While Motorola’s Woody Ritchey admitted that, at the time of Telecom ’95, the company did have cellular infrastructure architecture that included Internet Protocol (IP), it was only at the drawing board stage. “We were not talking publicly about IP at the exhibition, and neither do I recollect anyone else talking about IP as a current or planned technology as they moved forward,” Ritchey said.
However, Ritchey conceded that, over the last 18 months, IP has become the real rallying cry of the industry and is destined to be the architecture of choice for the future. “This also applies to the wired side of the industry,” he added.
Also missing at Telecom ’95 was any mention of Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). Ritchey said that this technology, together with the emerging EPOC handheld operating system software and Bluetooth short-range initiative, will drive down the cost point of the next generation of high-functionality mobile phones.
He maintains these de facto standards will enable the cellular industry to follow a similar cost/performance curve to the PC/laptop world, leading to much higher levels of cell phone ownership.
But Ritchey warned this new IP-based cellular world will mean today’s operators will need to change vital pieces of their businesses. “They won’t be able to bill in the same manner that has been adopted for voice-based services. The new billing systems will need to record subscriber usage based upon a variety of parameters: bits, packets, speed of the link, applications charges, advertisement content and feature services,” he said.
However, he predicted the more nimble cellular operators that deploy these new data services first will gain increased customer loyalty and attract new subscribers.-Paul Rasmussen in Oxford, United Kingdom
