While cellular and personal communications services carriers have a long way to go to woo business travelers to their mobile Internet offerings, companies building WAN- and LAN-based networks are poised to take over the wireless Internet market, according to research firm eTinium’s new report.
Companies like Metricom, MobileStar and CAIS Internet are offering wide area network and local area network data services that are far more suited to mobile businesspeople, the report states. These networks offer users high-speed access, from 128 Kbps to 2 Mbps, which mobile workers need for entry into corporate networks, Web browsing and access to e-mail with attachments. In addition, these networks aren’t “walled” like the limited Internet offerings from cellular and PCS carriers.
This is key, according to the report, to enticing the 40 million to 45 million “road warriors” in the business market.
eTinium’s new report, “Wireless Internet: Alternative Technologies to Cellular/PCS,” predicts that “insurgent networks,” or WAN and LAN networks, will soon begin chipping away at the cellular and PCS carriers’ most lucrative customers-business users on the move.
“Higher bandwidth, full access to the Internet, lower cost of infrastructure and therefore lower pricing as well as always-on packet switching technology will all join together to make the insurgents’ services an attractive alternative,” the report states.
However, before these insurgents will be able to take over the business market, the service must be offered in every major city, airport and hotel, and the price of wireless modems and services must be right.
“These are important steps in removing the psychological barrier against large-scale usage,” the report states.
Conversely, in order to tempt business travelers, cellular and PCS carriers must move away from trying to offer the entire Internet. They need to market their wireless Web services with more targeted information, including text messages, location-based services and a consolidated e-mail account, calendar and address book. Offering more services will require more bandwidth, which will come at a high price-Verizon Wireless recently bid more than $4 billion on New York licenses alone.
Goli Ameri, eTinium’s president, said the report is an attempt at shedding light on alternative technologies for the wireless Internet-technologies that don’t receive much attention.
“There’s really very little out there about wireless Internet technologies,” she said. “I think people are really just starting to see the potential of the alternative technologies … to wirelessly connect to the Internet.”
eTinium, which recently changed its name from AmeriSearch, is a small consulting and marketing research firm specializing in the convergence of the telecommunications and Internet markets.
