What does "wireless" mean?
"Wireless" means transmitting signals over invisible radio waves instead of wires. Garage door openers and television remote controls were the first wireless devices to become a part of everyday life. Now the cordless keyboard and mouse, PDAs, and digital and cellular phones are commonplace.
Wireless technologies are used for things as simple as making a phone call or as complex as letting the sales force get information from an SAP application.
For businesses, wireless technologies mean new ways to stay in touch with customers, suppliers and employees. The future of wireless lies in faster, more reliable methods of transferring data and, to a lesser extent, increased use of voice commands and audio improvements.
How do wireless networks work?
Wireless data is predominately transferred over two kinds of networks: wide area networks (WANs) and local area networks (LANs). These networks are similar to their wired counterparts！they just use radio waves instead of copper or fiber.
WANs can cover areas as large as several countries. AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless, Sprint PCS and Verizon and are among the carriers that use wireless WANs.
Wireless LANs, already popular in airports and hotels, are often used to replace or enhance wired LANs. They can cover a range of 500 feet indoors and up to 1,000 feet outdoors. They may service a smaller area than their WAN cousins, but LANs can transfer data much faster, at speeds up to 11Mbps. Wireless LANs are used primarily for data; they do not usually support voice traffic.
What is Bluetooth?
A Bluetooth device uses radio signals to send information from one Bluetooth device to another through the air. For example, if you are trying to transfer a PC's address book to a PDA, first the data in an address book is translated into a language that the PDA can understand by a conduit. The data goes through the conduit to the Bluetooth device. The Bluetooth device is made up of a base-band processor, a radio, and an antenna. The base-band processor transfers the data into signals that the radio can understand, and the radio puts out signals in a frequency (2.4 gigahertz) that the antenna transmits through the air to another antenna on another Bluetooth device within 30-feet. The other device receives the data and processes it in the reverse order.
What is 3G wireless?
3G wireless networks are capable of transferring data at speeds of up to 384Kbps. Average speeds for 3G networks will range between 64Kbps and 384Kbps, quite a jump when compared to common wireless data speeds in the U.S. that are often slower than a 14.4Kb modem. 3G is considered high-speed or broadband mobile Internet access, and in the future 3G networks are expected to reach speeds of more than 2Mbps.
What is 2.5G?
When the wireless industry realized that it was going to be costly and technologically challenging to upgrade to 3G networks, an interim stage emerged called 2.5G. These networks transfer data at speeds of up to 114Kbps, which is faster than traditional digital (2G) networks. They are always on. A phone with 2.5G services can alternate between using the Net, sending or receiving text messages, and making phone calls without losing its connection.
What is a Wireless LAN?
A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a local area network (LAN) without wires (see LAN, left). WLANs have been around for more than a decade, but are just beginning to gain momentum because of falling costs and improved standards. WLANs transfer data through the air using radio frequencies instead of cables. They can reach a radius of 500 feet indoors and 1000 feet outdoors, but antennas, transmitters and other access devices can be used to widen that area. WLANs require a wired access point that plugs all the wireless devices into the wired network.
What exactly is WAP?
WAP is a set of protocols used to transfer data to wireless devices. WAP-enabled devices provide wireless users with a limited version of the Web designed to work on the small black and white screens of phones and PDAs.
You wouldn't want to have been a field sales representative for Frito-Lay back in the early 1980s. After delivering America's popular salty snacks all day in the sweltering heat or freezing cold, the reps had to return home to sort through a load of paperwork before they could crack open a cold one and put their feet up. Since the field sales guys technically owned the merchandise once they took it out of the warehouse, their day wasn't done until the books were settled by hand.
To hear then Frito-Lay CIO Charlie Feld tell it, most of the reps could hardly balance their own checkbooks, much less deal with corporate accounting tasks, so they often drafted their wives to help them. Sorting through the wads of receipts and forms was a nightly ritual that didn't exactly qualify as quality family time.
So Frito-Lay's 10,000 sales reps were happy to get their hands on first-generation handheld computers (HHCs) in 1986 that considerably lightened their homework. Based on a Fujitsu device with a homegrown application, the HHCs would transmit daily sales figures each evening back to the corporate mainframe in Plano, Texas. With a careful pilot program, Frito-Lay's first foray into wireless technology was a success！salesmen bought into it and the entire program paid for itself.
Although the sales reps loved the new app, not much was easy about being one of the first companies to implement wireless technology. For one thing, there were hardly any vendors at the time. Pioneers like Frito-Lay had to fund multiyear research and development efforts and then cobble together their own solutions！at great expense, in both time and money. There were no standards for hardware, software or radio frequency data transmission. And！at least at first！there were no public networks that companies could use to transmit their wireless data. All this doesn't even take into account the doubters. Very few people believed that wireless devices would ever be as reliable as that sales rep and his wife hunched over the kitchen table.
In fact, the wireless pioneers made their investments in wireless technology not because they wanted to, but because they had to. They had no choice. In the case of wireless technology, necessity truly was the mother of invention.
A CIO magazine survey reveals that those respondents using wireless technology (38%) support many standards and devices and stress in-house applications. They peg system integration and security as top concerns.
The Technology Of Wireless Generations
1G: The first generation of wireless that introduced analog systems transmitting over radio frequencies, used primarily for voice. This gave us the cell phone. Early 1980s.
2G: The second generation of wireless introduced digital encoding and text messaging, and was also used primarily for voice. Mid-1990s.
2.5G: The highest level of wireless technology currently available in the United States. Allows for voice and text communication and Web access. 2001.
3G: The third generation will provide speeds of up to 2Mbps, and multimedia data and voice transmissions. Currently available only in Japan. Expected 2002.
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3G (third generation)
An industry term used to describe the next, still-to-come generation of wireless applications. It represents a move from circuit-switched communications (where a device user has to dial in to a network) to broadband, high-speed, packet-based wireless networks (which are always "on").
802.11
A family of wireless specifications developed by a working group of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. These specifications are used to manage packet traffic over a network and ensure that packets do not collide！which could result in loss of data！while traveling from their point of origin to their destination (that is, from device to device).
Bluetooth
A short-range wireless specification that allows for radio connections between devices within a 30-foot range of each other. The name comes from 10th-century Danish King Harald Bl?tand (Bluetooth), who unified Denmark and Norway.
PCS (personal communications services)
An alternative to cellular, PCS works like cellular technology because it sends calls from transmitter to transmitter as a caller moves. But PCS uses its own network, not a cellular network, and offers fewer "blind spots"！areas in which access to calls is not available！than cellular.
Nagaraja Srivatsan, vice president of Digital Vision Labs for Edison, NJ based SeraNova, answered your questions on how companies can best integrate smart phones, personal digital assistants, and pagers into the enterprise.
How can I deploy a large volume of sensitive information, speedily, to a global mobile workforce?
Consider creating a portal through which your team can access the information, consolidated in a single look and feel, but for performance reasons, replicated regionally according to user locations.
What kinds of corporations other than telecom companies have used mobile techology to improve productivity, and what was their justification for choosing mobile computing?
Package delivery and dispatch service companies have long used mobile technology to improve productivity. The value of mobile computing was to provide instantaneous location and tracking of the couriers and packages. The justification was made based on competitive advantage and increased customer service, as well as increased productivity of couriers. United Parcel Service, for example, has been quoted as saying that their investment on wireless technology is "an investment in the customer", but that if packages were tracked without a mobile device, then there would be additional call center and service representative costs involved. Utility and energy companies have also been users of wireless technology to send critical data from remote locations to their regional offices. Technicians and surveyors routinely send information regarding condition/damage levels for gas lines, power lines, etc. The justification for the technology can be made in terms of the revenue losses, as well as the liability costs, due to extended service outages.
25 Million Americans Will Buy Satellite Radio by 2010
It's predicted that 25 million Americans will purchase satellite radio services by 2010. Currently, close to half (47%) of Americans over the age of 12 (100 million people) are aware of the new technology. Satellite radio companies XM and Sirius Satellite Radio have put $1.5 billion towards developing a complex satellite radio network. There are currently 22 different digital audio broadcast receivers available commercially.
July 18, 2002 - Ipsos-Reid and In-Stat/MDR
Most wireless users say they would like Internet access from their handsets.
Close to one-third (31%) of U.S. wireless handset users are looking to upgrade in the coming year. More than half (52%) say they would like access to the Internet with their upgrade, while 64% say they would like to be able to send and receive e-mail. The largest percentage of those looking to improve their existing handsets (80%) say address book applications are a priority. Of those looking to upgrade, only 18% say they plan to do it for better functionality of their handsets.
July 11, 2002 - Harris Interactive
Learn how to evaluate the quality of your wireless environment:
Do you have the skills and financial resources to support wireless applications? Field tests help gauge your wireless strengths and flaws！before others do it for you.
What device does your company use? Is it compatible with the intended use?
How many people access corporate information through wireless devices? How does your company regulate this access?
Is there a business case for the application that you are wireless enabling?
What are the boundaries of your wireless LAN signal? Have you tested multiple configurations?
Do you know your wireless provider's gateway and fraud policies? What transmission standard does it use?
Where are you most vulnerable to an attack?
Are your wireless applications carrier-neutral?
CIO Wireless Communications Research Center
http://www.cio.com/research/communications/
A wide lens look at the wireless industry. Included are overview articles, news and information sources and organizations that will keep you up to date on the wireless world.
Think Mobile
http://www.thinkmobile.com/
This portal from Internet.com offers news, articles, and other resources pertaining to mobile communications.
USAToday.com's Wireless Channel
http://www.usatoday.com/life/
cyber/wireless/wireless.htm
This site offers users a few top news stories, an 'ask the mobile gadget guide' feature, product reviews and access to past stories about a range of topics.
Computerworld Mobile/Wireless Knowledge Center
http://www.computerworld.com/itresources/
rchome/0,4167,NAV63_KEY68,00.html
This site has a wide variety of up to date articles about what is going on in the wireless world, including examples of how businesses are using wireless technologies and the security implications of these technologies.
Wireless Data Primer from the Wireless Data Forum
http://www.wow-com.com/internet/primer/articles.cfm?ID=300
This is a comprehensive primer on the world of wireless data with everything from basic definitions to revenue forcasts from consulting firms. Choose the PDF or Rich Text Format to see the entire primer at once instead of clicking through the numerous screens.
The Wireless Channel at Stardust.com
http://www.stardust.com/wireless/
This section of Stardust.com (a site that claims to be "making sense of new Internet stuff") has pages devoted to specific facets of the wireless world, including local area networks (LANs), multimedia applications and location services (that track the geographic location of mobile devices). The site is also chock-full of articles, product reviews and presentations.
AnywhereYouGo.com
http://www.anywhereyougo.com/
Don't let the fact that this site is targeted for developers of wireless technology scare you away. Mixed in with its how-to articles are a good number of general ones that can help even the biggest technophobe understand the evolution of the wireless world.
About.com: Wireless Guide
http://wireless.about.com/
About.com's guides are usually some of the best for learning about technology, and this one on wireless doesn't disappoint. The guide's editor, Brian Newman (a wireless industry veteran), writes about wireless tools, such as customer relationship management applications, in relation to broader trends and predictions for the sector.
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