Subject: [NEXTEL-1] CDPD premortem:

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 01:35:51 -0400

Wireless World

CDPD premortem:

CDPD's pending demise should force
companies not to get locked into one wireless technology

By  Ephraim Schwartz
April 11, 2003

The demise of the CDPD (cellular digital packet data)
analog cellular network in and of itself may not be the cause of
any major disruptions in your business processes. But it should
give you pause, forcing you to think about the future as you
deploy your wireless systems in the present.

First a bit of background: CDPD was created by scientists at
IBM and was used for the company's own field force. AT&T was and
AT&T Wireless now is one of the two major CDPD network providers;
Verizon is the other.

CDPD has a low-speed, 19.6Kbps data rate, which in its day
was good enough. Today, it is primarily used by public-safety
organizations, in the health care and transportation industries
and in other vertical markets where just getting the data
transmitted is more important than high performance.

The Federal Communications Commission decided a while back
to allow the CDPD providers off the hook, ruling that they no
longer had to support this low-bandwidth, unprofitable service.
AT&T Wireless stopped selling the service last month and will
discontinue the service as of June 2004.

Verizon representatives told me the company will continue to
support it. But the truth is that the equipment manufacturers have
already stopped making CDPD equipment, and according to a source
familiar with CDPD industry equipment suppliers, the carriers are
scrambling around for spare parts, having to cannibalize one
system to fix another.

Current users relying on CDPD face a further dilemma: Most
of the equipment they have uses embedded CDPD modems and they are
supporting technology that is not worth upgrading. With the demise
of this network, public-safety outfits and others -- some strapped
for capital as it is -- will be forced to perform a complete
upgrade.

The typical notebook stays deployed for between three and
eight years, especially in public safety. In the meantime,
carriers are rolling out CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access),
EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution), EvDO (Evolution Data
Only), and who knows what else. IT managers need to be thinking
about what equipment they will be buying, or they will go through
the same thing again.

I spoke with Dave Johnson, director of wireless technology
at Spokane, Wash.-based Itronix, maker of a rugged laptop that
still supports CDPD as well as other wireless networks. I wanted
to speak with him because his company seems to have already done
some forward thinking. Itronix notebooks are network-upgradable
from CDPD to whatever comes down the pike.

Although CDPD is less expensive on a flat-rate basis,
Johnson advises companies to investigate whether they really need
a flat rate. "People pick a flat rate because they are
risk-adverse. But many applications have predictable usage levels,
so if you are only using 1MB, 5MB, or 10MB per month, buy a plan
that gives you that, and most will save money," Johnson said.

So, the lesson here is obvious. As you decide that wireless
has value for your own field force, whether it's used in the cab
of a truck, on a laptop mounted in a patrol car, or in the back of
a van, make sure that whatever equipment you buy can be swapped
out. And with the economics of the wireless industry being what
they are, it is more than likely that a carrier will give you more
bandwidth at a cheaper rate for the newer technology.

If your company is making the transition from CDPD to
something else, I would like to hear from you.

Ephraim Schwartz is editor at large at InfoWorld.
Contact him at [email-masked]

http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/04/11/15wireworld_1.html?networking

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