3G today: Broadband on every corner

Mobile 3G wireless has had more ups and downs than a Six Flags thrill ride. First, it was built up as a fast-approaching broadband panacea that would keep us connected, outdoors and in, all the time. Then it plunged into ridicule and ultimately obscurity thanks to infrastructure delays, the economic downturn, and competition from coffee shop Wi-Fi.

And today? With little fanfare, 3G has clearly added a new, if pricey option for those who need high-speed access on the go.

In the U.S., Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel have already rolled out their EvDO (Evolution Data Optimized) service -- Verizon to more than 180 major metropolitan area markets and Sprint Nextel to 219. Claimed download speeds average 400Kbps to 700Kbps, and both companies are quickly ramping up for near nationwide coverage by the end of 2006 or mid-2007. Cingular is off to a semirespectable start with 16 metropolitan area markets and promises to connect most U.S. metropolitan markets by the end of 2007. T-Mobile has no 3G service yet but promises a fast ramp-up in 2007.

Meanwhile, 3G speed is accelerating. Cingular's HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access), already in deployment, is supposed to deliver sustained downlink speeds as high as 1.1Mbps by the end of 2006, and EvDO Revision B could achieve 14Mbps with new client chip sets within a couple of years.

Although 3G services still can't be considered cheap, prices have moved into range, averaging US$60 per month for unlimited data using a notebook and PC Card, with enterprise volume discounts, discounts for bundled voice and Wi-Fi, special pricing for shared buckets of megabytes, and lower monthly pricing if you use a phone or BlackBerry device as a modem. If you compare this with the average charge of US$8 to US$12 per day for Wi-Fi in hotels and airports, you're in right the ballpark for frequent business travelers.

Hardware options have also multiplied, with certain Dell, Lenovo, and Sony notebooks offering built-in 3G modems, and a number of smartphones offering the same. In many cases you get both 3G and Wi-Fi. Verizon Wireless recently unveiled the first 3G-enabled BlackBerry device, which can double as a 3G modem for a notebook. Intel recently announced an agreement with the GSM Association to publish guidelines for building SIM cards into notebooks that would allow users to connect to both 3G networks and Wi-Fi. And of course there's always the notebook PC Card option from a variety of vendors, including Kyocera, Option NV, Sierra Wireless, and Sony Ericsson.

The 3G premium

Does this mean that 3G is finally taking off in the enterprise? It depends on whom you talk to. "There are few applications, aside from certain verticals, that have the need for 3G performance," says Ken Dulaney, vice president for mobile computing at Gartner. "The typical business traveler leaves the house, drives to the airport, and has maybe a few minutes at the airport to get on a Wi-Fi hot spot and do some work. He uses his BlackBerry to get e-mail. After getting off the plane he typically rushes to his destination. For these uses, Wi-Fi hot spots and BlackBerrys are fine."

Dulaney adds that the price of 3G is still high for most enterprise budgets and that carriers have been somewhat misleading, quoting theoretical 3G speeds in unloaded cells and conveniently limiting their quotes to downstream performance when upstream is typically much slower. And he cautions that notebook-embedded 3G undoubtedly means trouble switching carriers and added expense when carriers upgrade.

Julie Ask, research director at Jupiter Research, agrees. "3G is great for the few frequently traveling white-collar executives who can convince IT the cost is justified." She places 3G enterprise percentage uptake somewhere in the "low single digits" but adds that 3G is generally a more reliable connection than Wi-Fi. "Wi-Fi typically has too much interference, and [it's] on and off. 3G is a closed network."

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As you might expect, the carriers, which have invested billions in their 3G networks, are more bullish. "What we're seeing with mobile broadband is the development of the real-time business that really does operate in real time," says David Deady, product manager at Sprint, adding that IT decision makers understand 3G benefits and are leading the charge. "We did some research and found that 20 percent of businesses and 28 percent of large enterprises are committed to going forward with mobile broadband," Deady says.

Carriers point to a host of specialized apps -- such as law enforcement, insurance adjusters processing claims and sending back digital photos of car wrecks from the field, or realtors allowing customers to browse the Multiple Listing Service as they drive together from site to site -- that can benefit from 3G's mobility and high bandwidth. Not to mention sales force automation and fleet administration. Deady spoke of a bank setting up an ATM at a street fair using wireless broadband and new suburban stores and small offices using 3G for an immediate shared fixed broadband connection, rather than waiting weeks for a wired connection.

We're seeing considerable growth in all categories," says Claude Mitchell, director of marketing for the enterprise segment at Verizon Wireless. Mitchell sees 3G being used primarily for Web searching and accessing corporate e-mail remotely and believes a lot of companies are pushing out their sales and field force automation and other enterprise applications to recently offered Windows Mobile 3G-enabled Treo 700w and UTStarcom XV6700 smartphones. The question is, Which of these applications really require the bandwidth that 3G offers?

Is 3G for me?

Frequent travelers are the most obvious enterprise customers for 3G. True, opting for a monthly Wi-Fi hot spot plan is much cheaper, typically just $30 per month, with a one-year contract. But a Wi-Fi subscription assumes the road warrior will have easy access to a hotel or coffee shop with that service -- or will be willing and able to navigate the complicated, frequently expensive roaming schemes of rival Wi-Fi providers.

According to a Gartner study published last fall, the fragmented nature of Wi-Fi access is clearly an impediment: Less than a quarter of all business travelers used Wi-Fi hotspots while traveling. The primary reasons for this were log-on hassles and cost -- or uncertainty about cost options. Perhaps the greatest advantage of 3G is the simplicity of a single, transparent log-on from anywhere within the sphere of coverage.

Special deals can also make the 3G option attractive. Make sure you're familiar with the discounts and benefits that can come with bundling voice and 3G or 3G and Wi-Fi and/or BlackBerry service. Cingular and Sprint offer Wi-Fi subscription bundles, whereas Verizon Wireless currently does not. Other factors to consider: All three vendors offer volume discounts, although none of them would give any concrete examples. Some enterprises may prefer going for pricing plans that offer shared buckets of megabytes transmitted, which could turn out to be less expensive than an unlimited data plan

Other deals to consider if you expect 3G usage to be only occasional is paying less per month for the privilege of using a cell phone or, in Verizon's case, a BlackBerry as an external 3G modem. The hitch is that you can't use these devices for anything else, such as voice or e-mail, while they're working as a modem. Verizon offers the use of a BlackBerry as a modem for an extra $15 a month, which is a bargain.

Another option is to share a 3G connection among several users. Although carriers are not terribly keen on shared usage (Verizon Wireless has been known to threaten disconnection), you can also find 3G to Wi-Fi and Ethernet routers from vendors such as Junxion and Kyocera and soon from Linksys. These can make a decent shared mobile or small-office connection.

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The carrier question

After you've decided on 3G, the choice comes down mostly to coverage, performance, and pricing. You'll want to consider upload as well as download speeds. International roaming agreements are another factor to consider. If your users do a lot of international travel, GSM-based carriers enjoy a slight advantage.

Then there's the hardware. PC Cards vary in how well they hold onto weak signals, as well as the quality of connection software support for VPNs, authentication, and session management they provide. Some combine 3G with Wi-Fi and, on the GSM side, offer tri-band functionality for international use. If you're more interested in PDAs and smartphones than notebook access, consider the relevant hardware each carrier offers.

Carriers also provide some enterprise-level services, such as applications that offer session persistence as users move in and out of range, along with their 3G. Verizon Wireless offers its own branded business mobile e-mail solution, Wireless Sync, in addition to BlackBerry service, a field force management application, and a device management system that can remotely wipe data clean on a stolen device. Sprint is the only carrier we talked to that offered shared 3G services using a router. These can be used in the field or in a truck.

You can expect coverage to be roughly equivalent among the carriers by the end of 2007. The questions then become whether prices will fall or rise and how well will carriers handle increased capacity. For now, however, things look very promising. In our random testing with Sprint and Verizon Wireless, we found excellent performance that felt very similar to an airport Wi-Fi connection. And the freedom that 3G provides can be addictive. As with broadband and Wi-Fi, after you've tried 3G, it's hard to turn back.

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The long, winding road to today's 3G broadband

Compared with Japan, Korea, and Europe, America's mobile carriers have taken their time rolling out mobile broadband. The prime reason is the split in 2G digital mobile phone technologies among U.S. carriers, which has meant the networks needed to deploy their own new 3G equipment to cover the same service areas.

Today, the major 2G camps are GSM and CDMA. Although primarily for voice, 2G also supports data transfer at speeds around 20Kbps, slow enough for most early customers to decide Internet access via mobile device wasn't practical. Carriers introduced 2.5G data services approximately four years ago as a bridge to 3G. The GSM camp offered GPRS, at 30Kbps to 60Kbps, and then EDGE (Enhanced Data GSM Environment), at 75Kbps to 150Kbps; the CDMA camp rolled out CDMA 2000 1xRTT (One Times Radio Transmission Technology), at 30Kbps to 70Kbps -- all of which provide enough bandwidth for e-mail and modest Web surfing. The current major carriers have close to nationwide availability for 2.5G service, and most 3G devices and services can fall back to 2.5G when 3G service is unavailable.

With 3G ramping up, the alphabet soup has grown even thicker. Although UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) was supposed to be the next step up from EDGE, both Cingular and T-Mobile are jumping to the higher-performance HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access), and CDMA vendors Sprint and Verizon Wireless have adopted a standard called EvDO (Evolution Data Optimized).

Both technologies boast average download speeds of 400Kbps to 700Kbps with peaks of 2Mbps. Cingular and Sprint claim average upload speeds of about 100Kbps, and Verizon boasts 60Kbps to 80Kbps, putting them all in the wide-area wireless broadband category. Future standards, future versions of EvDO, and EvDV (Evolution Data Voice) will increase performance and balance upload and download speeds more evenly, which is important for corporate uses.

The only idea you need to take out of this mess is that, as opposed to Wi-Fi, there's no single 3G standard, so your hardware largely ties you to a carrier. And, unlike Wi-Fi, 3G standards are changing rapidly, so your hardware will become obsolete fairly quickly. That's why both Gartner and Jupiter Research advise purchasing external 3G PC Cards for notebooks, rather than going for notebooks with embedded 3G, unless you want a considerable upgrade hassle and expense a year from now.

3G vs. Wi-Fi hotspots

Now that 3G is becoming a viable wide-area wireless solution, is it time to kiss Wi-Fi hotspots goodbye? Not likely. Both will be around for a long time, and each has its distinct advantages and disadvantages. For your company, the choice depends on budget and where and how often your users travel and need to connect.

For the average traveling business user, Wi-Fi is still convenient and inexpensive. The hardware is essentially free, as it's built into just about every notebook manufactured in the past three years. Availability is widespread and in just the locations most business users are likely to need it -- corporate offices, airports, hotels, and coffee bars -- and the bandwidth is hard to beat. Not to mention that the monthly subscription cost of Wi-Fi is roughly half that of a 3G account, and in a growing number of hotels and in some localities building municipal Wi-Fi, connectivity is virtually free.

The problem with Wi-Fi is that the service is decentralized and chaotic. Wherever you're traveling, you first have to find out where Wi-Fi is offered and then hope it's either free or falls into your subscription plan. If not, you're likely to pay somewhere between $8 and $12 for a day's usage, which can add up to more than a monthly 3G subscription if you're a frequent business traveler. Every corporate office has its own policies for visitor Wi-Fi access. And there are times when you end up fighting with dead spots, slow performance, and frequently dropped connections due to interference and overloaded access points.

The big enticement of 3G is its locally pervasive availability. If it's offered in your metro area, you don't need to look for a coffee bar or pirate someone's home connection. You can hook in from a park bench, a moving taxi, or a commuter train, and you'll always be using the same service and software. When you've tasted that kind of freedom, it's hard to give it up. Performance is a little slower than Wi-Fi, but because you're dealing with a closed network, 3G tends to be more consistent. The big difference for now is that upload performance is generally a fraction of download, whereas with Wi-Fi they're basically the same. If you intend to send a lot of large files, such as photos or videos, you'll notice the difference.

The cost of 3G is also high, with hardware averaging between US$50 and US$200 per laptop card and services averaging US$60 per month for unlimited use. There are, however, volume discounts, lower-priced phone or BlackBerry-as-modem plans, and bundles with voice and Wi-Fi. If you're not in one of the major metro areas served by your carrier, you're basically out of luck, although you may be able to hook into a significantly slower 2.5G connection. And with 3G, you're talking about competition among a handful of providers who have sunk billions into their 3G investment, which may well mean higher prices down the road. Finally, the standards situation is a mess compared with Wi-Fi. Buy a notebook with 3G built in and you're essentially stuck with a single provider. Even then, you're in for a significant upgrade cost next year when your provider moves to the next version of its service.

On the other hand, as 3G becomes more ubiquitous, its flexibility and consistency will be hard to beat. If you're a frequent traveler who needs true mobility, with the option to connect just about anywhere, 3G is probably your answer. If you're like the rest of us, you may be relying on Wi-Fi for a long time.

Keep an eye out for mobile WiMax, or 802.16e, a fourth-generation wide-area wireless technology pushed by Intel and others, that uses that same logical link control standard as 802.11 but has greater range and performance -- from three to 10 miles, with speeds as fast as 30Mbps -- and replaces 802.11's contention-based architecture with one based on time slicing. WiMax is in its infancy, but the mobile standard was ratified by the IEEE in late 2005, interoperability testing has begun, and deployments are expected to start in the United States in 2007.