NEW YORK-Single-number portability, delivery of branded content and the growing similarity between switched voice and data are all trends that are moving in fast, according to participants in a panel Nov. 20 on wireless technology.
“No intelligent network platform is as reliable as a switch. It never can be. But it can facilitate utilization of a network by customers,” said Andrew Ory, president of Priority Call Management, Wilmington, Mass. Ory spoke at a Telecom Day conference sponsored by UBS Securities L.L.C., New York.
Given comparable voice quality, coverage, billing and customer service, the key differentiators for carriers will be applications designed to attract new subscribers, increase revenues and reduce churn. The most important of these value-added service applications is the ability “to make calls, return calls and send and receive voice and fax messages without hanging up,” he said. “Switched voice will become more like switched data.”
In 1996, Priority Call Management added as customers Paging Network Inc., ComCast Cellular Communications Inc. and three cellular carriers overseas. Besides the wireless telephony sector, Ory predicted increasing interest from paging carriers, “who are scared silly that wireless telecom can provide comparable services.”
Handset manufacturers, which like carriers have seen the commoditization of their industry sector, “are looking to leverage technology to add value,” said Gordon Mayer, president and chief executive officer of Geoworks, Alameda, Calif. “For cellular operators, smart phones (provide) a platform to deliver branded content and services.”
The United States is the victim of its own success at wireline and analog cellular service, and this has slowed deployment of cutting edge digital networks, Mayer said. “GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) is in over 124 countries. Invest-ment hasn’t occurred here as fast, but the U.S. is on the threshold of building out its digital network.”
While there are many companies worldwide that produce plain old wireless handsets, “only a handful … can produce these smart phones: Nokia (Mobile Phones Inc.), Ericsson (Inc.), NEC (America Inc.), Hewlett-Packard (Co.), Toshiba (America Consumer Products) and Brother (International Corp.)”
“We work with these companies,” Mayer said. He predicted a “resurgence of Japanese handset manu-facturers,” whose 15 percent international market share today is primarily centered on their domestic consumers.
Single-number portability and calling party pays are the two most important pending developments in the United States, said Chris Resavy, engineering director of Omnipoint Communications Inc., Wayne, N.J.
The United States is the only country in which recipients of wireless telephone calls pay for the calls, and this must and will change soon, he said.
Single-number portability also is important and necessary to avoid the current situation of customer confusion, Resavy said. He predicted worldwide adoption of one-number portability and high-speed switched data within five years.
A decade from now, Resavy expects the advent of Dick Tracy phones and the possibility of “life without paper.”
