Jim:
Thanks for the article on wireless data. It isn't surprising that we perceive "overseas" ahead of NA in telephony- historically NA has been the leader in starting a technology, while Europe stalls a bit, then leverages the technology advances made in the 4 years it takes them to come up with a standard. For example, T1 was first, but only had 24 channels- E1 came later, and has thirty.
GSM (Europe, et. al) is a slightly different case. It succeeded for three reasons, in my opinion:
1) it took forever to get a new phone installed from a government monopoly- wireless phones helped with this
2) it cost a lot for phone service - wireless phones were not much more initially, and you got mobility at least with them
3) the GSM standards were defined by service providers, not equipment vendors; this was a first I understand
(this was told to me by the head of the GSM MOU, the committee who initially defined the GSM standards).
They had a vested interest in ineroperability (that roaming revenue) and speedy operations oriented standards.
Japan is another story.
Basically the desire for cellular data, while real, has several major obstacles.
1) there is only so much bandwidth available for use by a handset powered by a small battery.
2) this costs money now (Europe is now auctioning out spectrum), and cellular SP's want to use every bit of the spectrum
3) Voice is where the money is.
The minute a data call starts to compete with voice, it will be dropped, I suspect. As far as I can make out (I
haven't done a queuing analysis of this), the 'high speed data' offered by GPRS, EDGE, UMTS/3G and other technologies basically use clever sharing techniques to use bandwidth not used by voice. So in a crowed area (cities, conventions, etc.), your data access speed will drop quickly, I think, since voice is the higher priority
application.
As far as SMS goes, it has been around since 1995 (I used to be involved with this) and every SP using GSM or IS-41 CDMA/TDMA digital cellular, or even analog thought that is not used much) can use it. Basically, it uses the SS7 network to highly inefficiently send small messages (150 to 255 bytes) to a cell phone over the cell phones signaling channel. It is a very intelligent store, forward, and retry mechanism with a set of complete standards all the way to the application level that are almost the opposite of IP, which is a simple flexible protocols defying only layer two. I have trouble believing that short messaging is a killer app, when it has been around and available for 5 years and hasn't gone anywhere. There is a market, but it rather like the voice mail market to the phone company- and added source of revenue that has evolved as a service option on the voice offering.
Bottom line is that I believe that WAP or something like it is mandatory- you just won't have the bandwidth to have HTML/HTTP/IP/air. In this area (if it matters) the US IS-41 has defined SMS for almost as long as GSM, there have been cellular data in the US (unsuccessfully) since AMPS, and EDGE standards are including TDMA/CDMA for data, so we are all moving no where at the same speed. Actually, WAP started in the US, and has only reluctantly been adapted by global companies; I knew a marketing guy who had just left Nokia and told me 'WAP is Dead' over two years ago- I don't know it that was his opinion or company opinion (see wapforum.org for a list of members of the WAP forum, which has just about everyone, including Charles Schwab).
The real issue is not who is ahead in technology, but what will people pay for it. Cellular service providers have to
first pay back the high spectrum license fees, and since SMS (which handles voice mail notifications, short messages, over the air activation, email header display, news, sports, stock quotes) handles the mostly likely applications currently, using SPARE channel capacity. Also, I'm not sure what I would pay for WAP service; perhaps a lot to get SI on my PDA? GO2NET isn't in the WAP forum!
As for combined PDA/handset- I first saw them at CBIT in Hanover in 96/97 and discussed integrating them with SMS with the vendor's product managers: I don't think they have taken off, since they were rather bulky and people seem to use SMS happily enough on their phones. Personally, I'd like one that had WAP, a detachable headset and a large foldout keyboard. But that might not be portable either.
justone opinion |
