You’re wandering through Bucharest, Romania, lost and about to be late for an important appointment. You’re worried that your assistant back home can’t keep the network running in your absence, but your immedi- ate attention is focused on survival.
There are no cabs or subway stations in sight, and the signs are all written in a language you don’t understand. Does the street you’re on lead to the office you’re supposed to visit, or the part of town that the guidebook told you to avoid?
Hoping for an answer, you whip out your wireless data–equipped cell phone. What happens next depends on future developments in mobile data.
If you believe the vendors’ optimistic predictions, your smart phone is an invaluable tool. It displays a map of the local area, complete with a route to your destination. A bus will be passing by in 5 minutes, so you have the option to buy a ticket electronically or call the closest unoccu- pied taxi, which can reach you in 2 minutes. You choose neither, as the phone also informs you that one of your colleagues is in a café less than a block away. Noting that the corporate network has reported no prob- lems, you decide to join her and travel to the meeting together.
Alternatively, you may never get a chance to see the map or the net- work status report. Your phone is instead overloaded by pornographic
spam, trying to entice you into the houses of ill repute that fill the neighborhood you have inadvertently entered.
The only obvious transport option is a cab company that’s paid to part- ner with the cellular operator, and it can’t reach you for at least half an hour. You’re aware that your every move is logged and reported to the boss, who will want to know why you’re not at the meeting already. The expensive-looking cell phone has attracted the attention of some unpleas- ant characters. You switch it off and start to panic.
Both scenarios rely on location-based wireless data technology that uses satellites or radar-style systems to determine a cell phone’s position to within a few meters.7This technology is set to become more widespread
in 2003, though its own initial location is quite surprising. In an industry usually led by Europe and Japan, the first country to offer location-based wireless data services and applications across all its cellular networks will be the traditionally tardy United States.
America’s carriers aren’t deploying the technology because they think it’ll be profitable; they’re doing so because of a regulation designed to help emergency services pinpoint 911 callers. Nevertheless, it will give mobile business a much-needed kick start.
If you’re considering any kind of application for mobile data, location- based wireless data services could play a role. America’s carriers also throw up new but predictable privacy5and security concerns: Should
you be keeping track of your employees and potential customers? Or should you be worried about marketers, your service provider, and the FBI keeping track of you?
Corporate applications of location-based wireless data services are often described as “m-commerce,” marketing-speak that prompts many of us to flinch in disgust. The phrase has become a catchall term for any business conducted using a cell phone, from checking your corporate e-mail to buy- ing soda (both of which have yet to become mainstream, though they are offered by some carriers). But, while m-commerce is certainly overhyped, it isn’t entirely empty; nor is it just pocket-size e-commerce.8
M-commerce proponents originally claimed that it would enable cus- tomers to buy anything, anywhere. They forgot that cell phones already allow people to do this, and in a way that doesn’t involve navigating a menu system five layers deep or typing URLs on a 12-button keypad. When British operator Orange asked a group of volunteers to survive for a day by ordering their food through a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) phone, it found that they quickly gave up on the wireless Web and called for pizza.
The operator blamed this on WAP’s primitive state, but even a perfect user interface wouldn’t stimulate much m-shopping. If people are pre- pared to wait several days for delivery, as most online shoppers are, their order probably isn’t urgent enough to require a cell phone.
Most of us use cell phones to keep in touch with friends, colleagues, and contacts, not to buy things. This will likely be the case even when mobile data capability becomes widespread, though the type of communi- cation may change: e-mail (with attachments), database access, and per- haps video or multimedia will supplement basic voice service. As companies have realized this, m-commerce has become a lot less fashionable.
In June 2001, analyst firm Ovum (http://www.ovum.com) asked 60 enterprises in the United Kingdom what they saw as the main application for wireless data. Of the nine available responses, not one enterprise men- tioned mobile commerce.
Nearly half chose the ability to retrieve data from corporate net- works, and all said they had data that mobile users could benefit from. Some jargon-happy vendors describe this as business-to-employee (B2E) m-commerce, but it’s really just remote access.
Nevertheless, mobile commerce isn’t dead. Operators are spending bil- lions of dollars on third-generation networks, and they cannot recoup those investments in charges for bits or minutes. They hope to recover their expenditures through more innovative services that take advantage of a cell phone’s great distinction—that it accompanies its user nearly everywhere.
Some of these are extensions of existing Web services. They rely on a phone’s ability to keep in constant contact with customers, helping them to make time-sensitive decisions. Location-based wireless data technology is something new and unique to the mobile world, permitting genuinely innovative services: for example, a phone that can provide precise traffic and weather forecasts, guide police to a thief whenever it is stolen, and record a person’s movements both on line and off line. This last one partic- ularly worries many people, so the industry is emphasizing that location- based wireless data services don’t (yet) mean an electronic tag of the kind currently applied only to convicts.
Data aren’t stored long-term. Certain services might do this in the future. Parents might have a location-detection device sewed into their kids’ backpack or shoes.