Office as close as a handset

By PAUL BRISLEN

Mobility is often the key to survival for small businesses. Data mobility has come on in leaps and bounds in the past two years and promises to move even more rapidly in the next 18 months when the next generation of networks are brought online.

Today's mobility options come down to a choice between Telecom and Vodafone.

Telecom's technology of choice, CDMA, is slightly faster than Vodafone's GPRS, but both are quite slow in the real world.

GPRS runs at around 40-60 kbps, making it only slightly better than a dial-up connection, while CDMA runs at speeds of up to 150 kbps.

However, both have good coverage nationally, meaning users need take only a laptop with either a PC card or a cable to connect to their cellphone to use as a modem to be connected.

Internationally, Vodafone's world No 1 cellular crown means users can roam to dozens of countries and still access the network at GPRS speeds.

Unfortunately roaming charges make this a costly business but then mobile data is a premium product with both Telecom and Vodafone charging around $8 a megabyte for data on a casual plan.

One other player in the market today offers better speeds at a better price, but is far more limited in terms of roaming capability. Woosh Wireless is based in Auckland and has managed to build a network reaching around 70 per cent of the city.

It has started work in Wellington and Christchurch and has plans for other cities in the year ahead.

Woosh uses wideband CDMA (W-CDMA) so its technology is related to Telecom's but is capable of greater speeds. The service is billed as "portable" rather than mobile because users must be stationary within a cellsite to use the service.

However, the product is available at speeds of 250, 350 and 500 kbps, making it much faster than either CDMA or GPRS where it is available.

But Woosh's claim to the fastest portable network in the land is under threat.

Both Telecom and Vodafone are building new third generation or 3G networks, and TelstraClear has signalled it will get into the mobile game by building its own network in New Zealand.

While details on TelstraClear's plans are sketchy, Telecom and Vodafone have both decided again to adopt different courses of action.

Vodafone is spending $400 million to build its W-CDMA network and plans to have Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch up and running by the end of next year.

However, Vodafone isn't going to build over the top of its existing GPRS network - it will offer these faster speeds only in the main CBDs rather than nationally. Vodafone expects users will see maximum speeds of around 384 kbps on the network.

Telecom has taken a different route, opting not to build a W-CDMA network, instead using a software upgrade to its existing CDMA network to deliver greater speeds. Telecom will spend only $40 million to upgrade the main centres to EV-DO (evolution, data optimised) and expects users will see speeds of 500 kbps on average with a maximum of around 2 Mbps.

EV-DO is a relatively untested network with only a handful of players adopting it worldwide. However Telecom is in good company. Both Sprint and Verizon in the US have announced they will use the technology and Telecom's ongoing relationship with Sprint means it will have access to end-user devices, such as phones and PC cards, when the network is running.

Telecom's approach is to target the business user instead of the consumer with this new network.

Overseas, 3G networks have typically been aimed at the consumer with offers of cheap voice minutes alongside videophone capabilities.

However, reports from Australia suggest Hutchison's 3G network, known as "3", has had negative feedback from consumers who find the video phone isn't as exciting as it is supposed to be.

Telecom's targeting the business user and will begin not by offering phones, but by offering PC cards for laptops and handheld devices.

By marketing the network to those high-end users, Telecom hopes to secure the bigger spenders instead of the traditionally low-value consumers.

This is good news for small to medium-sized enterprise users as 500 kbps is at least as good as a landline-based broadband connection and means a laptop on the road in another city will have as much connectivity as it would in the office.

Another technology could potentially disrupt the entire cellular roadmap by offering end users tens of megabits of speed relatively cheaply in the next couple of years.

Intel is spending a large amount of money on WiMax, the technology it sees as the successor to Wi-fi.

Wi-fi offers users up to 10 mbps and is relatively cheap and easy to install. Most of Intel's new chipsets are to be wirelessly enabled so users will already be able to access the wi-fi hotspots with their laptops.

WiMax offers Intel even faster speeds and could revolutionise the wireless industry.

The market will soon experience a rush of mobile opportunities opening up for end users. The small business end of the market stands to be the greatest beneficiary of that market.


A look at the options

* Vodafone's current GPRS network runs at 40-60 kbps

* Telecom's current CDMA network runs at 100 kbps

* Woosh's network offers range of speeds up to 500 kbps

* Vodafone's 3G network to run at up to 384 kbps

* Telecom's 3G network to run at up to 2 Mbps

* WiMax from Intel could run at several megabits per second