Remote Control
BY DARA BLOOM
Editor, TMCnet™

In 1995, global mobile telephony subscribers stood at 85.3 million. According to a 1998 Yankee Group study (Global Trends of Cellular/PCS Markets), that number had risen to 198.5 million by the end of 1997 -- and the study forecasted 529 million subscribers by the year 2002. That enormous growth is obvious to anyone that leaves their house occasionally -- it's easy to see that cell phones are attached to more of the population's ears than ever before.

Readers of CTI magazine will recognize that the growing role of wireless communications -- now so much more than a simple cord-free telephony device -- has received quite a bit of coverage lately. For example, TMC Labs' executive technology editor Tom Keating wrote in his October 1998 CC: column, "Looking For Aladdin's Lamp," about his wish for a "universal communicator" -- basically, a PDA (personal digital assistant) that handled all his communication needs. More recently, Bob Emmerson examined "Mobile CTI Development" in the February issue of CTI.

Wireless devices supporting simultaneous voice and data over Internet Protocol (IP) are closer to Keating's ideal of a universal communicator than any other wireless set we've seen yet. This combination is becoming the implementation du jour for "x" over IP -- take away the wires. A number of products using or hinting at wireless Internet telephony have been introduced since this year began, and three of them, noted here, are indicative of the wireless VoIP trend.

Service Provider Offerings
Californians, take note: you may be the first to experience "WVoIP" -- wireless voice over IP, as WebTel Wireless, Inc. has dubbed their new service. Formed in 1996, WebTel just announced that they'll be using Ascend Communications' MultiVoice for the MAX platform to offer wireless Internet telephony service.

WebTel Wireless' VoIP network allows carriers worldwide to terminate calls in Arizona and provide long-distance calls for about half the cost of the same service over the PSTN. By combining WebTel Wireless' managed IP network with Ascend's MultiVoice VoIP platform, the company is positioned to deliver integrated voice and data into a single network.

Currently, WebTel Wireless offers wireline and wireless flat-rate long-distance telephone and Internet services. The company's initial deployment of WVoIP comprises five Arizona Points of Presence (POPs) in Flagstaff, Phoenix, Prescott, Sedona, and Tucson. The company plans to deploy additional POPs and begin service in the southwestern and eastern U.S., plus Europe and Asia.

In The Enterprise
Wireless, Inc. has brought to market its newest product in the WaveNet IP Series, the WaveNet IP 2458 wireless access router for point-to-multipoint applications. The router offers support for both data and voice over IP.

VoIP support is embedded in the design of the WaveNet IP 2458, making user-configurable bandwidth reservations for voice traffic and voice prioritization simple to manage. You won't be locked into an IP network that treats your voice packets with the same routing rules as data.

The WaveNet IP 2458 has central and remote units. The remote units are mounted on the roof or side of a building and connect into a corporate LAN with a 10Base-T cable. Up to 12 central units can be co-located at one location, and each central unit supports up to 60 remotes. The WaveNet IP 2458 can support hundreds of remote connections per central site. In addition to IP telephony, the router easily handles applications such as Internet and intranet access, security monitoring, two-way paging, and network redundancy.

Operating in the 2.4 and 5.8 GHz license-free ISM bands, the router has capacity up to 20 Mbps per central site. Central-to-remote line-of-site distances can be as far apart as 20 miles -- a benefit for corporate campus environments.

Carrier-Class
On a carrier-class scale, Leap Wireless has tapped PulsePoint Communications to deploy enhanced services to Leap Wireless' customer base. Leap Wireless is a carrier that deploys, owns, and operates fixed and mobile wireless networks based on CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access). CDMA supports wireless voice and data services with more than three times the capacity of current digital networks. It makes sense, then, that CDMA can be effectively used in deploying a wireless extension to IP telephony networks.

PulsePoint brings its Windows NT-based Enhanced Application Platform to the deal, and will be the primary supplier of voice mail and unified messaging to the carrier. The Enhanced Application Platform, which won an Editors' Choice award in the September 1998 issue of CTI magazine, is an Internet-ready, standards-based enhanced services system. The platform's architecture integrates with PSTN, wireless, and IP networks.

No wireless Internet telephony offering has been announced yet, but the flexibility of PulsePoint's PC-based and IP-friendly platform combined with Leap Wireless' CDMA network mean WVoIP can't be far away.

Waiting For The Universal Communicator
For those readers that, like Tom Keating, are patiently waiting for a universal communicator to come on the market, take heart: wireless Internet telephony is a big step in the right direction. Other recent product announcements -- such as Motorola's i1000plus, a palm-size, IP-addressable handset that combines the capabilities of a digital phone, two-way radio, and alphanumeric pager with a Internet microbrowser (from Unwired Planet), e-mail, fax, and two-way messaging capabilities -- are harbingers of devices like the universal communicator on Keating's wish list.