By Cassimir Medford
Network World, 12/24/01
[ Back to Power on the go ]

Companies that dispatch armies of people who work on trucks, read meters, fix gas leaks or deliver packages are beginning to ditch pencil-and-paper or feature-poor customized private radio solutions for mobile "office" technology.

Research in Motion BlackBerries, Palms and Compaq iPaqs provide less expensive, feature-rich and frequently upgraded alternatives for the systems of old. Wireless "office" systems offer superior economies of scale, local storage, numerous third-party applications, hundreds of developers, an array of public carriers and many systems integrators willing to add sophisticated functions.

BC Hydro, a utility that provides electric energy to more than 90% of the people in British Columbia, recently turned to wireless applications running on Windows CE. It replaced its radio-based dispatching system with ServiceLink, a wireless, Web-based dispatching system that is housed and managed by eMobileData, a wireless systems integrator in Richmond, British Columbia. ServiceLink, which hooks into back-office systems, consists of a Web-based application server, mobile device and carrier interfaces.

"These wireless systems enable utilities to work more orders per day, to notify customers and negotiate with customers, and to forecast their workloads. They are able to move people around in bad weather when even the radio goes out," says Deborah Springborn, eMobile's COO. "Even if the workers aren't in direct communication, they've captured their schedule locally and can continue working."