voice or hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). And it will allow varying levels of services, from basic messaging to e-commerce
transactions.
Worldwide collaboration is key to developing their concept. Picture a global team of engineers, working from offices in the
United Kingdom, the United States and Australia racing to meet the project design deadlines. Team members from different
locations taking advantage of time zone differences to keep project work going around the clock. Time-of-day is irrelevant and
meetings are held at all hours. The project mantra: "Sleep is highly overrated."
That's how Vodafone aims to achieve its goal within a six-month deadline. It brought IBM in as prime contractor and systems
integrator. IBM, working from new offices in the San Francisco area where Vodafone has its Wireless Internet headquarters,
will manage the project and make sure all components and services contributed by each partner work together.
Sun Microsystems is contributing most of the hardware and software for this system. That includes its servers and data storage
technologies that run with the Solaris operating system and its iPlanet software, which runs unified messaging, calendar and
e-commerce functions while providing needed security. Key to all of the services will be end-to-end use of Sun's programming
language, Java, which will enable customers to download applications from the network.
Vodafone will be working with Sun to enable a scaled-down version of Java, called the Java 2 Micro Edition platform, to run
on customer mobile devices. J2ME can be used in conjunction with services based on the Wireless Application Protocol and
the two technologies are not mutually exclusive, Vodafone emphasizes. WAP will be used in the early version of the Vodafone
platform, set for release early this year. J2ME will be added as part of the advanced release, planned for deployment by the
end of the year.
"We're extremely supportive and believe in WAP, but there are other [media] and ways to deliver messages that we think are
important to the consumer," says Peters Suh, vice president for Internet services for Vodafone AirTouch. "There's an
ever-changing technical dynamic to improve the quality of experience of the Internet for the consumer. Part of that, we believe,
is J2ME."
Regardless of the application, a host of content providers have already joined with Vodafone to provide information and
e-commerce services. These include InfoSpace.com, Charles Schwab and Travelocity.com. Subscriber devices are under
development by Palm Computing, Ericsson and Nokia.
Suh says team members will continue to work globally around the clock in separate but concurrent teams, to make sure
applications and services are ready-on time-for both the first and second versions of this service.
As the partners burn the midnight oil, the rest of the industry certainly will be watching.
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