* As networks evolve, be prepared
In creating your grand plan for mobility, one item to quiz your carrier about is its timeline for network technology evolution and the upgradability of the hardware devices you invest in.
And it’s wise not to presume a lifespan of more than three years for any devices you buy (two years is probably playing it safer for business professionals). This might mean that you postpone a purchase or limit an initial deployment to just a population of users for whom a payback is an absolute no-brainer.
It’s no secret to anyone who has followed the cellular market that 2G, 2.5G and 3G networks continue to undergo many iterations of technology upgrades. Usually, the upgrades offer advantages such as faster speeds or global interoperability. However, sometimes you can’t presume backward compatibility between the devices your users have (or that you’re contemplating purchasing en masse) and the newer network service, which is usually available in fewer places than the older service.
And, for many large organizations with lots of very distributed users, coverage usually trumps speed. For smaller, more local businesses, however, speed often wills out. These are the priorities you have to determine.
I mention this now, because we are on the brink of another upgrade to the mobile network services path from Cingular Wireless (whose network footprint has merged with that of the former AT&T Wireless). In January, Cingular announced that it had completed its first High-Speed Downlink Packet Access call in the Atlanta market and will be building out the HSDPA footprint throughout the year.
HSDPA is an enhanced version of Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) 3G technology. UMTS is available from Cingular today in six cities, thanks to AT&T Wireless’ previous efforts. HSDPA will ultimately support peak data speeds in the download-only direction of up to 14.4M bit/sec and, in the nearer-term, about 1M to 3M bit/sec.
But users are already caught between services. For example, there is no single network interface card (NIC) available in the U.S. that works with both the carrier’s UMTS service (running at a maximum of 384K bit/sec) and its slower, but fairly ubiquitous and useful Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution (EDGE) data service (100K to 130K bit/sec).
You need to ask carriers about such things: To use EDGE and UMTS, do I need to buy two data service plans for each user, for example, along with the two NICs? What happens when HSDPA comes along – what are my connectivity and interoperability options there? How many pieces of end user equipment are necessary to cover me everywhere?
Consider, also, Sprint. The carrier has been committed to a Code Division Multiple Acces-based technology path and repeatedly says it will deploy 1x EV-DO (300K to 500K bit/sec) any day. However, the company just joined the WiMAX Forum and owns a lot of spectrum in the 2.5-GHz band, which can be used for mobile applications, including the mobile flavor of WiMAX, a.k.a. 802.16e. And Intel says laptops en mass will have 802.16e connections embedded in them by 2007 (wouldn’t it be nice if there was a network service to connect them to?) Sprint’s acquiree, Nextel, also owns a bunch of spectrum in this band, and has never officially committed to a 3G technology.
So before you commit to a large mobile data plan of your own, sync up with the carriers’ plans and find out what kind of hardware investments, upgrades and replacements you’ll likely have to make, based on your speed and coverage requirements in the coming years.
