Wireless Voice/Data Services:
What Carriers Need To Know To Succeed
BY SANJIV PARIKH
Advanced wireless data services and mobile messaging products are
coming onto the market at a very fast rate. These new systems promise to
usher in a new era of boundless communications. But are the enhanced
messaging, Short Message Service (SMS), and Wireless Application Protocol
(WAP)-based products used by carriers now capable of delivering a true
"anytime, anywhere, any device" experience? End users and
telecom carriers are finding that the answer is: Not quite yet.
We've all heard the claims and seen the advertising for mobile data
services that promise amazing new features via the "wireless
Web." Subscribers who sign up for WAP or SMS services quickly find
that wireless data services channeled through a cell phone have little in
common with the desktop Web experience. Delivering only four or five lines
of text at a time, the tiny LCD screens on handsets just don't have enough
real estate to deliver feature-rich Web content. The larger displays on
handheld devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) do a better
job of delivering visual content, but they can't provide voice or voice
messaging functionality. Moreover, current mobile networks and wireless
modems can only transmit at snail pace speeds of 9.6 Kbps or 14.4 Kbps.
The current advanced voice/data systems available to carriers, however,
are delivering valuable experiences to subscribers. And much like the
early days of the Internet, these elementary services are whetting the
appetite of consumers for more advanced services down the road. Networking
companies and device manufacturers are perfecting third generation (3G)
products and applications that promise to bring wireless data into the
mainstream within two or three years.
WHERE WE ARE TODAY
Enhanced Services And The User Experience
Many wireless carriers are providing enhanced services to their
subscribers based on a unified communications model. The central value
proposition is that the wireless phone or handheld should allow the user
to comfortably navigate all aspects of their daily communications life:
voice service, voice messaging, e-mail, and fax. These services are
provided through established mobile voice technologies, and increasingly,
via emerging wireless data technologies. As unified communications
services become more popular, the mobile user experience is changing in
fundamental ways.
It's a transition that has been under way since the early days of
mobile phones. Over the past decade once-exotic features such as caller ID
and call forwarding gradually made their way into the mainstream. Many
mobile phone plans now include such services as standard features. Today,
unified communications services such as follow-me/find-me and centralized voice mail/e-mail
inboxes are becoming commonplace, especially for business subscribers at
new media companies, telcos, and dot coms.
Just as today's cell phone users expect to know who is calling them
before they hit the "talk" button, the mobile subscribers of
2002 will take it for granted that they can use their mobile handsets or
handhelds to automatically receive calls made to their home phone and read
e-mail sent to their business account.
Wireless Data
SMS
Short Message System, or SMS, doesn't receive as much attention as the
more advanced Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), but it is an effective
wireless data transmission platform that is being deployed by carriers
around the world. SMS has several positive attributes. It is very cost
effective, and offers excellent flexibility and compatibility with legacy
systems. It doesn't require enormous investments in new applications or
outlay for infrastructure. Virtually any mobile phone with an LCD screen
can display messages delivered via SMS. Therefore, it's an excellent
choice for carriers with a large installed base of users with older
handsets.
With SMS, there is no need for gateway equipment or a network overlay,
so it is inexpensive to deploy. And it works with virtually all mobile
systems, including TDMA and CDMA (the dominant platforms in North America)
and GSM (the standard mobile technology in Europe and most of Asia).
However, SMS is strictly a first-generation transmission technology.
Capable of delivering alphanumeric messages of only 160 characters or
less, SMS offers limited bandwidth and lacks session-oriented
interactions.
Even with narrow bandwidth capabilities, though, SMS enables access to e-mail
and information warehouses on the corporate LAN. SMS-enabled handsets can
also access Internet-based content such as stock updates, news, traffic
reports, and weather information. Its limited carrying capacity means SMS
will never be capable of delivering graphic content, or even the richer
text-based experience possible with WAP phones. But SMS may be a better
choice for carriers who would prefer to wait for broadband 3G services to
come onto the market.
WAP
WAP has been hailed in many circles as the industry standard for wireless
data and mobile Internet services. It delivers more sophisticated content
than SMS-based mobile data systems. WAP uses session-oriented technology,
which means end users can send and receive virtually unlimited amounts of
data during a session -- much like a dial-up wireline PC/Internet session.
But technological shortcomings and the rise of wireless data
transmission platforms that offer greater bandwidth are convincing many in
the industry that WAP will eventually be used for only certain text-based
wireless data services. WAP's Achilles' heel is its inability to directly
deliver HTML-based content -- the basic code for the vast majority of the
world's Web sites. WAP-enabled phones can only display content formatted
in Wireless Markup Language (WML). Many top Web portals produce content
formatted for the tiny screens on WAP-enabled handsets. But in effect, WAP
restricts end users to a tiny subset of the Internet.
BIG CHANGES ON THE HORIZON
SMS and WAP have given mobile subscribers a taste of what's possible with
wireless data services. New developments in handheld device technology and
wireless networking could open the floodgates for a wireless revolution
over the next few years.
The bigger viewing area and processing horsepower offered by handhelds
have made them logical devices for mobile communications. But bandwidth
limitations and lack of voice capabilities were significant drawbacks.
This equation is changing, however, as greater last air mile bandwidth
becomes available and service-specific networks evolve to serve handheld
users. For example, OmniSky allows
Palm V users to access a broad array of HTML-based Web content via its
snap-on modems. Though OmniSky lacks voice and voice messaging
capabilities, it is channeling more of the Web to a useful mobile
environment.
For carriers, the most promising developments in the wireless data
industry is the emergence of advanced second generation and third
generation technologies such as GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and
HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data). GPRS is a data service for GSM
networks that allows transmissions of far greater bandwidth than currently
possible. A packet-switched transmission format, GPRS is a second
generation technology that is already being deployed in Europe. It is
expected to support data transfer speeds in the range of 56 Kbps --
typical of a desktop Internet connection. HDR (High Data Rate) is a
proprietary technology from QUALCOMM
that enables 3G-quality data transmission rates up to 2.4 Mbps, and is
expected to begin market trials in certain U.S. locations in 2001.
With the high speeds enabled by GPRS and HDR, end users will finally be
able to use cell phones or handhelds equipped with HTML browsers for a
graphically rich, desktop-quality Web experience. If device manufacturers
can produce effective voice/data handsets that can take full advantage of
this growing bandwidth, the mobile Web will become a reality.
GETTING TO TOMORROW
Getting from today's text-based wireless data services to the broadband
multimedia mobile content of tomorrow will be an incremental process.
Three core services will remain constant: call management, messaging, and
information/data services. It will be very important for wireless carriers
to adopt the technology and standards that will allow them to do these
three things seamlessly across different devices and formats.
At the same time, consistency in the user interface as well as
interoperability of different media services will be crucial. Carriers
need to be aware that today's immature services will need to mesh with
more advanced services coming online in the next couple years. The bottom
line is that the current device- or service-specific networks are not
going to allow carriers to tap the huge potential of revenue from the
universe of the global Internet. Emerging 3G technologies will.
Sanjiv G. Parikh is
a senior product manager at Centigram
Communications where he concentrates on wireless data technologies and
intelligent networking. Centigram is a global provider of Internet-enabled
call management, WAP-based messaging, and unified communications services
to mobile and landline telecom service providers. Leveraging its expertise
in voice messaging, call processing and IP-enabled multimedia messaging,
the company is delivering next-generation communications services that
enable the transmission of voice, text, and multimedia content to wireless
and wireline phones, PCs and WAP-enabled devices. The company delivers
these services on the highly integrated Series 6 platform and the
Centigram Short Messaging Service Center. ADC
Telecommunications completed its acquisition of Centigram in July
2000. |