Mobility for business applications is not a new idea. In fact, it’s one of the oldest dating back to the early 80s and earlier. Taxis and other dispatch services, including law enforcement and emergency services have relied on mobile voice as a core element of their business. Mobile data has evolved through more expensive dedicated and proprietary solutions using the Mobitex network and CDPD. With widespread higher quality data networks being deployed and upgraded this decade should see the growth of massive mobile data applications – but will it?

There are ongoing “who owns the customer” debates going on daily. The prevailing wisdom seems to change with the wind. Two years ago application developers were pitching their ideas to wireless carriers with the threat that “if you don’t evolve to offer this sort of service soon, you run the risk of becoming a dumb pipe”. This thought terrified some executives who saw themselves as leader and icons, not pipes. Carriers begun partnering with firms to offer wireless access to email and contact lists through companies like WirelessKnowledge, Seven, Aether and Accenture (formerly Anderson Conuslting). These groups would allow the businesses themselves to master of their own destiny with the carriers providing the pipe function.



The only carrier that has played exclusively to the small business market has been Nextel. Formerly called “Fleetcall”, this carrier began using specialized mobile radio (SMR) spectrum to offer mobile services to local blue-collar oriented business. They worked with a single vendor (Motorola) to develop a proprietary exclusive technology that allowed walkie-talkie like functions over cell phones. At first the going was tough. Nextell employed and ex-FCC commissioner, Morgan O’Brien to work with expanding out of the SMR space with Enhanced SMR (ESMR) technology. The system called MIRS (Motorola Integrated Radio System) was problematic at first with poor voice quality and network glitches. Motorola remade the system, calling it iDen (some of the engineers, ducking the problems with MIRS claimed iden stood for “iden do it!”). Nextel forged ahead, fixed glitches and became the highest revenue/user carrier in the US. In the early part of the 21st century however, even the high arpu seemed inadequate to deal with the massive debt and high cost to provision and support the Nextel users. Meanwhile, other companies began experimenting with push-to-talk technology of their own. With many “me too” services coming to market, the niche position held by Nextel appears destined to be commoditized and lost to others in a looming price war. But is this the best strategy? Compete as carriers?