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Victoria and ALL: Article...Intel to smooth mobile connection glitches..
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Intel aims to smooth mobile connection glitches
By Margaret Kane
August 4, 1997 9:27 AM PDT
ZDNN
Just about every mobile PC user has had the experience of wandering aimlessly through a hotel or airport, looking for somewhere to plug in the darn thing.
Intel Corp., working with a group of telecom equipment manufacturers, PC vendors and software companies, is hoping to change that.
The companies today announced the North American rollout of the Mobile Data Initiative (MDI), which aims to make wireless phones, PCs and other devices interoperable, no matter where the user is located.
The initiative is modeled after a similar program begun a year and a half ago in Europe, said Stephen Nachtscheim, vice president and general manager of Intel's mobile and handheld products group.
The European movement began earlier because although wireless telecom services are more established there, interoperability on the continent remains a big problem. Indeed, wireless phones built in France and England do not necessarily work outside of their country of origin.
"It's really hard to communicate in Europe. You have to bring a kit bag full of plugs with you everywhere, and you have to crawl around looking for somewhere to plug in," Nachtscheim said. "On the other hand they're much further along in deploying digital wireless telephones."
The problem in North America is not so much interoperability, but availability, he said.
"People that carry mobile PCs generally want to communicate when they want to communicate," he said. "People really have a need for any kind of communication. Given the speed of business today, demand is probably equal or little bit different in North America as in Europe."
And as the theory goes, better mobile communications will drive up mobile PC sales, which means more processor sales.
"That's absolutely the theory. People buy PCs because of their abilities and many of the buyers of mobile PCs are business users. This allows users to be much more productive," Nachtscheim said. The same reasoning likely applies to other members of the MDI, including Nokia Corp., Ericsson Inc., IBM, Toshiba Corp., Pacific Bell, Bell South Corp., Western Wireless Corp., Omnipoint Corp. and Aerial Communications Inc.
The European initiative incorporates the Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications network, a digital mobile standard widely used there. Today, a group of seven U.S. and Canadian wireless phone companies announced an agreement to market wireless phone services here under the brand name North America GSM Alliance. That group will use the PCS 1900 service, which supports data transmission, including messaging, fax and E-mail, over wireless networks.
Nachtscheim said the MDI would also support the PCS 1900 protocol, as well as other wireless protocols such as Code Division Multiple Access. MDI is "protocol agnostic," he said.
Interoperable GSM products should start to appear by the end of the year, he said, and other technologies may take a bit longer.
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The Intel machine just seems to be everywhere!
Regards, Michael |
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