Wireless carriers ramp up data services

A gale force of new partnerships between carriers and mobile infrastructure providers is beginning to blow away roadblocks that slowed implementation of wire-less as a reliable, secure, and manageable platform for mission-critical enterprise applications. Carriers are joining with infrastructure players to extend the value of carriers’ networks while delivering the deep pockets and varied services the smaller mobile infrastructure solution providers lack.

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Nextel Communications will reveal a deal this week with Antenna Software to resell, support, and connect Nextel handsets to most of the major enterprise applications and present those services on a single bill that will include both the voice and data services. The service is called Nextel Bill.

In recent weeks, Sprint and Seven said they will extend Sprint’s PCS Business Connection data services from smart phones to lower-cost Java-enabled handsets. Cingular Wireless, working with Good Technology and Sprint, said it will bring push e-mail and PIM functions to cell phones. Meanwhile, Sprint and Cingular made deals with Antenna to give the carriers’ corporate customers access to field-force and field-sales applications.

With these announcements, enterprise users are noticing that carriers and mobile middleware providers are changing their attitudes toward the enterprise, said Ken Dulaney, principal mobile analyst at Gartner. Until now, carriers often treated enterprise customers like a collection of consumers, unwilling to do more than offer up a technology without the support and maintenance large companies have come to expect. “The problem was disinterest on behalf of the carriers,” Dulaney said.

The Nextel-Antenna partnership will give companies using Nextel handsets Antennas A3 product line, which includes the handset application, SmartClient, and field-service and field-sales components that can be customized for integration with individual deployments of solutions from vendors such as SAP, Siebel Systems, J.D. Edwards, and Oracle.

Peter Semmelhack, CTO and chairman at Antenna, cited IBM’s services model to describe his company’s arrangement with Nextel. “When IBM sells its services, it is soup to nuts and includes software integration, development expertise, application-provisioning expertise, and implementation services,” he said. These are the kinds of services enterprises also want from carriers if they are going to take mobile technology beyond e-mail, he added.

For their part, companies like Antenna and Good will try to leverage the respect and reach into the enterprise that the carriers own. “It is a symbiotic relationship,” said David Applebaum, vice president of marketing at Antenna. “What you now have is a convergence between telephony and data services.”