“Off the beaten path I reign. Rover. Wanderer. Nomad. Vagabond. Call me what you will,” so go Metallica’s lyrics to “Wherever I may roam,” circa 1991.
Spring forward 16 years and we find that mantra being lived by millions of workers who freely roam their cities and beyond with no home base to speak of. The wireless industry, in part, has enabled their newfound freedom and cut the ties that previously chained them to desks and office space.
“It’s not only the death of distance . but also the death of location,” said Roger Entner, an analyst at IAG Research. “It doesn’t matter where you office location is anymore.”
Daily grind dulled
If it hasn’t yet arrived, the phenomenon is surely on its way to making waves in how Americans work and lead their daily lives. This burgeoning set of exclusively mobile workers relies on remote Internet access and cellphones to conduct their business. For them, the daily grind is never a monotonous routine, but rather a freewheeling lifestyle that takes them from location to location as if the world is truly an oyster that’s been pried out of its shell.
The San Francisco Chronicle recently branded this breed of workers as Bedouins after the nomadic Arabs who wandered the desert. Except these modern gurus of technology set up shop in coffee shops with free Wi-Fi access while their more seasoned counterparts rely on the PC Cards to access wireless carriers data networks.
“To a certain extent I’m one of them. The only number on my business card is my cellphone number and I have a high-speed data card. My office is everywhere. Right now I’m in the middle of Arkansas waiting for my stupid plane and I can work,” Entner said.
“I think Wi-Fi is a great spot solution. You can do Wi-Fi here and there; this is when you’re semi-serious about this,” Entner said. “If you look two years back or so you see articles how cafes in Seattle have either curtailed or stopped free Wi-Fi service because they found that all these people came in, bought one coffee and sat there for eight hours,” Entner said, adding that it became more of a “revenue distracter” than a “revenue generator.”
PC cards now, integration later
Wireless modem manufacturers decline to give numbers on the amount of merchandise they’ve sold, but Entner predicts there are at least 10 million high-speed data cards currently in use. “If you have a data card you’re completely independent,” he said. “I think a lot of people, including analysts, are underestimating the number of data cards.”
Dan Shey, an analyst at ABI Research, said modem shipments grew 68 percent from 2004 to 2006, and forecasts a steady growth of 53 percent over the next five years. “By 2012 we forecast that modem shipments will reach 68 million units-compare that to 2006 shipments which totaled about 5.2 million units,” he said.
“Modem shipments up to this point have really been driven by the business customer, increasing mobility of customers and probably early adopter type customers,” Shey said, adding that he believes laptop manufacturers will eventually remove the PCMCIA slot, which PC cards plug into, as their products get lighter and thinner. “By 2009 and later, shipments of USB modems and internal modems will overtake shipments of PC cards. By 2012, USB modems and internal modem shipment will lead PC card modem shipments by over 6-to-1,” he said.
Biz main driver, but trust is key
Business customers currently comprise 80 percent of wireless modem sales, but once the uplink performance of 3G networks is upgraded he believes a “critical mass of these networks will probably be late 2008, early 2009,” Shey said.
“Wireless has and will continue to have an impact on the American work force,” he said. “Not sure there will be a watershed event but wireless modems will contribute to the overall benefits of wireless and build critical mass so that using wireless services to perform work tasks is commonplace.”
Entner said the bulk of people given this liberty by their employer are typically higher-level employees who travel frequently. “A lot of it is how much do employers trust their employees,” he said. “That’s the biggest challenge here: ‘Do I trust my people not to goof off?”
