The chase is on for 'wireless Internet', microbrowser wars begin>
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February 16, 1999
ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING TIMES: New Orleans - New
companies, alliances and products struggled
to come to grips with a still-undefined market
for wireless Internet services at the Cellular
Telephone Industry Association's Wireless '99
show last week. Announcements ran a broad
gamut from new players pursuing broadband
fixed wireless services to fresh efforts to
deliver simple messaging schemes over
traditional circuit-switched networks.
Competition flared just below the surface
here in areas including microbrowsers for
next-generation handheld devices and
server-based software tools. But most
agreed that the future of cellular systems lay
not in voiceband services but in a general
shift toward Internet Protocol data over any
wireless system.
Much of the action swirled around true
broadband millimeter-wave services like Local
Multipoint Distribution Service (LMDS). Not
only were there dedicated sessions on
broadband LMDS, but millimeter-wave startup
Wavtrace Inc. wavetrace.com
(Bellevue, Wash.) elected to
launch its broadband-access system at the
show, while wireless-ATM specialist Netro
Corp. netro-corp.com (San Jose, Calif.)
launched an effort to
switch gears to LMDS and other licensed
access services.
Narrowband data services also enjoyed a
renaissance of sorts, as developers formed
alliances to exploit simple messaging
methods, primarily the Short Message
Service (SMS) initially developed for GSM
cellular. SMS found a new home in the iDen
Enhanced Specialized Mobile Radio band from
Nextel Communications Inc. and Motorola
Inc., as those two companies formed new
links with Unwired Planet Inc.
unwiredplanet.com and other
software developers. Separately, Motorola's
computer group (Tempe, Ariz.) announced a
dedicated SMS server, developed in
conjunction with ADC NewNet, for handling
nationwide SMS distribution in iDen networks.
The upshot was to put the 800-MHz digital
cellular and 1.9-GHz PCS communities on
notice that they must hammer out a range of
data services for today's frequency bands
and the wider-band channels promised by
third-generation (3G) cell phones. Merle
Gilmore, president of the Motorola
Communications Enterprise Sector, said that
these transitions drove Motorola's deal,
announced last Monday, to work with Cisco
Systems Inc. on bringing advanced IP routing
and switching to cellular networks.
"One of our first goals is adding wireless-data
capabilities to existing networks, and this will
start in the 2.5G generation," Gilmore said.
"More important is to put in place a migration
path to move [circuit] switched hierarchical
networks to a distributed, peer-to-peer,
IP-based net. "
This change in the physical network is
sparking software battles in client and server
worlds. A microbrowser war is emerging
between Unwired Planet and Microsoft Corp.,
as the latter company divides its interests
between independent CE-based
microbrowsers optimized for Windows and
work with Qualcomm Inc. (San Diego) on a
"personal portal" for unified server-based
applications accessible through small
appliances such as PDAs and cellular phones.
That effort-undertaken by the pair's Wireless
Knowledge joint venture-begins to intrude on
server-based information tools such as the
ByeDesk agent technology from Fujitsu
Software Corp. and the DNS Peering tools
launched at the show by Canadian startup
Saraide.com Corp.
The lesson for carriers is to go broad,
exemplified at Wireless '99 by a flurry of
deals that link regional and national wireless
carriers to specific handset and PDA
developers and software houses working on
wireless data.
Broadband grows up
The obvious first front is LMDS and similar
high-frequency systems. Last week
Wavtrace, a company with founders from
Motorola, Siemens, MCI and other key
vendors, launched what it called the first
broadband Internet access system based on
time-division duplexed (TDD) channels. Chief
executive Tom van Overbeek said that TDD
technology was critical in allowing LMDS to
support the type of symmetrical services
currently served by symmetric and
high-bit-rate DSL (digital subscriber line)
schemes. Another LMDS startup, Ensemble
Communications Inc., is rumored to be
working on a TDD LMDS system as well, but
is said to be several months from announcing
systems.
Wavtrace announced initial trials of its
system at Virginia Tech, and chief
technology officer Bob Foster predicted a
growing interest in the dynamic
bandwidth-allocation features that
omnidirectional TDD radio allows.
Netro, a company that got its start two
years ago touting point-to-point wireless
ATM, made an extended pitch at the show
for using its point-to-multipoint AirStar
product line in a variety of
millimeter-frequency bands, corresponding to
many regions' LMDS plans. Cynthia Hillery,
vice president of marketing, said that the
28-GHz version of the system for the United
States will follow versions for 26, 10 and 39
GHz. The North American LMDS market is not
as mature as in other nations, she said,
where wireless broadband access is often
the only Internet option available.
Traditional cellular providers are looking to
chip and subsystem developers for help in
crafting midrate wideband services to deploy
prior to the availability of 3G 384-kbit/second
channels. Qualcomm, which made a strong
push for its High Data Rate system at last
year's PCS show, is trying to show carriers
how to install HDR alongside CDMA cellular
and future 3G systems in unified
basestations. HDR uses dedicated bands to
provide 128-kbit to 1-Mbit channels
alongside traditional cellular service.
Qualcomm anticipates that the only way
data service can be made profitable is by
amortizing the cost of the technology over a
common cellular infrastructure, said Paul
Jacobs, president of the consumer products
division.
SMS, long popular in Europe for simplified
low-data-rate messages in a GSM
environment, made a big splash as Nextel
forged deals with Motorola, Netscape
Communications Inc. and Unwired Planet to
provide simplified Internet access using
Motorola iDen phones and the SMS message
structure. Mary Evren, business-development
manager for wireless data at Nextel,
emphasized that her company will work with
application developers in SMS, circuit-data
and packet-data realms. She said developers
often need some basic training on the types
of e-mail and messages they want to
support. Some assume they want a full
packet-data service when SMS will actually
work more reliably, she said.
The telecom team in Motorola's computer
group is providing fault-tolerant systems,
developed in conjunction with ADC NewNet,
for SMS server duty, as part of the iDen
infrastructure.
This begs the question of what kind of
platform wireless users will want for
interfacing to the Internet. LMDS and other
millimeter-wave services clearly are oriented
to desktop platforms, where full browsers
and multimedia can be supported. The
microbrowser makers, on the other hand, see
the phone with a small display as the access
platform.
New, augmented phone/PDA systems from
companies such as Innovative Global
Solutions Inc. (La Jolla, Calif.) were on view
at the show, offering enhanced Web access
based on the Unwired Planet browser. But
Ben Linder, Unwired Planet's vice president of
marketing, said it was just as interesting to
see a simple four-line browser show up on
the tiny iDen phones. That these mini phones
can access scores of Web sites shows that
Unwired Planet is gaining ground in getting its
Web tools widely deployed, he said.
The next battleground may be server tools.
Wireless Knowledge launched the first
offering for mobile server-based Internet
access, Revolv. The company said 11
developers are working in the Revolv
environment for Windows platforms, and
pledged other service suites in coming
months. Wireless Knowledge sees its server
technology as enabling "personal portals" for
Web service, based on a mobile user's
personal Web space.
Others in this realm include Fujitsu
Software's ByeDesk and newcomer
Saraide.com (Nepean, Ont.), which grew out
of a skunkworks program at Nortel Networks.
Copyright c 1999 CMP Media Inc.
By Loring Wirbel
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