Features

The Age of Wireless is imminent - as it has been for ten years

The CTIA (http://www.ctia.org) put the matter plainly in its "WIC Manifesto" at its recent exhibition: "The U.S. wireless data market has been 'poised to take-off in the next year' for at least the past 10 years." But 98% of U.S. wireless traffic is still voice.

That sounds about right. It was 10 years ago that I wrote a book called "The Guide to Field Computing," which predicted that wireless was "about to take-off" with modems like the 9,600 bit/second Mobidem and "arm-top" computers. The book bombed, I left for e-commerce, and when I come back it seems I haven't missed a thing.

But now that I'm here, they're determined to get moving. The big feature of the CTIA keynote was Flarion Technologies' OFDM. Senior director of marketing strategy Ronny Haraldsvik said the system ran data at 384 Kbps (real speed, not phony "up-to" speed) in a test on a 1.25 MHz wide 700 MHz "experimental" frequency band the FCC loaned them, and a market test will take place in San Diego this summer.

Flarion was spun out of Bell Labs several years ago to develop a packet data product, and the result can be installed for 1/10th the cost of 1XRTT, said Haraldsvik. An unnamed carrier will test pricing in its tests, but Haraldsvik insisted "we can deliver 40% margins for everyone on the value chain for $40/month" unlimited use.

Sanjeev Verma, founder of Airvana Inc, begged to disagree. His 3G system also runs at 384 Kbps, he insisted, fully loaded with users, and he's willing to name some customers. Verizon is trialing it in the U.S. and Korea will install it for real. "Its first use will be in a cell phone as a modem."

An Airvana phone will have a jack that connects to a PC or Palm-top, allowing users to have Web sessions from anywhere. Later the product will find its own market. All you can eat pricing can work, he insists, but with so many people have unused minutes on their calling plans, so could per-minute charges, or "buckets" of service. All tiers will be tried.

Verma insisted the cellular carriers aren't broke, that they can get 3G going. AT&T is spending $5 billion on network upgrades, he said, and Sprint $3.5 billion more. "The fundamentals are strong," he insisted. "You have to invest to generate new revenues from new services."

Time will tell if he's right. This is where I came in.