Publication
Date: July 3, 1997
Wireless Tools for
Added Mobility
By
Ken Shulman
You are at
a sales meeting, typing figures into your
laptop as you and your client hammer out
the details of your agreement. You are
just about to close the deal when he
comes up with one last question. It is a
question you should be able to answer on
the spot, but you don’t have the
necessary information. And it would be
unprofessional to have to place a phone
call to your office, or even worse, to
ask for a phone line to plug into your
laptop modem. What can you do? A lot, if
you are connected to your server by a
wireless radio modem.
"It
can be very indiscreet to place a
landline or cellular phone call in a
customer conference room," says Bob
Kimball, chief technology officer of Wynd Communications in San Luis
Obispo, Calif. "But they are never
surprised when you take your computer
into a meeting. While you are typing
away, they can’t tell whether you
are simply taking notes, or writing an
urgent e-mail message about something
you’re embarrassed to ask
about."
Founded in
1994, Wynd develops software that enables
corporations and government organizations
to send and receive data over the
airwaves. More significantly, its
products allow on-the-road professionals
to connect to existing office platforms.
The term
"wireless" has generated broad
interest and broad confusion in the
corporate arena. While any device that
operates without a landline phone cord
can technically be defined as wireless --
many long-distance carriers describe
their cellular phone service that way --
the IT industry reserves the term for
devices that enable data communication
between computers over a dedicated radio
network, and that transmit that data in
digital packets.
"When
I think of wireless, I think of something
with an antenna that is not necessarily
created for voice transmission,"
says Mike Reagan, product manager for
wireless products at 3Com Corp.’s mobile
communications plant in Salt Lake City.
"But there is a real education
hurdle to get over before these products
take off, first in teaching the public
what they are, and second, what they can
do."
A U.S.
Robotics plant until that company’s
recent merger with 3Com, the Salt Lake
City facility began marketing its All
Points wireless modem card in January
1996. Small enough to fit in a laptop or
palmtop, the All Points card enables data
communication over the RAM Mobile Data
network, a land-based radio network in
the United States and Canada with
approximately 60,000 subscribers. The
card is sold at retail for close to $500
and is leased by networks for $10 to $40
per month, depending upon usage.
Wireless
modem cards such as All Points offer
convenience and economy. Unlike cellular
phone communication, which requires a new
dial-up connection each time the remote
unit needs to contact the server, the
wireless data connection is constant.
E-mail messages are pushed automatically
to the remote unit and can be accessed
immediately. Being digital, wireless data
connections tend to be more secure than
cellular analog connections, with
smoother handoffs when the remote unit
roams from the range of one signal tower
or transmitter into another. The wireless
connection offers an economic advantage
as well, as subscribers pay according to
the volume of data transmitted and
received, and not, as in the case of a
cellular connection, according to the
duration of the connection.
The
practical applications of the wireless
technology are still being explored.
"The first and most prevalent use of
this technology is always e-mail,"
says Kimball. "But once they realize
that this technology exists, people want
to know what else they can do with it.
Until now, wireless has mainly been the
province of vertical applications that
are fairly specialized. Now, we can
enable our customers to use the existing
applications on their company server over
the airwaves."
There are
still several wrinkles to be ironed out
before wireless data communication
becomes as ubiquitous, and as successful,
as the PC. The major issue is bandwidth.
At present, wireless data networks max
out at about 12,000 bps. The speed is
fine for e-mail and text messages, but
agonizingly slow for spreadsheets. World
Wide Web access is so slow that several
companies now offer software that strips
the graphics and images from Web pages as
they are retrieved by the mobile unit.
Several high-speed land-based and
satellite networks are in the works --
one of which should offer transmission
speeds of 128,000 bps. Yet until these
are realized, the dream of the wireless
office seems destined to remain a dream.
"There
is definitely a market for this wireless
technology," says Tim Bajarin, a
wireless communications specialist and
consultant with Creative Strategies in
San Jose, Calif. "But we have to be
careful. Everyone in the industry would
eventually like to bring this technology
to the consumer. But the bottom line is
that for the next 10 or 15 years,
wireless products and services will have
to be targeted at the business community,
and specifically at the sales force.
These are end users who are looking for a
very specific solution, a solution that
wireless can offer them right now."
Ken Shulman writes
from Cambridge, Mass.
Bob
Kimball and Tim Bajarin are featured
speakers at DCI's Sales Force
Automation Conference. Please
see the latest online
brochure for program and
registration information.
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