Published August 16, 2000
“Received your message; answer it later. I’m traveling now,” is the personal email reply from a friend/colleague. But how did he do that? —probably by way of a wireless Internet connection.
Business travelers recognize the advantage to stay connected even though away from their fixed office or home Internet access point. It’s good business to be accessible. Timely answered alerts can mean closed sales and cinched financial opportunities.
Cellular phones are going digital and pagers are bi-directional. New standards for world-wide acceptance of fixed wireless transceivers is underway. Within a few years, analysis’s say, full Internet capability is possible on a pocket-size phone or personal digital assistant (PDA).
In Europe, short message service (SMS) notes are commonly whizzing from daughter to mother, friend to friend, and colleague to peer. It’s cheap and efficient. In fact, IBM has announced spending $1000M over the next two years to advance mobile Internet on that continent.
The convenience of weather reports, sports scores, inner-city traffic alerts, investment trading, online purchases or any of many other common adaptations justify the decision to invest in the equipment and services for wireless Internet.
More than voice without a handset cord, wireless fits the pace, confidence, and necessity of our lives. The Dick Tracy radio manifestation has becomes more than utterances across invisible distances. A few lines of text plops into our hands on a small liquid crystal display; and just as quickly, a choicely worded reply is radioed back, across the Internet. It’s a beginning.
Digital phone service does not cover the entire country yet, but one-button retrieval of the written word rings for those within range of select metropolitan locations. The coverage area, for direct wireless data Internet access (not through a cell-phone), is focused within a tight quarter mile radius of each hub.
Laptops computers are the equal to desktop equipment except for portable size: fine keyboards, high-resolution screens, large data storage capacity, and a special data-radio plug-in. With the laptop notebook or powerbook, new wireless services lends itself to entertainment applications too.
Unplugged from a telephone wall jack, the laptop is instead wired into a data wireless unit with a small antenna, or into a data equipped PCS cellular phone. If the corresponding services exist on the other end, Internet connection is provided to the modern traveler.
The costs are still in flux, but expect a hefty bill: include a per-minute, per-day, monthly or annual fees for roaming. Lost production is seen as a greater detriment than the expense. Industry acceptance of this segment of communications has been positive and significant growth is anticipated.
Airports, second to hotels and homes, are the favored locations for travelers using high-speed Internet. In a hundred select locations across the country at certain airports, travelers can receive wireless signals directly into their laptop computers for sending and receiving email and other Internet information. Cisco Systems, Lucent Technologies and 3Com support this emerging standard.
For the slower but adequate modem-speeds, Sprint PCS Wireless Web, GTE Wireless and Bell Atlantic Mobile embrace the cellular phone linked to the Net. Manufacturers like Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola are each advancing their own adaptations.
Six years ago the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics fully tested laptop computers for interference to navigation, communication or safety equipment aboard commercial airliners; no operational irregularities were detected. Thereafter passengers’ laptop computers, electric games and CD players were allowed onboard for use during flights. The exception is during critical takeoffs and landings below an altitude of 10,000 feet.
“Intentional transmitters” such as cell phones are still banned by the FCC (not the FAA) around commercial aircraft or in the air, mainly because full testing was curtailed for lack of funding. Experts agree that those too are no more likely to disrupt normal flight safety than the inflight movie.
In the mid-1980s, Airbus, the #2 plane maker, tested its computerized A320 at a French Air Force base in Toulon. There was no impact to aircraft systems parked ten feet away from a battery of radar and electronic transmitters, including cell phone frequencies. Boeing also tested its jets in 1991, 1995 and 1995 and repeatedly failed to detect any interference.
The revenues from Air-phone service onboard commercial airlines, shared by the airlines, GTE and AT&T aboard commercial airplanes, is 20-50 times more profitable than typical cell-phone rates. Analysts estimate an annual revenue of $150M from these sanctioned Air-phones.
Although officially discouraged, Airline crews acknowledge that cellular phone usage is rampant—perhaps thousands of calls an hour by passengers of various airborne flights, and all without incident.
In 1992, Michigan Congressman Bob Carr, vice chairman of the Transportation Appropriations subcommittee, asked the FAA for a detailed look at alleged cellular interference. Rep. Carr had been reprimanded by a United flight attendant for using his cell phone while his flight to Chicago was delayed on the ground in Detroit. Carr, a pilot, says he regularly used his cell phone while flying in the late 1980s. He says he is convinced the airline ban was, and is, "bogus" and not founded in science.
We’ll just have to wait to connect to the Internet from a laptop computer during long flights. Oh well. This might be a good time to catch a nap.