KEY POINTS:
Being able to connect to an office network, a hosted email service or the internet while in transit can mean the difference between securing a business deal and losing it.
"There have been situations where I have been in transit, urgent requests have come through, and the only reason I had a positive result was because I could get straight back to the [customer]," says Rowena Goodwill, Australia and New Zealand manager for Gold Coast Tourism.
Goodwill regularly travels between Australia, New Zealand and Asia and keeps in touch via a laptop and smart phone.
Yet while much has been written about the joys of remaining in touch while in transit, less has been said about the hidden costs and connection problems people regularly encounter.
Pat O'Connell, chief information officer for Carter Holt Harvey, says international mobile data charges are "exorbitant" and while many US hotels now offer free fixed line broadband access for people with laptop computers, Australian hotels can charge $A29.95 plus GST per day.
Additionally, O'Connell says he often has difficulty connecting to the Carter Holt Harvey network via mobile technologies while in transit.
"The set-up required for mobile communications is still too complex and it's a mission to get online most of the time depending on what you are connecting to," says O'Connell.
"If it's to a business network, there are firewalls and proxy servers [to negotiate] and security settings on your laptop and passwords which you need in order to be connected to different types of servers," says O'Connell. "Mobile broadband connections are not seamless and they aren't turned on like electricity. It's more like trying to turn on a tap with 15 different settings on it."
Greg McAlister, general manager Telecom business solutions, says Telecom is aware of the mobile connection difficulties its customers face and has put a lot of work into refining Telecom Connection Manager - a laptop software application that provides "drag and drop" menus to help business customers connect to their office networks.
"For the first time we have software that puts the connection options for securely connecting via WiFi, [fixed line] dialup or [cellular] broadband together in one place," says McAlister.
Telecom has also announced a new international global roaming partner, Hong Kong-based CSL, which operates a GSM-based mobile network covering 180 countries.
By the end of this year Telecom mobile customers will be able to use a WorldMode phone to switch between using Telecom's CDMA mobile service in New Zealand and CSL's GSM mobile service internationally.
One phone number and one email mailbox is all that will be required, and pricing for both services will be placed on the same bill, says McAlister.
Of course, relatively simple global roaming is something Vodafone achieved long ago thanks to its own global nature and reach and its numerous international partnerships.
But mobile customers in transit may be prepared to ignore a little "clunkiness" in Telecom's new global roaming service if the price turns out to be right.
The high cost of mobile voice and data services compared with other countries is a sore point for New Zealanders, and one regularly raised by the Government and media.
Whilst connection and pricing issues are somewhat under control for customers in transit nationally, get on an international flight and all that changes.
The transfer of a gigabyte of mobile data in New Zealand costs around $50 per month for both Telco's - yet three weeks of light voice calling and a twice daily email check via Vodafone's GSM mobile partners in France can set you back $1100.
Both mobile Telco's want to protect their customers from this sort of bill shock, yet New Zealand business customers say not enough is being done to get the cost of international mobile voice and data services down.
Goodwill says her employer has a policy of being prudent with regards to mobile connection charges and so she is careful to mitigate costs in transit by using cheaper and faster WiFi "hot spot" network services or fixed-line services providing they cost less.
In the future, emerging wireless technologies such as WiMax (which operates a little like WiFi, but over a far wider area) are also likely to prove cheaper and superior in performance to mobile cellular services.
However in many situations the use of secure mobile cellular connections will remain unavoidable.
The good news is that while prices undoubtedly need to drop, the cost of using mobile voice and data services while in transit is frequently offset by business productivity gains.
"If I wasn't supported by [cellular] mobile technologies, I could spend a whole day travelling between the Gold Coast and Auckland during daylight saving months and wipe out a whole day of work while I waited in airports," says Goodwill.
