Two of the world’s fastest-growing industries, cellphones and the Internet, are converging to create a new generation of wireless information devices. Jack Schofield reports
Most Internet users would really like a permanent connection to the Net (one that’s “always on”) and they’d like their connection to work at a faster speed than today’s standard 56 kilobit modems. Next year, they’ll be able to have both in handheld devices that are small enough to carry around in their pockets.
Users marooned at an airport will be able to use their handhelds to look up timetables on the Net, search for a local hotel and check their bank accounts. Some will be able to buy things from vending machines that are also on the Net: this is already possible in Finland, according to Nokia’s Tuomas Korpela. He says: “You’ll be able to have an Internet address in your pocket. In theory, it will be possible to run a Web server on your cellphone.”
Wireless information devices would have seemed revolutionary a few years ago, but now they’re simply the next step in personal communications. First, cellphones enabled millions of people to stay in touch while out and about; then SMS text messaging services like Cellnet’s Genie were added.
It is already possible to use pocketable computers and portable personal computers to access the Internet via a cellphone and a modem. Not many people do it because it’s very slow – the maximum data rate is only 9,6 kilobits/second – and, at cellphone rates, very expensive. Plug the same modem into a voice line and it works about five times as fast for a fraction of the price.
But suppose you didn’t have to dial up an Internet service provider? What if your cellphone or palmtop computer was permanently connected to the Net? And what if it could work more than twice as fast as the fastest voice modem – at a theoretical maximum of 115 kilobits/second – so that Web pages arrived in seconds instead of minutes?
The technology to make this possible is known as general packet radio services (GPRS). While progress may not be inevitable, GPRS looks like being adopted. For the cellphone operators, GPRS offers a way to make fuller use of their network infrastructure and introduce money-making data services. GPRS is also a step towards Edge (enhanced data rates for GSM evolution), which will increase the possible data rate to 384 kilobits/second, and eventually to the third-generation universal mobile telecoms service (UMTS), a global service that will offer speeds up to two megabits/second.
The basic idea of GPRS is to use the cellphone network to carry data whenever circuits are not tied up by people talking. Because the data is packetised, there does not need to be a one-to-one connection between the sender and the recipient: just put on an address on the packet – such as an Internet protocol address – and the system will deliver it. GPRS devices can then be “always on” like phones or pagers, always listening for data.
At the moment it’s not clear how the telcos will charge for GPRS services they haven’t yet set up, but the obvious alternatives are to charge a flat rate for unmetered usage, like cable TV, or to charge for the amount of data sent and received. Both have their attractions. For example, there could be flat rates for fixed applications like vending machines (“I’m empty: fill me”), or distributing popular data like racing results and share prices, but hefty charges for “road warriors” making high-speed connections to their corporate networks.
Katrina Bond, a researcher with Analysys Limited in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and co- author of a report on cellular data published recently, says: “The cellular networks don’t have unlimited bandwidth – it’s not like you could put in another 500 fibre optic cables – so the networks will price it so only those willing to pay will use it.”
Some people think the cellphone will continue to be the dominant wireless device, and Internet access will be an extra feature on models chosen mainly for voice use – like Teletext facilities on a TV set. Others see the opportunity to connect palmtop and notebook PCs to the Net, not just to pull down Web pages but to make network connections and move large word processing files and spreadsheets around.
The typical cellphone, with its small liquid crystal display screen and limited memory, is not well suited for displaying websites full of high-resolution graphics and digital video clips. But such phones could show some useful information, and software houses are developing “microbrowsers” that use the wireless application protocol (WAP, see ) standard to create a new generation of “media phones”. The first example could be Nokia’s 7110 phone, due later this year.
Malcolm Bird of microbrowser developer Phone.com says: “WAP isn’t about phones surfing the Web, it’s about using services written for phones and sent to phones. It’s possible to go to any website and extract something that you could display on a cellphone, but you get a much better service if you design pages with the cellphone in mind. So we encourage people to write their applications in wireless markup language (WML).”
WML pages cannot be read using ordinary Web browsers written for standard HTML (hypertext markup language), but telcos are now being encouraged to install WAP “gateways” or “proxy servers” that will link cellphone networks to the Internet.
WAP and WML have widespread support and Bird says some information suppliers – news agencies like Reuters and share price firms like Quote.com – have already developed compatible services. Since there are at least twice as many cellphone users as there are Web surfers, this could be a lucrative market. And with the number of cellphone users expected to reach the billion mark by 2005, it could become a very large lucrative market. WIDs of various sorts – from cellphones to lifts to vending machines – could eventually make up the majority of devices on the Internet.
But even if that happens, millions of people with handheld and portable computers will want access to more than WAP can provide. Many users with handhelds like the Psion Series 5 and various Windows CE machines want full function e-mail and browsers that can display most Web pages. Microsoft wants users to move Word and Excel files across the cellphone network as easily as between PCs connected by local area networks. In other words, the battle between Psion’s Epoc (electronic piece of cheese) software, used in the Series 5, and Windows CE (originally, consumer electronics) operating system is incidental to Microsoft’s real aim: an end- to-end system that includes desktop PC and server software.
Last year, Psion spun off Epoc into a company called Symbian, in which the world’s three largest cellphone manufacturers, Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola have shares. This should make Epoc a safe bet to be the most popular operating software for phone-based devices. Products have yet to appear, but STNC, a software house, is developing software for them.
Amy Mokady, co-founder of STNC, says the company is providing communications software “directly to Symbian. The market we see being addressed by Symbian is where a cellphone and a computer are combined. This is the top 10% of `feature-rich’ devices, but even mass- market phones are beginning to get data facilities.”
STNC has rejected WAP for HitchHiker, its Web browser. “We are using real HTML,” says Mokady. “If a Web page is written in HTML you can access it from anything; if it’s written in [WML for] WAP, you can only access it from a cellphone.” She argues you should be able to get information from the Net using a phone/organiser, even if it would look better on a PC.
Microsoft has also neglected to support WAP in Windows CE, which includes a browser in its modular range of software components. CE is used in a wide range of devices from handheld and ultralite notebook computers to in-car systems, games consoles, music players and phones.
For mobile communications, Microsoft and Qualcomm, a $3-billion United States-based wireless communications company, have set up a joint venture called WirelessKnowledge to bring “true convergence to the computing and wireless communications industries”.
WirelessKnowledge’s system is based on Microsoft technology, including Windows CE, its BackOffice programs for servers, and the Microsoft Commercial Internet System, MCIS. The system is being adopted by several of the US’s cellphone service suppliers. Microsoft has also signed a deal with British Telecom in the UK, which involves British Telecom adopting Microsoft’s microbrowser.
Microsoft’s strategy is designed to appeal to corporate information technology managers and, as Yankee Group researchers say, “by assuring these gatekeepers of a relatively smooth and easy transition to wireless, Microsoft may be able to succeed where no one else has before”.
But in linking two of the world’s fastest- growing industries -mobile telephony and the Internet – wireless data looks like developing into such a large and varied market, no single company will be able to dominate it.