It’s not hard to see the increase in use of wireless communication — drivers stuck in traffic talking on their phones, shoppers at the grocery store dialing home from the aisles, and movie goers having to listen to both the movie and a conversation on their phone.
According to a study conducted by the Gartner Group, the majority of homes in the United States now has some form of wireless communication. Verizon Wireless, the biggest wireless phone company in the country, added more than 1.2 million new customers in the fourth quarter alone. In a statement released earlier this month, the company said for the year, total customers grew by 3.7 million to 27.5 million.
Beyond Cash Donations: How New Forms of Giving Are Transforming Not-for-Profit Accounting
Evolving Funding Landscape for Not-for-Profits Not-for-profit organizations are being asked to do more with less,…
Learn More
“People are looking for the ability to communicate and do business from wherever they can,” said Abra Degbor, spokesperson for Verizon Wireless of New England. “It’s all about convenience.”
A recent report released by Cahners In-Stat Group, a high-tech market research firm, predicts that the wireless data market will grow from about 170 million subscribers worldwide in 2000 to greater than 1.3 billion in 2004.
According to Dave Jackson, senior analyst for In-Stat’s Wireless Data, service messaging will be the primary driver of wireless data adoption over the next few years.
“We estimate that the number of wireless messages sent per month will balloon from 3 billion in December of 1999 to 244 billion by December of 2004,” he said. “Other features such as mobile or M-Commerce applications, entertainment, real-time financial information, travel, and location-based information services — getting directions to the closest restaurant or ATM, for instance — will also be popular but will take longer to reach the market.”
Although messaging is already prominent in Europe, Rebecca Diercks, director of wireless research at In-Stat, in the United States carriers can’t offer the same products in wireless as they can in wireline-based Internet.
“The fact that wireless doesn’t deliver what wireline does definitely does hurt them,” she said.
Hal Records, an associate professor at Bryant College, said what’s happening is “typical of the computer industry.
“Communications companies haven’t been able to take advantage of what has been developed,” he said. “It seems that the computer industry surges forward and then technology tries to catch up. I don’t know when the two will meet.”
Degbor doesn’t agree that communications companies can’t keep up and instead believes it is companies like Verizon that keep generating new products.
“We are committed to making it easier for our customer,” she said. “We have invested a lot in our network and are committed to constantly updating and releasing new services and products.”
But according to some industry officials, new products and services can’t make up for the industry’s biggest potential problem – a shrinking market.
“Sooner of later, the industry will have managed to scoop up all of the customers willing to make a purchase under the current market conditions,” said John Sullivan of Wireless Today, an on-line industry news source. “The trend will be more pronounced if the economy continues to sink. Indeed, carriers could even see overall subscribership fall this year if unemployment grows and overall discretionary spending shrinks.”
Still, for many analysts it seems too early to tell if the high cost of technology development and the possibility of an economic slowdown will deter people from communicating wirelessly and in the meantime there are more products to be developed.
“The future is in microwave communication,” Records said. “Sending digital data back and forth using infrared waves and no direct connection to the network. The possibility is out there, we just need to get there.”
