I am no longer "on strike." (someone accused me of being a "blabbermouth").
I hereby declare Qualcomm an Internet play !! (See following article).
February 8, 1999
Cisco and Motorola to Develop Wireless Internet
System
By DAVID BARBOZA
CHICAGO -- In what is being billed as the next giant step in the Internet
revolution, the Motorola Corp., the maker of wireless communications
products, and Cisco Systems Inc., which provides Internet equipment,
plan to form an alliance that would build the world's largest wireless Internet
system.
The project is the most ambitious effort yet to build a global network that
would enable businesses and consumers to have high-speed Internet access to
e-mail and faxes without the burden of wires, cables or even walls.
The plan, which is expected to be announced Monday at a cellular telephone
conference in New Orleans, makes Motorola and Cisco Systems the latest
communications and networking giants to join forces in an attempt to
capitalize on the increasing popularity of the Internet and the rapid growth of
wireless communications products.
Over the last year, several telecommunications companies have announced
plans to offer new services or upgrade their wireless communications
operations so that businesses and consumers may have some access to the
Internet. The AT&T Corp., for instance, already is offering wireless service
that taps into electronic mail and Internet information.
The race to transform communications through the Internet also has led to
several giant mergers that could result in greater wireless access. In June,
Northern Telecom Ltd. of Canada, one of the largest makers of
telecommunications gear, said it would acquire Bay Networks Inc., a large
data networking company. Just last month, Lucent Technologies, the former
research arm of AT&T, announced its acquisition of Ascend
Communications, a leading provider of Internet equipment.
Executives at the Microsoft Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and Qualcomm Inc.,
the wireless communications outfitter, also have expressed an interest in
developing products related to wireless Internet access.
"This is part of a trend," said Roberta Wiggins, a wireless communications
analyst at the Yankee Group in Boston. "People have been saying: 'There are
all these people with cell phones and all these people accessing the Internet,
and at some point people are going to put these two things together."'
While Ms. Wiggins and other analysts say that developing a wireless system
could be costly and cumbersome -- with competing and incompatible systems
trying to transmit bulky data and video into wireless units -- officials at
Motorola and Cisco say their vision of a world where automobiles could get
tuneups by wireless signals and sales executives could obtain company
information from a remote place is just beyond the horizon.
"This extends the Internet to a world without wires," said Don Listwin,
executive vice president at Cisco, based in San Jose, Calif.
Over the next four or five years, Motorola and Cisco say they plan to invest
more than $1 billion to create a system capable of transmitting voice, data and
video over existing cellular telephone stations directly to wireless telephones,
laptop computers and other devices.
The system would create a new line of products for Motorola, a new
generation of wireless networking gear for Cisco and perhaps even signal the
convergence of several existing communications products, like pagers,
cellular telephones, televisions, radios and computers. "The goal is that instead
of having four or five communication devices in your briefcase, you'll have
one or two," said Doug Wills, a spokesman for Cisco.
The two companies also plan to open four jount research and development
centers, two in the United States and two abroad.
A critical piece of the puzzle, Motorola and Cisco say, is that the wireless
transmissions would be delivered using an Internet Protocol platform that is
compatible with all wireless formats. Unlike analog or digital platforms, the
companies say that the Internet Protocol, or IP platform, will be able to
effectively deliver and bundle voice, data and video feeds through cellular
stations.
What is novel about the effort, the companies say, is that they plan to adopt
an "open" standard. In other words, they plan to create a wireless industry
standard that could be adopted by any company that wants to develop
different or competing products. Such an open standard, officials say, would
be different from other wireless Internet efforts now under development. The
new IP framework will be published this spring in a "white paper," the
companies said.
For Motorola, which has stumbled of late in the world of wireless
communications, the deal with Cisco is an attempt to help resurrect its
reputation as an innovative company. After two years of earnings shortfalls
and market share losses tied to its line of wireless telephones, Motorola has
been on an aggressive path to new wireless ventures.
The company, which is based in Schaumburg, Ill., and had sales of $29 billion
in 1998, has a huge stake in Iridium, a satellite venture that offers voice and
paging systems. In May, when sharp cuts were being made in its work force,
Motorola abandoned a plan to spend $13 billion to build what it called its
Internet in the Sky project, a satellite network capable of delivering high-speed
data communications anywhere in the world.
Instead, Motorola said it would invest about $750 million in Teledesic, a
low-orbit satellite venture that also intends to deliver high-speed access to the
Internet, beginning in 2003. The new wireless venture with Cisco, officials at
Motorola say, is different but would be compatible with Iridium and
Teledesic, which was founded by William H. Gates, the chairman of
Microsoft, and Craig McCaw, the cellular telephone pioneer.
Now, company officials say, they have hit upon a revolutionary scheme.
"With this system you can get Internet information any time, anywhere," said
Bo Hedfors, senior vice president at Motorola.
As for Cisco, executives say the new venture will strengthen its move into the
telecommunications equipment market, where it is battling companies like
Lucent and Nortel. By forming an alliance with Motorola, Cisco -- which
among other things sells networking gear to telephone providers -- is staking
out firmer ground in its efforts to persuade global companies to use its
equipment and the Internet to transfer information.
Though some analysts insist that Motorola and Cisco face many hurdles in
creating a wireless Internet system, including the prospect of transmitting
bulky video feeds over a wireless network, the two companies say the
framework they have outlined already has won strong support from big
telephone service providers like Sprint, Nextel and Airtouch Communications.
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company |
