Alliance pledges unified wireless

"[The OMA] has a lot of potential," says Craig Mathias, a principal with FarPoint Group, a wireless consulting company. "They're trying to create interoperability over a wide range of [wireless] networks, so applications will work as well on the wireless side as they do on the wireline."

Mike Wehrs, director of technology and standards for Microsoft's Mobility Group, calls the effort "a tidal shift in the mobile industry. "

"With the formation of the [OMA], you take in several different [industry] forums that focused on mobile technology and industry development, and consolidate these into one organization," he says.

The OMA membership includes an array of international computer, telephony and software giants: Alcatel, AOL, BEA Systems, Deutsche Telekom Mobilnet, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Nokia, Novell, Oracle, Qualcomm, Sun and Verizon. Also included are corporate users such as Charles Schwab, Credit Suisse e-Business, Disney, MasterCard International, Nissan Motor and Visa International.

One notable absentee is Palm, although a company spokeswoman says Palm is considering joining.

What unites the participants is the OMA's goal of creating a set of wireless specifications and standards that will let any kind of client device access information over any network. The members are convinced that a body of such standards, coupled with interoperability testing, will make wireless services more useable

Unlike cellular voice networks, wireless data networks are limited to a particular wireless carrier. There are no cross-platform standards that let users easily take advantage of whatever wireless connection is available. A March study by Cahners In-Stat/MDR projects that corporate wireless data users will grow from just more than 10 million this year to nearly 20 million by the end of next year. Respondents said the main barriers to more widespread use of wireless data were limited geographic coverage, connection reliability and security concerns.

Several existing industry groups are merging with OMA, or becoming part of its structure of working groups. These include the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) forum, the SyncML Initiative and the Location Interoperability Forum, along with the similarly named Open Mobile Architecture Initiative. The latter was launched last November and spearheaded by Nokia to create common standards for GSM/General Packet Radio Service(GPRS) and the emerging 3G networks.

The new effort aims more broadly than the earlier one. And that's one reason why Microsoft joined OMA, and has a seat on the board of directors. "Other than the WAP forum, Microsoft has taken a watching role [with other mobile industry groups] because they didn't have a broad enough charter to reach a meaningful goal," Wehrs says.

By contrast, the OMA has a broader scope, while being focused on creating a useable architecture for mobile services. He says OMA membership is open to all.

"Anyone can be on the board, there are no preferred members, and the intellectual property rules are the same for all members," he says.

Wehrs says OMA's work will have a "tangible benefit" for corporations. "We'll be able to say interoperability has been dealt with," he says. "Things will just work the way you expect them to work."

That emphasis on practicality is on target, according to FarPoint's Mathias.

"The real issue is, what do we need in order to build a wireless data network that has the reliability at least of today's cell phone network?" he says. "There are people who run their businesses on cell phones. We need a comparable framework for wireless data. And we're close to being able to do that."

Not everyone is willing or able to wait.

"We're ignoring the [international work on] standards," says Ken Blackney, director of core technology infrastructure at Drexel University in Philadelphia. "Even if [the OMA members] are standardizing, the question is 'when?' Should we wait for them?"

At Drexel, the answer is no. Blackney is overseeing creation of Drexel One Mobile, a wireless extension to the campus Web portal, called Drexel One. The new mobile elements, based in part on code written to Microsoft's .Net framework and Mobile Internet Toolkit, will give students and faculty with any kind of device or network connection access to portal-based data and applications.

"If you have a [Research In Motion] Blackberry with GoAmerica, or a Nokia smart phone with AT&T Wireless or a PocketPC with an 802.11b card, we don't care," he says. "The idea is to take selected e-services that are available on the campus wireline or 802.11b wireless LANs, and make them available to any wireless Web device."

That sounds like the result the OMA is working toward.

"We want to create an illusion of a [global] standard, without waiting for the industry," Blackney says.

OMA members are sensitive to the need for fast action. Unifying the various organizations, setting up a structure of working groups and operational criteria, and approving budgets are just some of the initial issues facing the OMA. "But the attitude is to try to resolve these issues as quickly as possible," Wehrs says. "We're giving everyone two months to do all this. There's a sense of urgency."

It's a tall order for an organization packed with so many competing interests, according to Mathias. "But the [wireless] industry is in such a state today that they're all under pressure to say, 'We just have get to this done.'"

Adding to everyone's sense of urgency is a new report from Gartner about the high costs of wireless computing. The new "total cost of ownership" figures from Gartner make plain the hidden costs of wireless computing: an average of up to $4,400 per year per user, based on a PDA with wireless modem.

Gartner defines capital costs, which makes up 60% of the total, as including network services, which have the biggest impact on this cost category, according to the study. As a result, Gartner recommends consolidating service providers, bundling services and negotiating aggressively on wireless contacts. Other costs include technical services and support; application development and management; evaluation; and deployment.

Meanwhile, the product parade continues as vendors try to make wireless networks smarter, easier and more efficient.

Last week SyChip, a fabrication-less semiconductor maker in Plano, Texas, announced a reference design for an 802.11b chipset that will fit into the Secure Digital card format - about the size of a postage stamp. Secure Digital is the designated expansion format for the upcoming Palm OS 5.0 generation of handhelds. The first 32-bit Palm operating system, which began shipping earlier this month to licensees, adds native 802.11b support to its existing support for Bluetooth, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), GSM and other cell-based networks.

Sirific Wireless, of Oakland, is working on a programmable radio frequency chipset that can support multiple frequencies and standards: CDMA2000, GPRS, W-CDMA, 802.11b and Bluetooth.

Until these products become available, probably next year, a growing number of vendors are offering wireless network cards that support 802.11b wireless LANs and one other wireless WAN standard, such as GPRS or GSM. These dual-mode cards let a wireless device use a high-bandwidth wireless LAN when available, and a lower-bandwidth cellular-based connection when not.

Even standard 802.11b PC cards are getting smarter. SMC Networks, a wireless LAN vendor, announced recently it will load its wireless network interface cards with software from Boingo Wireless, a Santa Monica, Calif., company that creates a back-end provisioning and billing framework that unifies about 600 separate 802.11b hotspots in airports, hotels or cafes.