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Your Turn:
Wireless Data Outlook

by andrew seybold
January 7, 2002

Welcome to the new Wireless Internet Magazine section of Wireless Week! When I agreed to do this column, I told the folks at Wireless Week that I would be happy to contribute a column every month, but that I didn't like the phrase "wireless Internet." We need to find some other phrase to describe what wireless data services are about.

The term "wireless Internet" gives the impression that wireless data is only about extending the Internet as we know it on our desktops. My contention is that if all we do as an industry is try to wirelessly deliver the same experience that we have on our desktops today, the uptake will be lousy. We have to understand that even with faster wireless packet-data networks and good color devices, the notion of using them to "browse" the Internet is not what will attract customers in droves.

As with all new technologies, those who want to access company information will make up the first wave of users. Research In Motion Ltd. already has proven that access to corporate e-mail is a big deal. If wireless information access is to be successful, we also need access to calendars, sales force automation and customer resource management applications, and corporate databases. We also need the ability to share information easily and quickly with others in our company.

Think about how we interact with information with the desktop Internet. Let's suppose that in our calendar there is a flight from San Jose, Calif., to Dallas tomorrow. We have become accustomed to opening a browser window, typing in the name of the airline Web site and navigating through the site until we reach the point of having to enter the flight number and date. We then get up-to-the-minute information about the flight status and gate number. If we want to check the weather in Dallas, we type in the name of another Web site, type in "Dallas" and get that information. If we want directions from the airport to our hotel or customer's facility, we type in yet another Web site address, enter the starting and ending locations and get a set of directions we can print out.

Are we going to go through this same nonsense on a wireless device while we're mobile? We don't have time to go through all of this, nor do we have the screen real estate to display a full Internet page – and we shouldn't have to. My business partner, Barney Dewey, calls what we need "active content" and it works like this.

We would select the flight information on our calendar and ask for updates. Without leaving the calendar, the back-end system would go to the airline site, gather the information and leave an "agent" in place to push any changes to us as an alert. The system would then retrieve weather information and place an icon in our calendar–a sun, a sun covered by clouds or a rainstorm (you get the idea). The system would then "see" that we have reserved a rental car and that we are staying in a specific hotel. In the background, the system would automatically download turn-by-turn directions. In the morning when we clicked on our first appointment, we would get up-to-date information we need for the meeting as well as any current news stories and perhaps the subject company's latest stock price. If there were orders in process, we would get a complete update as to their status and we could easily check the status of the accounts. With active content, we would have all of this information and more without ever leaving our calendar and resorting to a browser.

If we are to attract wireless data users, we need to make it faster and easier to use our wireless data device than any of the other tools we carry. If we can look up a flight faster in the paper copy of an airline guide, if we can change a flight reservation easier by calling a voice number, why do we need the wireless Internet?

Access to information while we are mobile has value. It is something we will pay for and it will make our lives easier and more productive. There are companies working on this concept of wireless information access, and guess what? If we get it right, we are going to want a similar system on our desktops as well.

In this new column I won't be focusing on the wireless Internet. I will instead focus on such things as what is being done to make use of both Internet and corporate information packaging so we are more productive while mobile. I hope you will enjoy these columns and I welcome both feedback and information about companies that understand the difference between the wired Internet and what we need when we are mobile. You can e-mail me at aseybold@outlook4mobility.com. See you next time. [WIM]

Andrew Seybold heads the Andrew Seybold Group, a consulting firm specializing in Connected Mobility, and is editor in chief of Forbes/Andrew Seybold's Wireless Outlook.