Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Wireless looks to speed up sales

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2002 14:39:57 -0500

http://www.azstarnet.com/star/today/21027WIRELESSWEB2fjm2fgc.html

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Tucson, Arizona  Sunday, 27 October 2002

Wireless looks to speed up sales

A.E. Araiza / Staff

Making a connection: John Horvath, left, with Joe Cristiani's Mobile Communications discusses high-speed service via phone with Margaret and Gary Holmes at Park Place Shopping Center.

* Newer phone models, coupled with high-speed access, let users check news, weather,

e-mail with more ease.

New services faster; prices coming down

By David Wichner

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Wireless Internet access isn't magic, as one cellular-phone TV commercial featuring illusionists Siegfried & Roy suggests, and it doesn't come cheap.

But new, higher-speed Web surfing offerings rolled out recently by Tucson-area cellular carriers can do wonders for people who need to stay connected on the go.

A wireless Web isn't new - Internet access via cell phones and some pagers has been available for years - but it's gotten a lot faster.

Within the last year, five of Tucson's seven primary wireless carriers - AT&T, Nextel, Sprint PCS, T-Mobile and Verizon - have introduced the latest generation of wireless Net access at connection speeds at or above the 56-kilobits-per-second (kbps) speed of typical land-line phone modems.

Wireless carriers tout typical download speeds of 40 to 80 kbps, but some users of wireless access cards that plug into handheld or laptop computers report consistent speeds at 100 kbps or higher.

Click to compare wireless plans

By comparison, first-generation cellular data systems run at a poky 14.4 kilobits per second, which along with cost made wireless Web services a tough sell.

"We travel quite a bit and we have that (14.4-kbps service) on our phones, but it doesn't work very well - it's too slow," said Gary Holmes of Port Huron, Mich., who with his wife, Margaret, recently looked at the newer phones at Joe Cristiani's Mobile Communications at Park Place shopping center.

The Holmeses' carrier in Michigan, Cingular Wireless, doesn't yet offer the faster Web services.

Wireless industry officials acknowledged that slow speeds have slowed the adoption of wireless Net services.

"There was a lot of hype about it and a lot of high expectations, and it didn't quite work out that way for a variety of reasons," said Matt Sopcich, senior marketing director for Qwest Wireless.

Sopcich said Qwest's 14.4-kbps "BrowseNow", which costs $10 monthly for unlimited usage, is fine for most users who mainly want to do e-mail, adding that the company has not yet announced plans for higher-speed services.

Cellular carriers hope the higher speeds will attract new customers who may have passed on the first-generation systems.

About 10 million, or 11 percent, of handheld and laptop computer users currently have wireless Net access, according to a survey by ComScore Media Metrix, a Web research firm.

Figures on the percentage of the nation's 137 million current cellular-phone subscribers who use phone-based Net access are not available, but an industry analyst placed it in the single-digits to the low double digits.

Ray Jodoin, director of wireless research for Scottsdale-based research firm In-Stat/MDR, said higher speeds may help attract new wireless data customers, but all but power users may balk at the cost. "It's too expensive for the average person," Jodoin said.

He cited initial offerings by Verizon and Sprint PCS at about $100 a month for unlimited access, or prices based on the amount of data downloaded, ranging from a few cents per kilobyte to $3 per megabyte, as too costly for all but serious business users.

Jodoin said U.S. prices for wireless Net services are higher than in Europe and Asia, where wireless usage generally is higher and rates generally don't subsidize handset costs, as is common in the U.S.

But prices are coming down, and wireless carriers are enticing consumers with options like phones with color displays, add-on cameras, instant messaging and fun stuff like downloadable ringers and games.

After rolling out its high-speed Sprint Vision service in August - with TV ads featuring Siegfried & Roy - Sprint PCS on Friday announced new pricing through year's end that allows phone customers to add unlimited access to their voice plans for $10 monthly.

Sprint Vision for Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), handheld or laptop computers runs from $40 monthly for 20 megabytes of downloads to $100 monthly for unlimited usage.

"The benefit of the speed is getting significant interest from both the consumer and the business user," Sprint PCS spokeswoman Vicki Soares.

A Sprint Vision Samsung A-500 ($299.99 without rebates) phone tested by the Star had an eye-popping color screen with a moving aquarium screensaver.

The phone logged on to the Net within seconds, allowing users to send e-mail and surf largely text-based Web sites, including CNN, EPSN and Google searches.

An optional Sprint Vision digital camera ($99.99, $69.99 with current rebate) plugged into the phone to download snapshots suitable for e-mailing within seconds. Photos were uploaded quickly to a Sprint PCS Web site for storage or e-mail sharing.

Typing e-mail messages via a phone keypad takes some patience, as you must keep punching each key until the desired letter appears; however, address books and Net bookmarks can save on typing.

Jerry Weygint, technical services director for Tucson Medical Center, recently outfitted his technicians' laptop PCs with modem cards and service from Verizon.

The set-up allows on-call staffers to troubleshoot hospital systems within minutes at speeds of up to 120 kilobits per second - about twice the speed of 56 kbps phone connections.

"Practically anywhere they are they have high-speed access to the Internet, and they can work as though they were here," Weygint said. "They are able to respond much faster … and sometimes that can literally be a matter of life or death."

Darrell Blaker, corporate information-technology director of Universal Avionics Inc. in Tucson, said his company is saving time and money by equipping about 25 company laptops with Sprint Vision wireless modems.

Not only can employees fetch needed documents literally while working on a plane, but the company saves money on slower hotel modem connections, Blaker said, citing typical connection speeds of 75 to 80 kbps on the Sprint network.

"If you sit (and connect) in a hotel, you get stuck with the phone charges," Blaker said.

Mike Vickery, vice president of corporate services for Tucson-based Joe Cristiani's Mobile Communications, advises laptop users or frequent Web surfers to consider unlimited-usage plans, noting that paying by the megabyte can add up quickly.

T-Mobile, formerly VoiceStream, estimates that 1 megabyte of data equals about 350 e-mails or Web pages viewed on a handheld computer or 18 Web pages or 170 e-mails viewed on a laptop.

Meanwhile, new devices aimed at taking advantage of the faster mobile connections are rolling out, including combination phone-cameras and PDAs with built-in phones.

Even faster speeds are coming, with the prospect of sending live video from phone to phone - not unlike the cartoon detective Dick Tracy's "wrist phone" - just a few years away, AT&T Wireless spokeswoman Karen Klagues said.

* Contact reporter David Wichner at 573-4181 or at [email-masked].

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