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OCTOBER 15, 2003
Telecom's Hottest Tech, Coolest Gadgets [Page 2 of 2] Stayin' Alive One of the big kinks still to be worked out of the various wireless technologies now appearing on the market is how to hand off communication among them when users move around. For instance, the first third-generation (3G) phone network launched in Britain by Hong Kong-based Hutchison Wampoa (HUWHY ) drops calls when users move out of range of a 3G cell, even if they're still covered by a GSM (2G) network. That gremlin should be worked out by next year, but it makes the service a lot less useful today. Likewise, users of popular Wi-Fi wireless networks can't move their laptops out of a hotspot in the middle of an Internet session and keep the connection alive through slower mobile-phone connections -- or, at least, they couldn't until now. A company called Option, based in Leuven, Belgium, showed a PC card called the 3G Globetrotter that switches automatically and "seamlessly" -- that is, without dropping the connection -- between a wired Ethernet network, a Wi-Fi network, and 3G and 2.5G (or GPRS) mobile-phone networks. The unprecedented technology, developed by two Belgian graduate students, means that for the first time, a laptop user with the card installed can stay online as he or she moves in and out of the office, wireless hotspots, and cell sites. Naturally, the speed adjusts with each move, but the card is smart enough to recognize when a faster option is available and jump back up automatically to a better connection. The fly in the ointment is that today most people who use more than one kind of connection get their service from different providers. For instance, they may use SBC Communications (SBC ) for their wired Internet connection, Boingo Wireless for Wi-Fi, and T-Mobile for mobile service. The details of how authentication, usage tracking, and billing would be passed from one kind of service to another haven't been ironed out. But with the existence of a gizmo such as the 3G Globetrotter, the impetus to come up with an answer has just gotten a lot stronger. Revenge of the SIM The lowly subscriber identification module, or SIM card, found in every one of the nearly 1 billion GSM phones on the planet, has just gotten a promotion. The thumbnail-size silicon chip, which is used to authenticate mobile users on the network and store phone numbers and other data, has long been the locus of jostling among industry players. Some have sought to imbue it with important new capabilities -- in effect, to make SIMs the repository of a customer's preferences and other personal information -- while others aimed to strip back its role to that of a simple identity tag, storing personal information in the handset or the mobile network instead. Meanwhile, in the Internet world, Web-site operators have struggled to find viable ways to identify customers other than through easily forgotten or compromised passwords. And e-commerce outfits have gone to their graves waiting for better methods of online payment than credit-card numbers. Users have rejected as clumsy or intrusive scores of technologies for security and authentication, while online payment schemes, from digital cash to micropayments, have mostly failed. The relationship between SIMs and the Internet? It was consummated this week by Microsoft and Vodafone, which showed a new thumb-size device -- known in computer-industry jargon as a dongle -- that plugs into a USB port on a PC and contains a SIM chip. The idea is to use SIMs' strong encryption and widespread support infrastructure as a means of establishing user I.D. and authentication on the Internet. The deal also puts Vodafone in the Internet-portal business because its mobile customers -- especially users of its popular live! wireless services package -- will now be able to use the same content and services over the Internet. Obviously, that's just a starting point: If a Web surfer jumps online and gets verified through her SIM card by Vodafone, she could then go shopping at Amazon.com (AMZN ), securely and with no need for passwords, and then buy stuff that would be charged directly to her Vodafone bill. Pretty clever, eh? After all the tears and capital shed over trying to come up with new security and payment systems for the Web, it couldn't be more ironic that one answer lay under everybody's noses all along. Perhaps the wireless Web will happen after all, only with a twist: The wireless folks become the gatekeepers to the Web.
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