RFID remains wildcard

SAN JOSE, Calif.-The business opportunities enabled by WiMAX and other broadband wireless technologies are as abundant as those being touted for the mobile-minded consumer. After all, it promises nothing short of increased productivity-hence increased profits-and upward mobility in the marketplace.
Businesses are pushing increased productivity as their No. 1 priority, much like the emphasis that was placed on cutting costs two to three years ago, Ebrahim Keshavarz, vice president of new services development at AT&T Inc., said at the Wireless Communications Association International Symposium and Business Expo in San Jose, Calif., last week.
“Enterprise customers want to take advantage of mobility, but they also want control,” he said. “It’s about making that enterprise wireless” and bringing new applications to its environment that increase overall value.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is one example where broadband wireless capabilities can immediately provide benefits to the business customer, Keshavarz said. RFID’s potential appears to be as deep as the creativity is on the business model side. It can provide instant, live tracking of products with a unique ID, which is stored on an RFID tag, but scanners can also learn much more from the tag.
“The richness of the value of those items will explode” if RFID scanners fully realize the potential data available to the end business user. Temperature, location, condition, speed, direction, light, chemical presence and much more will be available to RFID sensors. So produce growers, distributors and regulators could instantly have access to the temperature lettuce is being stored at; hospitals could pinpoint the exact location of basic, yet often hard-to-find equipment like wheelchairs and crash carts; and beer companies could track the success of in-store promotions without having to rely on a middle man.
“What will spike this industry is making these applications mobile,” Keshavarz said. The goal for the short term is to glue the pieces together to make all this possible. In the long term, the wireless industry must further embrace these opportunities for their business customers and build the platforms on which they will stand, he said.