wireless edge conference and expopage 44 - SYS

COMING: WIRELESS EDGE CONFERENCE AND EXPO
PAGE 44
JANUARY 2002 | VOLUME 2 ISSUE 1
MOBILE MESSAGING
PROVES EFFECTIVE FOR
Sony Entertainment
page 26
SECURE Networks
page 50
page 30
WIRELESS INTERNET
THE
Next Generation?
page 40
THIRD
GENERATION
FOMA Technology
and BlueGrid
page 43
PRODUCT
REVIEW:
Pocket PC 2002
page 48
BOINGO
Jumps In
page 56
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V O L U M E 2
I S S U E 1
WBT
INSIDE
THIRD GENERATION
FOMA TECHNOLOGY
AND BLUEGRID
FEATURES
Going Global
World phones coming at you
by Robert McGarvey
COVER STORY
50
Powerful capabilities could
finally drive a global standard
for a wireless Internet
by Junichi Threat
M-COMMERCE
43
SECURITY
30
Wireless Internet...
The Next Generation?
Wireless Security:
Not something to gamble on
NTT SOFT is bringing their unified vision of
wireless and Internet technology to the U.S.
by Nagy Moustafa
by Junichi Threat
SECURITY
20
Secure Networks
An overview of security technologies available
today for LAN and WAN wireless networks
by Kevin Wittmer
6
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M-COMMERCE
40
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COMPA Q
W W W.COMPAQ.COM/MOBILE
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INSIDEWBT
DEPARTMENTS
OTW: KEEPING AHEAD OF THE W-CURVE
SPECTRUM
iConverse ‘JumpStarts’ Customers
into Workforce Mobility
The Spectrum Cap Fight:
A Left, a Right and
a Smoke Screen
Was the cap lifted to increase
services or to fill the pocketbooks
of major carriers?
by David Geer
The Cat Sat on the Phone
16
Texas Instruments Helps Drive
Communications Convergence
‘Mobile Mickey’ to
Rescue Disney Profits?
CASE STUDY: M-MARKETING
How to Gain Longer Life
for 3G Mobile Devices?
Mobile Messaging Proves
Effective for Sony
Entertainment
Freedom of choice plays a big role
in consumers’ acceptance
by David Sklaver
Bravo, ‘Maestro’!
26
‘Wow, Now That’s 3G!’
FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY
M-COMMERCE: M-CAMPAIGN WATCH
Can Billboards Successfully
Go Wireless?
They’re working out at New York health clubs
by David Cotriss
14
Product Review
38
Pocket PC 2002 is enterprise-ready
with a built-in VPN client
VENTURE CAPITAL
Boingo Jumps In
The killer network of the future may
be a combination of Wi-Fi and 3G
by Tim Bresien
56
WIRELESS FUTURES
Wearable and Wireless
Computing Converge
Welcome to the world of wireless
wallets, “smart spaces,” and
“interactive clothing”
by Scott Stemberger
60
PLUS
DATELINE JAPAN
The Wireless Uptick Begins Here...
3G Crunch Time for
DoCoMo and J-Phone
Can FOMA attract 1,500,000
users by March 2003?
by Michiyo Nakamoto
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Publisher’s Commentary by Jeremy Geelan
66
12
Letters
Reader Feedback
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EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Jeremy Geelan [email protected]
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Robert Diamond [email protected]
I N T E R N A T I O N A L
A D V I S O R Y
B O A R D
Ron Dennis, Cofounder, Livemind, Inc. (CA) • Andrea Hoffman, Editor-in-Chief, Mobile Media Japan (Tokyo) • Douglas Lamont, Visiting Professor of Marketing,
DePaul University (IL) • James Ogilvy, Director and VP, Global Business Network (CA) • Anita Osterhaug, Director of Knowledge Products, Brokat Technologies (CA)
Keyur Patel, Chief Strategy Officer, Brience, Inc. (CA) • James Pearce, UK Director, AnywhereYouGo.com (London) • Ian Pearson, Futurologist, C2G (Martlesham, UK)
Simon Phipps, Chief Software Evangelist, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (CA) • Bob Pinna, CEO, Mobilize, Inc. (CA) • Bruce Scott, President & CEO,
PointBase, Inc. (CA) • Roger Strukhoff, President, SYS-CON Custom Media (CA) • Alan Williamson, CTO, n-ary (consultancy) Ltd (Scotland)
T E C H N I C A L
A D V I S O R Y
B O A R D
Joshua Allen, Senior Developer, Ulex, Inc., and Microsoft Corporation • Carl Braga, NWSS User Interface and Game Design, Nokia • Jacob Christfort, Chief Technical
Officer & VP, Product Development, OracleMobile, Inc. • Ben Forta, ColdFusion Evangelist, Macromedia, Inc. • Scott Geddes, Vice President of Mobile Commerce,
Brokat Technologies • James Gosling, VP & Fellow, Sun Microsystems, Inc. • Rajiv Gupta, General Manager, E-Speak Solutions & Chief Architect for E-Services,
Hewlett-Packard Company • Larry Mittag, VP & Chief Technologist, Stellcom, Inc. • Peter Roxburgh, Mobile Solutions Developer, SecureTrading Ltd.
D E P A R T M E N T
E D I T O R S
ART DIRECTOR Alex Botero [email protected] • EXECUTIVE MANAGING EDITOR Jamie Matusow [email protected]
M-COMMERCE
Paul Eijkemans (Netherlands) [email protected]
SECURITY
WAP
Hans-Henrik T. Ohlsen (Denmark) [email protected]
WIRELESS JAVA
Jake McKee (New York) [email protected]
M-MARKETING
DESIGN
WML
APPLICATIONS
USABILITY
Wei Meng Lee (Singapore) [email protected]
Jim Milbery (Pennsylvania) [email protected]
Luca Passani (Denmark) [email protected]
EUROWIRELESS
Tom Dibble (London) [email protected]
CONVERGENCE
Tom Hauff (Florida) [email protected]
I-MODE
BLUETOOTH
COLDFUSION
GENERATION Y
PRIVACY
ENTERTAINMENT/GAMING
E-DUCATION
Ori Neibach (San Francisco) [email protected]
Chatschik Bisdikian (New York) [email protected]
NEWS
TELEMATICS
WIRELESS LAN
Ben Spero (CA) [email protected]
STOCKWATCH
SHORT MESSAGING
Dan Lubar (CO) [email protected]
PRODUCT REVIEW
VICE PRESIDENT MARKETING
EAST COAST SALES REPRESENTATIVE
Alan Williamson (Scotland) [email protected]
David Cotriss (CA) [email protected]
Ben Forta (MI) [email protected]
Jeremy Hill (Los Angeles) [email protected]
Pascal Stolz (CA) [email protected]
Dean Terry (San Francisco) [email protected]
Anne Jenkins (Durham, UK) [email protected]
Margarita Strange (US) [email protected]
Douglas Lamont (IL) [email protected]
The Stockwatcher (San Francisco) [email protected]
George Spelvin (New York) [email protected]
E D I T O R I A L
A D V E R T I S I N G
SR. VICE PRESIDENT MARKETING
Bill Ray (England) [email protected]
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Carmen Gonzalez [email protected]
Gary Rhodes [email protected]
M’lou Pinkham [email protected]
EDITOR
Nancy Valentine [email protected]
MANAGING EDITOR
Cheryl Van Sise [email protected]
Miles Silverman [email protected]
ADVERTISING DIRECTOR
Robyn Forma [email protected]
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Gail Schultz [email protected]
ADVERTISING MANAGER
Megan Ring [email protected]
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Jean Cassidy [email protected]
REPRINT SALES COORDINATOR
Carrie L. Gebert [email protected]
ADVERTISING ASSISTANT
Alisa Catalano [email protected]
ADVERTISING ASSISTANT
Kristin Kuhnle [email protected]
P R O D U C T I O N
W W W . W B T 2 . C O M
VICE PRESIDENT PRODUCTION
Jim Morgan [email protected]
WEB MASTER
Bahadir Karuv [email protected]
DEPUTY ART DIRECTOR
WEB DESIGNER
Stephen Kilmurray [email protected]
ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR
A. Venkataraman [email protected]
WEB DESIGNER
Chris Croce [email protected]
ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR
Cathy Burak [email protected]
CONTENT EDITOR
Lin Goetz [email protected]
Louis F. Cuffari [email protected]
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Richard Silverberg [email protected]
SYS-CON TV
James M. Bartolozzi [email protected]
S Y S - C O N
E V E N T S
C O R P O R A T E
A C C O U N T I N G
PRESIDENT & CEO Fuat A. Kircaali [email protected]
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Bruce Kanner
VP BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Grisha Davida
ASSISTANT COMPTROLLER Judith Calnan
SALES EXECUTIVE Michael Pesick
CREDIT MANAGER Jan Braidech
SALES EXECUTIVE Richard Anderson
C I R C U L A T I O N
ACCOUNTS PAYABLE Joan LaRose
CONFERENCE MANAGER Michael Lynch
CIRCULATION MANAGER Engin Sezici
CLERICAL ASSISTANT Betty White
NEWSSTAND CONSULTANT Brian Gregory
VP EVENTS Cathy Walters
SHOW ASSISTANT Niki Panagopoulos
REGISTRATION ASSISTANT Jaclyn Redmond
JDJ STORE MANAGER Anthony D. Spitzer
CUSTOMER SERVICE Patti Del Vecchio
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PUBLISHER’S COMMENTARY
by Jeremy Geelan
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Okay, okay. Mea culpa. Guilty as charged. I’ve been
taken to task for allowing a somewhat uncharacteristic
burst of negativity to creep into my commentary last
month.
T’S QUITE ENOUGH, READers complained, to have the
U.S. economy shrinking at an
annual rate of 1.3% – marking
the weakest performance since
the first quarter of 1991, when
the country was enduring its
last recession – without WBT
making things worse by
bemoaning the conspicuous
absence to date of a wireless “Big Bang.” Wireless Rome was never
likely to be built in a day, it has been pointed out to me. And of
course it’s true.
If you care to remember, say, that scene in Wall Street in which
Michael Douglas sits in his limousine trading stocks via his mammoth-size cell phone, then you’ll remember, too, that the
wireless telephone was about as common in 1987 as the
Bloomberg machine, and far from being a part of everyday life. In other words, it has already taken nearly 15
years – so what’s another month or two between
friends?
Therefore my New Year’s resolution was to
wipe the slate clean and keep a renewed ear, eye
– and e-mail Inbox! – out for best-of-breed
examples of wireless ROI and case studies.
Wherever in the world they may occur, they
demonstrate how the combined innovative and
entrepreneurial energies of the entire global
economy are now systematically engaged in the
move to wireless.
One sure place to look for indicators of an uptick is U.S.
consumer spending – the lifeblood of the economy. This grew at a
rate of only 1% in the third quarter of 2001, the weakest showing
since the first quarter of 1993 and a big drop from the 2.5% growth
rate posted in the second quarter. But since consumer spending
nonetheless accounts for two-thirds of all economic activity, it
remains a crucial bellwether where wireless is concerned.
I
Any indication that at last a plethora of welldesigned and impressively functional devices was arriving would be a huge shot in the arm for the consumer
(and therefore the overall economic) wireless market.
So I am delighted to report here that this month’s
Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas provided just that.
High-quality handsets now abound, Wi-Fi, GPS and
telematics are bringing wireless
connectivity to previously
untouched areas of our home
and working lives and, above all,
the applications are moving
beyond the trivial to the
absolutely life-changing.
For example, take Wherify, a
company that is launching a
new GPS personal locator for
children, which WBT’s SMS Editor Dan Lubar describes as looking
“like a bulky Gen Y wristwatch.” A parent will now be able to find
the location of any child wearing it in about a minute, using any
Internet browser. Now that’s the kind of functionality that not
just thousands, but literally millions of potential wireless consumers have been waiting for!
This is also the quarter in which Danger,
Inc., promises to release its long-awaited
“Hiptop” phone/PDA, which not surprisingly, was swiftly nominated for the best
design of the show award. The Hiptop is
going to do some very interesting things to
2.5/3G markets in the U.S. Significantly
Microsoft also announced their
“Smartphone 2002” at CES.
As the consumer play unfolds through 2002,
other more marginal issues will fade into the
background. For example, it was always the case
that, as one commentator puts it, “The Internet doesn’t
need the wireless data industry. The wireless data industry, however, does need the Internet – desperately.” But it
was always going to take a great deal of price, hardware, and
distribution channel tinkering before the wireless industry came
close to providing a mass-market “wireless Web” product…so we
shouldn’t be surprised that it’s taken till now for the Hiptop and its
like to emerge.
The wireless uptick begins here.
The Wireless Uptick
Begins Here…
Jeremy Geelan, editorial director of Wireless Business & Technology, is also a regular commentator on alternative social,
political, economic, and technological futures for a variety of European journals and newspapers.
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@
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LETTERS
READER FEEDBACK
WAP Can Still Help Untether
the U.S. from the PC
[“UMTS and Common Sense” v. 1 n. 7]
In his article “UMTS and Common
Sense,” Hans-Henrik T. Ohlsen asks if WAP
will really matter in, say,
two years. Contrary to
popular belief, the
answer is that it certainly
will. WAP remains
uniquely positioned in
the U.S. to provide consumers and business
users with value-added
mobile data services in
conjunction with the maturation of networks,
devices, and expectations.
As Ohlsen mentions, WAP’s growing
pains can be traced to its status as an emerging technology, combined with poor marketing and positioning, and a U.S. user market
that is quite different from those in Europe
and Asia. Had the wireless industry set user
expectations correctly, priced services appropriately, and given better incentives to thirdparty content providers, WAP would be
viewed in a much different light.
Developers can help accelerate WAP’s
growth and acceptance by designing and
building WAP applications that take advantage of the core benefits of mobile technology
(time, location). They cannot expect to duplicate the wired Web on mobile devices, but
rather must be innovative in their approach to
presenting data to the mobile user in a fashion that is most intuitive and useful.
Ultimately, we should all recognize that
mobile phone penetration will continue to
grow; this, coupled with the eventual rollout
of 3G, creates tremendous opportunities for
WAP. The near-term challenge will be for
entrepreneurs to create high-quality data
delivery services and to bridge the gap
between the vast content available on the
Web and the more limited offerings currently
available through mobile devices.
In the end, however, questions still exist
regarding whether WAP and mobile data will
ever reach the level of popularity in the U.S.
that they currently experience in other countries. The answer, for WAP anyway, is likely
“no,” given its position as a complementary
technology viewed on small devices.
However, if a way can be found for WAP to
be taken seriously on all mobile devices, we
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just may have one technology that completely untethers the user from the modern PC.
Either way, wireless technology will still continue to progress along the technology cycle,
and reach that final destination of true innovation and efficiency. At that point, users will
have moved way beyond messaging and
become part of a truly connected, mobile
data–driven society.
—Scott Stemberger
[email protected]
Fixed-line DSL Puts
Wireless 3G in Its Place
I have noticed that Michiyo Nakamoto’s
excellent Dateline Japan columns in WBT
have focused mostly on 3G throughout 2001.
However, instead of 2001 being “The Year of
3G” in Japan, it might very well come to be
referred to as “The Year of DSL.”
xDSL access is a very hot and underdeveloped market in Japan and continues to rapidly add subscribers, no doubt competing on a
significant level with next-generation wireless
Internet services.
While in October 2001 (according to
Nakamoto) just over 11,000 subscribers
joined NTT DoCoMo’s 3G FOMA service in
its much-hyped first month, I can reveal that
there were 270,000 new xDSL subscribers.
As WBT’s Dateline Japan columns remind
us, Japan is heading into the unknown with
wireless 3G, whereas with xDSL it’s headed
into rather more predictable territory. South
Korea, Japan’s north Asian neighbor and the
world’s most advanced broadband market
with over 60% public penetration (versus
Japan at less than 10%), experienced this
same kind of meteoric xDSL growth two
years ago. And Korea Telecom, the country’s
largest telecom and xDSL provider, increased
their number of xDSL subscribers from
100,000 to 2 million during the 12 months
prior to February 2001, and now has over 3
million subscribers.
Put this growth rate in a market more than
10 times as big and the major question
becomes: If xDSL follows the same path in
Japan as it has in Korea, will this cannibalize
the 3G business? This is an internal battle
Japan’s other carriers face as well. KDDI and
J-Phone also have xDSL businesses offered by
their fixed-line business units (KDDI through
ISP partner Dion, and J-Phone through their
parent company, Japan Telecom’s OCN
Internet service). It will be interesting to see
what effect xDSL will have on existing 2.5G
ARPU and the 3G service launches of J-Phone
and KDDI (scheduled for mid to late 2002).
It’s also a nice coincidence that the carriers delayed their 3G networks at the same
time that xDSL was seeing explosive growth.
Testing the networks and ironing out the bugs
and performance issues are good reasons to
delay 3G services – in the case of DoCoMo,
their worldwide reputation is at stake – but
maybe it will help to have a landline broadband moneymaker pumping yen into the coffers while the 3G market matures.
xDSL is already much more of a commodity than the wireless Internet at this point. The
Japanese consumer is uniquely blessed to
have this choice of broadband wireline and
wireless Internet.
—M. Thuresson
[email protected]
An Excellent Book for Those
New to Wireless
I wanted to alert WBT readers who may
be new to wireless – and also those who’d
like to learn more – to a new book I’ve
found, called 3G Wireless Networks by
Daniel Collins and Clint Smith. Its 500 pages
cover 1G, 2G, 2.5G, and 3G wireless networks and various air interfaces used and/or
proposed for these networks. It gets over the
ambiguities of various 3GPP releases and
clearly describes each release and its associated network reference model. There are also
good descriptions of various 2G radio access
standards (AMPS, TMDA, CDMA, GSM,
WCDMA, CDMA2000) and their associated
network reference models. While it doesn’t
offer in-depth coverage of any particular
wireless topic, it attempts to give a broad
overview on everything wireless and provides
plenty of references for readers to follow up.
When I checked on Amazon.com recently
there were only four copies left, so apparently I’m not the only one who likes it!
—Murtaza Amiji
[email protected]
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OFF THE WIRES >>>>
iConverse ‘JumpStarts’
Customers into Workforce
Mobility
JumpStart customers, he explains, “will
another – and it’s also amazing how
be able to institute project-, departmentcompletely, fundamentally unnecessary
and pilot-level applications that can be
it is to do any such thing.
easily upgraded to global deployments
But then of course, reality intrudes,
Just when enterprises were thinking
as individual needs increase and ROI
and even the most saintly analyst of the
that their mobile workers could only be
models are formulated.”
wireless world realizes that these handprovided with point solutions with
Undoubtedly it’s this type of managesets, and this service, won’t be used for
access to out-of-date or static data and
rial confidence that has made the overall
showing anything so innocent as a cat
limited application functionality, along
iConverse Mobility Platform a recent
peering around a chair leg. DoCoMo is
comes Waltham, Massachusetts-based
winner of multiple prizes and wireless
doubtless poised to capitalize on the
iConverse with their snappily named
software awards. WBT will be keeping a
world’s second-oldest vice, pornography.
“Adaptix” solution.
keen eye on the company’s progress in
There was never any doubt that this was
By enabling application users to conhelping developers leverage existing Java
always going to be the first service to
tinue to perform their job functions
code for more dynamic user experience,
make serious money out of mobile
regardless of mode of operation (whether
code protection, and ease of maintevideo, nor that it would probably start
connected, intermittently connected, or
nance.
www.iconverse.com
doing so first in the East rather than the
disconnected), iConverse Adaptix 1.0 is
West. But how long can it take now,
designed to help enterprises increase the
before bored businessmen and snickering
productivity of their mobile workers.
The Cat Sat on the Phone
teenagers in Europe and America are
The vastly experienced Ron Matros,
What was it Andy Rooney used to say?
pouring large portions of their discreCEO and president of iConverse isn’t shy
“Computers make it easier to do a lot of
tionary income away in indiscreet pursuit
about the merits of Adaptix. He is espethings, but most of the things they make it
of full-motion titillation at the rate of 10¢
cially proud of the company’s awardeasier to do don’t need to be done.”
a second?
winning iConverse Mobile Studio, a
What’s true of computers is perhaps
If you think this is overly pessimistic,
100% visual drag-and-drop development
also true of cell phones. Rooney’s words
then just consider the fact that, of the 190
environment for rapidly creating cuscame mischievously to mind on hearing
million or so e-mail messages currently
the very latest reports from Japan about
received by i-mode users every day, 90%
a new functionality being added to NTT
are “dating club” solicitations – in other
DoCoMo’s much-publicized “worldwords, spam invitations to sex.
leading, third-generation cellular telephone service” – a.k.a. FOMA (Freedom
of Mobile multimedia Access).
Texas Instruments Helps
In announcing their complementary
Drive Communications
“world-beating full-motion video” servConvergence
ice, i-motion, DoCoMo apparently took
Best known as the world leader in
a full-page ad in the Asahi Shimbun,
digital signal processing and analog
Japan’s leading business newspaper. “In
technologies – the so-called “semiconaddition to i-mode content,” the ad
ductor engines of the Internet age” –
purred, “enjoy the thrill of full-motion
Dallas-based Texas Instruments is now
imagery in the palm of your hand.”
also making big inroads in wireless –
What did the folks at Tokyo’s equivaspecifically, in the convergence of wirelent of Madison Avenue hit upon as a
tomized mobile business applications,
less voice, multimedia, and data – with
sample video frame to demonstrate the
enabling the simultaneous creation of
their OMAP processing platform .
incredible extra dimension of functionboth thin- and smart-client applications.
As a foundation for enabling new
ality now being added to DoCoMo’s
“In addition to our award-winning wireapplications, TI boldly claims that
N2002N handsets thanks to i-motion?
less technology,” he gushes, “suppleOMAP has become “the de facto stanYup, you guessed it: staring out from the
menting our product offering with adapdard platform for 2.5G and 3G wireless
tiny frame was...a cat.
tive, distributed mobile computing
handhelds today.” To back up their
Never mind Lara Croft. Forget
makes us the only platform provider in
claim that OMAP processors support
Michael Jackson. If you’re a Japanese
the market able to supply a 100% comhigh performance and low power conconsumer you can now hold your favorite
plete mobile technology solution.”
sumption – two essential features for
pussycat in the palm of your hand and,
With its low cost of ownership, new
any mobile device – and are scalable to
best of all, the i-mode N2002N only
smart-client functionality, and a rapid
address any market segment, they have
costs a paltry $500, plus say $1.25 in
development and deployment cycle,
recently announced that Palm-branded
viewing fees for a 12-second video clip.
Adaptix 1.0 claims to provide a feature
handhelds incorporating OMAP procesSo you can demonstrate your feline love
set that marries rapid application cresors are expected to be introduced
fiscally, by sacrificing huge sums of
ation with enterprise-strength deployapproximately one year from now.
money to DoCoMo as you show her off
ment and scalability. For less than
Gilles Delfassy, TI senior vice presiin full-motion video to all your friends.
$16,000, Matros assures WBT, Adaptix
dent and general manager of their wireRooney was right. It’s amazing how
customers will be able to begin rapidly
less business unit, told WBT that TI’s
easy i-motion makes it for ordinary
developing and deploying adaptive, disOMAP and wireless GSM/GPRS techmortals to show off their pets to one
tributed mobile applications. iConverse
nology will help Palm deliver “a set of
14
www.WBT2.com
J A N U A R Y
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KEEPING AHEAD OF THE W-CURVE
>>>
‘Mobile Mickey’ to Rescue
Disney Profits?
next-generation devices that take the
Bravo, ‘Maestro’!
user experience to new levels.”
A new pocket PC has just
In addition to Palm’s selection of TI’s
been launched by Audiovox
They may be scaling back the conOMAP processors, Delfassy explained,
Communications Corporation,
tent on ABC.com, closing MrShowbiz.com
“TI will continue to offer Palm their
a U.S. leader in CDMA handand Go.com, and ending the status of
portfolio of other silicon and software
sets. “Maestro,” as the
Disney Internet Group as a separate diviproducts, which include advanced DSPsion, but Michael Eisner’s faltering enterdevice is called, combines
based GSM/GPRS modem processors,
tainment powerhouse clearly isn’t blind to
the ease of use and comradio frequency, analog baseband techthe commercial potential of the humble
prehensive functionality of
nology, power management, audio
wireless handset. In Japan, Disney already
Microsoft Windows–powcodecs and touch-screen controllers.”
offers low-price content to cell phone users
ered Pocket PC 2002 softThrough copromoting the features
through their Disney Mobile division, which
ware with advanced wireand benefits of the products resulting
has already signed
less communications
from this new collaboration, Delfassy
up 2-million subcapabilities. Not bad for
expects Palm and TI will expand the
scribers and is plana device that’s just about
overall market for wireless handhelds.
ning to expand to
the size of a 3" x 5" file
Certainly it’s multifaceted business
other areas of Asia
card!
alliances such as this – encompassing
and Europe.
Small, lightweight and powerful,
technology, product collaboration and
In his recent annuAudiovox will be selling the Maestro
joint marketing – that are tending to
al letter to shareholdPocket PC through wireless carriers, bunmake 2002–3 the phase of the business
ers, CEO and chairman Eisner explained that
dled with an Audiovox CDM-9100 wireand technology cycle in which major
Disney had scaled back their Internet operations
less handset. This combination, hopes
companies at last make good on the conbut mentioned Disney Mobile as being one of the
ACC president and CEO Philip
sumer and enterprise promise of wireless.
high-tech initiatives he views as being an area of
Christopher, will make Maestro a total
“By combining TI’s wireless technolgrowth for Disney. Who’d have thought five or ten
mobile communications and pocket
ogy leadership with Palm’s expertise in
years ago that “mobilizing Mickey” would ever
computing solution: “By bundling
handheld computing,” Todd Bradley,
Audiovox’s Maestro with our flagship
have such a strategic impact on one of the world’s
Palm’s executive vice president and
CDM-9100 phone,” he told those attendlargest entertainment conglomerates?
COO of its solutions group, told WBT,
ing this month’s Consumer Electronics
“our two companies can bring users
Show (CES) in Las Vegas, “we support the
How to Gain Longer Life for 3G
higher performance, longer battery life,
wireless data initiatives of our carrier cusMobile Devices?
and a host of new capabilities.”
tomers while making Pocket PC Internet
What if cell phone batteries were able to last
“Examples of new business functions,”
connectivity practical and easy.”
longer? And/or to charge faster? Danish inventor
he continued, “could include utilizing
The link between the Maestro and
Lars Rosenmeir foresaw that extending the life
rich multimedia presentations or docuAudiovox’s CDM-9100 tri-mode CDMA
of mobile devices – or, in the technical jargon,
ments, or employing biometrics for secuwireless phone is via a simple, single
“increasing energy density” – was going to be
rity (fingerprinting). Other more maincable connection, allowing users to surf
even more crucial for 3G mobile handsets than
stream functions might include searching
the Internet, and check and send e-mail
for current 2G and 2.5G phones, as 3G phones
large databases, browsing the Web with
– including Pocket Word and Excel docgobble up electricity. Rosenmeir outsourced
rich multimedia content, playing video
uments – anytime, anyplace.
the necessary R&D tasks, founded a startup
clips, listening to music, or playing graphThis crowns Audiovox’s first 15 years
called Danacell…and has just won his battery
ically intensive interactive games.”
in the wireless game. Maestro will find
technology company $600,000 in funding
In a neat quid pro quo, Texas
its way to market through the company’s
from a Danish venture capitalist.
Instruments will endorse the OMAP
international sales force, which reaches
“The capital injection,” Rosenmeir tells
processor-powered Palm solucustomers in 42 countries across six
WBT from Danacell’s headtions as soon as
continents. Although all sales team
quarters in the Danish
they’re availmembers will now likely be equipped
Science Park north of
able, by
with this winning combination, we can’t
Copenhagen, “will be used for
adopting
help wondering what connectivity probfurther research and developthem interlems they might encounter along the
ment of new polymers for lithinally as an
way.
www.audiovox.com
um ion batteries and to hire a
executive stancommercial manager to identify
dard, and placbattery producers for Danacell to
‘Wow, Now That’s 3G!’
ing them on
sell our technology to.”
“When people see this futuristic
their approved
The startup hasn’t yet built up a
Sprint PCS phone by Sanyo,” said John
technology stanWeb presence at www.danacell.com,
Garcia, senior vice president of sales
dards list for more than
and distribution for Sprint’s wireless diviso Rosenmeir is best contacted directly
35,000 TI employees worldsion, “the immediate reaction is ‘Wow,
by e-mail: [email protected]. Send
wide.
now that’s 3G!’ The OLED [Organic
it direct from your mobile phone, if the
www.palm.com
battery isn’t too low!
www.danacell.com
www.ti.com
—continued on page 17
J A N U A R Y
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SPECTRUM
SP
SE
CS
MC
FT
GS
VC
WF
DJ
The Spectrum Cap Fight:
A Left, a Right and a Smoke Screen
Was the cap lifted to increase services or to fill the pocketbooks of major carriers?
riers more profitable? Or only the latter? Unfortunately, we may not
ited capacity to a larger market,
thereby profiting from what the
market will (continue to) bear?
know until the smoke clears whether the consumers, the carriers, or
The Challenger
Is the cap lift equally capable of improving QoS and making car-
both are the winners.
by
David Geer
David Geer, a journalist and computer technician,
graduated from Lake Erie College in 1993 with a
BA in psychology. He has worked in the computer
industry and in the media since 1998.
@
[email protected]
16
www.WBT2.com
o
n November 8, 2001,
the FCC began a
gradual lift of the
spectrum cap for mobile radio
frequency (inclusive of cellular
PCS). The cap lift elevates the
amount of spectrum any single
carrier can own in any one market from 45 to 55MHz. The lift
will be completed in 2003.
Cellular service is becoming
essential technology in terms of
national security (wireless communications were both vital
and strained during the terrorist attacks of September 11),
business communications
(BlackBerry e-mail devices, cell
phones, and pagers to name a
few), and private-sector consumers (varied devices accommodate a culture that is constantly on the go, with multiplejob families, multiple responsibilities and stressors requiring
convenient, immediate, mobile
communication, not to mention emergency use).
Because this essential technology depends on a scarce
commodity called spectrum, we
have a struggle for power. The
power is capacity and the titans
are assembled in camps for or
against the cap lift. Most of the
liberal left, along with small
carriers trying to avoid being
gobbled up in mergers the lift
will produce, are against peeling away the cap. Much of the
conservative right, who want to
spur the economy and foster a
free and open market, along
with the big carriers that expect
to swallow up smaller competitors or rob them of the ability to
compete, are for the cap’s
demise.
While the fur and dust are
flying, is our attention being
drawn away from the fact that a
few major carriers will
remain...stronger, richer, and
more powerful? That they’ll
have more spectrum to work
with and more room to
breathe? And that they’ll still
have no accountability to the
government or anyone else for
making good on promises of
more capacity and better quality of service (QoS) for all? Will
carriers improve, optimize, and
innovate as a result of the cap
lift? Or, will they simply rest on
their laurels and enjoy their
spoils, selling only the same
poor quality of service and lim-
The camp on the left, which
wishes the cap had been left in
place, points to the following
cons. Along with a few big guys
who have enough spectrum
(like Sprint), the naysayers
argue that there is still enough
spectrum left to justify maintaining the cap. But it seems
unreasonable to wait until
absolutely no spectrum is left
before freeing up more. The real
motivations for making claims
of no shortage are obvious. The
smaller carriers won’t be able to
compete with the three or four
remaining giants the mergers
will create. They will shortly be
assimilated or wiped out.
The consumer’s union sits in
the no-lift faction, fearing prices
will skyrocket and quality of
service will plummet when there
is a handful of providers remaining. But according to Charles
Shalvoy, president and CEO of
Conductus, manufacturers of
wireless superconducting systems, larger companies, such as
Sprint, that are sitting on a spectrum stockpile find it easier to
lead the market in geographical
areas where competitors such as
Cingular and Verizon are spectrum-strapped. Again, some on
the left also point to the political
angle, suspecting right-wing
shenanigans, and citing a money
trail from large-carrier lobbyists
to Republican campaigns. They
claim these contributions
swayed the Bush administration
to push for a speedy removal of
spectrum limitations.
J A N U A R Y
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OTW—continued from page 15
Mike Rosenthal, director of
regulatory affairs at Southern
LINC (a regional wireless carrier
in the Southeast), says they
wish the FCC would make the
cap lift more gradual. They see
some negative results to its
removal. “Larger national carriers are suggesting that the FCC
lift the cap entirely so that free
competition and market forces
can operate unhindered. But
this new system rewards carriers with lousy business plans
who have pursued growth at all
costs and now must consolidate
in order to stay afloat,” says
Rosenthal. He adds that innovation falls when market consolidation increases, another notso-nice side effect of quickly
raising the spectrum ceiling.
The Champ
Those on the right argue
that a free market is great for
spectrum and for the economy.
Shalvoy says, “Basic economic
theory would say that...if the
free market is allowed to work
its magic, then the scarce good
[spectrum] will be put to the
highest economic benefit and
people will bid and buy and sell
that scarce good until it finds its
highest economic return. And I
think that’s the basic philosophy behind the Bush administration; let’s free this spectrum
up so that it will go to the highest possible economic use.”
According to Shalvoy there is
a shortage and the cap wasn’t
helping any. “The number of
subscribers grew by about 25%
last year. Minutes of use per
subscriber grew by about 30%,
[and] overall capacity needs of
wireless networks in this country grew by over 70%. Spectrum
is a key part of adding more
and more capacity. The initial
reason to put spectrum caps on
the providers was to foster
competition in the wireless
industry. That was successful in
[that] there are at least 10 different wireless operators in the
J A N U A R Y
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U.S. providing different services. In any metropolitan market
you might have six or more
providers, but the problem is
that none of them are providing
really good service. Or the service is often spotty and varies
from city to city and many of
them are running into spectrum shortages that prohibit
their ability to make the service
better,” says Shalvoy.
Another suggested benefit of
the cap lift is that we may see
some leeway at the 2.5G level,
permitting some new applications to enter the market.
Applications developers
dependent only on 2.5G bandwidth will benefit. According to
Dr. Scott Snyder, president and
CTO of OmniChoice (provider of
technical solutions to optimize
telecom sales and marketing),
“Software.com and Phone.com
should benefit from the cap lift
as well as office-related applications [providers]. InfoSpace.com
and similar content providers
may be able to add content as
bandwidth frees up.”
From a broader economic
perspective, some predict a
domino effect. The cap lift, like
the bright light at the end of the
tunnel, forecasts eventual success for 3G, which can only
come from a position of financial success in the current market. This should spur investment and, in turn, raise hopes
of developers and press them
toward new products. The
buildout of networks also continues. If the carriers optimize
networks as they should to capitalize on the opportunity the
cap lift provides, consumers
will enjoy the service more and
should use it more. This drives
revenues and motivates
providers to release more services to the market.
History argues in favor of the
conservative camp. In each
major new industry (the auto
industry being one example) a
field of a number of small play-
ers eventually developed into a
clearer field of a few large companies. To resist the cap lift in
order to avoid this prospect
arguably would be trying to
avoid the inevitable.
As Shalvoy puts it, “Three or
four suppliers could be a good
number. That would be an
amount that would encourage
the suppliers to provide a quality
product at a competitive price,
which is good for consumers. ...It
also allows those three or four
suppliers to have enough business that they can afford to continue to invest in making new
products and services available
and expand their networks.” This
view tends to consider the economic impact on everyone, and
not just the benefits to smaller
competitors who would like to
stay in business.
The Big Smoke Screen
A few carriers will be left
standing with a lot more breathing room after the smoke screen
clears. But then it will be payback
time – time for those carriers to
produce and give us the quality of
service we desire and deserve by
optimizing their networks. Will
they come through or will they
give in to the temptation to sell
their capacity thin so that they
have more and more customers
while we all get the same poor
service? The government holds
landline carriers to account, but
not the wireless carriers. Without
such lawful accountability, how
can we be sure we’ll get the payoff
we hoped lifting the cap would
bring?
According to Annabel Dodd,
author of The Essential Guide to
Telecommunications, Third
Edition, and adjunct professor at
Northeastern University, the government should hold wireless
carriers accountable just as they
hold landline carriers accountable: “The landline carriers are
held responsible for the quality
of their networks. They have to
make reports to the FCC when
Light Emitting Diode] display
makes an ideal screen for viewing demos of 3G applications
such as multimedia, games, and
digital imaging.”
Garcia was referring to the
launch of a new Sprint/Sanyo initiative, unveiled at CES.
The strong relationship
between Sprint and Sanyo has
already produced a number of
leading devices, including the
first color screen in the U.S. and
the thinnest phone. So when
Sprint chairman and CEO,
William T. Esrey, displayed a
futuristic 3G Sprint PCS phone
by Sanyo featuring a 2.5-in.
OLED display, it seemed to
many to be nothing more than
further evidence of the innovative Sprint/Sanyo tradition.
During his keynote address,
Esrey treated the CES audience
to a preview of a day in 3G life,
with a series of demonstrations
to illustrate how customers will
connect to family, friends, information, and entertainment using
enhanced applications, a faster
network, and wireless devices
such as the new 3G Sprint/Sanyo
PCS handset, which is estimated
to be available by 2003.
“The Consumer Electronics
Association has already recognized and awarded Sanyo and
Sprint for achievements in innovation with the SCP-6000 and
SCP-5150, and this new phone
with its OLED display takes
innovation to the next level for
the next generation of wireless
networks,” said Atsushi Kodera,
group vice president, general
manager of Sanyo Fisher
Company’s Communications/
Information Technology Division.
The new phone’s OLED display is comprised of thin layers
of individual carbon-based elements that emit light when electric current is passed through
them. Perfect, in fact, for streaming video clips, games, and digital imaging. Best of all, OLED
screens are self-emitting, and
thus require no backlighting –
which will mean lower battery
consumption for all of us in the
wonderful world of 3G...whenever it finally comes.
www.sprintpcs.com
www.WBT2.com
17
SPECTRUM
WIRELESS SPECTRUM
Broadcast TV
30
MHz
90
54 – 72MHz
76 – 88MHz
174 – 216MHz
470 – 512MHz
512 – 608MHz
614 – 806MHz
120
AM/FM Radio
150
535 – 1,605KHz
88 – 108MHz
60
180
3G Broadband
Wireless
210
746 – 764MHz;
776 – 794MHz
240
Personal
Communications
Service (PCS)
270
300
MHz
1,850 – 1,990MHz
600
Wireless
Communications
Service (WCS)
900
2,305 – 2,320MHz
2,345 – 2,360MHz
1200
1500
1800
2100
Digital TV
54 – 88MHz
174 – 216MHz
470 – 806MHz
Teledesic
18.8 – 19.3GHz
28.6 – 29.1GHz
2400
2700
3
GHz
6
9
12
Satellite-Delivered
Digital Radio
2,320 – 2,325MHz
Cellular Phone
Service
806 – 902MHz
3G Broadband
Wireless (proposed)
1,710 – 1,855MHz
2,500 – 2,69MHz
15
18
Local Multipoint
Distribution
Service (LMD )
21
7.5 – 29.5GHz
31.0 – 31.3GHz
24
27
30
GHz
18
Multichannel
Multipoint
Distribution
Service (MMD )
2,150 – 2,680MHz
www.WBT2.com
SP
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they have outages that either
affect public service carriers or
more than a certain number of
callers; they have to report all
those outages and the FCC analyzes them. There is no such
thing that happens on the cellular side. I think just lifting
caps, letting people do whatever they want, is very wrong.
…There should have been
something done to say you’ve
got some responsibility to the
government.
“You’re using a national
resource, you’ve got responsibility for not overselling, for
keeping a certain amount of
spare capacity, for making sure
calls go through. And reliability
and redundancy, you know, [it’s
like the carriers say] ‘oh here,
just take whatever you want.’ I
think a lot of people have talked
about the fact that prices will go
up and innovation could be
hurt and I think that’s true and I
agree with that. But then there’s
also the issue of capacity and
reliability. You know, reliability,
redundancy, sustainability… all
those things should be looked
at by the FCC; there should be
some accountability.”
Yuval Davidor, founder of
Schema Inc., optimizer of wireless networks for recovery of
spectrum, says it’s time for carriers to pay up: the market
forces and definitely the media
are already focused on carriers
paying the bill. Davidor says, “I
mean prove that whatever we
gave you – whether it was the
trust in buying your shares or
the revenues [generated] by
sticking to you and getting the
service from you, the fact that
the federal government gave
you additional spectrum and so
on – that you took it seriously
and you have improved the
service to meet QoS. …It [QoS]
is extremely quantifiable.”
For example, when Schema
does a retune – a retune is when
an operator implements a
change to the network RF setup;
MC
FT
GS
namely, a change in the frequencies assigned to the cells to use
when a demand to initiate a call
is made, or when the equipment
parameters are changed, such as
the power of transmission,
antenna type, or antenna direction – two to three weeks later
the operator collects statistics
from the switches and knows
exactly what percent the retune
has improved on dropped calls,
the bit error rate, attempt failures, additional capacity, and so
on. “It’s so quantifiable.”
Davidor says. “You just need to
ask the question.
“Maybe after a year or so the
market will become so intelligent that they [will] say you
have to give me the bottom line
of the switch statistics,” he says.
“That will tell me how good
your service is. We don’t need ifs
and buts and guesswork and to
talk to my neighbor or my
friend at work. I’ll just know the
statistics that result from a million users.
Shop-and-compare benefits
from quality-of-service estimates
are coming, according to
Shalvoy: “There are two impediments that I think make people
nervous about the industry consolidating down to three or four
and still being competitive. The
QoS data on who is the best
provider in a geographic area is
not real well known right now. It’s
not the same as if I wanted to
buy a new station wagon for my
wife and could pick up Consumer
Reports or JD Power and see a
ranking of all the station wagons,
find the top two or three that I
was interested in, and go out to
those dealers and buy one.
“In wireless the quality of
service can vary dramatically
from one region of the country
to another. Cingular might be
best in one region, Verizon in
another, and Dobson in another; so those could vary all over
the map. One thing that could
be very helpful [is] if there was
a good service that would rank
VC
WF
DJ
all of these different providers
in each geographical area. So if
you use a certain provider in
your area and you’re dissatisfied
with them…you could say, well,
okay, let’s see who’s better.
…You could pick up a survey
and if all their prices are pretty
much the same, you’re really
looking for quality of service.
“This issue is amplified by
the fact that Congressman
Anthony Weiner, a Democrat out
of New York, submitted legislation in Congress that required
the FCC to collect and disseminate this quality of service information on a regional basis. He
was responding to a number of
surveys that showed that quality
of service was a major dissatisfier for a large percentage of wireless users in this country. So that
could be one thing that could
help consumers.”
The cap lift may buy carriers
more time to prove themselves
but may not really make a difference in quality of service.
According to Dodd, “The caps
are lifted but they don’t really
have any more spectrum unless
they buy somebody else who
may also be at capacity. …I
think there’s a lot of synergy if
you put two networks together,
and you use the same kind of
access technology, a little bit
more capacity with one big network than two smaller ones.
…It really depends if these carriers are going to buy somebody
that also has the spare capacity
where they need it….”
What will it take for us to get
the quality of service we should
be able to have now? Will we
have it when carriers run out of
excuses like caps needing to be
repealed? Will we get it when
consumers have the ability to
compare quality of service and
to switch based on what they
find? Will we get clear, stable
calls when the FCC regulates
wireless providers the way they
do landlines? These questions
remain to be answered.
J A N U A R Y
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KADA SYSTEMS
W W W.KADASYSTEMS.COM
J A N U A R Y
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WIRELESS PRIMER: SECURITY
by
Nagy Moustafa
Nagy Moustafa is president and CEO of Diversinet.
He has more than 16 years of professional experience working in technology and engineering. Nagy
was founder and president of CIT Canada Inc., an IT
consulting company, and director of information technology for Rogers Communications. Prior to that he
worked at IBM, Computerland, and the Canadian
Ministry of Treasury and Economics.
@
[email protected]
20
www.WBT2.com
According to the research firm IDC, 84-million people in the U.S. will plug into the
wireless Internet by 2005. Mobile devices will shift from being personal communication tools to a way of purchasing everything from soda to equities. With the increased
exchange of confidential information required for these transactions, users, enterprises, and wireless operators are seeking more advanced levels of security to protect
their intellectual and monetary assets. One solution is wireless PKI.
J A N U A R Y
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Advantages of
Wireless
over Wireline
ver the next few
years, the wireless
industry will see a
significant uptake of
mobile Internet
services resulting
from faster wireless data rates
as carriers roll out 2.5 and 3G
networks, more functional enduser equipment, and always-on
capabilities.
The heavy investment by
network operators and Internet
O
J A N U A R Y
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merchants in mobile commerce (m-commerce) opportunities has subsequently led to
an increase in wireless applications, such as prescriptions
and stock trading, and the
modification of existing wired
applications to communicate
with Internet-enabled mobile
devices.
Businesses are now starting
to look at their wireless strategies, as it will be essential to
stay close to their customers to
avoid losing them to competitors. Additionally, the right
wireless strategy can create
new revenue streams from previously untapped sales channels and value-added services.
The key vertical markets
that have been identified as
early adopters of these new
mobile applications are the
financial (wireless account
access, debit and credit trans-
Remote access to corporate
systems and information will
supplement rather than replace
static access to network systems. The type of information
and services accessed from
wireless applications will be of
a different nature than wired
access and will take advantage
of the unique benefits that
remote retrieval can offer.
With the Internet, financial
institutions began to seek consumer retention by offering
low-value applications such as
accessing bank account balances, transferring funds, and
paying bills online. The value
of mobile applications is the
ability for users to conduct
transactions or access services
anytime, anyplace. Mobile
www.WBT2.com
21
WIRELESS PRIMER: SECURITY
SECURITY
actions, equity and bond trading, real-time stock quotes,
account billing and payment,
and loan approvals), health
care (patient records and medical reports), gaming, and
leisure markets. These market
segments will benefit the most
from the burgeoning opportunities that m-commerce can
bring.
However, as with any new ebusiness avenue, companies
will have to figure out ways to
protect their monetary and
intellectual property offerings.
For these industries, wireless
security will be paramount.
Enterprises are generally the
first adopters of new technologies, as they are able to pay a
premium for valued services
and applications. New services
and devices are introduced to
employees before being
extended to revenue-generating customers. Wireless access
can enable mobile workforces
and give remote workers access
to proprietary information and
databases that they would have
otherwise needed a wired computer to access. This mobility
provides improved response
time to customer needs, and
can increase the efficiency of
the mobile workforce.
SECURITY
1
2
Sona Innovations’ wireless
product development
platform enables corporations to mobilize new or
existing mission-critical data
Sona’s advanced architecture
can be secured either
through a secured session on
the handheld device, communicating directly with the
secure server, or with
PKI-enabled digital certificates and signatures
applications such as stock portfolio alerts or
wireless lines of credit will get the wireless market off the ground. High-value applications such
as these provide consumers with preferential
salient information that is “pushed” to them,
whereas the Internet provides static information
that has to be “pulled” from its databases.
High-value applications based on pushed
information are done with the aid of intelligent
applications such as Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) engines and Global
Positioning Systems (GPS). With the help of
these intelligent systems, personalized, customizable alerts are possible. Services can be
provided to track stock movement at the source
so traders can know instantly about unusual
buying patterns that might affect their portfolios. Global Positioning Systems offer locationbased information that can enable mobile services such as “call me a cab” or “find the best
price for this product within a 10-minute walk.”
These applications will go beyond remote
access e-mail, location-specific information, and
access to time-sensitive news. They will also provide enterprises with mobile access to information such as a company’s supply chain, real-time
access to customer or partner data, and remote
order entry. Consumers will be able to conduct
personal finance transactions (e-cash transfer
between personal devices) and instant product
and price comparisons while out shopping.
Interactive financial services will foster customer loyalty. For example, you will be able to
pay a fee for a service that will notify you if a
check is about to be returned for insufficient
funds. Before the bank charges you for an NSF
check, they would alert you of the situation via
your mobile device – wherever you are – and you
can immediately transfer money to cover the
amount of the check.
Unfortunately, the adoption of these services
and the growth of the wireless Internet have
been hampered by security issues. Widespread
news of network hackers, credit card fraud, and
cyber-thieves has created a universal fear of
transmitting personal information over the wireless Internet.
Need for Advanced Security
Most of the online applications mentioned
above can be implemented today, and secured
to a level that is acceptable to the consumer. But
once the perceived value of the information
being transferred wirelessly becomes high
enough, the level of security is reevaluated. The
more money or value that is put on the line, the
higher the level of security and documentation
must be.
For enterprises, the basic value equation is
providing secure mobile applications to customers or employees with a value that exceeds
the cost and risks of not rolling out applications
22
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or building security into their solutions. With
wired Internet applications there was less of a
perceived need for greater security among some
users. Therefore, companies did not invest
enough time and money in an advanced security
solution and their application offerings did not
evolve.
To ensure the future of Internet-enabled
wireless devices and applications, enterprises
must offer secure high-value transactions and
services. This is the fundamental necessity to
grow the Internet from a static resource to a
mobile transactional arena. The mobile user
must be 100% comfortable that all information
is kept confidential and that transactions are
assured. This security is a value-added service in
any online transactional service – people pay for
peace of mind.
Some of the tools needed to ensure security
in mobile environments are:
• On-demand wireless digital signatures: “I
approve” or “I accept” in a legally recognizable fashion
• Signed-session authentication: Use of digital
signatures to authenticate mobile device
users and their devices to enterprise systems
and enable access to those applications for
which the user is entitled
• Encryption: For confidentiality of transactional messaging
Advanced security solutions need to be in
place before the mass market for wireless data
can mature.
Advanced Security Methods
Hackers, poor implementation of security
policies, and low employee awareness of security
procedures are the most common threats to
wireless infrastructure and access to the wireless
network database.
To counteract these risks, the three most
important elements of wireless security in a
high-value transaction are: (1) confirmation of
the parties involved; (2) legalization of the transaction; and (3) protection of information transferred. The wired Internet has traditionally been
secured for users using encryption with electronic server authentication and
username/password authentication. While this
is fine for low-risk transactions, it does not provide for the strong authentication of users and
nonrepudiation of transactions that are required
in high-risk situations.
The most effective way to increase the security in the wireless world and to more closely
mimic the strong security of the “bricks-andmortar” world is through a public-key infrastructure (PKI), a system that verifies and
authenticates the validity of each party involved
in an Internet transaction.
Consider the following security steps taken in
a bricks-and-mortar banking transaction:
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SECURITY
TYPE OF
SECURITY
Encryption
Scrambles data so it can not
be seen/read
when transmitted
Wireless transport layer security
Provides an encrypted link between
the mobile device and server application
and authenticates the server
Public Key Infrastructure
A secure key infrastructure for digital
certificate management and
user-and-server authentication
SECURITY
PROVIDED
SECURITY
NOT PROVIDED
CONFIDENTIALITY
• Data integrity
• User and server
authentication
•Nonrepudiation of
transaction
CONFIDENTIALITY
DATA INTEGRITY
• User authentication
• Nonrepudiation of
transactions
AUTHENTICATION
CONFIDENTIALITY
DATA INTEGRITY
AUTHORIZATION
NONREPUDIATION
• Authentication: The customer authenticates
the bank by identifying the building and signage. The bank authenticates its customer by
asking for identification or a password.
• Privacy: The customer stands at the teller
booth away from other customers.
• Authorization: A customer card or profile
indicates what transactions the customer can
do.
• Integrity: Business is transacted; cash is tendered and counted by both parties.
• Proof of contact: The bank’s records and the
customer’s bankbook are updated. A signed
receipt is provided.
An advanced PKI environment encompasses
all five of these pillars of security: digital certificates and digital signatures provide authentication, integrity, and nonrepudiation or proof; privacy is ensured through the use of encryption;
and authorization is conducted through the use
of digital permits that establish where users can
go and what they can do.
In addition to encryption and authentication, public-key cryptography provides a way to
digitally sign messages. Electronic or digital signatures are analogous to handwritten signatures, which bind a person’s identity to a particular message or document. Digital signatures
are a digital code that can be attached to an
electronically transmitted message to identify
the sender. Digitally signing a message is a technique used by the sender to sign a message with
his or her private key; then, using the freely
available public key, others can verify that signature.
With the advent of the Electronic Signatures
in Global and National Commerce Act (E-SIGN)
S. 761 enacted by the U.S. in June of 2000, and
similar legislation throughout the world, digital
signatures are now as legally binding in the electronic world as they are on paper.
Digital signatures used in PKI allow enterprises to offer high-risk services and transactions
online. Digital signatures are especially important for electronic commerce and are a key component of most legitimate authentication
schemes. The use of digital signatures in transactions is a very effective way for enterprises to
reduce their liability in conducting transactions
over the Internet. By verifying that the person
conducting the transaction is who they say they
are, and by having a signed receipt that the
transaction took place, institutions have a legally
binding record of the transaction.
For example, Sona Innovations Inc., a wireless application development company, is working with Diversinet to enhance the security features in Sona’s existing and future wireless financial and gaming applications.
The addition of Diversinet-enabled digital
certificates and digital signatures in Sona’s wireless applications enhances the security features
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One of the problems that wireless security
vendors are discovering is how to provide
advanced security on a wireless device. Securing
applications running on a network is easy, but
tried and true solutions in the wired world do
not convert smoothly into the wireless world,
where devices are highly constrained by their
networks (limited bandwidth), computing power
(limited CPU and memory), and an ongoing
need to preserve battery life.
Battery life is probably the most significant
issue in the development of wireless applications and implementing wireless security. If you
try to download a 256x256 color image to your
PDA, your battery will run out in approximately
three minutes. Battery life is a consideration in
any wireless application.
Additionally wireless networks provide relatively low data transmission speeds. Therefore,
security tools such as the digital certificates used
in wired public-key infrastructures are too large
for wireless devices and applications. The CPUs
in mobile devices are also less advanced than
their wired counterparts. This, combined with
limited memory, means lengthier processing
times for wireless transactions. To resolve these
issues, smaller digital certificates using condensed encryption algorithms have been devel-
Summary
As mobile networks and the wireless Internet
become more advanced, mobile devices will
shift from being solely a personal communication tool to a way of enabling business transactions. In addition, the wireless handset will
become a user’s wireless wallet, purchasing
everything from soda to equities.
With the increased exchange of confidential
information, users, enterprises, and wireless
operators are seeking more advanced levels of
security to protect their intellectual and monetary assets. Privacy and authentication are as
important in the wireless world as they are in
everyday life.
In order to get a head start on the competition, enterprises and operators should incorporate wireless PKI security from the onset. An
advanced security solution is imperative to generate more revenues, improve efficiency, retain
customers, and evolve their service offering.
SECURITY
The Challenges of Wireless
Security
oped specifically for wireless security applications.
Another major challenge facing m-commerce
is the complexity of current systems for wireless
transactions. Whereas the wired Internet features standardized computer tools and browsers
that are independent of a device’s underlying
operating system, wireless devices lack both a
common user interface and a cross-platform
way of providing content.
Users prefer a simple, standardized system
for conducting transactions. Applications are
being developed today that incorporate common, standardized security tools. This will make
secure m-commerce as simple as transactions
handled on the wired Internet (e.g., entering one
passcode for all transactions). It will help broaden the development of seamless applications
designed for this purpose, and help to make mcommerce more ubiquitous.
Digital signatures are now as
legally binding in the electronic
world as they are on paper
beyond the privacy and confidentiality that
encryption provides. Digital signatures provide
accountability by verifying the identity of users,
binding the identity of a user to the transaction
so that knowledge of the banking or gaming
transaction cannot later be denied, and proving
that data transmitted wirelessly has not been
tampered with in transit. These supplementary
security features are important in wireless financial and gaming transactions where substantial
monetary risk and liability exist.
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25
CASE STUDY: M-MARKETING
SP
SE
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MC
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VC
WF
DJ
Mobile Messaging Proves
Effective for Sony Entertainment
Freedom of choice plays a big role in consumers’ acceptance
As wireless technology continues to evolve at breakneck speed,
marketers believe they are coming closer to finding their Holy Grail.
In 2002, the reality of wireless media, and the unheard-of new anti-
by
David Sklaver
spam and user-control standards it requires, calls for “interest-certain” mobile messaging.
t
his concept of
mobile marketing,
while in its early
stages, is already mainstream in
the entertainment industry and
is quickly attracting attention
from leading Fortune 500 companies.
The Ups and Downs of
Online Advertising
David Sklaver is CEO and president of Upoc.
He is a senior marketing communications
executive with more than 25 years of experience.
Prior to Upoc, David was general partner and founder
of Artustry Partnership, a strategic and creative
communications consultancy. Before founding
Artustry, David was president of Wells Rich Greene.
@
[email protected]
26
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As history has taught us,
however, claiming victory is a
difficult and risky task. From
the early days of Internet advertising, online banner ads promised to deliver throngs of consumers to a marketer’s Web
site. The buzz was shortlived and the technology
wizards went back to the
drawing board to reinvent
the online advertising arena.
The dawn of multimedia
interactive ads raised the bar
for creativity and pushed
marketers to communicate to
consumers in new and exciting ways. As multimedia
online advertising grew in
popularity, the advertising
industry soon learned that
although the technology
enabled them to target consumers creatively, it did not
deliver on attracting and
retaining them.
The Web did not evolve into
a broadcasting medium as some
anticipated, but it has proven
effective as a direct marketing
and customer relationship
medium, offering marketers a
means to connect directly with
their target audience.
While mobile marketing is a
relatively new term in the
United States, it is widely
accepted, and consequently frequently used, in Europe and
Asia. In the past, the lack of any
unified standards in the United
States prevented many compa-
nies from understanding and
experiencing the true benefits of
mobile marketing. Now, platform-agnostic technologies that
work with any wireless carrier
and device have been developed to help break down the
barriers and enable companies
to reach consumers in an intimate way, providing them with
requested content on the device
that is always with them. U.S.
companies, especially in the
music and film industries, are
beginning to understand the
potential of mobile marketing
and are increasingly incorporating wireless initiatives into their
overall marketing strategies.
Living the Mobile
Lifestyle
According to a mobile
lifestyle survey conducted by
Frank N. Magid Associates in
November 2001, over 58% of
Americans now own mobile
phones. For marketers, consumer adoption of mobile
has surpassed 50% in every
key demographic from
teens to the 55+ crowd.
This number is up from an
estimated 23-million users
last year, representing an
incredible annual growth
rate of 40%. At the same
time, people’s awareness of
text messaging and wireless
Internet capabilities also
continues to increase.
Consumers have been
exposed to text-based wireless advertising for some
time now. Unfortunately,
wireless advertising has not
been well received by con-
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CASE STUDY: M-MARKETING
1
Mobile users receive Ali trivia
SP
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sumers, who don’t want to be
spammed with unwanted
advertisements. Mobile marketing platforms need to give consumers freedom of choice so
they can select which messages
they want to receive. They
should be able to choose their
own communities and willingly
interact with the message. This
is referred to as “interest-certain” content, and it serves to
guide the development of
mobile programs for marketers.
Mobile messaging has
proved effective for marketers
aiming to build relationships
with core consumer groups. For
example, Sony Music was able
to build communities for artists
including Lil Bow Wow and
Destiny’s Child. Sony Pictures
recognized that mobile messaging was also a targeted way
to promote their movies. By
giving artists and actors additional touch points through
which to reach their fans,
mobile messaging offers marketers the opportunity to
actively engage consumers
prior to the release of a movie.
This approach has the potential
to be far more effective than
traditional mass marketing
because it engages consumers
in a relationship and dialogue,
whereas traditional marketing
allows the consumer to remain
passive and potentially nonparticipatory.
Sony Pictures Packs
a Mobile Marketing
Punch for Ali
One clear example of mobile
marketing’s ability to reach target audiences is the recent promotion and release of Sony
Pictures Entertainment’s blockbuster Ali. Sony Pictures wanted
2
28
Text messages update
community members on
celebrity sightings
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to build a mobile community
where end users could request
both voice and text messages
containing information on prerelease activities prior to the
launch of Ali on Christmas day.
Another significant goal was to
raise awareness for the film with
younger urban audiences who
are already using this technology in their everyday lives and to
provide enthusiasts with the
opportunity to create a personal
connection to the film.
Sony Pictures’ marketers
enlisted Upoc to develop content on public appearances and
events by the cast, behind-thescenes information, inspirational messages, movie premiere news, as well as trivia,
which could be disseminated
through Ali’s wireless community. Accordingly, the mobile
community was integrated into
Sony Picture’s Web site and promoted across partner sites.
Launched in early December
and slated to last through
January 2002, this marketing
tool was utilized by Sony
Pictures to help Ali stand out
during a very crowded holiday
movie season. The cross-media
promotion of the campaign was
particularly successful in driving sign-up for dedicated e-mail
blasts, promotional banners,
and community chat rooms. As
of press time, the number of
users who had signed up for the
Ali mobile messaging campaign
went well beyond expectations
to become the largest mobile
community to date for any
domestic film release.
The wireless communities
allowed Sony Pictures to turn
each of these interactive touch
points into an ongoing relationship with Ali fans. The mobile
VC
WF
DJ
alerts helped create buzz among
fans and press alike. The wireless
campaign helped Sony Pictures
build relationships with core
consumers and create excitement around the film’s launch.
Aside from the Ali-specific
outreach, the wireless promotion also helped Sony Pictures
build a mobile user base of avid
entertainment consumers that
can be tapped for inclusion in
future initiatives for new releases. Having realized the power of
mobile communication, Sony
Pictures Digital Entertainment
can now leverage an effective,
targeted way to promote future
movies and give artists and
actors the ability to interact with
their fans anytime, anywhere.
“Upoc brings a fresh perspective to viral marketing with their
mobile services,” said Zachary
Eller, director of partnership
marketing, Sony Pictures Digital
Entertainment. “The Ali program
is a compelling example of
SPDE’s commitment to let audiences connect with Sony
Pictures content on multiple
devices, anytime, anywhere.”
Lessons Learned
Over the last few years we’ve
learned a lot in the world of Web
marketing, including a number
of tough lessons from the dotcom era that helped us to understand the possibilities – as well as
the limitations – for marketing in
the mobile arena. Mobile marketing is clearly in a good place
when viewed as a logical extension of a company’s communications program, not as a be-all
and end-all. Prescient marketers
will be well served by acquainting themselves with this new
communications channel unlike
any they’ve seen before.
“This approach has the potential to be far more
effective than traditional mass marketing because
it engages consumers in a relationship and dialogue“
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29
WIRELESS PRIMER: SECURITY
Despite what you may
have heard, secure
wireless networks can be
deployed. However, truly
secure wireless networks
require hybrid solutions.
Read on to learn about the
solutions used in such
network configurations.
by
Kevin Wittmer
Kevin Wittmer works as a senior software engineer
for Expand Beyond Corporation, headquartered
in Chicago. Expand Beyond develops enterprise
software that enables organizations to manage
their IT infrastructure wirelessly. www.XB.com
@
[email protected]
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I
memory address space common to most mobile
devices, as well as latency delays often experienced during RF transmission.
In nearly all cases, implementing any of these
technologies requires support by the mobile platform residing behind the firewall inside the enterprise network. Table 1 provides a sample listing of
mobile application platform products along with
what security technologies each currently supports.
SSL is the most common technology supported,
while VPN technology receives the least support.
PKI, which is centered around the use of digital certificates, provides the best security, but also requires
the most effort in planning and deployment.
WTLS
Wireless Security Today
Corporate IS organizations that have taken a
wait-and-see approach to wireless network technology become even more hesitant when they
learn of the holes present in the first releases of
wireless security technologies such as WEP and
WTLS. Companies both large and small expect
deployable security solutions that are on a par
with wired networks. As a result, some organizations, fearing the worst, have scaled back ambition deployment plans of installing wireless network technology into the enterprise, waiting
instead for many of the wireless-specific security
technologies developed to mature into proven,
reliable solutions.
The list of technologies available for implementing secure wireless connections includes
WTLS, WEP, ECC, SSL, TLS, VPN, RADIUS, and
PKI. Technologies such as WEP are used to provide security over IEEE 802.11 networks, while
WTLS is generally used to provide security for
WAP sessions carried over CDMA or GSM. The
remaining family of technologies, such as ECC,
PKI, SSL, TLS, RADIUS, and VPN can be applied
to both Local Area Network (LAN) and Wide Area
Network (WAN) deployments.
These security technologies share common
features such as support for authentication and
encryption. In addition, all of them, many of
which originated in the wired world, have been
modified to cope with low-bandwidth wireless
connections, limited processing power and
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WAP is typically carried over cellular networks
based on CDMA or GSM. This includes all derivatives such as GPRS, CDMA2000, or UMTS.
Bluetooth also has a provision in its specification
for carrying WAP, although it has received little
interest from vendors or early adopters of WAP.
WTLS, part of the WAP family of technologies, is
used to provide confidentiality, integrity, and
authentication over circuit- and packet-based
networks. WTLS provides security over the RF air
link between the WAP mobile device and the
WAP gateway that typically resides on the carrier’s network. WTLS is based on TLS, and is classified into three levels (see Table 2) with support of
client and server certificates being the primary
differentiator among the three levels.
The first version of WTLS had a few highly
publicized weaknesses, including vulnerabilities
to attacks involving datagram truncation and
message forgery. A further weakness in WTLS
architecture is the role that the WAP gateway is
required to play in encrypting and decrypting
WTLS packets, and then encrypting or decrypting the information as SSL/TLS packets. WAP 2.0
has addressed these weaknesses by adding support for TLS 1.0 (RFC 2817) and TLS tunneling to
the WAP profile (see Figure 1). WAP profile support for TLS consists of cipher suites, X.509 certificate formats, signing algorithms, and sessionresume functionality. And whereas WAP 1.x supported WTLS over UDP, WAP 2.0 allows TLS operations to occur over TCP.
SECURITY SUPPORTED
SSL 3.0
HTTPS
PKI RECIPROCAL DIGITAL CERTIFICATE TRANSFER
SSL
SSL AND WTLS
HTTPS, WTLS, AND PKI
VPN, WTLS, SSL, AND PKI
128-BIT SSL WITH CERTICOM ECC, HTTPS
SSL AND WTLS
SSL/TLS, WTLS, AND PKI
CERTICOM ECC
TABLE 1: Security supported in various mobile application platforms
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A SECURITY VOCABULARY
• Encryption: Algorithms used
to provide confidentiality during data transmission. There
are two basic types of encryption: symmetric and asymmetric. Symmetric encryption
involves two parties sharing a
private key and using a cipher
function to encrypt or decrypt
data, while asymmetric
encryption has the recipient
distributing a public key used
for encrypting messages to all
intended senders, and using a
private key to decrypt any
encrypted message subsequently sent. In practice, most
security mechanisms implement a hybrid approach that
first uses asymmetric encryption to exchange keys and
then switches over to symmetric encryption for the duration
of the session. For example,
both SSL and WTLS provide
algorithms such as RSA, DH,
or ECC for key exchange, and
then transition to DES for
symmetric encryption once a
minimally secure link session
has been established.
• Authentication: The process
of validating the true identity
of the mobile user using a
password challenge and
response mechanism or digital certificates. The ChallengeHandshake Authentication
Protocol (CHAP) is an established protocol that is most
often used to validate username and password, encrypting the information so as not
to transmit either item in
clear text over the network.
One proven solution for
implementing authentication
in systems that use WAP or
IEEE 802.11 is to use a system
based on the open RADIUS
server specification.
• Authorization: Involves determining what rights are
assigned to the mobile user.
These rights can include
access levels that determine
what operations can be performed, as well as what network resources can be
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WIRELESS PRIMER: SECURITY
f you follow wireless technology, then you
frequently read articles on the Web or in
various trade magazines reporting the latest security holes found. This article will
attempt to draw a border around the wireless security landscape by providing a discussion of various security technologies that
have been designed and optimized to operate
over local and cellular-based wireless networks.
The support for security in mobile application
platforms will be highlighted along with what
technologies are available today for securing
wireless networks; accompanying diagrams
depicting different configurations are also
included.
WIRELESS PRIMER: SECURITY
1
2
Example deployment diagram for TLS and WTLS
Example deployment diagram for ECC and SSL
A key point to consider when implementing
WTLS is making sure that support is available on
both sides of the connection. On the mobile
device side, WML microbrowsers supporting
WTLS include Openwave’s Mobile Browser,
which supports WTLS Class 2 security (see Table
2) as well as SSL, and Nokia’s WAP browser version 2.1, which has support for the highest level
of WTLS security, Class 3. The other side of the
equation is the WAP gateways. For example,
Motorola’s 1200 data system is a WAP gateway
system that supports the first two classes of
WTLS, but not Class 3, the highest level.
WEP
The IEEE association is composed of a number of committees that define various industryaccepted technical standards. Members of the
association include the 802.3 standards committee, whose focus is the Ethernet network standard, the 802.5 standards committee devoted to
the Token Ring specification; and the IEEE 802.11
standards committee charged with advancing
SECURITY FEATURE
PUBLIC KEY EXCHANGE
SERVER CERTIFICATES
CLIENT CERTIFICATES
SHARED-SECRET HANDSHAKE
COMPRESSION
ENCRYPTION
MAC
SMART CARD INTERFACE
CLASS 1
MANDATORY
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
—
MANDATORY
MANDATORY
—
wireless LAN standards. Within the IEEE 802.11
standard committee are working groups and
technical advisory groups that focus on the family of technologies covered under the IEEE 802.11
standard umbrella, including the Wired
Equivalent Privacy, or simply WEP.
The WEP standard defines the layer-two
security protocol that is to be employed in
IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN technology. The first
specification of WEP called for a secret key to
be shared between a mobile station and the
local access point, which made key management at large sites quite unmanageable. It also
specified 40-bit encryption using RC4 encryption with static keys. Early adopters and vendors found the first version of WEP to have
some significant shortcomings in both security and management. The list of deficiencies
included vulnerability to disassociation
attacks, no central authentication, no
accounting support, RC4 stream chippers that
are vulnerable to known plain-text attacks,
lack of a key management protocol, and a
CLASS 2
MANDATORY
MANDATORY
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
MANDATORY
MANDATORY
OPTIONAL
CLASS 3
MANDATORY
MANDATORY
MANDATORY
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
MANDATORY
MANDATORY
OPTIONAL
TABLE 2: WTLS security feature matrix
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Pocket PC 2002 comes with a built-in VPN client
MovianVPN Pocket PC client VPN software that interoperates with various VPN gateways
Pocket PC VPN solution that operates with Entrust VPN gateway systems
SmartPassCE VPN supports various CE devices including SH3, MIPS, and ARMS
VPN and LinkSpy provide the framework for implementing VPN clients for Pocket PC
TABLE 3: VPN solutions available for Pocket PC. For the latest list of mobile VPN offerings, go to the following link and select VPN:
www.microsoft.com/mobile/enterprise/solutions/swsol.asp
32
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Bluetooth Security
The primary application of Bluetooth wireless
network technology is to support peer-to-peer
device networks that operate over small distances. Maintaining security at the data-link
layer of a Bluetooth network is accomplished
using a unique public address for the Bluetooth
device, two private keys, and a random number
generated for each network transaction.
Different primary keys are used for authentication and encryption, and both are derived
during hardware device initialization. For
authentication, the size of the key is fixed at 128
bits while the size of the encryption keys is
made to support variable lengths ranging from
8–128 bits. Variable length encryption-key sizes
allow for flexibility for future upgrade paths as
well as easing the effort that Bluetooth device
implementers have to exercise in conforming to
government export restrictions placed on various cryptographic algorithms. Since the Bluetooth
specification does outline support for WAP, support of WTLS might be a theoretical possibility
in enhancing security over a Bluetooth connection, but more than likely not a terribly practical
one, because most mobile devices support
Bluetooth.
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Wireless Securities
for WLANs and WANs
A SECURITY VOCABULARY
The following wireless technologies can be
applied to local and cellular networks, as they are
not tech-type specific. In fact, some of these
technologies can be combined to enhance security of wireless networks.
—continued from page 31
ECC
•
Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems (ECC) are based
on discrete logarithm mathematics, specifically
various points located along an elliptic curve.
ECC, which is commonly implemented in hardware (see Figure 2), can be used to provide a digital and encryption communications scheme.
ECC has been employed in wireless applications
that use WTLS over WAP-compliant networks
such as Verizon’s CDMA wireless network, or in
non-WAP systems that operate over CDPD networks such as Mobitex.
SSL
The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a protocol
that was first developed by Netscape to provide a
secure data channel over the TCP/IP network
protocol stack. The SSL protocol consists of two
distinct protocols: the SSL Record Protocol and
the SSL Handshake Protocol. The SSL Handshake
Protocol allows the client and server to authenticate each other, negotiate an encryption algorithm such as DES or RC4, and exchange cryptographic keys before an application protocol such
as HTTP or SMTP initiates any communication.
The length of the encryption transaction session
key, typically 40- or 128-bit, is contained in server-side certificates, and determines the security
strength of the SSL communication channel. Due
to government export restrictions, 128-bit capable (or greater) Web browsers cannot be exported
outside the U.S. or Canada.
For the wired Internet, SSL is the de facto
technology for building Internet trust infrastructures capable of supporting secure e-commerce
transactions. The SSL protocol, X.509 digital certificates, and SSL server-side certificates form
many of the key components in a PKI solution.
For wireless systems, SSL is typically used
between the Web server or mobile application
platform and the WAP gateway or the Web clipping proxy server.
Given the limited memory, RF bandwidth,
and processing resources of most mobile devices,
secure SSL-based communication has not been
widely adopted for securing online transactions.
This has particularly been the case between the
wireless gateway or proxy and the mobile device.
For example, the Palm Web clipping client
browser that is integrated into the operating system of wireless-ready Palm devices does not support any form of SSL. Recently, however, support
for SSL in mobile browsers has begun to appear.
Mobile browsers such as Handspring’s Blazer,
Microsoft’s Pocket Internet Explorer, and
•
•
•
accessed. Some WAP gateway systems provide for
authorization through support
of access control lists.
Auditing: Involves reviewing
all previously recorded events
related to network or system
security. If there is a security
breach, one of the first
responses is to isolate where
the breach came from by
reviewing various system logs
to determine what users were
active and where in the system they were. Auditing
capabilities are commonly
found in WAP gateway and
RADIUS software systems.
Integrity: Required to prevent
malicious intruders from tampering with encrypted message
data while it is being transmitted over the radio spectrum or
across the wired network.
Algorithms used to guarantee
message integrity include
Message Digest 2 (MD-2),
Message Digest 5 (MD-5), and
Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA1). Techniques applied by
these algorithms include protecting the integrity of messages over wireless connections, cryptographic chaining,
date/time stamps, sequence
numbers, and server ID fields.
Nonrepudiation: Concerned
with not allowing the mobile
client or user to claim that a
secured communication did
not occur. One technique for
implementing nonrepudiation
in SSL is using a unique token
in conjunction with the DSS,
Fortezza, and SHA algorithms.
Key management: Defines
how the client and server will
exchange keys for public and
private encryption. Exchange
key algorithms include RSA
and Diffie-Hellman. DiffieHellman uses an advanced
mathematical algorithm
known as modular exponentiation to exchange keys
between peers on a public
network without certificates
or prior communications
between client and server.
www.WBT2.com
33
WIRELESS PRIMER: SECURITY
security scheme that could be instantly comprised if an attacker obtained access to the
shared private key residing on a lost or stolen
mobile station.
Vendors addressed various shortcomings such
as lack of a key management protocol by
enhancing their implementation of WEP by
increasing the size of the encryption keys or
developing their add-on 802.11-based security
protocols (see sidebar “Securing Your 802.11b
Network”). CISCO’s Lightweight Extensible
Authentication Protocol, or LEAP, incorporated
into the Aironet product line, is one example of
this. LEAP is a derivative of the Extensible
Authentication Protocol (EAP) that has been
optimized to operate over wireless LANs. EAP
specifies that authentication and key exchange
be done at layer three, not at layer two as WEP
does. LEAP also calls for keys being generated as
part of the login process, and requires that all
clients have unique keys.
The IEEE 802.11 Task Group 1 has been laboring away at the 802.11 specifications to address
the initial shortcomings of WEP by developing
the WEP2 technical specification. WEP2 specifies
128-bit encryption using the RC4 algorithm, and
calls for a scheme that will involve implementing authentication and encryption functions at
the software layer (layer 3 and above). Enhanced
Security Network, or ESN, is another technical
specification that has been proposed for the
next-generation of IEEE 802.11 products. ESN
will support WEP, WEP2 and AES encryption
algorithms, and employs dynamic, associationspecific cryptographic keys.
SYS-CON EVENTS
W W W.SYS-CON.COM
34
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SYS-CON EVENTS
W W W.SYS-CON.COM
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WIRELESS PRIMER: SECURITY
3
WAP Gateway – RADIUS Network Configuration
QUALCOMM’s Eudora Web browsers now all support SSL, along with the capability to render
common wireless markup languages such as
WML, HDML, and cHTML.
TLS
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
MICROSOFT WHITE PAPERS
Microsoft has published
three useful white papers on
implementing IEEE.802.11b
networks in the enterprise VPN
technology for Windows 2000,
and PKI configuration in the
Windows 2000 environment:
• Making IEEE 802.11
Networks Enterprise-Ready
www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/administration/security/wirelessec.asp
• Virtual Private Networking
with Windows 2000:
Deploying Remote Access
VPNs
www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/planning/incremental/vpndeploy.asp
• Windows 2000 Server and
PKI: Using the nCipher
Hardware Security Module
www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/administration/security/win2kpki.asp
Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 is a followup to SSL 3.0 and includes minor enhancements
to the implementation of SSL dealing with message authentication, key material generation,
certificate verification, and alerting. TLS, like
other security technologies such as RADIUS, can
be used to enhance the security of wireless networks. In the case of the IEEE 802.11 network
protocol, TLS can be used in conjunction with
RADIUS to enhance the security of local wireless
networks.
VPN
Virtual Private Networks provide private,
secure, point-to-point connections between two
machines or networks over a shared or public
network. To achieve security, local network protocol traffic is encrypted using a tunneling function supported by a VPN protocol such as IPSEC,
and split into a series of IP packets for transport
across the Internet. All PC-based variants of
Microsoft Windows can be configured with a VPN
client, including Microsoft Windows ME, XP,
2000, and 98. This makes VPN technology an
attractive solution for deployment on mobile
SANS INSTITUTE
VERISIGN
SECURITY RESOURCE WEB SITE
BLUETOOTH FORUM
SSL RESOURCE WEB SITE
SSL OPEN SOURCE
WAP FORUM
clients installed with Windows ME operating over
the IEEE 802.11b wireless network.
As Table 3 shows, VPN solutions are also available for both the Pocket PC 2000 and 2002 platforms. Included in this mix is the Microsoft-centric VPN client that ships with Pocket PC 2002.
This VPN client with support for PPTP is ideally
suited to work with Microsoft’s VPN gateway software found in Windows NT and 2000 server operating systems. Additionally, this implementation
has been designed to operate within Microsoft
Windows networks by utilizing a primary domain
controller for authentication.
Overall VPN support for Pocket PC 2000 and
2002, while new, does look promising. This, unfortunately, is not the case for existing PalmOS-based
platforms. The main reason for this is the limited
processing power and task management capabilities of the embedded CPU and operating system,
which, combined, are barely sufficient to sustain a
VPN client session over a wireless link and then
also execute a browser or network business application to communicate over the VPN session.
There is a cost associated with using a VPN
connection over a wireless network, however,
and that is the reduction in bandwidth available
for transport of application data. In cases where
bandwidth is particularly tight, performance of
application data transmissions will be noticeably
degraded and therefore not a practical solution.
RADIUS
RADIUS, or Remove Access Dial In User
Service, is an open-source protocol for performing user authentication and security accounting
activities. It is based on a client/server model with
support for encrypted communication between
the client and the server. The RADIUS protocol is
UDP-based, with port 1645 assigned to authentication and 1646 assigned to accounting activities.
RADIUS server software is available for a number
of platforms, including Windows NT and UNIX. It
is interoperable over many network protocols,
including the IEEE 802.11 wireless network protocol. In this scenario the wireless LAN access point
(AP) forwards all mobile station challenge
responses to the RADIUS server for authentication (see Figure 3). Upon validating the mobile
station, the RADIUS server responds by sending
an encrypted authentication key to the AP for use.
Once received, the AP uses this key to securely
transmit unicast and multicast authentication
keys to the mobile station.
WWW.SANS.ORG/
WWW.VERISIGN.COM/
WWW.CSM.ORNL.GOV/ ~DUNIGAN/SECURITY.HTML
WWW.BLUETOOTH.ORG/
WWW.MODSSL.ORG/
WWW.OPENSSL.ORG/
WWW.WAPFORUM.ORG/
TABLE 4: Security resources table
36
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SECURING YOUR
802.11b NETWORK
To secure your 802.11based wireless network, configure a VPN client on each
mobile device, place the
access points in a firewall
segmented part of your network, define access control
lists (ACLs), and configure
each mobile device to use a
common WEP key. The
instructions below outline
setup as well as the steps
involved in configuring the
AP and mobile devices with
WEP key security
1. Collect the six-digit hardware MAC addresses of all
the mobile devices that
will operate on the local
802.11-based wireless network.
2. Using the access point
(AP) administrator tool,
enter all of the MAC
addresses into the list that
determines which mobile
devices can gain access to
the AP.
3. Select (enable) WEP key
usage on the AP using the
administrator tool.
4. Create a shared, private
WEP key. This key will
either be five or eight bytes
long, and can be a pass
phrase or hex string (randomly generated by the AP
administrator tool).
5. Enter this shared key into
all of the mobile devices
that are intended to have
access to the wireless local
area network (WLAN).
RECOMMENDED
READING LIST
SSL and TLS Essentials
—Stephen Thomas Wiley
Essential WAP
—Damon Hougland,
—Khurram Zafar
Prentice Hall
Voice and Data Security
— (Many authors) SAMS
J A N U A R Y
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The RADIUS server is flexible; it can authenticate the user
based on an internal username/password list or elect to act as a
client (via a proxy) to another type of authentication system, such
as those found in Windows NT, Netware, or UNIX. When a user
makes a connection of some sort to a remote access server (i.e.,
WAP gateway), the username and password are sent to the RAS,
which in turn passes the information to the RADIUS server for
authentication. The RADIUS server will issue either a PASS or a
FAIL to the user via RAS. To learn more about the RADIUS specification, visit www.itef.org and search either for RFC 2138 or RFC
2139. For more details about how RADIUS can be applied to
secure IEEE 802.11 networks, visit www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/administration/security/wirelessec.asp.
PKI
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for wireless systems, also sometimes referred to as WPKI, is composed of the following components, including the Certificate Authority (CA) server, the
Registration Authority (RA) server, a database system such as
LDAP for storing certificates, the mobile-side application that is
usually a Web browser preloaded with trusted certificates, a Web
server or mobile application platform that supports SSL or WTLS
certificates, and an optional wireless gateway server if WAP is
being used.
In a PKI system, the CA is a trusted agency that digitally signs
and distributes certificates used for client and server authentication. CAs can either be a third-party organization, as is the case
with CAs such as GTE CyberTrust, VeriSign, Entrust.NET, and
Thawte, or internal. Advantages of establishing an internal CA network are added levels of trust and the flexibility to organize multiple CA servers in a hierarchical arrangement to alleviate potential
scalability problems. In either case, a master CA, also referred to as
root CA, will sit at the top of the CA hierarchy.
In addition to issuing certificates, the CA also manages them.
More specifically, the CA will determine how long certificates are
valid and when they should be renewed, and track those that are
no longer valid. The type of information contained in a certificate
includes subject identification, key assertion, and the trusted
organization that issued the document.
The most common standard followed for defining the content
of a certificate is the X.509. Certificates used with WTLS are based
on the X.509 standard, but are not 100% compliant certificates.
The CA can validate a server (the most common usage), the
client, or both. Support for client- and server-side certificates is
the primary difference between WTLS Classes 2 and 3 in the WAP
protocol suite. Please note, it is important to determine whether
the mobile application, most commonly a browser, supports
client-side certificates and whether it comes preloaded with certificate authority files. In the case of WAP, few browsers, with the
exception of Nokia’s, support Class 3 in the WTLS specification,
which is the highest level of security in a WAP system using
WTLS.
Summary
Security over wireless networks, as with many other areas of
wireless technology, is just starting to mature. Weaknesses in WEP
and WTLS have been clearly identified, and newer versions of
these technologies (such as WAP 2.0), as well as adaptations of
more established technologies such as SSL, ECC, and PKI, are in
the pipeline and will be available shortly. In the meantime, look for
hybrid solutions that involve mixing various security technologies
to shore up the weaknesses of a particular security technology and
increase the strength of the overall solution.
Wearable and
Wireless Computing
Converge
—continued from page 64
will constantly analyze data and
make decisions to provide
access to content, services, and
entertainment for anyone, at
any time, in any place. Indeed,
wearable devices will pave the
way for gains in mobile computing that entirely transcend
our current set of mobile
devices and the advantages
they offer today.
Of course, this change won’t
occur overnight, as we can only
move as fast as the technology
evolves. Companies such as Levi
Strauss are already looking to
capitalize on the wearable concept, offering a line of jackets
that incorporate a hidden MP3
player and mobile phone connected to a remote control and
microphone in the collar. Peerto-peer technology companies
also continue to proliferate, with
P2P technology perhaps playing
an important role in the energy
conservation challenge associated with wearable devices.
Of course, even as we hear
about “wireless wallets” and
“interactive clothing,” we’re
occasionally informed of real
mind-numbing advancements
like those by the Israeli scientists who developed a DNA
computer so tiny that a trillion
of them could be combined to
perform a billion operations per
second, expanding our horizons and challenging issues we
might have viewed previously
as insurmountable. DNA computers currently have no business applications, implying that
people aren’t yet interested.
However, if I told you that
these DNA computers are being
considered for potentially operating within human cells and
acting as monitoring devices to
detect disease-causing changes
and synthesizing drugs to fix
them, would the terms “wearable computer” and “proactive
interactions” take on a new
meaning?
FIRST PUBLISHED BY IBM DEVELOPERWORKS AT
HTTP://WWW.IBM.COM/DEVELOPERWORKS/.
www.WBT2.com
37
M-COMMERCE: M-CAMPAIGN WATCH
by David Cotriss
M-MARKETING EDITOR
Some people think outdoor ads clutter the landscape. I
couldn’t help but notice the vast array of billboards for
dot-com companies along California’s Highway 101 a few
years ago. I didn’t mind them, but then again, I was into
the whole dot-com thing. Now
most of them have been replaced
by other offerings. While it could
be argued that there is too much
outdoor advertising today, it can
be highly effective when combined with other marketing
avenues. Who would have
Can Billboards
Successfully
Go Wireless?
They’re working out at New York health clubs
thought a few years ago that billboards and
wireless could have anything in common? In
this day and age of new media miracles, several
firms are attempting to make the connection.
F
IVE EQUINOX FITNESS CLUBS IN NEW
York’s financial district have installed
wall units inside that deliver information
to PDAs when they’re aimed at special RF ports
on the boards. Creative copy and graphics on the boards, along
with in-club stickers and demos, draw users who can download
information on all classes, spas, and training. Class schedules are
searchable by activity, instructor, and day, and can be added to
the user’s daybook. Special promotions and incentives can also
be delivered.
“This is an easy, timely, and fun way to provide members with
information,” explains Equinox vice president of marketing, Kathy
Reilly. “It reduces costs to get information to members and is a
great branding mechanism since it shows up on their daily plan.”
David Cotriss is WBT’s m-marketing editor.
38
www.WBT2.com
She says this fits well with the target market since members are affluent and successful, with good wireless penetration.
While Reilly couldn’t reveal specific figures, she said
she is pleased with the download and response rates.
One recent successful promotion offered 10% off a spa
treatment, redeemed by showing the page on the handheld. While costs are lower during this proof-of-concept
phase, Reilly says all indications
are that it will continue and be
rolled out to more clubs, even
with higher costs. She says
plans also include placing the
boards outside to reach
prospective members.
Streetbeam, the company
providing the technology, has
focused mainly on outdoor
phone kiosks and bus terminal
ads thus far, mostly in New
York.
adAlive, a competitor, uses
the concept for indoor airport
billboards, but sends users travel-related information in addition to an ad.
The companies are fairly tight-lipped about
their revenue models, but both rely on premium fees charged to advertisers.
For the most part, Gartner analyst
Mike McGuire agrees it’s too early to tell at
what point between convenience and spontaneous purchases a successful business
model can be derived from the mobile billboard concept. “This is a great way to leverage existing customers and increase brand
awareness,” states McGuire. “For cold
prospects, it’s best used along with other marketing methods.”
Equinox’s model is similar to that of opt-in e-mail, where regular communication can be maintained with customers. Both companies have reported advertiser success, but numbers are hard to
come by. Another question is whether the concept could work in
other countries. As with most overseas marketing programs,
McGuire agrees it depends largely on the culture.
In a way, I miss those dot-com billboards, let alone the whole
dot-com craze. Fortunately, wireless is even allowing billboards to
innovate. Now if I could just get a PDA.
[email protected]
J A N U A R Y
@
2 0 0 2
IMARK
COMMUNICATIONS
W W W.EXPO4MOBILE.COM
J A N U A R Y
2 0 0 2
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M-COMMERCE
40
www.WBT2.com
J A N U A R Y
2 0 0 2
M-COMMERCE
The wireless Internet has become a way of life
for Japanese consumers. What will it take to create
a similar experience for North American users?
NTT SOFT thinks they have the answer and they
have set up an ambitious plan to achieve their
goals.
ver the past decade, NTT’s wireless
division, NTT DoCoMo, has developed
the mobile communications technology that has given Japanese consumers
access to more than 40,000 Internet
sites as well as more traditional online
services. NTT DoCoMo, with their i-mode platform for wireless voice and Internet communications, has amassed over 28-million subscribers,
or about 20% of the population of Japan.
As you can see in Table 1, Japan commands an
impressive share of the global market for m-commerce. Projections show that Japan will retain a
major share of revenue generated from m-commerce for the next one to two years.
Wireless technology is well suited to the
lifestyles of Japanese consumers. Japan is a very
mobile society in which time spent commuting to
and from work represents a sizable portion of the
working day. For this reason, mobile computing
and wireless products are important tools in making travel time a productive extension of the
physical office. Commuting time and business
travel also create the opportunity for personal use
of the Internet in the form of commercial transactions, entertainment, and information services.
There are other ways in which mobile communications and computing devices are suited to
the special needs of Japanese consumers. The
popularity of home computers is not nearly as
O
J A N U A R Y
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widespread in Japan as it is in the U.S. Many people who do not own or do not use home computers to access the Internet will purchase a mobile
phone for Internet access.
In this respect, mobile phones have three distinct advantages: (1) they are much simpler to
operate, (2) they are much less expensive than
wired access, and (3) they allow the user to avoid
the expense of purchasing a home computer.
Unlike other countries, Japan enjoys certain
advantages in the nature of its market that set it
apart from other major world markets. One key
advantage in Japan is the presence of universal
engineering standards for telecommunications
products and services. Universal standards have
certainly accelerated the adoption and acceptance of mobile phones in Japan. They enable
NTT DoCoMo to deliver a wider selection of content to mobile subscribers along with lighter,
more attractive handsets designed for convenience and ease of use.
by
Junichi Threat
The North American Market
By contrast, in North America the marketplace for wireless and mobile products is subdivided into operative zones based on the prevailing types of technology that are dominant in that
particular area. In North America, there are no
universal standards for interoperability between
devices and across networks. This absence of
national standards for protocols, connectivity,
infrastructure, applications, and services must be
overcome in order for the U.S. to become a real
powerhouse in the global wireless technology
arena. This diversity of standards is due to the
very competitive nature of American culture and
the innovative mindset that is always seeking a
cheaper, faster, and better alternative to the traditional way of doing things.
To be sure, these innovative qualities are also
embedded in Japanese culture, but the considerable diversity to be found in North America cer-
Junichi (JT) Threat is cofounder and EVP of Vuico’s
international operations. JT gained his business
experience by founding and selling two successful
systems integration and international consulting
companies. He has 18 years of international
business development and IT consulting experience.
Recently, he was the president and CEO of JQuest,
Inc., an international consulting company that
specialized in building Japanese and North
American joint business ventures.
@
[email protected]
www.WBT2.com
41
SOURCE: JUPITER RESEARCH COMPANY
M-COMMERCE
WORLD ELECTRONIC COMMERCE VIA WIRELESS INTERNET
(M-COMMERCE) MARKET FORECAST (2000-2005)
Table 1: Global m-commerce market
tainly impedes the voluntary adoption of uniform standards and manufacturing processes.
And yet, that is exactly what has to happen for
m-commerce to become as pervasive and profitable as it is in Japan.
Challenges of the
North American Market
Unlike the Japanese market, North American
wireless subscribers’ access to the Internet is
somewhat limited. Although many North American
wireless users have wireless Internet capabilities,
only a small proportion of these subscribers
actually use them.
In my opinion, the main problems with the
wireless Internet in North America are briefly:
• The lack of a robust wireless application infrastructure to enable the rapid deployment of
useful wireless-specific applications
• Wireless users do not have the wealth and
diversity of content they are accustomed to
from other channels
• Users are not content with the different pricing models for wireless Internet usage
The lack of enthusiasm for wireless Internet
services in North America seems to stem from
mobile users not being able to access Internet
applications as easily as they can on their home
and office desktops. Presently in North America,
most wireless personal communications services
(PCS) carriers are delivering a weak imitation of
the Internet experience to their subscribers.
PCS carriers should use more restraint in the
way they market the wireless Internet. Wireless
users believe the hype and expect to experience
similar processing speeds and the same range of
42
www.WBT2.com
content they receive from wired access.
Unfortunately, the reality of today’s wireless
Internet in North America is that users cannot
expect graphic-rich Web content; all they see is a
compressed menu of text-based information.
Today, North American PCS carriers strive to
increase access speeds and require users to equip
themselves with resource-intensive PDAs and
mobile laptops in order to have full access to the
Internet. I don’t look at this as a consumerfriendly long-term solution.
In order to overcome the problems I just
described, I believe it is necessary to focus on
developing wireless-specific applications that
can enable any wireless device to access any content, instead of content that can be seen only on
more powerful devices. Instead of trying to duplicate the wired Internet experience, the focus
should be on developing robust wireless-specific
applications and offer content that is most useful
and of greatest value to mobile users. In Japan,
NTT DoCoMo has found that creating the most
satisfying wireless Internet experience for their
wireless customers is the only way to capture
market share.
Another problem in North America stems
from PCS carriers trying to duplicate the wired
Internet experience on wireless devices. In this
respect, they fail to consider the fact that wireless Internet content is viewed differently and
therefore will likely be used differently. For
example, when wireless users are on the road,
they are more likely to access e-mail, airline
reservation schedules, and traffic information
rather 3than apply for a mortgage loan or download graphic-rich Web content. Certain sites are
inherently more useful to a mobile customer
than others.
Although North American PCS carriers try to
approximate the wired Internet experience on
wireless devices, they do not retain the wired
Internet pricing structure of a monthly fee for
unlimited Internet access. Per-minute user rates
may not be the best pricing scheme when carriers don’t offer enough wireless-specific applications, desired content, and functionality to
ensure a satisfying Internet experience.
1
Supply and demand: the m-commerce cycle
J A N U A R Y
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The Japanese Experience
Powerful capabilities could finally drive
a global standard for a wireless Internet
by Junichi Threat
J
J A N U A R Y
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43
M-COMMERCE
INTERNET
NTT DoCoMo’s experience in developing the
THIRD GENERATION FOMA TECHNOLOGY AND BLUEGRID
i-mode service rested on their insight into customer requirements and their decision to merge
wireless and Internet technology as opposed to
building countless bridges between two distinct
and mutually exclusive domains of techSuppliers/Customers Purchasing, Procurement,
e-marketplace
nology. From the first, NTT
Sales, Maintenance, etc.
DoCoMo recognized one imporExisting trading partners & customers
tant fact about wireless Internet
services and m-commerce: as is true
Front office
in the wired Internet arena, it was
INTERSTAGE
understood that when more people use
Application
Server
the wireless Internet, the cost of
Security,
traffic control
access should get cheaper, along with
Front office
the cost of doing business transacINTERSTAGE
Middleware
INTERSTAGE
Network
tions.
Existing Online
Portal Server
Access Server
System
INTERSTAGE
As a result, the products and servIntegration
INTERSTAGE
Server
Application
ices that wireless users buy should
ERP/EDI
Server
INTERSTAGE
become cheaper and, of course, profits
Application
Server
from products and services sold by application and content providers should be higher as
Mobile phone customer
sales volumes increase. This cycle is illustrated in
Figure 1.
Of course, the most important reason for
implementing NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode service
was the potential revenue it was expected to add
to the bottom line. Company executives were
expecting declining prices for voice services, and
wireless Internet services were simply another
way to improve the bottom line. They wanted to
prevent their wireless service from being reduced
to a commodity along the lines of long-distance
apan’s fascination with NTT DoCoMo’s mobile Internet service appears to have
carriers.
taken root as a cultural as well as commercial fixture. The demand among
NTT DoCoMo had already invested substanJapanese consumers for next-generation wireless Internet services is the prime reatial amounts in their wireless infrastructure and
son why NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s leading provider of mobile telecommunications and
had a substantial base of existing customers; the
data services, is bypassing the interim 2.5-generation level technology in favor of true
more customers who could be persuaded to use
third-generation commercial broadband CDMA services.
their services, the better. NTT DoCoMo also
As a result of their wholesale embrace of the mobile Internet, NTT DoCoMo is expectwanted to distinguish their services from the
ed to lead the wireless market at least through 2003 and possibly beyond, due to a couple
competition and give current and prospective
of factors operating strongly in their favor. NTT’s Cyber Communications Laboratory
customers better value for their money.
Group, the R&D muscle behind the Japanese telecom and Internet boom, is currently
According to Ryoichi Hosoya, NTT SOFT’s EVP
developing the technology that will become the foundation of 4G and 5G mobile
of R&D and marketing, NTT DoCoMo’s goal was
telecommunications networks. The other asset in NTT DoCoMo’s corner is the aggressiveto encourage their current and prospective cusly innovative mindset that drives design and development in all areas of Japanese industry.
tomers to use i-mode to conduct m-commerce
As many of you already know, the latest offering
transactions. There was a general consensus that
from the group that created i-mode is a 3G mobile
in order to spur m-commerce in their wireless
communications platform called FOMA (Freedom of
Internet services, they would have to:
Mobile multimedia Access). FOMA promises users a
• Reduce the cost of wireless Internet access
panoply of benefits that target the shortcomings of the
• Quickly develop robust, wireless-specific
mobile phone/mobile computer. Built on the
applications
WCDMA system, and compliant with IMT-2000, an
• Offer content that customers want to use
international standard for 3G mobile communica• Offer a satisfying Internet experience
tions, FOMA promises voice transmission clarity on a
par with fixed-line terminals. It supports diverse multi“NTT DoCoMo developed a common set of
media content designed to accommodate and enliven
goals and carried out a focused strategy to
DoCoMo’s i-mode package of mobile Internet access
achieve them with a high level of discipline and
and services. FOMA also pushes the envelope by
intensity,” Mr. Hosoya explains. “The company
offering a videophone and music-video content via
had the foresight to create i-mode at a time when
DoCoMo’s i-motion and M-stage services.
the Japanese market for mobile phones was
reaching maturity and users were in need of new
—continued on page 47
services. These services could not be provided
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M-COMMERCE
DR. SEISHIRO TSURUHO,
PRESIDENT AND CEO, NTT SOFT
MR. RYOICHI HOSOYA,
EVP, R&D AND MARKETING,
NTT SOFT
2
46
unless customers were given full access to the
existing network of conventional Web servers to
provide a seamless connection between mobile
phones and the Internet.”
With that in mind, NTT DoCoMo created a
prominent wireless Internet portal similar to AOL
in the wired Internet access arena.
Yoshiki Mitani, NTT SOFT’s senior manager,
Internet Solution Division, explains NTT
DoCoMo’s approach to customer retention: “NTT
DoCoMo provided so many services that the
users had no conceivable reason to leave. The
company wanted to own the wireless user’s experience from beginning to end. They encouraged
loyalty and got wireless Internet service customers deeply involved in our services by providing customers with an easy add-on optional service to personalize their wireless portal experience.”
NTT DoCoMo also targeted enterprise and
corporate users by offering robust wireless applications that can access corporate systems and
intranets. They designed wireless applications
that allow subscribers to access corporate data
from anywhere.
Having built the foundation, NTT DoCoMo
was in a unique position because they controlled
the wireless gateway that linked the wireless
Internet connections to the content providers
and the product and service providers. A small
portion of every m-commerce transaction added
up to a very significant new revenue stream for
NTT DoCoMo.
Not satisfied with merely keeping pace with
their competitors, senior management declared a
corporate mission to surpass and lead the rest of
the world in offering cutting edge wireless
Internet services. To do that, NTT DoCoMo
hopes to create a new “mobile culture” by integrating the Internet with the mobile phone.
Mr. Hosoya explains that NTT DoCoMo
embraced the Japanese people’s desire for highquality products and services. “NTT DoCoMo
applied the inherent Japanese trait of adding
innovative features and building in the quality
that makes our products cheaper, faster, and better than any other products in the world.”
Bridging cultures: Vuico will anchor NTT SOFT’s wireless campaign in North America
www.WBT2.com
NTT SOFT’s North American Strategy
How will NTT SOFT reinvigorate wireless and
mobile technology in North America? The
answer lies in NTT SOFT’s Content Solution
Suite. NTT SOFT immediately sensed that consumers in North America would welcome the
same advantages as the Japanese. As Dr.
Seishiro Tsuruho, president and CEO of NTT
SOFT, explains, “We discussed the business
opportunity of bringing NTT SOFT’s Content
Solution Suite to North America and found the
idea was well received by senior management.
The first step in that process was to nominate a
suitable technology partner in the U.S. market
to provide localization and marketing insight
into what we perceived as a dramatically different landscape with altogether different challenges to overcome.”
“We selected Vuico, Inc., a Houston-based
wireless and mobile computing software development company, because the management
team has the experience to adapt and market
NTT SOFT’s Content Solutions Suite to the target
market that NTT SOFT was most comfortable
with,” Dr. Tsuruho says “We believe that with
Vuico as our partner, we can reinvigorate the
wireless and mobile computing landscape in
North America by promoting the technology and
standards pioneered by NTT SOFT.”
NTT SOFT expects Vuico to achieve rapid
penetration into the North American market and
provide optimum value for consumers. Their first
step will be to customize BlueGrid products for
the OEM and carrier markets and to deliver these
products through licensing agreements and
annual contracts (see Figure 2). BlueGrid is a
client-server software foundation that facilitates
the connectivity and communication of wireless
devices, such as cellular phones and PDAs, to
server-side applications. This enables wireless
devices to perform true mobile computing.
As Dr. Tsuruho puts it, “Right now, mobile
devices can only imitate the features and functionality of a desktop. We want to close the gap
and BlueGrid is a big step in that direction. It’s
the link between mobile devices and servers and
the means to accelerate the development of
mobile applications.”
For the handset and PDA OEMs, Vuico products feature preinstalled BlueGrid and complementary applications and content. For ISHVs,
BlueGrid products offer a comprehensive end-toend wireless solution involving client, server, and
wireless services. In similar licensing arrangements to serve wireless subscribers, Vuico offers
bundles of customized applications, tools, and
games that enable carriers to drive more bandwidth usage.
By targeting the OEMs and wireless carriers
first, Vuico will be building the fundamental
client-server infrastructure for their applicationconnectivity software in North America. This
proposed infrastructure is fully compliant with
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THIRD GENERATION FOMA TECHNOLOGY AND BLUEGRID
—continued from page 45
With FOMA and i-mode gaining more attention in markets outside Japan, NTT
DoCoMo is focusing on the work of developing the applications that will turn
their latest smart mobile device into an all-purpose accessory as indispensable and universal as an electronic wallet. One giant leap in that direction
occurred with the introduction of the Java-enabled cell phone. Java extended
the range of applications available to cell phone users to include the full
range of the most popular entertainment and business programs. These applications require a close and reliable collaboration between the SHD (smart
handheld device) and server-side applications through a network.
That means communication becomes the key issue for improving the
flexibility and interactive qualities of mobile applications on platforms that
operate on a wireless network. Developing wireless-specific applications is a
process that is mined with formidable technical challenges that can limit
scalability and reliability and delay time to market for new applications.
To overcome this hurdle, NTT SOFT, a sister company and key technology
partner of NTT DoCoMo, created a specialized developmental tool called
“BlueGrid.” BlueGrid is an advanced mobile communications middleware
that supports easy development and scalable execution by enabling the collaboration of J2ME CLDC (connected limited device configuration) and J2EE.
To developers of applications for wireless-specific devices, that means:
• Minimum development costs and reduced time to market
• Scalability and high reliability of applications
Java currently leads the pack as a preferred wireless middleware platform
programming language. In a chaotic market in need of global versus regional
standards, Java’s growing dominance at least gives wireless markets a foot in the
door toward the distant beacon of a seamless global wireless device.
To further enhance the power of FOMA, i-mode, and all other Javaenabled wireless devices, NTT SOFT made significant enhancements to
BlueGrid. The new version of BlueGrid is called “BlueGrid for Web
Services” and is far more powerful than the current version and much
more advanced than any similar technology on the market.
NTT SOFT and their key technology partners in Japan and the U.S. are
convinced that this new product is equally suited to the U.S. market. They
are also convinced it will solve many of the problems that are keeping the
North American market from adopting the kind of next-generation wireless solution that is already available in Japan.
Although BlueGrid for Web Services has already passed all final beta
tests, it will not be available until April 2002. The new product is now
being localized for the North American market and will be simultaneously
available in Japan and in the U.S. Detailed technical data on BlueGrid for
Web Services is not yet available in English.
NTT SOFT believes that wireless technologies will continue to evolve
and compete in the next few years. In the meantime, they are concentrating
on building strategic partnerships as the key to long-term survival. One of
NTT SOFT’s chief BlueGrid architects commented: “Wireless technologies
will slowly begin to unify in years to come, but for now we are focused on
choosing the most advantageous business alliances. Naturally, we would like
FOMA and BlueGrid to be as popular in, say, North America and Europe as
they are in Japan, and that will depend on finding the right partners to localize and position these products to appeal to a very different kind of market
than what we have here.”
The FOMA/BlueGrid combination presents an attractive alternative to the
patchwork technologies competing for regional market share. How the market
responds will depend on the willingness of wireless executives to broaden their view
beyond their own fixed horizons. For a general overview of BlueGrid, see
http://www.ntts.co.jp/java/bluegrid/en/web-services_en.html
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47
M-COMMERCE
the global standards set forth by NTT DoCoMo
and NTT SOFT.
Vuico’s next step will be to deliver a software
development kit (SDK) to content providers,
including applications developers, and vendors,
consultants, and system integrators. Vuico’s SDK
will enable all types of wireless devices and
appliances to gain access to server-side
applications by facilitating the rapid
development and deployment of applications created by Web developers, as well
as traditional programmers.
Vuico also intends to develop key sales
channels to the enterprise with system
integrators, alliances, partnerships, and
resellers. Vuico’s approach to the enterprise will be that of traditional vertical
market development in which vertical
specialists will be authorized to offer
Vuico products and services aimed at
specific vertical industries.
Currently Vuico is in the funding
stage in which key business development efforts are designed to leverage
the current leadership position of NTT
SOFT. Upon completion of the funding
round, Vuico will develop a world-class
management team that will guide further development and delivery of wireless software, including Vuico MX
(Mobile Expansion Pack), wireless application servers, and 3G- and 4G-specific applications.
While BlueGrid will be an effective tool
for Web developers and content owners to
extend Web applications into a wireless
environment without prohibitive development costs, MX will give hardware and
software OEMs and wireless carriers the
benefit of rapid mass-personalization of
content.
Together, BlueGrid and MX will give
Web developers a wireless software infrastructure that paves the way for the rapid
development and deployment of wireless
applications. This in turn will make smart
phones more appealing to consumers who
want all the benefits of m-commerce. This
is proven technology built to standards
that have been well tested in Japan.
Looking ahead, NTT SOFT and Vuico
will remain focused on the consumer.
Ultimately, NTT SOFT’s North American
venture will depend on the customer’s
perception of the value that these products add to their lives.
Dr. Tsuruho’s direct approach to
marketing NTT SOFT’s technology in
Japan will continue to guide NTT SOFT’s efforts
to build a following for their wireless solutions
in the U.S. and Canada. “If the value is there,
then success, no matter how elusive, will follow
in time.”
FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY
PRODUCT REVIEW
Pocket PC 2002 Is
Enterprise-Ready
with a Built-in
VPN Client
ith the release of Pocket PC 2002, built-in VPN client
support is now available. That’s the great news for wireless enterprise users; the not-so-good news is that it is a
Microsoft-centric PPTP VPN implementation. Furthermore, the VPN
has been internally configured to launch only when accessing any
of the following Windows network resources that might be available on the enterprise network:
• Windows network share (\\servername\share\)
• Microsoft Exchange server Inboxes
• Internet proxy server (using the http://servername/ form; Internet
addresses containing periods will not initiate a VPN session)
W
When any of these network resources are requested, a PPTP
VPN session is first created before any network application data is
transferred as part of the overall request.
Pocket PC 2002 VPN Configuration
To configure the VPN client, first navigate to “Settings” which is
found on the “Start Menu” and select it. Next, find and select the
“Connections” tab found in the horizontal tab menu set located
along the bottom of the screen. Locate the “Connections” icon and
select it.
The Connections Manager tab form (see Figure 1) will contain
three selection groups, with the first two having associated “Modify”
and “Connect” buttons. The first group specifies the Internet connection and will factory default to “Internet Settings,” the second group
controls work network connection properties and will default to
“Work Settings,” and the third group determines what network card
(i.e., Ethernet card, dial-up modem, or wireless RF modem) will be
used. This option will default to “The Internet.” The Internet connection group allows you to define the remote access account. Settings
associated with this particular group include connection name,
modem, and baud rate. Additional advanced tabs available as a part
of this group include port and TCP/IP settings.
The work network connection properties allow you to define
multiple connection properties, and also include a VPN connection
tab (see Figure 2). The VPN connection form is very simple, allowing you to specify the name and IP address of the PPTP-friendly
VPN gateway system of your corporate IT infrastructure. In addition
to the VPN tab, you can also specify a network proxy configuration
under the “Proxy” tab. To automatically connect to the Internet
using work property settings, check the “This network connects to
the Internet” found in the “Proxy Settings” tab.
A detailed overview of the Connection Manager is available on
Microsoft’s Web site: www.microsoft.com/mobile/pocketpc/tutorials/connectionmanager/article6.asp
48
www.WBT2.com
1
The Connections Manager tab
2
The Work Settings VPN tab
Finally, it is important to note that the configuration of the VPN
server ideally requires using the VPN software component included
in Windows NT or 2000. If a non-Microsoft Internet security system
is being used, then be sure to specify a PPTP VPN gateway type
using PPTP tunneling coming across port TCP/1723 and using MSCHAP for extended authentication. The primary and secondary
DNS assignments should also be set for automatic assignment.
Pocket PC 2002 VPN Testing Bed
To establish a quick test bed for testing the Pocket PC 2002 VPN
client, configure the single dial-in user account that is available
with any instance of Windows 2000 Professional. This single dial-in
account can be configured to host a single remote VPN session.
Once this has been configured, manually initiate a VPN connection
on the Pocket PC 2002 by completing the following steps:
1. Configure the wireless modem, and verify that the modem can
establish an RF link using the device driver’s software.
2. In the Connections tab form, set the first list box to “Internet
Settings,” and then select the “Connect” button. (Perform this
step to establish the Internet connection.)
3. Make sure “Work Settings” is selected in the second list box,
and select the “Connect” button here as well. (Perform this step
to establish the VPN session.)
If network path resolution continually fails during testing, one
important troubleshooting tip is to determine which WINS server IP
addresses the VPN client is obtaining, and verify these against what
you are expecting to see.
Summary
The Pocket PC 2002 VPN client is a free PPTP Microsoft-centric
VPN solution. If your Internet security device supports a different
VPN protocol such as IPSEC, then consider investigating other vendors’ VPN client solutions. The list of third-party VPN clients
includes Certicom (www.moviansecurity.com), ColumbiTech
(www.columbitech.com), NetMotionwireless (www.netmotionwireless.com), and V-One (www.v-one.com).
Company Info:
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
Telephone: 425 882-8080
Product Information:
www.microsoft.com/mobile/pocketpc/software/features/vpn.asp
Pricing: Included free with the
Pocket PC 2002 OS
Overview: A built-in PPTP VPN
client that has been optimized
for providing a secure session
when accessing Microsoft-specific network resources. Supported
connection devices include dialup, Ethernet (both wired and
wireless), and cellular modems.
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GLOBAL SERVICES
You feel like an emasculated geek; you have
to feel that low when you get off the plane in
Hong Kong or London or Cape Town and suddenly, your wireless devices do not work. They
just sit in your pockets, useless, and bigger than
the loss of any cool, is that you are simply out of
touch, unreachable. Big deals may be pending –
clients may be screeching for attention – but none of this
will come your way because the probability is enormous
that, abroad, your wireless devices are so much inert plastic.
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GLOBAL SERVICES
A
nd that is definitely not the promise of
wireless. Business travelers accordingly
feel let down, betrayed even, when they
travel abroad, and nowadays this message
is hitting home. “There’s a need for seamless telephony for global travelers that carriers recognize,” says Andrew Cole, leader of the global
wireless practice at consulting firm Adventis.
Increasingly, too, carriers are taking steps to
satisfy this need: “Carriers now are seeking to
meet the demand for world phones,” says Cole.
How? Two years ago there were no easily
available global roaming options for U.S. customers, but that changed in April 2000 when
Nextel “was the first to come out with global
roaming,” says Gary Jankowski, a Nextel
senior marketing manager. What Nextel
offered was a one-phone, one-number
solution that meant a Newark, New Jersey
executive could get off the plane in
Heathrow or Frankfurt and his cell phone
would work, both for making outgoing
calls and receiving incoming ones. The
system wasn’t perfect – coverage in foreign countries wasn’t necessarily flawless –
but it pretty much delivered worldwide
voice roaming, and right there Nextel had
launched a revolution.
The Nextel announcement in turn triggered
an avalanche of competing offerings –
VoiceStream, Cingular and AT&T all market
some form of world phone service – but there are
facts to know here and a first fact is that, wishes
aside, we are nowhere near a world of seamless
interconnectivity for wireless devices. What works conveniently and affordably in New York and London may
not work in Santiago, Chile, almost certainly will not work
in Tokyo, and definitely won’t function at all in Argentinian
Patagonia (although there are options there – stay tuned).
In most places, most of the time, however, global roaming for
voice works well, and the fact is, there isn’t much that’s complicated
in setting up such services. Three components are needed, says Blake
Svensrud, CEO of WorldCell, a provider of global wireless services. Svensrud
ticks off the building blocks:
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by
Robert McGarvey
Robert McGarvey has covered the Web since 1994
for magazines ranging from Technology Review to
Upside. He is the author of the best-selling book
How To Dotcom and a contributing writer to various
SYS-CON publications, including Wireless Business
& Technology and Web Services Journal.
@
[email protected]
www.WBT2.com
51
GLOBAL SERVICES
• Bilateral, intercarrier roaming agreements.
• Data clearing between the visited and host
network. This involves both validating that the
visitor has a right to use the network and also
providing the user’s home carrier with data for
use in billing.
• Financial settlements (where visited networks
are compensated for use of their facilities).
1
2
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Front view of interWAVE’s
Network-In-A-Box (NIB)
solution (complete GSM
network in the size of a PC
tower)
Back view of interWAVE’s
NIB solution, including the
SMC, BSC, BTS
www.WBT2.com
None of that is new, all of it has been thoroughly demonstrated, and so – quite realistically
– world travelers have a right to expect cell phone
service in large parts of the world.
A fourth necessity mentioned by many analysts is the need for reliable fraud prevention
tools, and this is a hitch that sometimes blocks
users from accessing the cell phone services they
feel entitled to. As digital technologies have
spread, worries about fraud have diminished but
they have not vanished, and the upshot is that
sometimes cellular network access will be denied
legitimate visitors because the system has detected the possibility of fraud. This is an understandably huge aggravation to travelers but there are
no predictions about when fraud will become so
inconsequential that there will be no more
denials of service. For now, the clear message is:
“work with your carrier before you leave to
ensure you get the service you expect,” says
Audrey Schaefer, director of corporate communications for Nextel.
Even when a user does that, however, it doesn’t mean world phone service has reached a reliable level of usability. Here’s why: “The technology for providing a world phone for voice is adequate,” says Cole, “but very inadequate for data.
It is proving difficult to have data services roam
with world travelers.” Stay tuned for more on that
because this may be the thorniest and ugliest
issue in today’s global wireless world.
no handset maker is backing off world phone
development, either. Still, one problem that
plagues all world phones is that their existence
may be unknown to possible buyers. Carrier support for high-end phones has been slender. Most
carriers are preoccupied with driving up subscriber numbers, and the usual bait is a free or
very low-cost plain-Jane phone. Pricier models
are left to languish, frequently with little visibility,
in retail shops. One upshot: all handset makers
realize that to sell world phones, they themselves
will have to carry a heavier marketing burden
and so far, with overall sales proving sluggish in
the recessionary economy, the big handset makers are hanging back from spending these dollars.
Even so, at Siemens for instance, development of world phones remains aggressive,
according to Seiche. The company offers several
models (including the spiffy S40, supported by
Cingular). Going forward, Seiche and Siemens
are convinced this market can only get bigger
and the reasoning is scrupulously bottomline
oriented. “Carriers need new ways to generate
revenues and global roaming will do that,” says
Seiche.
This is all the more critical because no analyst
thinks the carriers’ current strategy of recruiting
subscribers by dangling very low-cost plans will
result in near-term profit improvements. Carriers
need to be hunting for products and services to
sell to high-end customers, and featured on any
list of high-end products is global roaming. That
is a big reason why optimism continues to reign
in this niche.
GSM Rules
Another issue fueling the spread of global
roaming: international cell phone carriers have
aggressively penetrated the U.S. market. “Global
alliances among carriers will make global roaming easier,” says Seiche, who points to Deutsche
The Globe in Your Hands
Telekom’s acquisition of VoiceStream in June
First, feast on the good news, and a bright spot
2001. “The future is getting brighter for global
is that handset makers are racing to give road
roaming,” says Seiche.
warriors dependable wireless
What is the present? Pretty
tools. “The market for world
good, if the user carries a GSM
phones is definitely growing,”
phone, says Priscilla Lu, CEO of
says Florian Seiche, vice presiSanta Clara, California-based
dent and general manager of
interWAVE Communications, a
mobile phones at Siemens.
developer of software and hardBuyers will be traveling business
ware for cellular networks.
professionals or “those who
“GSM has a clear lead that will
want the latest in technology,
only widen,” says Lu, who indiwhether they travel extensively
cates that GSM bands claim
or not,” says Seiche, who indi70% of global digital subscribers
cates that these are small but
(and 65% of all cellular substill significant target groups.
scribers). “GSM is the closest to
Siemens isn’t alone. Nokia,
being a global standard,” agrees
Motorola, and Ericsson are all
Roger Quayle, CTO of
steaming forward with world
IPWireless, a developer of
phone development programs.
Dr. Priscilla Lu
broadband wireless data soluNobody, frankly, seems to be
interWAVE chairman and CEO
tions.
recording substantial sales, but
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The Accompli 009 is a tri-band device that features
a speakerphone. But the unit’s core function is data.
building out domestic GSM networks. Nobody
predicts that GSM will soon surpass competing
technologies in the U.S., but even for customers
who use different networks, there’s an easy solution: multiband phones that also feature GSM.
“That’s how we provide our users with global
roaming,” says Nextel’s Jankowski, who explains
that subscribers carry a phone equipped to operate both on the Nextel iDEN network and GSM
networks. “For our subscribers that’s the easiest
solution,” says Jankowski.
Service Face-Offs
Brief looks at four competing programs give
quick insight into how these services work:
• Nextel: Nextel’s Worldwide Service lets subscribers (numbering around 100,000, according
to Nextel’s Schaefer, use one phone, one number in 80+ countries around the globe. Rates
range from 20¢ per minute in much of Canada
to $1.29 per minute in most of Mexico and
western Europe, and rarely top $2.99 (India).
“A call that might cost $6 from a London
hotel would cost only $1.29 using our phone,”
says Schaefer.
“We offer maximum convenience at a good
price,” says Jankowski, who indicates that the
Nextel world phone (a Motorola i2000plus)
operates on the 900MHz GSM band.
A hitch for Nextel – one that all carriers face
in one way or another – involves SMS messages. “You’ll receive your messages when
overseas, but you won’t be able to reply or initiate new messages,” says Jankowski. Note
this, however: no carrier can offer better, for
reasons revealed below.
• VoiceStream: “With our ownership, global
roaming is very important to VoiceStream,”
says communications director Kim Thompson,
who indicates that from the get-go VoiceStream
and its parent, Deutsche Telekom, have
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planned to offer
subscribers
competitively
priced international calling.
Simplifying matters: VoiceStream is
a GSM network.
Service is available in
about 80 countries
and per-minute rates
vary from 99¢ (in 26
European countries)
to $4.99 (Indonesia,
Russia and a few other
exotic locations). The only
requirement for subscribers to
access VoiceStream’s global calling
capabilities: they have to buy a designated
world phone, either an Ericsson T28 or
Motorola’s P280. What about wireless data
abroad? Thompson acknowledges it’s not yet a
reality and she also says “we do not yet have a
time frame of when it might be available.”
• Cingular: “Global roaming is a critical service for
a segment of our business customers,” says Tim
Hogan, vice president for business marketing
with Cingular. Cingular’s rates are stiffer than
their competitors’: $2.49 per minute for outgoing calls, $3.99 per minute for incoming, and
prices are applied to all 67 countries where
Cingular has roaming agreements. But, according to Hogan, the users who want world phone
services tend not to be especially price-sensitive.
The usual must-have is a world phone
capable of operating on three GSM bands
(1900MHz in the U.S., and 900 and 1800 MHz
abroad). Cingular customers can choose
between an Ericsson T28 or a Nokia 8890.
With somewhat more optimism than other
carriers, Cingular admits that wireless data
abroad is a problem but, insists Hogan, “we are
working on solving this with our international
partners. For our customers, wireless data goes
hand-in-hand with voice. We see reliable data
roaming as a paramount need and we will offer
it abroad.” When? Hogan is less explicit about
the time frame but, he promises, for Cingular
this is a high priority. “We need to tweak our
international roaming agreements to cover
data and that is a process we are beginning.”
• AT&T: AT&T’s WorldConnect is the only major
carrier that imposes an extra monthly fee for
users of their global roaming service ($7.99),
and calls are charged at 99¢ per minute plus
applicable international long distance charges
(which vary from 35¢ per minute in western
Europe to 95¢ in Africa). AT&T Wireless customers can use any of nine phones (handsets
from Ericsson, Nokia, or Motorola) for international roaming.
3
interWAVE’s operation and
management system with a
NIB including the SMC, BSC, BTS
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GLOBAL SERVICES
Globally, GSM is especially strong in
Western Europe (where it claims about 365million subscribers, according to GSM
Association data); Asia Pacific (203-million
subscribers); and Africa (28-million subscribers). Paradoxically, it is weakest in
the U.S. (13-million subscribers in the
U.S. and Canada), but that number
may be vaulting upward as
VoiceStream, Cingular, and AT&T
all throw dollars at
GLOBAL SERVICES
What about the others? Virtually all U.S. carriers offer some kind of global roaming – and analysts believe that going forward, offerings will get
richer, costs will drop, and eventually callers will
truly experience something near a seamless network where one phone will in fact work pretty
much universally. By when? “I’d say within three
years,” says IPWireless’s Quayle.
Data Busters
So, why is data proving to be the global sore
spot? While the mechanics of voice roaming are
well-understood – the industry has over a decade
of experience administering voice roaming pacts
and there’s plentiful technology for validating
users and billing for time – there is no history
with data roaming. Case in point: How is data
charged? By time (as with voice), or by byte? How
are systems established to have data follow the
user as he or she travels from country to country?
How are visitors validated? Nobody knows the
answers yet and the upshot is that, in most cases,
data doesn’t figure into current global roaming
plans.
This isn’t strictly a U.S. issue, either. Rollouts
of GPRS data networks in western Europe, for
instance, have been hindered by substantial
incompatibilities between networks and –
although western European users are much more
reliant on wireless data than U.S. users – data
roaming there is proving to still be the stuff of
fantasy. Systems simply aren’t in place and while
analysts speculate that markets could be huge –
for example, Katrina Bond, an analyst with
Analysys, has predicted 6-million GPRS subscribers in Europe by year-end 2002 – those same
analysts aren’t optimistic that the intercarrier
kinks will be ironed out anytime soon. The result:
global wireless data roaming simply is on hold,
for now.
Is it in fact possible to deliver global wireless
data? A vivid proof comes from Inmarstat, a UKbased satellite communications company that
offers a genuinely global service. “We cover 98%
of the globe,” says Stephen Rogers, the company’s director of marketing communications. “The
2% we don’t cover are the North and South
Poles.”
Initially founded to serve an ocean-going
clientele, Inmarstat – which offers both voice and
data services – lately has begun selling into
enterprise and it’s been put into service everywhere from Afghanistan (where war correspondents use it to connect with home offices in the
U.S. and UK) to North Sea oil rigs. Voice pricing is
a competitive $2 per minute and data – which
can be anything from digitized news footage to
faxes to computer documents – is $7 per minute,
says Rogers, who points out that while the data
price may seem hefty, Inmarstat can actually
connect (via its own satellite network) pretty
much wherever world travelers go and, importantly, “our transmission rate is 64K, much faster
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than the 9.6 offered by cell phones, when they
can connect,” says Rogers. “We launched the
world’s first global, wireless packet data service
and we still are unrivaled.”
One hitch with Inmarstat: users need a proprietary, pricey (about $2500, says Rogers), and
bulky (about five pounds) unit that does multiple
duty as a voice phone, fax, and data terminal.
“This is a B2B product,” concedes Rogers and,
fact is, at that pricing, only well-heeled companies with a keen need to communicate everywhere will likely loom as significant Inmarstat
targets.
Mass Market Movers
For most users, Inmarstat plainly is not a
viable alternative, but just when the goal of
worldwide wireless data seems elusive, Motorola
is now entering the scene with its Accompli 009
phone pictured earlier (about $650), a tri-band
GSM device that features a speakerphone. But
this unit’s core function is data. “It was designed
as a data device; we added phone functionality
later,” says Motorola marketing manager Allan
Spiro.
“Tremendous buzz” surrounds this product,
according to Spiro, who says Motorola found it
for sale on eBay months before it hit the market.
“People want it because it truly solves a need,”
says Spiro, and that need, of course, is for affordable data globally.
Does the Accompli 009 deliver? Not exactly, at
least not yet, Spiro admits. Users will have access
to wireless e-mail, WAP browsing, and other data
services, but global SMS, for instance, will remain
on the not-yet list. When will all data services be
available globally? Sooner than you might think,
says Spiro. “We believe the networks will be built
out soon. Demand is already there, and devices
like the Accompli are getting into users’ hands.”
Global wireless data, he adds, is a solvable problem – and “corporate customers definitely want
it,” he says.
That’s why he and Motorola are optimistic
that – in the near-term – a full slate of wireless
data services will become available to satisfy the
demands of customers who are already lining
up.
Is Motorola right? Nobody knows just yet –
but keep a close watch on how the Accompli
009 phone fares in the weeks after its debut,
around the beginning of 2002. If demand
matches Motorola’s high expectations, this will
be a big sign that, finally, corporate customers
are indeed demanding global access to wireless
data.
And carriers likely won’t be long in meeting
that demand. “A large concern for us is meeting
the demand of our business customers,” says
Cingular’s Hogan – and you can bet that when
enough business customers line up for wireless
data services, the carriers will line up briskly to
make some of their best customers happy.
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Boingo Jumps In
The killer network of the future may be a combination of Wi-Fi and 3G
Just before the clock ran out on a disastrous year for wireless
Internet investments, a $15-million wager was placed on the nearterm wireless future – in the name of Santa Monica, CA startup
by
Tim Bresien
Tim Bresien is a freelance writer covering
investments in the wireless communications sector.
He is a former research analyst with the
telecommunications consulting firm of Bond &
Pecaro, Inc., Washington, DC, and a cofounder of
the Telecom Investor Forum, held annually at
SUPERCOMM.
@
[email protected]
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Boingo Wireless.
b
y this time next year
many of you will be
Boingo subscribers,
accessing the Internet at multimegabit speeds from your laptops, from thousands of hot
spot locations in airports, coffee shops, and public gathering
places all across the country.
The alternate reality is that
Boingo will become just the latest addition to the broadband
scrap heap, but I’m betting
on the former scenario. This company has what it
takes to kick-start
the Wi-Fi service
industry, and to carve
out a leadership position for
themselves in the process.
In my last column (WBT, v.1,
n.9) I presented a collection of
industry opinions in an
attempt to find consensus among the internal
flaws and external factors
that contributed to the 2001
demise of Metricom. The rise of
the IEEE standard (802.11b) for
wireless Ethernet, also known
as Wi-Fi, and increasing hot
spot network buildouts were
cited as factors that would rob
Ricochet of their nomadic
demographic.
Unlike Metricom’s proprietary microcellular technology,
the 802.11b standard has led
dozens of manufacturers to the
edge of a newborn industry,
driving equipment costs ever
downward. Wireless hot spot
networks are being deployed by
businesses, neighborhood
cooperatives, and even individuals for less money than a
year’s worth of coffee at
Starbucks. Of course there’s
also the case of Metricom
apples versus Wi-Fi oranges in
this debate, as 802.11 networks
can deliver T1
speeds in common areas for
essentially the same cost to the
subscriber.
Sky Dayton, Boingo’s
founder and CEO, identified
this market as many others
have – while assembling a WiFi network in his home. What
his company will attempt to do
is to link the laptop road warriors of today with a wide
choice of service providers and
three billable Boingo service
levels. Laptop users will find
that they are increasingly
equipped with standard wireless Ethernet cards for use in
the office and at home. Thanks
to the 802.11 standard, these
same cards will be their keys to
wireless access on the go. “Just
as TCIP/IP served as a catalyst
for the wired Internet, I think
that Wi-Fi can serve as a catalyst for the wireless Internet,”
said Dayton. “One unifying
standard that brings it all
together.”
Using Boingo’s software,
which is available in downloadable beta form, businesspeople
in the field (or the airport or
the coffee shop or the library)
can use their laptops to “sniff”
for service
providers when
they are within a designated coverage
area.
Earlier wireless Internet providers
have been limited to only the
most technically sophisticated
customer base, both in the coffeehouse and in the field. This
surely reduced the size of their
intended markets. Metricom
found that cost and speed
weren’t the only limiting factors
that topped their subscribership at just over 50,000. Many
of the former Metricom users I
know are BSEEs or similarly
knowledgeable computer professionals. Ease of use is the
bridge that will enable providers
to move into a mass-market
opportunity.
The public beta software for
the Boingo Wireless service
includes a profile manager so
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customers can connect to
favorite Wi-Fi signals quickly
and easily. The company claims
that their full release software
will also include a searchable
database of hundreds of Boingo
hot spots so customers can find
locations whether or not they
are online. It will also feature
an integrated authentication
mechanism to make it simple
to log on to the Boingo Wireless
network. A one-click “Personal
VPN” will resolve the issues
that corporate MIS managers
may have with Wi-Fi security.
Another point of departure
for Boingo is that they will
serve this nascent market with
insights gained from the early
days of the commercial
Internet industry, both in the
field and from the boardroom.
EarthLink Potential
Dayton is the enterprising
upstart who founded EarthLink
(Nasdaq: ELNK) in 1994 and
helped lead its growth to 5-million customers, 6000 employees, and over $1 billion in
annual revenue. He still serves
as chairman of the company,
which is the largest independent Internet service provider in
the United States today.
“I’ve spent many years looking for another idea with
EarthLink potential,” said
Dayton. “Last year I set up a
Wi-Fi network in my house,
and I realized I was looking at
the next stage of the Internet. I
knew I had to make the leap
and be a CEO again. With WiFi, the wireless Internet is now
affordable and easy to build
and use.
“I see a world where thousands of entrepreneurs and
companies build millions of
wireless broadband hot spots
using Wi-Fi, blanketing cities
with wireless broadband. These
networks will be popping up
everywhere, and it will be
chaos. Boingo’s mission is to
organize that chaos and to
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make it easy to find and connect to the wireless Internet
wherever you are.”
Therein lies one of the key
differentiators for the company.
They aren’t building a nationwide wireless network. But stay
tuned. They will market one.
Dayton will serve as chairman of Boingo. Joining him on
the board are Austin Beutner,
president of Evercore Ventures;
John Sidgmore, the former CEO
of UUNET; Peter Barris, managing general partner of New
Enterprise Associates (NEA);
and Stewart Alsop, general
partner at NEA. Sprint PCS
joined Evercore and NEA in
Boingo’s $15-million first round
of funding, which was
announced on December 20.
“Sky Dayton is a great entrepreneur, and Wi-Fi is the
biggest opportunity in technology today,” says Alsop. “In the
past 24 years, we've learned
that the combination of the
two always leads to a great
investment.”
NEA also counts Wayport
among their portfolio of investments. The company, based in
Austin, TX, may be considered
one of the de facto leaders of
the Wi-Fi industry, due to the
financial troubles that other
early-mover service providers
have encountered. They are
also one of Boingo’s first strategic partners.
Ironically, John Sidgmore
joined UUNET Technologies as
president and CEO the same
year that Dayton launched
EarthLink. Independently they
grew companies that played
critical roles in the commercial
development of the Internet.
UUNET, which is now a
WorldCom Company, has
become the world’s largest
Internet access provider with
more than 70,000 business customers and 6,500 employees
worldwide.
“Wi-Fi has the potential to
turn the communications
Just some of the many distinguished wireless
movers and shakers we’re honored to have sitting on WBT’s
International Advisory Board or Technical Advisory Board
Simon Phipps Chief Software Evangelist, Sun
Microsystems, responsible for expounding and
explaining the “big picture” of software development. (www.sun.com)
Anita Osterhaug Director of Knowledge Products
for Brokat AG, headquartered in Stuttgart,
Germany, and San Jose, California.
(www.brokat.com)
James Pearce Director of Encerca, the new name
for AnywhereYouGo.com's Wireless Internet Lab,
which now has its own Web site – an expansion
of AYG's WAP testing, monitoring, and consultancy services. (www.encerca.com)
James Gosling Cocreator of the Java programming
language, currently Vice President and Fellow at Sun
Microsystems working at Sun Labs where his primary
interest is software development tools. (www.sun.com)
Peter Roxburgh A Mobile Solutions developer
with Secure Trading Ltd., the foremost service for
processing Internet-based credit card payments in
the United Kingdom. (www.securetrading.com)
Larry Mittag VP and Chief Technologist of Stellcom,
Inc., he has more than 25 years of technical and
strategic expertise with wireless systems
integration and embedded systems design and
development. (www.stellcom.com)
Rajiv Gupta Worldwide champion of “E-Speak”
and Hewlett Packard’s Chief Architect of
E-services. (www.hp.com)
Douglas Lamont Visiting professor of marketing at DePaul University
in Chicago, Illinois. The author of Conquering the Wireless World: The
Age of M-Commerce, and six other international marketing books, he
holds a PhD in business administration with a major in marketing.
Ron Dennis Cofounded Livemind, Inc., led the thirdparty developers group at AOL, and created AOL’s Web
Hosting Service and Software Greenhouse. Ron has
guided several Internet start-ups. (www.livemind.com)
Andrea Hoffman Editor-in-Chief and Technical
Director of Mobile Media Japan, an Internet portal
for information on the Japanese wireless industry.
(www.MobileMediaJapan.com)
www.WBT2.com
57
VENTURE CAPITAL
BOINGO WIRELESS
AT A GLANCE
SKY DAYTON
FOUNDER, CHAIRMAN, AND CEO
URL: www.boingo.com
FOUNDED: February 2001
HEADQUARTERS: Santa Monica, CA
CHIEF EXECUTIVE:
Sky Dayton
founder, chairman, and CEO
EMPLOYEES: 27
INDUSTRY: Wireless (Wi-Fi)
Internet Access
PRIMARY MARKETS:
Mobile laptop users,
"road warriors"
FULL RELEASE SOFTWARE AND
SERVICE AVAILABILITY:
Later this year
SERVICE LEVELS:
Boingo As-You-Go
no monthly fee,
$7.95 per 24 hour
connect per venue
Boingo Pro
$24.95 per month
for up to 10 24-hour connects;
each additional connect is $4.95
Boingo Unlimited
$74.95 per month
for unlimited access
SOFTWARE:
Free beta software available
today for download
CAPITAL RAISED: $15 million
INVESTORS:
New Enterprise Associates,
Sprint PCS, Evercore Ventures
58
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industry on its head,” said
Sidgmore, currently vice chairman of WorldCom. “Boingo has
tapped into the most exciting
thing happening in telecom
right now.”
The executive team seems
similarly loaded with management expertise and Internet
industry know-how. Complementing them are the first two
members of Boingo’s Advisory
Board: Michael O’Dell, former
chief scientist at UUNET, and
Dave Farber, professor of
telecommunications at the
University of Pennsylvania and
the former CTO of the FCC.
Having had the opportunity
to attend one of Farber’s presentations on the role of unlicensed spectrum at the FCC in
early 2000, I can understand
the value of his association
with Boingo. There are few peo-
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many companies in this industry.”
He acknowledges the
“important and vibrant community of single access points,”
some of which are seen as controversial for sharing their DSL
and cable modem connections
within their neighborhoods. Yet
they will all contribute to the
growth of Wi-Fi. On the subject
of what Boingo can offer the
independent provider, he
reached back into his own history: “We have the whole backend system here for the industry. If you’re a small operator
and you can put up an access
point, we’ll add you to our system.
“They don’t have to build a
billing system,” Dayton continued. “They don’t have to build
an authentication system. They
don’t have to create a tech sup-
VC
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where companies could concentrate on any one layer and
be successful, as opposed to
trying to vertically integrate.”
Have the stars aligned for
Boingo? Well, every first-round
startup is born with more
potential than they may ever
have in the future. They don’t
all enter the world with
Boingo’s pedigree however. Nor
do they arrive with an important and often overlooked
asset: good timing. Wi-Fi as an
“industry” is only further legitimized by Boingo’s entry. Only
those who would romanticize
the short-lived era of shared
wireless networks, boosted
with antennas made from
Pringles cans, could be disappointed as new money and
expertise moves in.
According to technology
think tank Allied Business
“Boingo’s mission is to organize
that chaos and to make it easy
to find and connect to the
wireless Internet wherever you are”
ple involved in the wireless
industry today that are closer
to the cutting edge, technologically speaking.
The Year Ahead
Just before New Year’s, I
asked about the Boingo future
view as it pertained to the coming year.
“Wi-Fi will be built from the
bottom up by entrepreneurs
and individuals,” said Dayton.
“It’s a mix of small networks
with several POPs and carrierclass businesses like Wayport,
that have hundreds. That’s also
how the ISP business was built.
Ultimately it’s my hope and my
belief that there will be many,
port group, they don’t have to
do the marketing. For a small
operator that makes for a much
more streamlined business
model. This is very similar to
what happened in the ISP
space. EarthLink was the first
company to go out and say
‘instead of building a nationwide network of POPs we’re
going to work with infrastructure providers in cities around
the country and around the
world that do that work.
Instead we’re going to focus our
energies on software, billing
systems, tech support, authentication, and marketing.’ As a
result, what evolved were several layers of an ecosystem
Intelligence of Oyster Bay,
New York, subscriber revenue
from North American hot
spots was a mere $1.1 million
last year. The firm predicts
that it will grow to $868 million in 2006. Dayton can
appreciate steady growth,
remembering the formative
stages of EarthLink, when he
would take his wife out to dinner to celebrate the signing of
30 new customers. This time
he is armed with both prescience and patience, as well
as an experienced management team. And the belief that
“the killer network of the
future is a combination of WiFi and 3G.”
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HTTP://JAVA.SUN.COM/JAVAONE/
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Wearable and Wireless
Computing Converge
Welcome to the world of wireless wallets, “smart spaces,” and “interactive clothing”
Even before the present wireless boom, the field of wearable computers was developing rapidly. Now it’s poised to explode into the
by
Scott Stemberger
marketplace of unwired must-have technology, with companies
such as Levi Strauss already offering a line of jackets that incorporate a hidden MP3 player and mobile phone connected to a remote
control and microphone in the collar. Although other technologies
must continue to evolve in order to enable true pervasive computing, wearable devices clearly bring with them the greatest amount of
value and are likely the final piece of the puzzle.
w
Scott Stemberger has several years of experience
managing large software, Internet, and wireless
implementation projects. He’s currently a manager
at Etensity, an e-business consulting firm based in
Vienna, VA, where he cofounded the company’s
wireless solution practice. Prior to joining
Etensity, Scott worked in the engineering
services division of Boeing.
@
[email protected]
60
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earable computing”
represents the next
big frontier in the
push for the always-on, alwaysactive, always-connected environment of the future.
Envisioned by some as a
small hidden device with transmission and storage capabilities
that’s wirelessly connected to
an ear-mounted speaker/
microphone, most people think
of wearable computers as more
suited for Star Trek than for a
shopping mall. But we’re seeing
the emergence now of a new
paradigm for how wearable
technology can create value for
consumers and enterprises.
future. The term refers to a
highly integrated and complex
network of people and computers in which there exists a continuous stream of content and
services provided to all members of society. Active and pas-
sive transactions are simultaneously executed based on user
preferences, user location, and
other designated data points
that define what information
should be presented to the user
at precise times and locations.
Some organizations, such as
Gartner, see the wearable trend
as an integral part of society.
Gartner predicts that by 2010,
40% of adults and 75% of
teenagers will utilize wearable
devices, and 70% of the population will spend 10 times longer
per day interacting with people
in the e-world than in the physical world. Other organizations
have echoed similar sentiments, citing the benefits of
wearable devices as too great a
value to ignore.
For instance, in the future, a
“digital persona” (i.e., your
electronic profile, that manages
First, the Big Picture
The term “pervasive/ubiquitous computing” is thrown
around fairly often by businesses and research organizations
attempting to describe what’s in
store for the society of the
Acceleration Sensor
Receiver Electrodes
Piezo Actuator
Transmitter Electrodes
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and defines your interactions
with other computers and systems) may choose to allow you
to snooze an extra 30 minutes
because you received an
update to your calendar stating
that an 8:00 a.m. sales meeting
has been postponed. Of course,
this was done after checking
the traffic report along your
daily route to ensure that you
can arrive at work at your regular time of 8:30 a.m., and that
no other new tasks that would
require you to arrive early had
fallen on your plate in the
interim.
On your way to work, you’re
informed of gas and coffee specials available from vendors
along your route. You choose to
get only coffee now because
you have enough gas and can
fill your tank after work. Once
at work, you begin refining your
sales presentation that’s now
been rescheduled for 11:00 a.m.
at another building. Reviewing
your presentation while walking
to the other building, you
notice a spelling error and fix it
immediately.
Upon arriving at the meeting,
you prepare to deliver your
presentation by uploading it
into the computer attached to
the projector. As you begin,
you’re informed via instant
message that some members in
the room aren’t being acknowledged by the face recognition
system. Your digital persona
suggests removing a later slide
with sensitive pricing information; you agree, and the slide is
instantly removed, all done
behind-the-scenes while you
continue speaking.
Upon completing the presentation, you’re packing up when
an urgent e-mail arrives from
your boss regarding a client
emergency. You quickly finish
and rush to his office, reading
the e-mail while simultaneously
calling his secretary to let the
boss know you’ll be at his office
in 10 minutes.
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What Exactly Are
‘Wearable’ Devices?
The scenario described above
is more of a reality today than
many people realize. One
example: the concept of “smart
spaces,” or physical locations
that react differently as various
people move in and out of
them, already exists to some
degree. A smart space combines
building and technology infrastructure, allowing things such
as temperature to be adjusted
in a room based on an individual’s physical presence and
associated digital persona.
In the future, personalized
physical attributes will be augmented by an individual’s information needs. Increasingly,
localized interactions with the
space around you will create
value and efficiency for corporate citizens, while improving the
quality of life for society at large.
Although other technologies
must continue to evolve in order
to enable true pervasive computing, wearable devices clearly
bring with them the greatest
amount of value and are likely
the final piece of the puzzle.
Today’s handheld computers
and other assortments of mobile
devices (pagers, phones, PDAs,
PDA watches, and so on) offer a
glimpse of where the industry is
moving as the devices continue
to decrease in size, while seemingly improve in functionality.
Ultimately, these devices will
become integrated in such a
manner as to provide minimal
distraction to the users by not
preventing them from performing other tasks (cooking, for
instance), even as they utilize
the device (reading e-mail).
Wearable computers are
miniature devices that enable a
user to conduct computerized
tasks with 100% portability and
freedom, all nearly transparently. Wearable computers are integrated into our wardrobe and
lifestyle so as to appear invisible,
offering a multitude of input
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and output mechanisms that
allow a user to continue with
other tasks even as they interact
with the computer and environment around them. Additionally,
while the advanced functionality
of today’s handheld devices has
severe form factor implications,
wearable devices of the future
will likely function more as thin
clients, providing device manufacturers more latitude in the
absence of the excessive battery
and processing power requirements associated with today’s
devices.
Current Research Thrusts
In order for wearable devices
to gain critical mass, the concept
of pervasive computing must
continue to evolve, allowing
wearable and nonwearable fixed
devices to interact in a seamless
fashion. For this to happen,
industry players must continue
to perform advanced R&D and
strike partnerships for combining efforts and making advances.
What follows is a description of
three areas in which considerable progress is being made.
‘SMART SPACES’
Smart spaces, such as an
enclosed meeting room, store,
corporate building, or shopping
mall, will bring with them
increased usability and functionality for all wirelessly connected
mobile devices, including wearable computers. As business-
62
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and consumer-focused organizations integrate smart spaces,
mobile device owners will feel
more inclined to utilize mobile
and wearable devices, which
allow them to seamlessly interact
while at work and at the grocery
store. The value proposition
inherent to smart spaces – thin
clients, interactive digital persona, location, and time-sensitive data – are not novel concepts, yet are much more realizable with the use of smart spaces
and their ability to easily deliver
highly prioritized localized interactions that will motivate the
mobile user of the future.
As an example, 802.11b
offers this capability today to
corporations deploying WLAN
stations in strategic locations.
WLAN stations can be configured to restrict access to sensitive content in certain physical
locations, and to restrict user
access altogether. Streetbeam is
an outdoor solution; their
Remote Access Mobile Point
(RAMP) continuously beams
out a message prompting users
to accept advertising information. This information, typically
location-specific, is transmitted
via infrared to the device once
the supporting display application has been downloaded.
INPUT/OUTPUT (I/O)
MECHANISMS
I/O mechanisms are a key
component to the success of
VC
WF
DJ
wearable devices. The ability to
easily and unobtrusively interact with a device and the surrounding environment is paramount for wearable devices, in
terms of differentiating them
from nonwearables.
For example, Sony Computer
Science Laboratories has been
performing cutting-edge research
on input technologies and two of
their ideas, called GestureWrist
and GesturePad, could be something we’re all using by the end of
this decade. With the goal being
to make inputs to your wearable
device as conceptually unnoticeable as possible, GestureWrist is a
wristwatch-type input device that
recognizes human gestures by
measuring changes in wrist shape
and forearm movements.
Networked to a visual display,
GestureWrist could serve as the
user’s virtual mouse.
Companies such as Xybernaut
have produced wearable devices
capitalizing on more traditional
I/O vehicles. Xybernaut, whose
core customer is Bell Canada,
offers a handsfree wearable computer that includes a body-worn,
voice-activated, high-power
processor and a VGA color flat
panel or head-mounted color display with microphone and eyepiece, through which the user
sees a video display. The batterypowered central computer
weighs less than two pounds, and
clips onto a vest or belt. The 1.1in. head-mount display has an
optional miniature video camera
or palm-size color touch screen
that straps onto the arm. (Bell
Canada trial users claimed to
have saved nearly an hour a day.)
A key advantage of wearable
visual displays is their ability to
project an image that appears
similar to that of a PC from the
user’s vantage point. This output
mechanism will likely become
very popular as it continues to
evolve and better integrate with
current eyewear. Voice remains a
prospective option in both input
and output technology, as well.
J A N U A R Y
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To be adopted by mass markets, wearable devices must
become completely integrated
with the user, so as not to
appear unusual or prevent
standard physical interactions –
such as shaking hands. By integrating with eyeglasses, watches, and shirts, wearable devices
become nearly invisible, allowing the user to conveniently
multitask while not impeding
physical activity or interrupting
other personal interactions.
The other Sony prototype
mentioned – GesturePad – is an
exploration into “interactive
clothing,” which is certainly a
step in the right direction.
GesturePad is a small pad that
can be inserted into traditional
clothing, thus transforming the
clothes into interactive devices.
GesturePad is actually a thin
layer of sensor electrodes that
can detect finger motions
applied to the outside of clothing fabric. A GesturePad inserted into the lapel of a sports coat
could control a PowerPoint
presentation, the volume of an
MP3 player, or the scroll bar of
a Web page being projected
from a person’s eyewear.
Furthermore, multiple sensors
could be inserted into any individual clothing item, each having a specific function.
Watches provide a clear
avenue into which wearable
computers have already begun
to infiltrate. Fossil, one of
America’s leading watch companies, recently announced a new
Wrist PDA, featuring both Palm
and PocketPC versions. The
watch provides read-only content, with current support for
infrared beaming as the transfer
technology between handheld
PDAs and the Wrist PDA. The
watch can store up to 190K of
primarily PIM-type (Personal
Information Management) data
such as contacts, schedule, todo’s, and memos.
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IBM and Citizen Watch Co.
recently joined forces to deliver
IBM’s WatchPad, a prototype
wearable computer.
The WatchPad features a
320x240 monochrome VGA display, Bluetooth and infrared
wireless connectivity, and
speaker, microphone, and fingerprint-sensor functions. The
goal of WatchPad is to begin
delivering new human-computer interactions – such as using a
watch to control a presentation
or other nearby devices – and to
receive, deliver, or store pertinent information.
Hypercom Corporation and
WearLogic have recently
announced an alliance to allow
consumers to use WearLogic’s
leather pocket wallets for wireless payments at checkout
counters using Hypercom terminals. WearLogic claims to
have proprietary technology
that can transform a traditional
leather wallet into a mobile
financial device containing a
flexible screen, ATM-like soft
keys, and an intuitive keyboard.
Users can track financial
account information, purchase
products in physical and electronic environments, and
download and store Web-based
information such as addresses
or driving directions.
Future Challenges
While research and commentary often focus on the physical
attributes of wearable devices,
many challenges come from
both the hardware and software
perspectives.
THICK OR THIN?
The debate continues as to
how thick or thin a wearable
client should be, as we’ve no
idea what our functional
requirements or hardware limitations will be in the future.
Today, a thick client represents
more CPU power, memory, and
disk capacity, which translates
to a larger, heavier device that
WIRELESS CHECKS IN
TO HOSPITALITY
Wireless is transforming
the hotel experience for
guests and employees alike.
IS WORLDWIDE
WIRELESS
BROADBAND
BARRELLING OUR
WAY?
As wireless broadband
connectivity spreads around
the globe, what technologies are taking us there?
How close are we? What are
the obstacles?
MAKING MONEY
FROM MESSAGES
SMS might be the solution to the growing debt
problem faced by companies that massively overbid
for 3G licenses, at least until
3G starts making money.
MOBILE OPERATORS
SEEK INCREMENTAL
REVENUE FROM THE
MOBILE INTERNET
a look ahead...
INVISIBILITY AND SOCIAL
ACCEPTANCE
What you’ll
see Next Month
in WBT...
Leveraging new and existing infrastructure for immediate and long-term ROI.
THE WIRELESS
WEB MATTERS
There’s plenty of opportunities for all involved, but
the public will buy in only if
they see indispensable tools
that enable greater productivity, entertainment,and,
of course, mobility.
MOBILE WEATHER
TECHNOLOGY FOR
THE ARMY
Weather affects not only
personnel, but nearly every
military weapon system and
operation. Mobile computing
technology can play a significant role in dealing with the
impact of weather systems.
www.WBT2.com
63
WIRELESS FUTURES
SP
SE
CS
requires a bigger battery and
dissipates more heat – all negatives when conceptualizing a
wearable device that, ideally, is
invisible to the casual eye.
Over time, as it’s rationalized,
packaging and other technological advancements can and will
reduce the physical size and
weight of a thick client.
However, thin-client enthusiasts
argue that these same advancements can be extrapolated to a
thin-client device, making the
device even lighter and smaller.
Ultimately, there’s no such
thing as a device being too
small or too light for a mobile
user interested in a wearable
device. However, the user must
take into account the worstcase scenario of no network
connectivity, and determine
what functionality is absolutely
essential 100% of the time, even
in nonconnected states.
BATTERY POWER
The proactive and self-tuning
nature of wearable devices will
increase the energy demand of
software on that device. In contrast, the pressure to make
wearable devices as small, light,
and unnoticeable as possible
places severe constraints on
battery capacity. There’s a growing sentiment that advances in
battery technology and circuit
design cannot overcome these
two opposing issues, and that
higher levels of system management must become involved.
One idea proposed by
researchers at Carnegie Mellon
is energy-aware adaptation, in
which individual applications
switch to modes of operation
with lower fidelity and energy
demand under OS control.
Another possibility is an OS
that can dynamically control
the amount of physical memory
that has to be refreshed.
Finding high-level energy management techniques will be an
ongoing and interesting challenge to watch.
64
www.WBT2.com
MC
FT
GS
USABILITY
Another key challenge for
wearable computer enthusiasts
will be usability. The user experience in the wearable industry
will be defined by multiple
facets: consistency, adaption,
and contextual awareness.
Consistency refers to an identical experience across different
environments and locations. If
users are accustomed to receiving certain alerts and information pushed to them when in
certain locations, what happens
when they visit another similar
location that lacks the smart
spaces or other infrastructure
to deliver the same experience?
Adaptation refers to the environment’s ability to detect a
lapse in service or service
unavailability, and adapt to the
situation by recommending an
alternative solution where
resources or services exist and
are more plentiful.
Finally, contextual awareness
refers to the user’s digital persona, and the ability to obtain
and store rich user information
beyond preferences and location. This includes traits such as
physiological (heart rate, body
temperature) and emotional
states, and how those attributes
can be used in conjunction with
other location- and time-specific
data to determine a course of
action or to guide an interaction.
Should the device be proactive
or transparent right now? Does
the user want to receive this
phone call? Is this message
important? What is the user’s
intent during this task right now?
A wearable device’s ability to
handle these types of inquiries
while delivering a consistent
user experience is what will
truly drive wearable devices to
reach critical mass.
PRIVACY AND SECURITY
Naturally, privacy and protection of personal information
remain at the top of the list of
challenges facing the intelli-
VC
WF
DJ
gent, ubiquitously connected
society. As stated previously,
pervasive computing requires
proactive interactions by
mobile and wearable devices,
based upon location tracking,
smart spaces, movements,
behavior patterns, and general
habits. This information must
be monitored on a continual
basis, causing severe security
concerns and implications for
the user. Users may fear that
this information could get into
the wrong hands and be put to
foul use, resulting in their
choosing not to rely on a pervasive computing system for
fear of a violation in trust and
privacy.
As with the energy issue,
there are contradictions here as
well. Reliance on the pervasive
environment around the user
requires greater trust by users
in the devices and infrastructure composing that environment. Whereas some users
today feel uncomfortable using
their credit cards online, the
pervasive environment needs
much more information about
users in order to ascertain a
user’s identity and authorization, and this level of information is more than users are providing today. Gaining confidence and mutual trust
between the user and system
will be challenging, to say the
least, and ultimately may prove
to be the biggest barrier to
wide-scale adoption of intelligent wearable devices.
Conclusion
“Pervasive computing”
remains our technology pinnacle, a utopia of sorts where
users are always on, always
active, and always aware.
Wearable devices will be a key
component in enabling pervasive computing to transform
our society into a networked
one in which a digital persona
—continued on page 37
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WBT COMPANYINDEX
COMPANY
URL
PAGE
AT&T
AUDIOVOX
BOINGO
CERTICOM
CERTICOM
CINGULAR WIRELESS
COLUMBITECH
DANACELL
DANGER
DISNEY
ENTRUST
EPIHAN CONSULTING
ERICSSON
FOSSIL
IBM
ICONVERSE
METRICOM
MICROSOFT
MOTOROLA
NETMOTIONWIRELESS
NEXTEL
NOKIA
NTT DOCOMO
PALM
SANYO
SIEMENS
SONA
SONY
SPRINT PCS
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS
VERIZON
VOICESTREAM
V-ONE
VUICO
WHERIFY
WORLDCELL
WWW.ATT.COM
WWW.AUDIOVOX.COM
WWW.BOINGO.COM
WWW.CERTICOM.COM
WWW.MOVIANSECURITY.COM
WWW.CINGULAR.COM
WWW.COLUMBITECH.COM
WWW.DANACELL.COM
WWW.DANGER.COM
WWW.DISNEY.COM
WWW.ENTRUST.COM
WWW.EPIPHAN.COM
WWW.ERICSSON.COM
WWW.FOSSIL.COM
WWW.IBM.COM
WWW.ICONVERSE.COM
WWW.METRICOM.COM
WWW.MICROSOFT.COM
WWW.MOTOROLA.COM
WWW.NETMOTIONWIRELESS.COM
WWW.NEXTEL.COM
WWW.NOKIA.COM
WWW.NTTDOCOMO.COM
WWW.PALM.COM
WWW.SANYO.COM
WWW.SIEMENS.COM
WWW.SONAINNOVATIONS.COM
WWW.SONY.COM
WWW.SPRINTPCS.COM
WWW.TI.COM
WWW.VERIZONWIRELESS.COM
WWW.VOICESTREAM.COM
WWW.V-ONE.COM
WWW.VUICO.COM
WWW.WHERIFY.COM
WWW.WORLDCELL.COM
51, 53
15
56-58
32
48
16, 51, 53
48
15
11
15
32
32, 48
52
63
63
14
56
11, 32, 36, 48
26, 52, 54
48
51, 53
52
14, 41-43, 47-48, 60
15
17
52
22,24
26, 28, 63
16-17
14-15
16
51, 53
32
47-48
11
51
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ADVERTISER
APRIVA
AT&T WIRELESS
URL
PHONE
PAGE
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877-233-9702
2
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68
COMPAQ
WWW.COMPAQ.COM/MOBILE
800-888-5846
7
CTIA
WWW.CTIASHOW.COM
202-785-0081
29
HIDDENMIND
WWW.HIDDENMIND.COM
866-242-4866
9
IANYWHERE (SYBASE)
WWW.IANYWHERE.COM/SOAR
800-801-2069
4,5
ICONVERSE
WWW.ICONVERSE.COM
781-622-5050
49
IMARK COMMUNICATIONS
WWW.EXPO4MOBILE.COM
888-827-6699
39
JAVAONE
HTTP://JAVA.SUN.COM/JAVAONE/
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KADA SYSTEMS
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LSSI
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QUALCOMM
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SOFTWIRED
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65
DATELINE JAPAN
by Michiyo Nakamoto
Launched in October, DoCoMo’s 3G FOMA service
Lessons from the Past
Nonetheless DoCoMo plans to spend massively over
the next three years on their 3G service, continuing to
believe in the benefits to consumers.
There’s no guarantee that 3G will be a success to rival
Kouji Ohboshi, DoCoMo chairman and the driving
force behind the development of i-mode, likes to tell the
i-mode, or even catch on in a significant way.
story of how Japan’s most admired new service was born
amid widespread skepticism. Ohboshi, who was then
DoCoMo’s president, gave the
CCORDING TO
go-ahead to develop and market
Yoshinori Uda, NTT
i-mode in spite of widespread
DoCoMo’s EVP, the
doubts as to whether such a
Japanese pioneer of the world’s
service would succeed.
first third-generation W-CDMA
When handset prices
mobile phone service may not
declined sharply in 1996, indimeet their target of 150,000 subvidual usage began to spread
scribers by the end of this comCan FOMA Attract 1,500,000 Users by March 2003?
and the market looked as if it
ing March.
was headed toward saturation,
Uda openly conceded to an
so Ohboshi decided DoCoMo needed to shift from voice to data
audience this month in Scottsdale, Arizona, that DoCoMo could find
services. “It was a (handset) dumping hell,” he recalls. “So I decided
it difficult to sign up 150,000 users to FOMA (Freedom of Mobile multhat relying on voice alone would not enable us to differentiate our
timedia Access) by the end of the fiscal year, as previously targeted by
services.”
the company. Achieving that target “is very difficult,” he admitted.
According to Ohboshi, DoCoMo met this challenge with a deep
Although Uda added that DoCoMo was still confident they could
sense of uncertainty, but this nurtured an entrepreneurial spirit
meet their target of 1.5-million subscribers by the end of March
and drive that has been at the root of the group’s success ever
2003, the 3G service DoCoMo launched in October has managed to
since. When DoCoMo was split off from NTT, their parent compasign up only 30,000 subscribers in its first three months. The small
ny, it was a very small organization. “NTT would never fail,” says
number is being blamed on the narrow area coverage and expenOhboshi, “but DoCoMo could have collapsed.” Instead, the i-mode
sive handsets. FOMA services were initially available only in the
team conducted meticulous research into what consumers wanted
Tokyo area and were just recently extended to Osaka and Nagoya.
from the service and tailored it accordingly. “We had to survive on
In the meantime J-Phone, Japan’s third-largest mobile operator,
our own. We struggled,” he recalls.
has announced a capital spending cut of about 50%, from $4.5 billion
to just over $2.3 billion, largely by scaling back on current 2G investment. The spending cuts, which will come in the current financial
Tachikawa: ‘We’re Going to Create Demand’
year to the end of March, reflect the strong influence of Vodafone,
“It is impossible to know whether 3G will succeed until you do
which last year gained control of J-Phone. Darryl Green, J-Phone’s
it,” says Keiji Tachikawa, DoCoMo’s president. “Everyone says there
new president, said the spending cuts wouldn’t affect J-Phone’s own
is no demand (for certain advanced services), but you can create
scheduled rollout of next-generation 3G services at the end of June.
demand. So, we are going to do it,” he states emphatically.
According to Kirk Boodry, telecoms analyst at Dresdner
DoCoMo’s faith in the benefits of their services has been their
Kleinwort Wasserstein in Tokyo, the spending cuts also highlight
strength. But it can also be a liability. Some products born of this
the increasingly difficult business climate mobile phone compaconfidence have been market flops. For example, a mobile camera
nies face even in Japan, where penetration rates are still below
unit marketed by DoCoMo, which must be attached to a mobile
those of some European countries and reflect a pragmatic recogniphone, has been overshadowed by rival J-Phone’s camera phones,
tion that J-Phone can’t afford to compete head-on with market
which have a camera embedded in the phone.
giant DoCoMo, which is three times its size.
There’s no guarantee that 3G will be a success to rival i-mode, or
Vodafone believes dual-mode handsets that can access both 2G
even catch on in a significant way. The new service will require
and 3G networks are essential for the spread of the new service.
huge investments of human and financial resources. Whether
However, analysts warn that the technical difficulties of producing
DoCoMo can confound the critics again depends on their ability to
reliable dual-mode handsets small enough to satisfy users could
be as sensitive and responsive to consumer needs as they were
delay the widespread take-up of 3G.
when they were a struggling upstart fighting for survival.
signed up only 30,000 subscribers in its first three months.
A
3G Crunch Time for
DoCoMo and J-Phone
Michiyo Nakamoto Tokyo correspondent of the Financial Times, regularly monitors DoCoMo and their suppliers, who, between them, have developed the world's
first W-CDMA service, FOMA. Her industry sources range from companies such as Matsushita Communications Industrial, which has been working on W-CDMA for
10 years, and NEC – its arch-rival in the mobile phone industry – to high-level executives in NTT DoCoMo itself, and in Japan's number 3 mobile telco, J-Phone.
66
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[email protected]
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