The latest DIAD version, introduced last year and in use by 40,000 drivers, supports dual mobile WAN connections matched to the services with the best coverage in the post codes of a given driver's territory, says John Killeen, director of global network systems at the worldwide delivery services company.
"The previous DIAD generation ran primarily on the Cingular network," Killeen says. "We found that 81 percent of our network problems related to roaming onto a Cingular partner's network. So now we have separate, direct contracts in place with all the primary carriers."
For now, UPS's roaming needs are confined to the mobile WAN. Sales-force personnel use EV-DO services and laptops; the company's warehouse-based personnel use Bluetooth finger-scanners that transmit package information to the company's 2000-site Wi-Fi LAN and don't require cellular connectivity. The company has made a conscious decision not to include voice in the DIADs so as not to "interrupt the driver's day", Killeen adds.
Anthony Marano, a fruits and vegetables wholesaler that turns much of its business around in a day's time, relies on voice-centric cellular/Wi-Fi convergence to survive.
"Some 80 percent of our business volume involves customers physically delivering, e-mailing or faxing us an order for produce that's needed within 48 hours," says Chris Nowak, IT director. As a real-time business, the company can't afford the delays associated with extensive voice mails and callbacks and desktop-bound e-mail, he says.
The company treats the nascent Enterprise Seamless Mobility system from Motorola, Proxim and Avaya as its production telephone network, even though it is technically still a pilot project. The year-old setup facilitates phone-call handoffs between the company's Wi-Fi network and the GSM cellular network from Cingular Wireless, allowing buyers and sellers to remain in continuous communication with customers and vendors.
The premises-based equipment integrates Anthony Marano's Avaya IP PABX with its wireless LAN, the cellular network and a dual-mode handset -- the Motorola CN620 -- that "speaks" both 802.11a (5-GHz) Wi-Fi and quadband GSM cellular.
Users can have a single phone number that reaches them on the campus Wi-Fi network, which extends across a space of 27,870 square metres, or on the cellular network when they are out of the office -- provided that the number called is the IP PABX number, Nowak says. The system extends phone calls, four-digit PABX dialling and phone transfers to the Cingular network; employees use browser-based Outlook Web Access on the CN620 for e-mail, he says.
John DeFeo, corporate vice president of enterprise products at Motorola, says this setup is in a half-dozen trials around the world, but Motorola has decided not to deploy the CN620 as a commercial product. Rather, the company intends to enhance the handset and related system components with unified mailboxes, presence capabilities, enterprise-class instant messaging and possibly additional Wi-Fi radio support. The next-generation system is scheduled to ship in the first half of next year, according to a company spokeswoman.
While a range of converged devices are already emerging, some IT executives would rather see cellular service stabilized and coverage enhanced before getting still more sexy handset choices.
Dale Frantz, CIO at Auto Warehousing, says, "The bane of my existence is that people love Treo [handheld] devices, because the push technology for 'always-on' e-mail access is unreliable. The network drops sessions and user credentials between cell towers and creates a significant support burden.
"It seems there haven't been many performance gains in cellular communications," Frantz adds. "I believe that stabilizing the network services is at least as important as delivering the next device that plays [your favourite song]."