4G to the rescue?

Although the carriers will never admit that current 3G and 2.5G data services are anything less than spectacular, they are still prepping their networks for the next generation. And wireless providers hope 4G technologies will light a fire under the moribund market for data services on cell phones.

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Whether the technology is 1xRT (1x Radio Transmission) from CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) carriers such as Sprint and Verizon or GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) from the likes of AT&T Wireless, coverage is still hit or miss, performance is worse than a land-line modem, and the possibility of connecting wide area wireless to the corporate network remains a major challenge.

"The lack of corporate adoption for wireless data is due to lack of adequate coverage and lack of reasonably priced devices that incorporate data," said Gerry Purdy, principal analyst at MobileTrax in Cupertino, Calif.

At Sprint's user conference in Dallas last week, company executives discussed CDMA 2000 Release C and Release D that will boost both the performance and capacity of its network.

Release C will give CDMA carriers downlink data-rate speeds of 3.1Mbps with uplink remaining at peak 144Kbps, and a threefold capacity improvement. Release D will provide an uplink of 1Mbps peak, 3.1Mbps downlink, and will improve capacity by as much as four times.

Release C has been approved by the 3GPP2 (3G Partnership Project 2) standards body while work on Release D will be completed and approved by the end of the year, according to Dean Prochaska, director of industry standards at Sprint in Overland Park, Kan. Handsets that include Release C and D chip sets should be available in late 2005.

Prochaska's unique reading of the market tells him the real-time video services will drive the need for 4G technology. Others in the industry, however, see it differently.

Leonard Loventhal, senior vice president at Honolulu-based Hawaii Home Loans (HHL), agrees that the only way technology gets adopted in the enterprise is when an application drives it. For HHL, it is not video but the ability to have loan officers access its mortgage system from anywhere that convinced Loventhal to partner with Sprint in adopting data handsets as the company's primary access to its network.

"We would switch to 4G because we are committed to wireless technology, but many of the companies I spoke with [at the Sprint user conference] are reluctant to adopt wireless as we did because they haven’t figured out how to work it into their infrastructure," Loventhal said.

There are a number of startups that are betting their business plan on their ability to offer an end-to-end, over-the-air wireless IP technology for accessing data as the key to success. Two of those players are San Jose, Calif.-based ArrayComm and Bedminster, N.J.-based Flarion Technologies. 

Flarion, a relatively new startup, has been in talks with Nextel and other carriers to deploy its OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) technology on top of the carriers' current networks.

"4G should be an end-to-end IP network," said Ronny Haraldsvik, senior director of marketing at Flarion.

According to Haraldsvik, OFDM allows Flarion's airlink to send IP in the air.

"It is much like Wi-Fi. It doesn't know it is in the air," Haraldsvik said.

But while Wi-Fi range is measured in feet, Flarion's technology rides on cellular signals and has the same range as any cell tower.

Because OFDM is compatible with any LAN, a mobile operator will be able to provide wireless access without having to deploy middle layer protocols, applications, and devices.

"It is an access solution like DSL or cable," Haraldsvik claimed.

The Flarion solution will sit on existing cell towers and use existing backhaul, and it requires no changes to users' laptops, PDAs, or cell phones.

While Nextel executives offer no timeline for next-generation services, end-to-end IP over the air is the goal of all 4G solutions, said Greg Santoro, vice president of Internet and wireless services at Nextel Communications in Reston, Va.

Other benefits of 4G include user-determined quality of service.

"The ultimate 4G would be full on-demand capability, Wi-Fi to WAN roaming, and have it as a true IP network," Santoro said.

ArrayComm -- founded by Marty Cooper, the man credited with inventing the cell phone while he worked at Motorola -- also believes that end-to-end IP over the air is the goal of 4G. And ArrayComm appears to be ahead of the 4G promises and hype with a first-phase live deployment of its iBurst technology with Personal Broadband Australia in Sydney, Australia, and a trial with Korea Telecom in Seoul.

Cooper, like Nextel's Santoro, believes that the killer app for wireless is IP.

"Billions of dollars were spent building the infrastructure for the Internet. iBurst is transparent to IP and hooks up directly into the Internet to handle data transparently," Cooper said.

Perhaps as unique as iBurst technology is Cooper's belief that 4G services, such as ArrayComm's Personal Broadband, will be deployed not by carriers but by application vendors and application service providers.

"Some believe there is one bill for everything. I don’t believe in that model. Kodak will charge by the photo. The ISP will charge by the megabyte. You tell me how you create one bill that makes any sense," Cooper said.

iBurst technology will also find its way into many more devices than laptops, Cooper said. He believes companies like Fuji and Kodak will become application providers delivering pictures rather than making film.

But whatever scenario comes to fruition, the wireless carriers will certainly have a part to play. They had better. In order to attract investors prior to 3G deployment, the carriers made promises to Wall Street that in two to three years 20 percent to 30 percent of their revenue would come from data. Companies such as Sprint presently gain between 1 and 2 percent of revenue from data services, according to a private study done by Morgan Stanley earlier this year.