BOG magazine

Business Solutions

Next meeting, bring everything you’ve got.

www.businessonthego.ca

Kyocera 7135™

Palm OS® 4.0 software. Minimum system requirements are mandatory. Kyocera is a trademark of Kyocera Corporation; Palm and Palm OS are trademarks and registered trademarks of Palm Inc.

Making it simple.

W O R K L I F E W I R E L E S S

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Marketing to the one Text messaging is Spam-free, inexpensive and effective

10 Automating the enterprise Traditional business processes meet efficient mobile technology

13 Start with the operating system Practical advice on selecting a handheld computer

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14 Knowing where to begin Location-based services track shipments and coffee shops

18 Living the mobile lifestyle Youth love cellphones. Here’s why

22 Saving seconds, saving lives New systems are helping emergency workers get there faster

24 Fast networks, no wires Mobile public networks are hot, hot, hot

28 Investing in innovation Start-ups and universities get seed money from Bell

29 Device diversity More devices are hitting the shelves everyday. Here’s a few

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contents PUBLISHERS Laura M. Lapierre Greg MacDonald 30 Brands, no boundaries

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Major brand names are moving into wireless

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Peter Wolchak ASSOCIATE EDITOR Christine Sadek

34 Wireless for the fun of it Hey, it’s not all about work.

Think games, messaging and dating

COPY EDITOR Lisa Manfield ART DIRECTOR Shelley Walker

38 Far and away The value of keeping field reps out in the field

41 The CDMA/GSM split A field guide to two competing mobile standards

ELECTRONIC PRODUCTION Peter Pasivirta

PHOTOGRAPHY Steve Uhraney (Toronto) Ron Sangha (Vancouver) Richard Desmarais (Ottawa)

42 The customer experience Bell innovates: interactive voice response plus simplified billing

44 From here to there

ILLUSTRATIONS Min Jae Hong (New York) Jack Slattery (Houston) Gavin Orpen (Vancouver) Greg White (Vancouver)

A nine-step guide to implementing an enterprise wireless solution

Bell Mobility Inc. 5099 Creekbank Road, 6E Mississauga, Ontario L4W 5N2 905.282.2000 Fax: 905.282.3513

48 The Sympatico story Sure, it’s about ’net access.

And TV, music and games

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© 2003 Business on the Go is published by Bell Mobility Inc. All rights reserved. Points of view expressed do not necessarily represent those of Bell Mobility.

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When I began my career the business world was a very different place. The Internet essentially didn't exist, no one had e-mail and technology was a mysterious back-room entity you sometimes heard about.

In fact, only 18 years ago mobile phones cost up to $5,000, talk time set you back more than $1 per minute and the phones were the size of stereo components.

Today it's a completely different picture.

Technology—especially mobile technology— surrounds us. We live and work aided by highspeed networks and multi-function devices.

Cellphones, for example, are small and inexpensive. Forty per cent of Canadians own a cellphone and that number is rising. That is a huge cultural and business shift in a relatively short period of time, and I draw two conclusions from that revolution: one, the revolution is not over; and two, these changes represent huge opportunities, for the individual and for the companies that embrace change.

Data is the message When most people think of mobile technology it is still voice that pops to mind. That makes sense: cellular voice applications continue to be a huge success story. But voice has paved the way for the next revolution: mobile data, the ability to access information and applications that until recently were locked within office building walls.

We're just starting to see mobile data functionality take off. Ontario's Hamilton Police, for example, today have 115 patrol cars linked to the databases and systems at police headquarters.

Ruggedized notebooks equipped with Sierra Wireless AirCards connect to Bell Mobility's 1X network, giving officers access to mug shot databases, e-mail, policies and procedures, and soon to scanned historical records.

This system helps officers spend more time on the streets of their communities, making those communities safer.

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Or look at TD Bank, which is rolling out mobile point of sales terminals. This means the next time you order a pizza you'll be able to conduct a credit or debit transaction from your own front porch.

You will soon see these portable sales terminals popping up everywhere.

Mobile data, particularly e-mail, will soon be as commonplace among consumers as cellular voice is today.

Seize the opportunity And that means there are huge opportunities up for grabs.

Remember, those who got in on the early days of cellular voice were the ones who delivered competitive advantages to their companies.

Wireless data represents a major new opportunity for people who understand how mobile works, where it fits and how it can drive competitive advantage and differentiation for their companies.

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THE POWER OF CHOICE Te x t m e s s a g i n g i s p e r m i s s i o n based, direct to the consumer and friendly as heck. And brands are noticing B y

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PHOTO: RON SANGHA

When Canadian pop music fans sent text messages to vote for their favourite performers on CTV’s Canadian Idol, they were making wireless messaging history. Unlike followers of the American Idol series, who could only vote by text if they subscribed to a specific wireless service provider, Canadian Idol viewers were able to vote from any text-messaging-capable handset from any carrier.

And vote they did.

“The numbers show Canadians are eagerly adapting to this worldwide phenomenon,” says Peter Barnes, President and CEO of the Ottawa-based Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA). “It’s a fast, instant and affordable way to communicate with friends.”

The voting service, powered by Airborne Entertainment, a wireless entertainment company based in Montreal, involved nine wireless carriers across Canada and was the first such interoperable entertainment-based campaign in North America. The system used common short codes—digital short cuts managed by the CWTA that every major wireless service provider can process.

The codes are a series of five or six digits that customers dial into their wireless devices to vote, sign up for contests, register for games or receive promotional information. Coordinated by the CWTA, the common short code initiative has enabled the Canadian wireless industry to offer customers ubiquitous text messaging experiences, and has given companies options for large-scale mobile marketing. In the case of Canadian Idol, viewers were invited to enter common short codes (such as IDOL01) into their handsets in order to vote for their hero of choice. They could also use other codes to sign up for regular text updates and play trivia games.

“This initiative for the wireless industry is a big leap

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GIULIA ARENA, BELL MOBILITY

NANCIE WIGHT, AIRBORNE

PETER BARNES, BARNES’ CWTA

VIRGINIA AULIN, TIMBERWEST

DARREN STONE, VERRUS

E-MAIL ON THE MOVE

forward,” says Nancie Wight, Executive Producer and VicePresident of Programming at Airborne Entertainment. “We’ve set up the infrastructure (for Canadian Idol) so that when the wireless votes come through, Airborne collects those votes, identifies the carriers and does all the reporting back to CTV. There’s been tremendous leadership on Bell’s part to put this project together.”

Millions of North Americans are now interacting with innovative brands, entering contests, messaging to colleagues and enhancing their workflow processes using non-voice wireless messaging applications. According to the CWTA, growth continues in all sectors of the wireless communications industry, with more than 15 million Canadians using wireless products and services, and sending more than 800,000 wireless messages each day.

Underlying all those messages is the SMS (Short Message Service) protocol.

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While most visible in the consumer sphere, non-voice wireless messaging is also being used in many business applications—to improve workflow processes, enhance work team communications and supplement customer service practices.

Virginia Aulin can attest to that business need. As Vice-President of Public Affairs and Government Relations for TimberWest Forest, she travels frequently and requires the ability to stay in constant communication with colleagues. That’s why, in January, she adopted a BlackBerry wireless handheld. “My CEO and I were at lengthy meetings in D.C. and noticed everyone had BlackBerrys and that they were so much more convenient than checking e-mail on laptops,” she says. “So he phoned our director of IT and told him he wanted everyone on the executive management team to have a BlackBerry by the time we got back to Vancouver. Since then, we use our BlackBerrys religiously.”

Aulin primarily uses her handheld for its e-mail functionality, and says the company has definitely seen a return on its investment as a result. “As a team we are better connected and can use our time more effectively. It means there’s no wasted time in airports or when I’m waiting for a meeting—I use that time to respond to e-mails.”

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THE BUSINESS CASE

Businesses are using text messaging for:

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E-mail: SMS messages can alert workers when new e-

mail arrives and communicate basic information such as the Sender and Subject fields.

Vehicle/fleet tracking: Coupled with Global Positioning Systems technology, text messaging can relay location information to customers or a tracking facility.

Group messaging: Messages can be broadcast simultaneously to a group.

Customer service: Customers can be sent basic information, such as account status or balances, or simple answers to questions.

Dispatch systems: Addresses and phone numbers can fit within the SMS text limit, making the technology useful for delivery or courier firms.

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The voice of the people Reality TV shows like Canadian Idol are doing a lot to drive that growth. “Canadian Idol is great because people see it on TV and find out how to use text messaging,” says Giulia Arena, Associate Director of Messaging at Bell Mobility. “We’re in the process of trying to create awareness about text messaging. There are people who use it and love it, and there’s a whole other piece of the market that still doesn’t even know it exists.”

Wight agrees there’s a long to way to go in the education process. “In Canada we’re a bit behind. Europe is far more advanced both in interpersonal messaging and (wireless) marketing. There you’ll see, for example, on a Coke can: ‘Short code to this number and win!’ If you tried that here, people wouldn’t know what you were talking about. The great thing

about Canadian Idol and this common short code initiative is there’s now a way to open those doors.”

Arena says companies could still market their brands by going with basic short codes, if for example they wanted to target only one service provider’s customers. However, she expects most new marketing initiatives will take advantage of the more flexible interoperable common codes.

“Say a third party wants to work with all the carriers—it would go to the CWTA to get one common short code,” Arena says. “Most brands want to work with everyone because that is where the market is, so the CWTA process helps them and really helps us all build the text messaging market.”

No Spam here Short code marketing is based on a by-request model, in that cell owners have to sign-up for individual campaigns. This avoids the enmasse Spam associated with e-mail marketing. Another advantage of mobile short codes is the call to action is immediate: people carry cellphones so when they see a campaign they like they can sign up immediately. In the older Web-based advertising model, interested consumers had to remember a URL and remember to try it out when they got back to their computers. And often, they didn’t do either.

Text messaging has made huge inroads into the entertainment and sports areas because, according to Arena, both are interactive and produce short bits of information in real time. “Text messaging is limited in its character set so it works well with those applications,” she says. “Voting is something very actionable and in the moment. With sports, generally there’s a real-time aspect and you want to know what’s happening via quick pieces of information.”

For three years, Vancouver-based wireless solutions firm Verrus has developed wireless solutions for professional sports venues.

Through agreements with the Seattle Mariners and the Carolina Hurricanes, the veteran wireless company began building a market for wireless entertainment and commerce, and survived the tech downturn on the strength of its compelling applications. “Basically, if you’re at the game you can predict what is going to happen using the WAP browser on your phone,” says Darren Stone, Vice-President of R&D at Verrus. “It’s a text-based interface that also lets you answer trivia questions. So it’s great for the sports fan who just wants to get more into the action.”

Airborne has also gotten in on the game, and delivers real-time sports alerts for Verizon in the U.S. “If you’re a sports fan you can sign up and have text messages come to your phone every time there’s a goal,” Wight says. “That business just hasn’t slowed down; every quarter it’s growing.”

Verrus has recently taken its sports initiative one step further and has rolled-out a wireless in-seat ordering service, giving sports fans the ability to “order a hamburger and beer to their seat with a cellphone,” Stone says.

“It basically turns the whole park into club seating.”

But the company’s first foray into mobile commerce was in another area altogether: parking lots. Verrus developed a wireless pay parking system which is now available in lots throughout Vancouver, Seattle, Calgary and Whistler, B.C. Rather than fumbling for change to pay for parking, customers dial a toll-free number from their wireless phones, indicate the lot number and the amount of time they wish to park, and have the charges billed to their credit

card. “It takes a minute to sign up the first time,” Stone says. “Each subsequent time it’s about a 20-second phone call. The really cool thing is Verrus sends you a text message when your parking is about to expire. You respond saying you’d like to extend it, and you don’t have to go back to your car.”

Mobile commerce driven by wireless capabilities is what Stone is most excited about. “That’s where we think there’s really exciting stuff going on. The adoption has been fantastic; we’ve seen a 15 per cent growth rate per month consistently over the last couple of years in terms of mobile transactions. If you use it once, you’re almost certain to use it again and again; that’s what our numbers tell us.

“We have a user base of many thousands of people in B.C. and Washington, with hundreds more registering for the first time every week,” Stone continues. “We also do surveys to find out who our market is and we’ve found that in a typical North American city, close to 90 per cent of people who park their cars in an urban centre have cellphones on them. That might actually be a larger per centage of people than those who have correct change.” ■ BUSINESS ON THE GO

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Making time

Office automation systems drive productivity for mobile reps

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The scene: a doctor’s waiting room, daytime. A crowd of people sit in uncomfortable chairs, reading months-old magazines, waiting for their appointments. Within the crowd are two men, wearing suits. They’re pharmaceutical reps.

One of them is concentrating on a compact BlackBerry. He has just checked his e-mail and learned that the anti-cholesterol drug his company has been developing was approved by Health Canada this morning. He can begin his sales pitch to the doctor as soon as she finishes her current appointment.

The other rep is sitting idle. His handheld needs to be plugged directly into a computer to pick up e-mail, so it’s sitting in his briefcase.

As his work day ticks away, he’s looking at his fingers, wondering if he should trim his nails.

Who would you rather have working for your company?

“Typically, employees such as pharmaceutical reps spend the day going from doctor to hospital to doctor,” says Kiran Lam, Associate Director of Wireless Business Applications at Bell Mobility. “And at each stop they make, they could be waiting 45 minutes or an hour just to see their client. Companies which send employees out into the field have always accepted that some productive time would be lost. They had no choice. Reps had to wait in waiting rooms, had to drive from client to client and had to travel back to the office to file orders. Those hours were like anchors tied directly to the company’s profits.

“But that time no longer needs to be downtime,” Lam says.

Data anywhere The new factor is higher-speed mobile networks. Bell Mobility and other wireless service providers selected a technology called 1X, while others opted for the General Packet Radio Service standard.

“1X allows cruising speeds of up to 86 kilobits per second, which is comparable to dial-up. That allows you to do about 90 per cent of what you can do in the office out in the field,” Lam says.

ILLUSTRATION: MIN JAE HONG / THREE IN A BOX

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“1X allows cruising speeds of up to 86 kilobits per second, which is comparable to dial-up. That allows you to do about 90 per cent of what you can do in the office out in the field.”

– Kiran Lam, Associate Director of Wireless Business Applications, Bell Mobility

And while the network is fast and wireless it is also robust enough to be used by the police force in Hamilton, Ont. More than 100 of their cruisers are now equipped with ruggedized laptops and Sierra Wireless AirCards, which link the computers to the 1X network.

The goal is to keep officers where they’re most needed: on the street.

“With the new system, the savings are not so much in dollars as they are savings in officers’ time,” explains Deputy Chief Tom Marlor. “The real efficiency is keeping the officer on his or her beat, to be available for priority calls.”

Marlor’s force patrols an area that spans more than 400 square miles, which means officers often find themselves more than a half-hour’s drive from the station. To file a report or access database information, officers could easily spend an hour just commuting to and from the station.

“Before our new implementation, when an officer wanted information from a file he or she had to go to the station, give a record number to someone in the records office who would go to a file cabinet, pull the record, photocopy it, give it to the officer, and then refile the paper,” Marlor explains. “On top of that there would sometimes be mis-files. So you have all these staff hours wasted. But the new system, which gives officers direct access from the car, eliminates all that.”

Up and running It’s a system that holds potential for almost any business or organization that sends people into the field. And implementation can be a very simple process.

When Suncor Energy Products decided to outfit its station inspectors with BlackBerrys so they could submit reports to head office in real time, designing and launching the system took only weeks. Suncor operates almost 300 gas stations across Ontario under its retail brand name, Sunoco, and Territory Managers tour each station, working with an inspection list that can run to more than 300 questions for the larger sites.

“Because Bell Mobility’s network covers almost every one of our stations we didn’t have to worry about store-andforward processes and how to make the application work offline,” says Geoff Le Quelenec, a Web and wireless developer for Sunoco. “Bell Mobility was able to say ‘You have signal almost everywhere’ and that was it.”

The main goal for Suncor, Le Quelenec says, was timeliness. “We wanted the speed of a wireless solution.”

And with the new system, instead of getting inspection results in weeks, information is available in real time. When the 12

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Territory Managers complete the inspection screen on the BlackBerry, a one-tap operation transmits the results wirelessly to Suncor Energy Products’ head office. The data is immediately available to the system and an improved report-generating process posts the results on the company’s intranet portal.

Sunoco and the Hamilton Police are very pleased with their 1X implementation, but Lam says the network is only being used at a fraction of its potential. “The more people learn about it, the more demand there will be.”

The really explosive growth, he predicts, will come next year when the majority of cellphones issued by Bell Mobility and other wireless service providers will be Java-enabled.

Adding the programming language means phones won’t actually be phones so much as personal digital assistants, allowing their owners to browse the Web or check and send e-mail.

The productivity play at Suncor The company

Suncor Energy operates a refining and marketing business in Ontario with distribution under the Sunoco brand.

The need

A wireless site-inspection system to track quality-control.

The solution

A PDA-based inspection solution powered by Bell Mobility's 1X network.

The results

Suncor executives get performance results in minutes, not weeks. Gas station operators can now act on inspection assessments immediately. Managers achieve improved results more quickly.

What does this mean for businesses? First, instead of checking e-mail on a $2,000 laptop computer, many could use a much less expensive cellphone. Going further, as cellphones and handheld computers become more advanced, businesses will ask themselves if they really need to rent office space for an employee just because he or she needs computer access.

“This all has a very strong ROI model,” Lam says.

“Businesses will have less need for office space. Their orders will be processed in real time. And since their field workers will be able to communicate in real time, they’ll be able to handle a lot more jobs in a day.

“We’re in for exciting times ahead. This story’s just going to keep on getting better.” ■

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Hand-held computers are cool.

They play music, display photos and many double as cellphones.

And, of course, they also keep track of appointments, store business contacts and keep you on top of e-mail.

But the key to selecting the ideal device for you actually starts with the hidden realm of operating systems. Understanding the strengths of each OS will help determine the best device for the job at hand.

Three operating systems currently hold sway over the market: Microsoft’s Pocket PC, the Palm OS, and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry software.

Here’s a snapshot look at each.

The veteran The Palm OS is the leading mobile data platform, with about 70 per cent market penetration. “Palm has the largest installed base of users today, and supports literally tens of thousands of applications,” according to Kiran Lam, Associate Director of Wireless Business Applications at Bell Mobility. He notes this has made Palm’s OS the jackof-all-trades of wireless

The rising star Microsoft’s Pocket PC OS, now renamed Windows Mobile 2003, is number two in terms of installed base but its market share is growing rapidly, Lam says. Information technology professionals are turning to Pocket PC as they look to add mobile data devices to existing Microsoft-based corporate networks.

“They like the consistency between Pocket PC and the Microsoft platforms,” Lam explains, adding Pocket PC devices are optimized for Microsoft Exchange and include a pocket Internet browser and stripped down versions of Word and Excel. “With a Pocket PC you actually open your files using a native application, so it’s a more elegant fit.”

The e-mail specialist While Palm and Pocket PC support multiple applications, Research In Motion’s key strength is that its OS is purpose-built to do one thing, and do it well. That one thing is e-mail. “As an e-mail appliance, it’s probably the best on the market today,” Lam says, citing long battery life, ruggedness and an excellent keyboard design among RIM’s advantages.

RIM’s OS scores big for security, too. “IT professionals love RIM for email because it uses triple-DES encryption,” Lam points out. “It’s probably the safest way available to transmit e-mail wirelessly.”

The future One of the biggest developments for hand-held-type devices could take place outside the big-three OS ring.

Looking ahead, Java-enabled phones will open new markets—particularly in those segments that have not yet adopted wireless data services. “The nature of the platform means it’s going to be more entry-level: the interface is not a full keyboard and the display is much smaller,” Bell Mobility’s Lam explains.

“But Java-enabled phones will be affordable and will have an all-in-one form factor. And you should see some of the games you can download on Java now—they are incredible, and they would’ve been only a dream three years ago.” ■ BUSINESS ON THE GO

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L Looking at mobile data?

Look at the OS first

data. “If you dream it there will be an application for it available for the Palm.”

Lam points out current Palm users are likely to stick with Palm when shopping for a wirelessenabled device, particularly if they have a lot of information loaded into their existing device.

“The Palm 7135 is selling like gangbusters right now,” he observes. “There’s a huge pentup demand.”

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LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION New location-based services will tell you where you are, where to go, and how to get there B y

t ILLUSTRATION: JIM SLATTERY / THE WILEY GROUP

These things happen to the best of us.

Visiting another city you find yourself short on cash. You wander around lost for what seems like hours, searching for a bank machine, only to find out later there was one right around the corner.

This is a common problem and one of the more popular business cases for wireless location-based services (LBS). With this type of service, wireless customers can send a “find me” request through a Web-enabled phone. The request matches up with a third-party database and users can look up a list of ATMs, restaurants, gas stations or whatever.

It’s not an entirely new idea. Think of all the times you called 411 or looked up a restaurant in the Yellow Pages.

LBS is in fact the evolution of these services, according to Adrian Vella, Associate Director of Location-Based Services Evolution and Applications at Bell Mobility.

Bell Mobility’s MyFinder, a mobile consumer LBS offering, is the first service of its kind in Canada. “We wanted to take a service that consumers currently use and were familiar with and make it even better,” Vella says.

“Say I want to meet with some friends for dinner tonight. I can run a search around a specific intersection and then get directions there from my office.

So I use MyFinder to find me and provide

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directions from where I am to where I want to go. I can then also send this information to my friends as a text message.”

There are different phases to this technology, Vella adds. The first phase, available now in Ontario, Québec and Western Canada, is based on “cell site technology.” This uses the carrier’s existing cellular network sites, found throughout the service areas, to locate a customer’s phone. Delivering this does not require phone upgrades, Vella says, so anyone with a digital, Web-enabled device is all set. Bell Mobility charges a small fee per “Find Me” request.

“The services that we launch will always be opt-in, where the customers will first have to give consent to be located,” he added.

Now that you’ve been located, says Andrew Seybold, a principal analyst with the Andrew Seybold Group and the Los Gatos, Calif.-based founder of Outlook4Mobility, a trend analysis group of companies focused on the wireless market, “you’ve solved the biggest issue...since it already knows where you are, it can match your location with a database and get the answer you’re looking for.”

The second phase of this technology will incorporate GPS (global positioning system) technology which will ramp up

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“Say I want to go out to dinner tonight. I can run a MyFinder search around a specific intersection and then get directions there from my office. So I use the search to find me and plot directions from where I am to where I want to go.”

– Adrian Vella, Associate Director of Location-Based Services Evolution and Applications at Bell Mobility

track your position 24 hours a day.” the accuracy of the mobile location process.

“With cell-site (technology), you are typically going to Castellani, who works as a student trainer specialising in find things within a five-minute drive from where you are. What health and safety with the London, Ont.-based Student Teaching that means in downtown Toronto is anywhere between a quarter Project, says she often travels to Toronto and other cities because of a kilometre and about a kilometre. “When you start of her job. “I find if I have that service, I can quickly find the closest bank, the closest nightclub—things like that. And it’s getting into rural areas, just an interesting thing to have, in this day and age. however, the search area Centre of Cell site that we use increases Tower “Also, I don’t own a car. And when I am using (the service) because our cell sites are I can get walking directions, which usually cut down a lot on more spaced out. In the time of getting somewhere. It actually gives you directions some cases, it might find through buildings and stuff—I found that really cool.” things up to 10km (away It is a very helpful feature to have when you are lost, she from where you are).” adds, because it can GPS Satellites Uncertainty But with GPS, you will be often tell you which radius able to pinpoint locaintersection is closest.

EV O tions within about 10 “I find I feel safer and LU metres, he says. That more confident when TI O Phase 1 will enable services such travelling than I did N as roadside assistance to before.” locate stranded motorists easily using the GPS in their phones.

According to Vella of Bell Mobility, the According to e-commerce consulting firm The Kelsey services offered, which Group, based in Princeton, N.J., the worldwide LBS market will Mobile includes some content exceed US$11 billion in revenue by 2005, by which time about Phone from Global Dining and one billion Internet-enabled handsets will be in use. And, Yellow Pages, are “just according to IDC Canada, about 60 per cent of Canadian companies are currently using at least one wireless solution. Vella Phase 2 the tip of the iceberg.” The focus this says LBS technology for wireless holds wide appeal for both year will be on monitoring applications and ensuring they offer businesses and consumers.

“For example, dispatch companies can now use this tech- the right content. “We are always adding value, but not bomnology to locate units—trucks, couriers, whatever—which are barding the application with so much content that it becomes out and about. LBS allows them to much more efficiently too complicated.” ■ dispatch calls.”

The privacy play The LBS market So what about privacy? Many people, according to Seybold, immediately wonder if this type of technology is Big Brother at ■ The worldwide LBS market will exceed US$11 billion work. “But all of this is going to be permission based...and by 2005 people are going to use it in varying degrees.”

■ Also by 2005, about one billion Internet-enabled Vella agrees. “Privacy is of utmost importance—it’s always handsets will be in use at the forefront. And we’ve really focused on designing the Source: The Kelsey Group services to give our customers full control of when you can be found, whether you want to or don’t want to be found, and On the consumer side who can locate you. So it’s all in the hands of the user.”

Strategy Analytics estimates consumer location applicaThe “opt-in” nature of MyFinder was one of the things that tions will generate more than US$8 billion in global servappealed to Christina Castellani. “What you have to do is you ice revenues in 2008, with Asia Pacific remaining the have to say ‘find me.’ And it can only find you if you tell it to dominant region. do that—you are making that decision. It doesn’t constantly 16

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Business Solutions

How can you have the answer before the question is asked?

It’s simple. With our full range of wireless messaging solutions, you’ll be ready for anything.

They give you real-time access to your e-mail and desktop on the device of your choice.

Find out about the BlackBerry 6750™, and our other wireless messaging options for business.

Take them with you to your next meeting. You’ll be equipped with what anyone in business absolutely needs. Answers. www.businessonthego.ca

Making it simple.

Some conditions and restrictions apply. Monthly service and/or usage charges apply. Service is available within Bell Mobility coverage areas and where technology exists.

The BlackBerry and RIM families or related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trade-marks of Research in Motion Limited and are used by permission; Bell Mobility is a trade-mark of Bell Canada, used under license.

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IT’S A LIFESTYLE THING The personal relationship between youth and their phones B y

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PHOTO: STEVE UHRANEY

If you’re past 30, or maybe even a bit younger, it’s possible the excitement surrounding mobility leaves you a little confused.

Typing text messages on a super-tiny keyboard seems hardly worth the effort, and you have a problem grasping the value of being accessible 24/7. You never had to do that before.

Camera phones? Polyphonic ringtones? Phones that let you listen to MP3s and play games? Puh-leeeeease! Don’t people have enough to do with their time?

Yet younger people are heavily into all of these, and it’s about more than just the phone. Kids are different and they take to cellphones in a different way.

“My parents are very technologically inept,” says Nicole Fawcette, a 20-year-old University of Toronto student who considers herself a heavy mobile phone user. “It’s just a lifestyle thing.”

That lifestyle thing is currently translating into some hard numbers. According to John Hillis, Director of Youth Marketing for Bell Mobility, about 43 per cent of the general population carries cellphones, but for youth it’s closer to 55 per cent. “Cellphones are simply a way of life,” he says.

So what is it that differentiates the 13- to 29-year-old set, and explains their general interest in technology, specifically mobile phones?

The number one reason most often cited is that kids are more technologically savvy. “Young people have grown up

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“This is a group that is so cellular. It is a form of technology that integrates into their lives and provides them with a lot of benefits.”

– Max Valiquette, President, Youthography

communicating with all kinds of technology,” Hillis says. In fact, more and more kids are growing up landline-less—many won’t even consider anything but cellphones.

“This is a group that is so cellular,” says Max Valiquette, President of Youthography, a full-service youth marketing consultancy. “It is a form of technology that integrates so easily into their lives and provides them with a lot of benefits that adults don’t typically seek.”

Number one is the fact “young people don’t tend to divide their world into buckets.” Where adults split their lives into work and home, and primarily (although this is changing) identify their phones as business tools, kids see cellphones as communication tools, and even as lifestyles tools.

“Business we shut down, but relationships we don’t shut down,” Valiquette says.

This partly explains why Fawcette leaves her phone, which is also her alarm clock, on 24 hours a day. A potential middle-ofthe-night caller is not a problem: she can turn the ringer off or, using caller ID, she can send the person straight to voice mail.

Living mobile Kids’ work and home lives roll together, and that’s how they use their cellphones. Mobile phones offer a lifestyle that is full of all those great energized words that define youth. Freedom.

Independence. Control.

“It’s your own, you customize it the way you want to, you don’t worry about anyone else deleting your messages, you don’t worry about not being able to reach somebody. It’s very, very, very much a kid thing,” Valiquette says.

Reade Barber, Senior Associate Director of Services Development for Bell Mobility, points out that youth also have more time on their hands. Indeed, Fawcette admits she uses her phone’s Web access to check movie listings and e-mail when she is “waiting for the bus and really bored.”

What a difference from my over-the-hill viewpoint as a

working mother of three. That wireless-Web-enabled, enchantingringtone, complete-with-calendar (and task-list) mobile phone in my handbag is truly a gem. And yet, I’m hard-pressed to find the time to play with it—not to mention learn the functions.

Which brings us to the next point. “Young people have a willingness to adopt and a willingness to experiment,” Barber says.

Not only do they have the time, but they also put effort into learning new technologies.

Understanding who young people are goes a long way towards explaining what they love about their cellphones. “[Youth] are a tremendously empowered generation who are used to taking control of their lives,” Valiquette says.

They are used to experiencing empowerment with technology, media and entertainment, and the cellphone lets them do it all.

Kids download what, when and how they want to, and every day brings new options, whether it be streaming video, location-based services, or multimedia messaging.

Cellphones give kids that unique mix of connectedness, independence, freedom and control they find so important. “Your parents don’t control this, you do,” Valiquette says.

Ironically, 17-year-old Montrealer Michelle Roseman says the cellphone makes her feel more independent, because it helps her stay in touch with her parents, who are then less worried. Aren’t kids supposed to feel more independent when they’re out of reach?

But caller ID and voice mail allow Roseman to decide who to talk to and when, and her parents give her more distance knowing they can stay in touch.

What’s mine No surprise then that personalization, which is also controlled by the individual, has become a big market hit. Bell Mobility offers users more than 1,400 downloadable ringtones. Some kids thrive on modifying their phone’s faceplates; others like to change the screen image.

“Images and ringtones,” Hillis says, “continue to skyrocket.”

Since youth also want to be entertained, they are “one of the key drivers of entertainment serv-

“Young people have a willingness to adopt and a willingness to experiment.”

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ices,” Barber says. A slew of services geared specifically towards youth include Java games, games playable from a phone’s Internet browser, and sites that allow kids to create their own images and upload them from the home PC to the phone.

According to Hillis, revenue from those younger than 24 is 20 per cent higher than from people older than 24. Also, as the current 55 per cent penetration is expected to grow to 60 per cent by the end of the year—which translates to about 300,000 new entrants—“now is the time to win new customers,” Hillis says.

What happens later? Does this extremely tech-savvy generation age like the one before it, or retain its youthfulness? And the generation following close on its heels—is it possible to be any savvier?

Valiquette says boomers have put a new value on youth, dramatically changing things from the way they were 20 years ago. “Adults value youth more now than they ever have before,” he says. And because parents like being young, youth culture has more influence.

And yet, “as we get older what we tend to do is to start to make divisions in our lives, particularly as a stress management tool. Young people don’t do that,” he says.

Which means that as these kids become working adults and parents, and are forced to split work and home, they may have to rethink where technology fits into their lives.

“I don’t want to be afraid of using new things,” says Fawcette, looking forward 30 years. “I think that growing up with TV and CD players and computers and things like that will help me be a little more receptive to emerging technologies.”

“Youth are more tech focused. I don’t think they’ll ever lose that,” says Barber.

And yet, Fawcette already notes a generational difference in the way she and those younger than her react to innovation. At 20 she has already caught herself questioning new technologies.

“The first time I saw a camera in a phone I thought—who needs that?” The next generation “will be even more tech savvy.”

One change, Hillis says, is “right now people see their phone as their phone, but as we see more integrated devices and richer content people will see their phone for more than simply voice calls. It will do more, and be a bigger part of their lives.”

Which is so appealing to youth. “Anything that makes your life easier without having to drag around a lot of stuff is a good thing,” Fawcette says. This applies both to the wireless qualities she and her peers value—style, pricing, functionality —as well as futuristic developments on the horizon.

“I think it will become more interactive. It’s not just for voice anymore,” she says. “It’s almost like taking around a mini computer.” ■

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LIVES WILL BE SAVED Mobile technology is increasing the effectiveness of emergency personnel

ILLUSTRATION: SHELLEY WALKER / PHOTO: STEVE UHRANEY

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Crushing pain—you’re having a heart attack. Clutching your chest with one hand, you manage to get the cellphone out of your pocket with your other. But as you punch in 911 and hit Send you fumble the phone, dropping it out of reach. If you made the call on a landline, the connection alone would have carried enough information for an emergency response team to find you. But because you used a wireless phone, you are out of luck. The emergency operators have no location data on you.

Or, at least, they don’t yet.

Wireless service providers across Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere have been working for some time on adding location information to mobile systems through an initiative called enhanced 911, or E911. The ultimate goal is to pinpoint, with as much accuracy as possible, a user’s location when a 911 call is made on a mobile phone. This is a complex issue, however, and involves wireless service providers working with telcos, emergency networks and governments to standardize protocols and technologies.

Three basic pieces have to be in place before a workable solution is possible, says Andrew Seybold, a principal analyst with the Seybold Group and the founder of Outlook4Mobility, a Los Gatos, Calif.-based trend analysis group focused on the wireless market.

“The device has to be capable, the network has to be capable and the PSAP (public service answering point—or 911 network) has to have the right equipment. Currently, on various networks, either the network’s not ready or the PSAPs are not ready.”

In Canada, the situation differs somewhat, says Warren Chaisatien, Senior Analyst for Telecommunications Research with IDC Canada. For one thing, the American Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has mandated that the wireless carriers employ a certain type of service delivery across the board. That’s a much more active role than that of the Canadian Radio-television and

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WARREN CHAISATIEN, IDC CANADA

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Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) had previously taken in Canada, although the CRTC recently became more involved. In fact, in August 2003 the CRTC released a directive that wireless service providers must provide E911 services wherever network access services are available. Previously, unless it accepted the status and all of the obligations of a competitive local exchange carrier, a wireless carrier had no regulatory obligation to transmit emergency calls. But while the CRTC has mandated E911 take place, there are still no set rules about the technology infrastructure or timelines like there are in the U.S., Chaisatien says. “The wireless service providers here are all working on this issue together...and because (the service delivery type) has not been mandated, the ball is in their court.”

Javan Erfanian, Senior Associate Director of Wireless Technology Planning at Bell Mobility, agrees it’s important that the carriers work together. “The public safety community would prefer a Canadian solution—we would like to have all the parties involved as opposed to having a fragmented solution.”

Getting there There are two phases to the E911 initiative. Phase 1, currently in process, involves wireless carriers providing the PSAP with the callback number of the wireless phone from which a 911 call was made. With that number, the PSAP can get general information about that person’s location, based on the “cell site” from which the call originated. “Providing a general area from which the call was made helps with more accurate routing to the correct police, ambulance or fire stations,” Erfanian says.

Phase 1 will always be the default service of E911. Phase 2 will provide more accurate location information to help pinpoint the caller, if needed for emergency response. The leading Phase 2 technology involves the use of GPS (global posi-

JAVAN ERFANIAN, BELL MOBILITY

DAN PUKLICZ, BELL MOBILITY

tioning system) in the handset, assisted by the network.

As Phase 1 is being rolled out in Canada, the network among the parties is underway to evaluate, coordinate and trial E911 Phase 2.

“Cooperation and coordination of the parties is essential to ensure development of a reliable and efficient end-to-end Phase 2 solution, with the goal of enhancing safety response to 911 callers,” Erfanian says.

Calling all cars Another public safety initiative taking place in the wireless world comes from the radio division of Bell Mobility. This is different from other dispatch radio networks in several ways. First, it uses digital “trunking” technology, which means radio channels are not assigned permanently to users but are shared and assigned as needed.

Second, the technology deployed by Bell is designed around the specific and demanding needs of police.

“Radio in the past used to have you assigned to a specific frequency of 154.100 Mhz, for example, and you had to stay there all the time. And if you wanted to talk to somebody, that would be the only channel you could use,” says Dan Puklicz, Program Director of Marketing for Bell Mobility’s Radio division. “The problem with that was, because you were the only one on that channel, 90 per cent of the time it was unused. So it was not very effective or efficient use of the radio spectrum, unless others were assigned the same channel, in which case you would lose privacy.”

Trunking takes several channels and puts them under the management of a controller. When a user pushes the button to transmit, the controller distributes the request to an available channel and only to those meant to hear the call. “Of course, the efficiency of the spectrum goes up significantly, while keeping the incidence of blocked calls down,” Puklicz says.

Bell Radio’s new network, called FleetNet, will operate Ontario wide and serve public safety needs. “If a police officer pushes the button to talk on his radio, he needs to be granted a channel to communicate within half a second,” Puklicz says. Users must have a public safety designation and be involved in the protection of life— FleetNet is not available to the general public. Federal, provincial and municipal customers, such as the Department of Corrections, the Ontario Provincial Police, Ontario’s Ministries of Health and Long Term Care, Natural Resources, Transportation, as well as Guelph police and fire are some of the customers of this service.

Voice applications aren’t the only wireless technology that police and other public safety users are deploying, he says. For example, Ontario’s provincial police is just one customer implementing mobile data terminals to retrieve data—to look up information on vehicles and drivers with the swipe of a driver’s licence.

Matt Hodgson, Business Manager at Hamilton, Ont.-based Echelon Response & Training, says his company—which deals with emergency chemical spills—also relies heavily on wireless technology for emergency response situations.

“Rather than us getting dispatched and not knowing what’s going on, the (incoming) call is routed directly to the person who is going to show up. They talk directly to us, we get the details, then we have a better idea of what we are facing when we get there.” Among the technologies he currently uses for his job are wireless phones, radios, fax machines and pagers, which are all connected to a 24-hour network.

Most of the time, Hodgson says, GPS technology wouldn’t be needed for his work, but he is looking forward to deploying Tablet PCs. “You can actually draw diagrams on them. We would like to have our server from the office be able to access it from the field.

If we can’t explain something over the phone, we would then be able to draw it and send it to the office.” ■ BUSINESS ON THE GO

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Wireless LANs coming to a train or coffee shop near you With a growing market for wireless LANs in homes and corporations, mobile service providers are working out when and where public hotspots make business sense B y

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I’ll admit my bias up front: I’ve installed a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) at home and it has proved to be one of the best technology decisions I’ve made. My wired network served me well in my home office but going wireless allowed me to do all the same work but from just about anywhere in the house.

Put like that it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but in practice it makes a world of difference. For example, I don’t have air conditioning, so with a WLAN I can grab my laptop and abandon the office in favour of cooler areas. And whatever their own reasons, many others agree with me because WLANs are popping up in homes and businesses across Canada. It’s no wonder when one considers that WLAN technology works, the hardware is relatively inexpensive, the network is easy to set up and manage, and the airtime is free.

But the same qualities that make a private system so attractive make it difficult to develop a profitable business case for public WLAN access points, called hotspots. One recent count put the number of public hotspots in Canada at 300 to 400, but there are many unanswered questions: Who will use them? How often? And what are people willing to pay for access? Technical questions abound too, covering everything from average and peak traffic levels to session management and security.

Bell AccessZone pilot To begin to answer these and other questions, Bell Canada is conducting a pilot project called Bell AccessZone. Running since December 2002, this deployment now includes more than 20 stationary hotspot locations plus mobile hotspots on VIA Rail passenger trains operating between Montreal and Toronto. Access is

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“The beauty of the VIA trial is that it demonstrates the synchronous interoperability of different networks. And if you can do it on a train, you can do it in fixed locations, so it may be possible to supplement a 1X network with 802.11 hotspots to make the network appear even faster and more robust than it already is.”

– Almis Ledas Bell Mobility, Vice-President of Corporate Development

free during the trial: the only requirement is a device, a laptop or PDA, with 802.11b wireless networking capability.

Almis Ledas, Bell Mobility’s VicePresident of Corporate Development, says AccessZone is primarily a technical trial.

“Users are experimenting just because it’s out there: we’re seeing a lot of that,” he explains. “We have experimenters, and we have some people who are trying to remain connected or productive in some manner, who are taking advantage of [hotspots].”

As comfort levels grow, Ledas expects people will change their routines in order to take advantage of hotspot availability. “We can imagine some of these, but the real impact will be those modifications we can’t imagine today,” he says. A similar process took place in the real estate industry a number of years ago as cellphones were introduced. “Real estate companies ended up shutting down their regional offices because they discovered the only reason agents came into those office was to pick up phone messages.”

The air conditioning scenario From a business perspective, one of the big questions that needs an answer is how much will people be willing to pay to use a public hotspot? Brian Sharwood, Principal with the SeaBoard Group, predicts installing hotspots will simply become a common cost of doing business. “When people install hotspots themselves, they realize it’s not a significant additional cost. Most businesses have Internet access as a fixed cost anyway, and the base station cost is a one-time outlay,” he says. “It’ll be a cost of business.”

Sharwood points to a coffee-shop scenario. “It will cost (the owner) about $150 (for the hotspot). How many extra coffees…does he or she need to sell? For $150, the attitude is, ‘I

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could’ve bought some extra plates or glasses, or a hotspot’ and the hotspot is going to last five years—longer than the glasses are going to last.”

Jean Barrette, General Manager of Bell’s Wireless Accelerator Fund, has a similar take on hotspot evolution. The Accelerator Fund led the VIA Rail trial and coordinated the various project partners.

“There is a significant probability that with unlicensed spectrum, and with free hotspots popping up left and right, and with no differentiation between a hotspot you have to pay for and one you don’t have to pay for, that we will see an ‘air conditioning’ scenario playing out,” Barette says.

There is a clear demand on both the home and SOHO markets but the public hotspot market is in its infancy. One outcome can be shown with an analogy. “Initially no restaurants had air conditioning. Then one person put it in his restaurant, and may have bumped up his prices a little bit because of this new feature,” Barrette explains. “But at some point every restaurant had air conditioning and it just became a cost of doing business: there is now no real revenue attached to it. So if you do not differentiate clearly the AC scenario may very well play out.”

In Canadians Cut Their Wires, a SeaBoard Group white paper published in mid-2003, the telecom consultancy notes unlicensed WLAN deployment has been “a consumer-led revolution” in which the first steps have been taken, not by large enterprises, but by residential users. While companies have been grappling with issues like security, firewalls and performance, people have been plugging in base stations and cutting cables.

Still, there are compelling reasons for Bell to deploy hotspots.

“I think there will be a wave of benefit that we’re not currently banking on, which is the seamless merging of wireless networks,

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such as Bell Mobility’s PCS and 1X data networks, with hotspots,” Ledas says. “When we have interoperable networks, the notion of a separate hotspot will go away: it will just look like more and better coverage that will improve the public wireless service.”

Integrating on the train It’s this integration that makes the VIA Rail trial exciting from a technical perspective. A hotspot mounted inside a business-class passenger car connects to 1X and satellite antennae on the car’s roof. These antennae in turn connect the car to satellite and high-speed terrestrial data networks. Bell’s Wireless Accelerator Fund brought together the various stakeholders, including VIA Rail, PointShot Wireless (which supplied the WLAN equipment), Bell Mobility, Bell ExpressVu and Bell Canada.

The VIA trial was launched in July 2003 and allows VIA 1 passengers on trains between Toronto and Montreal can use the mobile hotspot just as they would a wireless LAN in their office or home. The system switches between 1X and satellite as required, to maintain a strong data link, while an on-board cache ensures e-mail messages sent from the train are not lost if the train loses its link, and are sent when coverage is reestablished. VIA is also looking at how its employees can use the onboard hotspot to improve how they perform their duties.

One possibility is issuing tickets on the train using wireless Point of Sale terminals.

At SeaBoard, Sharwood says the market advantage for VIA is clear. “If you put an employee on an 8:00 a.m. train to Montreal for an afternoon meeting, wouldn’t you prefer if he was fully connected while on the way there?” The alternative, he says, is “putting him on a 9:30 flight from Toronto, where he has to leave at 8:00 anyway, and he basically does nothing except go through security and sit on a plane.”

Ledas says,“The beauty of the VIA trial is it demonstrates the seamless interoperability of different networks. And if you can do it on a train, you can do it in fixed locations, so it may be possible to supplement a 1X network with 802.11 hotspots to make the network appear even faster and more robust than it already is.”

“It’s pretty cool,” Barrette adds. “We have satellite from Bell ExpressVu, we have our 1X network, we have Bell

Canada’s wireline data network in the back end and we have the Bell AccessZone marketing approach, all working very well to provide a seamless experience. As far as I’m concerned, this is a Bell play: Who else in Canada can do this? I don’t think anyone else can. In fact, I’d ask who else in North America can do this?” ■ O N E L A R G E L AT T É W I T H C H O C O L AT E S H AV I N G S AND HOTSPOTS

Hotspots are still relatively new in Canada and all stakeholders are experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. And while the model is being worked out, consider these coffee-shop scenarios: A business manager cooling her jets in an airport coffee shop will attach great value to being able to check e-mail and access corporate files as she waits for her boarding call, and since her company is likely picking up the tab, paying for access is not an issue.

Put that same manager in the line-up at the coffee shop near her office and the value goes down: grabbing a coffee is all about getting away from her desk and work for a few minutes.

If that downtown coffee shop is near a university campus, students may patronize it over other area beanroasters because the shop has a hotspot. They may not be willing to pay for access, but having a hotspot means selling more coffee to the campus crowd.

“Why are people putting hotspots in coffee shops? I think because they can,” says Bell Mobility’s Almis Ledas.

“The cost of putting these in is so low that once they’ve been put in coffee shops they might stay there.”

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there are companies out there with great ideas that need a strong partner such as Bell for an idea to become reality,” says Jean Barrette, General Manager of the Wireless Accelerator program in Montreal. “We’re like a super integrator—integrating a group of systems to work together, which is no trivial task.”

The program provides funding, technical support, access to networks and expertise for companies doing research in the wireless arena, and as a side benefit the work also links the partner with the Bell name. This was one of the most valuable aspects of the program for Shawn Griffin, President and CEO of PointShot Wireless in Ottawa. His company created a wireless connectivity solution that delivers connectivity to VIA 1 passengers leveraging Bell ExpressVu satellites and Bell Mobility’s 1X data network.

The funding was important, but working with Bell opened doors, Griffin says.

“If Bell is your customer, it gives you a voice inside Bell. That’s a huge advantage.

It’s the single, most important thing about the Wireless Accelerator—to have a champion inside Bell,” he says.

Having Bell as a customer was also an advantage when selling to others, he says. It’s a “powerful asset for a small company.”

Over at March Networks, Michael Foster is preparing the company’s mobile digital video recorder (DVR) for production, and he says the product would not be where it is without the Wireless Accelerator program.

G R E AT M I N D S T H I N K A L I K E — S O G O E S TH E OLD ADAG E. B UT SOM ETI M ES A B ET TE R AP P R OAC H I S TO B R I N G TO G ETH E R D IVE R S E M I N D S TO TH I N K ABOUT N EW PROB LE MS AN D I DEAS.

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So goes the thinking at Bell.

Bell funds the Wireless Accelerator program and the Bell University Laboratories (BUL) program, which help drive research and development in Canada by matching companies and universities doing interesting R&D to internal departments at Bell.

Wireless accelerator fund The Wireless Accelerator Fund develops new products and services that will be sold to Bell’s wireless subscribers or that will be used within Bell to drive productivity, save capital or costs. To do this, the Accelerator works with companies in Canada to transform innovation into reality.

“The premise of the Accelerator Fund is that

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The new DVR will allow images from moving vehicles to be sent and viewed in real time, according to Foster, the Product Manager of Mobile Solutions. Police forces and bus companies in the U.S. have shown an interest in the product, Foster says.

Along with funds, the Accelerator brought with it technical expertise and relationships with suppliers that helped the product progress through its development phase.

Universities Universities are also benefiting from Bell’s R&D initiatives through funding to long-term and short-term research. Bell University Laboratories assesses research proposals, looking for projects that could also benefit Bell. It also sometimes initiates the projects, says Vino Vinodrai, Director of Industry Relations and Research at BUL. When there’s a problem Bell wants solved it approaches researchers to put together a proposal beneficial to both sides.

Through a BUL program at the University of Ottawa, researchers are looking into security for wireless devices. RSA certificates require keys with 1,000 bit key lengths. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and Hyper ECC can provide certificates that are as secure but have much smaller key lengths— 100 or 70 bit, according to Tet Yeap, an Associate Professor at the university. The key lengths can be smaller, because instead of manipulating numbers, the certificates manipulate complex algorithms, which means less memory, less battery and less powerful processors are needed.

At the University of Toronto, BUL is collaborating on a vocal village, a conferencing program that allows Voice over IP conferences to be spatialized, so that even in a discussion among several people it will sound to each listener as if voices are coming from different directions. This makes it easier to identify who’s speaking, says Mark Chignell, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at U of T. ■ E P O C A R E D R I V I N G M E D I C A L D ATA TO D O CTO R S I N R E AL TI M E

Dr. Sharon Straus of Toronto’s Mt. Sinai Hospital wanted to find a way for doctors to gain access to newly emerging clinical evidence. A study done 10 years ago found that in order to keep up with recent literature, doctors would need to read 17 articles a day, 365 days a year— which is hardly a realistic goal.

So instead, she wanted doctors to call up the information as needed at the patient’s bedside. She had heard that Bell University Laboratories (BUL), a Bell program that funds R&D in universities, was looking for projects in healthcare. The result was collaboration between two disciplines that don’t normally interact—BUL introduced knowledge management researchers to those working in medicine. The result was EPOCare, an interface for handheld devices which draws on information from existing medical Web sites.

“BUL has been incredibly supportive of our project— in particular it has allowed us to create collaborations with colleagues from various disciplines,” Straus says.

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Canadian businesses are finding a lot to like in the mobility offered by modern communication devices. Getting a call no longer ties you to the cord coming out of your desk phone. Cell owners can talk and walk.

And mobile data devices and services help lower costs, increase productivity and improve customer satisfaction for your business.

In sync Nothing ever has to be out-of-date again. Devices can update e-mail, calendars and other critical pieces of info with no effort. Even those “cradle updates” can be old news. Bell Mobility’s InfoXpress service keeps e-mail updated in Palms and Pocket PCs. Making sales It sure is nice to let the chef have a night off and order a pizza. But why bother when you have to run to the bank machine for cash to pay the delivery guy? Restaurants, pizza places and even taxis are starting to have affordable mobile Point of Sale terminals.

The MIST Freedom II is an example of a handheld, wireless, pointof-sale terminal. It performs secure credit and debit card transactions from almost any location, increasing the number of business opportunities and overall convenience for merchants and their customers.

To u g h p l a c e s . To u g h d e v i c e s When you start making phones and devices for the workplace, they have to be built differently. Tougher. Durable. Ruggedized. There are many designs out there.

Intermec’s 700 Color handheld is for use in harsh environments. It can withstand 1.5 metre drops to concrete and is sealed against rain and dust.

The ergonomic case design is sculpted and balanced for user comfort in long-term use; radio and scanner options are integrated, not add-ons, which means they are tested to the same ruggedness standards and don’t compromise the environmental or functional characteristics of the unit.

Global findings Anyone who has been lost after making a wrong turn in a wilderness area instinctively knows the value of Global Positioning Systems (GPS).

Because business has a very bottom-line use for this tech and can afford it at current cost there are many working implementations out there.

The AirLink Pinpoint CDMA is a rugged wireless modem with a GPS receiver that provides a cost-effective platform for mobile applications. It can be configured to report its position by time and/or distance. The GPS location is available for precise time-stamping of important events. The serial port provides network connectivity for a laptop, POS terminal, PDA or mobile data terminal. The unit is suited to ambulance, specialized transport, field service, construction equipment and transit arrival systems.

Smile. Click. Dial The jury is still out but camera phones may be the wireless phone’s killer application. They take e-mail and throw in a digital camera, so you don’t have to wait to load digital pictures onto your PC at home. While the quality may not match a single-purpose digital camera, snaps can be sent instantly by phone. Recipients can receive on a PC or their own photo-enabled handset.

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AOL Canada, Sony, MSN.ca, Sega. You know the names and you’ve probably used their services. And now, these and other big-name brands are lining up mobile partnerships aimed at dropping more dollars onto their bottom lines.

The goal for these brands is to grab market share in the increasingly competitive content business, which includes news, entertainment, sports and messaging services.

The battle for these dollars is heating up for a number of reasons. To boost their own bottom lines, mobile operators such as Bell Mobility will continue to pursue relationships with financially stable companies capable of delivering attractive and profitable content. In turn, those companies want relationships with wireless service providers capable of delivering customers as they become more numerous and as the technology becomes more accessible. Outside the mobile venue, other carriers and partners will likely heat up the chase for the same dollars as, for example, satellite broadcasters and cablecasters try to outgun each other. Meanwhile, as customers become increasingly savvy about the range and costs of the various choices available, they will attach their loyalty to a short list of providers, as they already have with services such as banking and investing. And as providers and partners continue figuring out the rules of the game they face increasing pressure to cut costs while boosting profits to increase return on investment.

The importance of these partnerships has increased as the concept of value chains has evolved, according to Ken Truffen, Director of Business Development, Wireless Data at Bell Mobility. “With the dot-com bubble breaking, a lot of services that used to be offered free of charge are no longer offered for free by the partners. So there is now a value chain so that the content provider earns revenue.”

The value chain—a set of specialized business activities focused on the relationship between customers and an organization—adds value to the relationship, in this case a partner of a mobile service provider such as Bell Mobility.

Traditionally, value chain activities included customer service, research and development, design, production, marketing and distribution, the strategy through which the organization delivers its products or services to customers.

In the new model, companies like Bell Mobility become part of the distribution component after thorough laboratory testing, double-checking the content or service’s adaptability to all telephones, helping with de-bugging where necessary and other preparatory activities.

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Deeper relationships At AOL Canada, boosting ROI has resulted in a series of present and future strategies, according to Arturo Duran, Vice-President of Interactive Marketing. The company provides AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ Instant Messenger on the Bell Mobility network on a revenue-sharing basis in both the WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and SMS (Short Message Service) formats.

That enables AOL to provide added convenience to customers and leverage its existing customer databases for a new revenue stream that would not be available in the absence of the wireless channel, Duran says.

“We have all these people already using the instant messengers.”

AOL also provides news and sports alerts to customers, again increasing usage of its network and bringing potentially greater revenues.

AOL Canada does not currently provide games through mobile telephones but is reviewing that as an option. “We’re talking about messages now. We’re not talking about content. Content has not yet arrived 100 per cent to the phones,” Duran says.

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Future plans, however, do include advertising and event marketing targeted at members who have given permission for AOL to send time-sensitive alerts such as discount shopping specials or even rock concerts. In a hypothetical scenario, a Bruce Springsteen fan will receive an early alert of The Boss’ Vancouver date. Using AOL’s First Look promotional program which provides preferred booking services, the fan could book a ticket through TicketMaster by entering codes on the cellphone.

In this scenario AOL would receive revenue from both advertising and the ticket sale. Duran says these strategies are still in the testing and design stage since the company has to build a database of customers willing to receive specific types of alerts.

Expanding to mobile At MSN.ca, improving ROI means not having to reinvent the wheel, explains Mark Relph, Manager of .net and Development, Enterprise Mobility at Microsoft Canada. “A lot of organizations view mobility as this separate application that needs to be treated as if it’s fenced off, when in reality it certainly isn’t,” he argues.

“ROI to me in the mobile sense is the ability of an application or an initiative that’s already underway to expand into mobile scenarios without having to make it a separate project.”

That means keeping to a minimum the re-writing of infrastructure, back-end systems and other components when moving from the Web portal format to the mobile format. “If you have to re-write and re-create the wheel with something you’ve done for one form—the PC and the full-blown browser—and you can’t take that and quickly translate it to the smaller screen-size mobile device, then I think you’re heading off on the wrong foot.” At MSN.ca this means that the mobile portal, including services such as the Hotmail e-mail system, use essentially the same infrastructure and back-end systems as the Web portal version.

“We’re actually getting our ROI by being able to re-purpose into all these different form factors.”

At Tira Wireless, boosting ROI follows a model similar to the more traditional activities associated with a book publisher,

explains Director of Marketing Wayne Seifried. Tira feeds games over the Bell Mobility network as well as other service providers in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia.

Seifried styles the contractual relationship between Tira and providers as resembling the relationship between book publisher (Tira) and book chain (in this case Bell Mobility). Just as a chain will discuss upcoming releases with a specific publisher, Tira and Bell Mobility review upcoming game releases that are expected to appeal to customers.

For its games, Tira divides the revenue it receives from Bell Mobility with the software developer, likened to the book author, and brand-owner, as many of its games are linked to specific names.

Using the author-publisher metaphor to underscore the ROI process, Seifried says it often starts with the raw manuscript, in this case the game. Tira then works out publishing considerations such as improving the graphics. Increasing the ROI here sometimes can even mean finding the right brand in the first place, Seifried explains, recalling the inception of an NHL-themed game. “The person who created the content is a software developer (who) came to us,” he says. Tira then negotiated the branding—the use of the NHL name in order to increase audience interest.

In this case, the mobile service provider pays Tira on a payper-use (or pay-per-download) basis.

Returning to the publisher-author scenario, Seifried says payment is split between the software developer (the author), and the brand owner. “So as a publisher, we actually write two cheques: one to the developer and another one to the brand owner,” he explains. “The publisher pays all of the contributors that created the application.”

While it hasn’t turned into an epic battle for market share yet, this kind of deal making could grow to resemble the more familiar deal making that goes on between networks and television program producers. The wireless service providers want the most audience-grabbing material available while the program producers want the best possible relationships with the service providers. ■

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Calculating ROI Return on investment, ROI, is often considered a better profitability evaluation tool than net income or income before taxes since it takes into account the specific level of investment associated with generating specific income.

Traditionally, it meant income or profit divided by investment required to obtain that income or profit, and referred to goods manufactured, sold and paid for in straightforward transactions.

As Bell Mobility continues building partnerships, the ROI principle of profit divided by investment required remains essentially similar but profit sources now include strategic contractual arrangements instead of simple traditional payment for services or goods supplied. “It means different things to different people,” explains Ken Truffen, Director, Business Development, Wireless Data at Bell Mobility. “With Java in our phones, with Sony, THQ (and other) major brands, you can download games. The return on investment there would be different than somebody offering an SMS (Short Message Service) application. It’s a case of revenue sharing between carrier and games provider, for example.”

The specifics around text messaging may not work in the same way. “Every carrier is different and every carrier pays their partners differently. There’s really no standard,” at least not yet.

“The way Bell Mobility does a deal would be very different than Telus or Verizon or Rogers. In many cases we do a revenue share with partners. In many cases we pay them a monthly fee,” he says.

At AOL Canada, ROI includes a new source of profits created by leveraging existing customer lists, according to Arturo Duran, Vice-President of Interactive Marketing. “It means a new revenue stream that we had no way to monetize before because now we have a partner,” he says, referring to the agreement for dividing revenues for messaging services with Bell Mobility.

“That’s (part of) ROI for AOL.” In some cases Bell Mobility partners such as banks will see part of their ROI as increased customer loyalty and service, so they may not charge fees. “We wouldn’t necessarily pay them for that service. It’s a service that benefits the bank,” Truffen explains.

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THE POWER OF DISTRACTION Dating, gaming, talking, messaging and more dating.

Cellphones deliver

v PHOTO: RICHARD DESMARAIS

Venkatesa Virahsammy is typical of your switched-on cellphone user: young, intelligent and with a certain degree of ambition, his phone isn’t some fashion accessory or just a tool for keeping in touch with friends and family.

It is a part of his life, connecting him at all times to important information, organizing his daily schedule and providing an escape from mindless routine.

“Everything I do, I do on my cellphone,” says the 19-year old commerce student at Montreal’s Champlain College. And when you add it up, “everything” on Virahsammy’s phone demonstrates the opportunity for North America’s mobile service providers.

For Virahsammy and his friends, today’s modern phones—with their souped-up games, schedulers, text messages and Web access—are powerful liberating devices that should be exploited for their efficiency and distraction potential.

To gauge that potential, take a page from Virahsammy’s life. If he’s at a bad lecture “and it’s really boring and useless,” Virahsammy simply types a quick message to a friend asking what they’re doing tonight. “Then I just wait for the answer.”

Or maybe he’s out somewhere where there’s no TV, but his friends want to get an important hockey score. “I’m like ‘One minute, let me check.’”

Suppose Virahsammy’s on a boring bus ride. No problem there. “I just go in and play Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

Finally, there’s a utility that those of us over 30 can only dream about. When Virahsammy’s parents are tucked in bed on a Friday night, they sleep peacefully knowing their son is connected wherever he is.

“Kids today have much more freedom.”

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The vote’s in It’s all fine and dandy that Virahsammy and his buddies get to stay out later than we did. But what’s the bigger picture?

“We’ve hit a pivotal time in wireless games and applications,” contends Ken Truffen, Bell Mobility’s Director of Business Development, Wireless Data.

Light years ahead of earlier offers on older handsets, Java-enabled games—he prefers to call them graphically downloadable games—are just one application taking the handset business by storm. “Quite simply, gaming has gone to the next level.”

Java-enabled phones act like mini computers, which now have all-important download and save capability. Download your favourite game once and it resides on your handset for as long as you want.

More importantly, users no longer have to hit a wireless server and wait for a response every time they log into a game, make a move, or enter an answer. Combine this with much better graphics and resolution and you’ve got an exponentially improved user experience.

Truffen says it’s these very enhancements that have inspired “the big boys” in the game design business to join the party. Users can now access a host of brands and titles they’ve known for years, optimized to a handset’s smaller screen. “It’s 10 times better than it was before.”

And for the providers games are paying the bills for now, but text messaging—also called SMS messaging—is the untapped market of the future. De rigueur for just about every age group in Asia, text messaging is set to take off in North America.

And the carriers are doing everything they can to

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facilitate the process. They’ve even banded together to promote the voting function for reality TV’s latest offer, Canadian Idol.

Andy Wright, Associate Director of Business Development at Bell Mobility, expects initiatives like these to have a major impact.

“One third of all the people who voted via text messaging for American Idol had never sent a text message in their life.”

Wright contends that once customers send that first message, they’ve made a significant psychological move and it’s only a matter of time until they’re hooked. There may still be a lot of wireless users who have never sent a text message, but Bell Mobility experienced a 400 per cent increase in SMS usage in one year.

New applications like mobile speed dating are helping to push those numbers up. Wright says that although there are a few too many lonely guys out there on a Friday night and the speeddating experience is still fairly basic, that will change quickly and from Bell Mobility’s perspective “the numbers in terms of traffic are phenomenal.”

Keeping the market sweet Wright puts forward a simple formula for long-term success in the wireless applications market: launch your products with high-end partners, make sure “the back-end stuff is very clean,” and “make it very easy for the user to access.”

His colleague Ken Truffen agrees. “Out of those, probably the 36

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most important thing, is making it easier for the customer. Mix that with the brands and the titles and you can’t lose.”

But he says, too, that there are few guarantees. When a new application is being developed, service providers must experiment furiously with price points, “to see where the sweet spot is” and understand what people will pay. “It isn’t easy at first.”

The price structure for Bell Mobility’s Java-based games is straightforward. You don’t pay a monthly fee for your PlayStation, argues Truffen, so why should you pay a subscription price to play games on your phone?

He’s a Qbert fan and says it only costs about five bucks to download a copy to your phone. That’s a small price to pay in anyone’s book, even for Qbert.

In it for you The thing about today’s wireless handsets is there’s something in it for everybody. If you like games, fine. Go ahead and play them till your eyes roll back in your head. Maybe you’re dying for a date, or want to get in on a flash mob, the latest thing where a bunch of people who probably don’t know each other gather in a predetermined location, perform some brief action and then go away.

That’s really a lifestyle choice, of course.

The point is, “you can do just about anything on that handset that you do on the Web, albeit in a text-based environment,” sums up Truffen.

Taking that logic one step further, he suggests that wireless handsets have brought us entirely new avenues and ways of communicating. These empower us, help bring order to our lives and—perhaps most importantly—let us shape messages to suit a particular audience.

Then he comes out with this poignant example about the value of text messaging: “It’s a whole lot easier to send a text message to a girl you like then to talk to her.”

Luckily, like many other evolutions in our hyper-technical world, if the younger generation finds it useful or amusing the adults can’t be too far behind.

“It’s never too late to learn,” muses the youthful Venkatesa Virahsammy. ■ 2004: NORTH AMERICA'S YEAR

Most of the world's games download revenue will be concentrated in South East Asia, principally Japan and South Korea, during 2003, but this will ramp up in Western Europe and North America during 2004.

Source: Strategy Analytics

JEOPARDY!, SEGA Soccer SlamTM + 100 more games Available on select handsets. Some conditions apply. Ask us for details. © 2003 Jeopardy Productions, Inc.:portions. All Rights Reserved. JEOPARDY! is a registered trademark of Jeopardy Productions, Inc. © SEGA Corporation. All rights reserved. SEGA Mobile and SEGA Soccer Slam are trade-marks of SEGA Corporation.

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Far afield New mobile technology keeps field reps out where they can do the most good: away from the office

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ILLUSTRATION: GREG WHITE / ANNA GOODSON MANAGEMENT INC.

It was an almost offhand remark. Todd Mathers was consulting on an information technology project and his client had just mentioned he could not run a particular application properly.

Mathers, President of Noisy River Software, had successfully installed the software for another client recently. He turned on his laptop, connected to his office database, downloaded an implementation file, saved it on a floppy and gave the disk to his client.

All without wires.

Mathers accessed the database using his laptop and a Sierra Wireless AirCard connected to Bell Mobility’s 1X wireless network.

Amazed, the client hired the server-centric computer consultant for additional work.

Capturing business through timely customer care is one reason that Mathers is sold on mobile data access. “I could have delivered the answer with a follow-up e-mail that night but I was able to resolve the problem right away,” says Mathers, who is also the author of Windows NT/2000 Thin Client Solutions.

Staying on the move As small, medium and global enterprises become increasingly mobile, wireless data has become an essential business tool.

In Canada, spending on wireless services is expected to hit $7.1 billion this year. By 2006, the value of the wireless market is projected to reach $10.3 billion and the number of wireless data users is expected to grow from 180,000 to 685,000, according to a study from IDC Canada.

“With portable PCs and cellphones in the 1980s and 1990s, mobile workers could stay in touch with customers and colleagues.

Now with wireless networking and VPNs (virtual private networks) they have access to a full range of corporate resources,” says Raymond Boggs, Program Vice-President for IDC’s Small Business Services. Advanced technology only improves mobile worker

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productivity, which leads to a broader mobility pattern and to more mobile working, he adds.

Wireless field service solutions, such as mobile connectivity to a company’s network, allow sales and service personnel to spend less time in the office and more time in the field. They can receive dispatches, access files required to complete sales and service calls and upload status reports and billing information— all without returning to the office.

Voice, dat a, both For wireless users who want voice and data in one device, Bell Mobility offers several handheld computing devices with built-in cellphones that operate on the 1X wireless network. The BlackBerry 6750, for instance, features wireless e-mail access as well as cellphone, text messaging, Web browser and organizer functionality in one handheld device.

However, many mobile employees need only data access or have separate portable computing devices and cellphones. When inserted into a PDA or laptop, the Sierra Wireless AirCard gives mobile users access to corporate data and intranets, e-mail, the Internet and the Web. Mobile workers can use downtime in airports or hotels to keep up with e-mail so they are not inundated when they return to the office. Equipped with laptop computers, they can access and work on spreadsheets and other files while connected to the head office network.

Write once, read anywhere There is no standard mobile device platform and it is not unusual to see workers within the same company using a variety of portable computing devices—Palm, Pocket PCs, BlackBerrys or laptops running Microsoft Windows. Data that can be easily read on one device may not format properly on another, which can lead to Tower of Babel data confusion.

IT departments can program applications so that data is readable on each mobile device in use, but that adds complexity to the wireless data integration process. Enter Bell Mobility partner Nextair Inc. The wireless application company has developed AIRIX, a wireless software solution that provides “write once, deploy anywhere applications” that run on a multitude of handheld devices, says Ron Close, President and CEO Nextair Inc. AIRIX applications can be used to send dispatch information to selected employees in the field or broadcast (push) updates to all mobile employees. Employees can send secure transactions and other confidential information from the field directly to the computer network.

Simplifying field service solutions through robust wireless networks, a choice of handheld devices and write-once readanywhere applications truly enhances the productivity of mobile workers and executives, which increases the return on investment in mobile technology.

Solid, practical, robust, reliable field service applications.

That is the state of wireless connectivity today. And, as the IDC forecasts indicate, wireless connectivity is becoming as ubiquitous as the air through which wireless data travels. ■ 40

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If you are old enough to remember a world before cellphones and wireless data, then you probably remember the TV show Car 54, Where Are You? The cop show comedy debuted in 1961 and ran for a couple of seasons on NBC. If the show were to hit the airwaves now, it might be renamed Car 54 There You Are! The reason? With wireless location-based services and global positioning systems it is virtually impossible for car rental firms, trucking companies, the police or any other organization to lose vehicles.

Using telematics, vehicles can automatically send their location to a dispatch-desk Web-based map, says Rebecca Mackinlay, Bell Mobility’s Associate Director of Data Devices. Lost or stolen vehicles can be found rapidly.

In Canada, about 40,000 vehicles disappear without a trace each year. Those that are equipped with Boomerang, a vehicle location service running on the Bell Mobility wireless network, can be found in less than an hour, and sometimes in minutes.

“Our system is so sophisticated that if your car is parked in a two-car garage, I can tell you whether it’s parked on the left or the right,” says Boomerang President Peter Lashchuk.

Consumers who drive vehicles equipped with OnStar are just a push of a button away from help if they get lost or need information—such as the location of the nearest Japanese restaurant. If an airbag deploys a signal is automatically sent over the Bell Mobility network to an OnStar operator who can contact the driver or deploy help.

But telematics can be used for more than just safety applications; commercial vehicles require regular maintenance, and telematics can track mileage and send reports to maintenance departments, avoiding the tedium of checking the odometer of each vehicle.

If an engine blows a gasket the incident (and the vehicle’s location) can be reported automatically so that help can be dispatched.

Companies can also use telematics to record the amount of time drivers spend on the road and the time vehicles spend idling. This information is crucial for companies that have to meet regulations governing driver and idle time and have to demonstrate compliance with regulations to obtain tax credits from the government.

In short, whether using driver-to-dispatch or vehicleto-network connectivity, telematics can keep the right people in the know when vehicles are on the go.

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What you need to know

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TWO MAJOR MOBILE P H O N E T E C H N O LO G I E S C U R R E N T LY D O M I N AT E PLANET EARTH. They are CDMA and GSM—formally Code Division Multiple Access and Global System for Mobile Communications. There are others, but they are minor in comparison.

CDMA is used mostly in North America, Latin America, Japan and South Korea. GSM is dominant in Europe and Asia. EMC World Cellular Database estimates there are about 1.2 billion wireless subscribers around the world, more than 863 million on GSM networks, about 156 million on CDMA. Thus, GSM networks serve more than 70 per cent of wireless users, a slice which has steadily climbed the last couple years, from 65 per cent in June 2001 and 68 per cent in May 2002. GSM should hit one billion users sometime in 2004.

Most users don’t care about such technical matters, but consumers and businesses should know a bit about CDMA and GSM. For instance, you can’t use a CDMA phone on a GSM network, or vice versa. Once you buy your phone, you dwell exclusively in that network domain.

EMC says there are about 22 million GSM users in North America (as of May 2003). The CDMA Development Group puts the same stat at more than 64 million for CDMA as of March 2003. In Canada, GSM is provided by Rogers and Fido (Microcell). Bell and Telus use CDMA. (Rogers AT&T uses Time Division Multiple Access, but we won’t go into that here.) The

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Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association says there are about 12.1 million wireless subscribers—7.5 million using CDMA, most of the rest on GSM. The generations This great divide was simply a matter of evolution and timing.

First generation: The world’s first cellular networks appeared in the early 1980s. These were analog technologies, things like AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone System). EMC says there are more than 24 million people out there still using analog-only phones.

Second generation: Along came TDMA and GSM. They could carry three to four times more traffic.

TDMA, once a third competitor platform, is facing extinction. TDMA will soon be useless as CDMA and GSM replace it. (EMC estimates more than 111 million users still exist, mainly in the USA.) But GSM spread across the world—especially in Europe, which then sold product into Asia.

But, just as GSM was being standardized, an even better solution was found in CDMA. It took hold in the USA and countries within its economic sphere.

The first commercial CDMA networks were launched in 1995, delivering about 10 times more capacity. Because it can support more traffic, CDMA brings better voice quality, wider coverage and superior security. (CDMA developed initially out

G SM a n d C DM A Wo rl d Cover ag e M ap Both CDMA and GSM coverage GSM coverage only CDMA coverage only

of the military’s need for secure communications channels.)

CDMA 1X (sometimes called 1xRTT) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) are the latest players on the landscape and are sometimes referred to as 2.5G networks. 1X is a software upgrade to existing CDMA networks which enables improved voice quality and wireless data speeds of up to 144Kbps. GPRS is a data network that is overlayed on GSM networks and enables data speeds of up to 56Kbps. There are approximately 32 million 1X subscribers worldwide and 7 million GPRS subscribers. The increased data speeds enable improved access to corporate e-mail, information and databases in addition to an enhanced Internet browsing experience that includes colour and sound.

Third generation: 3G systems are just being rolled out in the new century.

These networks will bring data integration and users will be one step closer to that sci-fi dream of the Dick Tracy communications wristwatch. You will be able to do some amazing things with your phone.

CDMA is the platform on which 3G advanced services are built, but GSM will not go away. It is developing 3G services, though on a type of CDMA platform. ■ BUSINESS ON THE GO

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Emily Bell simplifies customer experience with Emily and One Bill B y

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that the other telcos are taking a lesson from.“ Though voice recognition technology has been used in the past, Bell’s decision to deploy it in a customer service call centre was a very astute one, Surtees says.

Emily has also proved to be a money saving venture. Bell expects overall savings to be in the millions in Ontario alone in 2003.

Emily was first tested in the 905 area code, in the communities surrounding Toronto. In order to be successful, Emily had to handle a wide variety of accents and the 905 area exposed the technology to a plethora of voices. Since that test, Emily has been expanded to the rest of Ontario and can now also speak French.

Emilie was introduced in Québec in June 2003.

Bill me once Bell has also adopted One Bill, which gives consumers of multiple Bell products the choice of a single bill for all their services. Once One Bill is fully deployed, a customer who has wireline phone service, Bell Mobility wireless service, Sympatico Internet service and ExpressVu satellite service will no longer have to deal with four separate bills.

“It’s something our customers want for the convenience factor more than anything,” says Norm Berberich, the Director of Communications at Bell Canada.

BELL C A N A D A’ S 310-BELL NUMBER F I E LD S M O R E THAN 11 M I LLI O N CALLS A Y E A R I N O N TA R I O — A D A U N T I N G N U M B E R F O R A N Y C O R P O R AT E C A L L C E N T R E . S O T H E C O M P A N Y T U R N E D T O E M I LY F O R H E L P .

Emily is an interactive voice response (IVR) system designed to provide a simple, friendly experience by asking customers to explain in words what they are looking for and then routing their calls accordingly. No more “Press 1 for Customer Service, press 2 for Billing Inquiries.”

Because of Emily, misdirected calls have been reduced by 40 per cent in Ontario, meaning more callers are getting to what they need on their first try. And customers are warming up to Emily. Since the introduction of the technology, usage of selfserve applications has increased 27 per cent in Ontario.

In feedback forums, customers say Emily reflected well on Bell, showcasing it as a high-tech and innovative organization, says Nancy Fisher, the Senior Consultant for IVR Customer Experience at Bell Canada.

And customers aren’t the only ones who are impressed.

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In-flight entertainment is supposed to help pass the time on a long flight, but if you don’t like the scheduled movie that two-hour flight will stretch into a long-distance endurance match.

But WestJet customers will soon get out from under the thumb of those airline programmers who seem to have a strange fascination for movies starring talking animals. Instead, passengers will take matters into their own hands and select their own entertainment from a live Bell ExpressVu satellite feed.

Images will be splashed onto screens on the back of each plane seat and passengers will get a roster of 24 live channels.

Siobhan Vinish, the Director of Public Relations and Communications at WestJet in Calgary, is sure the offering will go over well with customers. It’s a first in Canada, but has already proved a great hit for JetBlue Airways in the U.S. “It’s been very successful from the airline’s perspective in terms of building business and bringing revenue,” she says. “So this satellite offering brings to the table all the The customer experience “doesn’t just end at the point of sale, it carries through to the billing experience,” he says.

This type of service will cut down the frustration customers feel when they have to approach a company several different times regarding various issues, IDC’s Surtees says, adding that even if it’s not something customers have been demanding enmasse it will make life easier for them.

The need to go through several different departments is a problem endemic to telcos, Surtees says. This is largely because legacy computer systems often are not able to communicate with one another.

“There’s a mess out there.”

One Bill is currently being offered to consumer customers who receive wireline and satellite service, and to those who receive wireline and Internet services.

By early 2004, One Bill should be available for all of Bell’s services, Berberich says. Where Bell can find a perfect match in name, customers will automatically be signed up for the service.

Those customers can choose to opt out if they want, but very few will, Berberich says.

“It’s been very positive. We’ve been quite impressed with the results to date. I’d say the vast majority of customers have adopted the program.” ■

things that WestJet looks for when they look at innovation.”

People will be able to enjoy television in the same way that they do when at home, says Nathalie Moreau, the Communications Manager for Bell ExpressVu. “So we’re following customers, not only in their homes, but also when they are travelling.”

WestJet will be able to cater the choice of 24 channels to specific flights, which means flights to Vancouver will feature local Vancouver channels while flights to Calgary can deliver channels from that city.

The service will eventually be made available to all flights in Canada, and will be a free offering initially.

“Live television has been extremely positive for (JetBlue) both from a customer service perspective and a financial perspective,” Vinish says. “And there’s no reason to think that we’re not going to see the same benefits here in Canada.”

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Getting from here Implementing an enterprise data solution opens the door to both rewards and pitfalls. Here are nine steps that will guide your new solution development

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Mobile technology can boost a company’s bottom line—that’s been proved repeatedly. You’ve read the reports and the case studies, your competition may already be implementing a cutting-edge system, and you know your company needs a mobile data strategy.

But there are challenges. How will this integrate with current processes, or in fact, should those processes be replaced? How is a device platform selected? What should be expected from the new system? There is no one response to those questions, there are only answers specific to your company. However, there is a defined methodology that will guide your implementation.

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Step by step Here are nine steps that will get your wireless data system up and running:

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1 Set objectives: Before implementing any IT project, such as mobile sales force or field service automation applications, senior executives need to determine the company’s overall business objectives. And these have to be clear and quantifiable, or the project is doomed before the first device is switched on, according to Chris Hubbell, Bell Mobility Associate Director,

there Wireless Data Strategy.

“Setting objectives is the most important step. You can kill a project if you haven’t been reasonable and realistic in setting your objectives,” he says.

“For instance,” says Eric Johnson, Wireless Executive with IBM Global Services (Canada) in Vancouver, “’enhance field service productivity’ is an honourable but squishy objective. ‘Increase field service calls by 20 per cent per week’ or ‘enable technicians to arrive on-site within two hours of dispatch’ are solid, measurable objectives.”

2 Assemble your team: The best idea is only as good as the team that implements it, and the best way to create a strong team is to be inclusive, Hubbell says. “Engage all the stakeholders as early as possible, and meet on a regular basis. For example, if you leave a key stakeholder out of the group that could be a real problem down the road.”

A good team may also be one that includes a ringer. “If executives are unfamiliar with technology, particularly wireless technology, they should consider bringing in a knowledgeable consultant early in the process. The consultant can suggest tech-

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nological options that will enable the company to effectively change business processes and meet its objectives,” says Tracy Kapteyn, Data Manager for Bell Mobility Enterprise Solutions.

For example, if the goal is to increase the productivity of field service technicians by a measurable amount, then a mobile application will fill the bill. If technicians have to return to the office to pick up new work orders, a mobile solution would allow dispatchers to send the same information directly to the technicians. However, if technicians have to download customer history or computer patches off the network before they start new jobs, the mobile solution will only be effective if it gives technicians remote access to customer information and service data.

“This is where a consultant, knowing the technology options available, can help a company marry mobile solutions with productivity-enhancing business processes,” Kapteyn says.

To ensure project buy-in, objectives and proposed business practice changes should be discussed in detail with workers, both mobile and administrative. Technology partners should also be consulted, as they will need to identify and implement technological changes required to meet the objectives.

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T H E I M P L E M E N TAT I O N P L AY E R S

Mobile application implementations do not have to be any more complex than other IT implementations, although more players may be involved.

Players can include HR staff, business executives and IT personnel, the wireless service provider, the mobile device retailer (if devices required for implementation are not supplied by the carrier), a middleware application developer who produces applications to connect mobile devices to the company network, a systems integrator who ensures the network is set up to receive and process wireless data, and a project management team to facilitate communications between service providers and the company and to oversee the implementation, field testing, revisions and rollout of the project.

This outline is echoed by a Yankee Group report that examines the role of systems integrators in the delivery of enterprise mobile computing solutions. The report, Systems Integrators Creep into Enterprise Mobile Computing, finds integrators are making steady progress in the emerging mobile computing market and view mobility solutions as an area of high growth in the next three to five years.

“Integrators can deliver significant value to enterprises by providing education about mobile solutions, such as cost justification,” says Andrew Efstathiou, Yankee Group Technology Management Strategies Program Manager.

“Companies without experience in wireless computing have difficulty constructing a total cost of ownership analysis, especially the components of TCO related to application and device management.”

Mobility is far more than wireless. It’s “the components of TCO related to application and device management,” he says, pointing to applications (software on the network and on devices), the devices themselves (choosing between a Palm, Pocket PC, laptops, tablets, phone/PDA), the integration of network applications with devices and their applications, and business process changes.

Customers, also, should in involved in the implementation process if possible, according to Chris Hubbell, Associate Director, Wireless Data Strategy. “Wireless can really allow a company to differentiate itself by providing superior customer service, so engaging your customers as part of the project team will be really appreciated by them, and that will help your business in the long run.”

3 Document current processes: Business processes can only ● be updated or changed when they are well understood, so finding out how you currently do what you do is crucial. For example, how many mobile workers do you currently have, what roles do they fill, with whom do they communicate, and how are they currently transmitting business data?

4 Seek efficiency: Once you understand the specifics of your company’s work, it’s time to capitalize on that knowledge.

“What it comes down to,” Hubbell says, “is determining if and where you are duplicating effort and where you are spending money. Then, perhaps, a mobile solution could eliminate or streamline those areas.”

5 Define requirements: You now know what you want to do, so now figure out how to get there. Step five is defining your system, device, network and application requirements. “On the device front, for example, people sometimes want to use the device they are accustomed to, but when you document your processes you may discover you only need to enter a few data items into your device. So maybe a handset with text messaging is all you need,” Hubbell says.

“Or maybe you’re entering a fair bit of information and you need the keypad of a RIM device or a Palm handheld.”

6 Go for an RFP: There are many consultants, wireless service providers, SIs, device manufacturers and software companies out there. A rigorous RFP process will help you choose the best one for you.

7 Launch a pilot: It’s a rare project that does not benefit from a pilot test phase, Hubbell says. “There are more shrinkwrapped applications—like e-mail—and for some of those a pilot may not be necessary, but for almost all solutions it’s a good idea to do a 30- or 60-day pilot.”

This time frame ensures the company generates enough assessment data to really determine if the project is a success so far. The pilot phase also allows you to bring in a representative selection of customers, where appropriate, and get their feedback, says IBM’s Johnson.

8 The rollout: When the fruit of all this labour is ready for picking, the roll-out begins. The two big challenges here, Hubbell says, are to devote sufficient resources to employee training and to maintain your service levels and business processes while engaged in the rollout.

9 Get the reviews in: Now wait about six months, Hubbell says, to get past the initial learning curve before trying to assess the success of the project. “This is where you go back to the objectives you set in step one and ask if you achieved the cost savings, the ROI or the efficiencies you wanted. This closes the loop.” ■

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ANDREW ANDREW EFSTATHIOU, EFSTATHIOU, YANKEE YANKEE GROUP GROUP

CHRIS HUBBELL, BELL MOBILITY

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TRACEY KAPTEYN, BELL MOBILITY

ERIC JOHNSON, IBM CANADA

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GIVING BACK Bell Mobility at work in the community B y

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BELL MOBILITY PRESIDENT MICHAEL A. NEUMAN UP TO HIS NECK IN REFURBISHED PHONES

When people think about cellphones they tend to concentrate on the latest and greatest models: new features, options and functions. Less often considered is what happens to devices when they outgrow their useful life.

What usually happens, of course, is cellphones get tossed into drawers and forgotten or tossed into garbage cans and sent to landfills. New programs at Bell Mobility, however, are not only redirecting these phones away from garbage dumps, they are also giving them new life in a worthy cause.

The three Rs Bell Mobility launched Recycle Reuse Redial in April of 2003.

Owners who no longer want older devices—including any brand (and from any service provider) of cellphones, pagers, PDAs, wireline phones, accessories and batteries—can drop them off at any Bell World or Espace Bell location, plus at retail partners such as Future S hop, Best Buy and The Telephone Booth and Wireless Wave. There are more than 380 drop-off locations in Ontario, Québec, Alberta and British Columbia, with more coming. continued on page 50 BUSINESS ON THE GO

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Bell and the battle for your TV A whole batch of cutting-edge stuff is coming from Sympatico, and your television is one target

PHOTO: STEVE UHRANEY

s

Say “Bell Canada” to most people and they think “Big phone company.” But if you say it to Brad Fisher, he thinks big distribution network.

That makes sense. Bell boasts 14 million landline customers and another four million cellular subscribers—almost 20 million people the company touches on a daily basis. It’s part of Fisher’s job description—he’s General Manager of Product Development for Bell’s Next Generations Services Group—to take advantage of all that contact, to use it to sell.

Sell what? Whatever Fisher and his colleagues can dream up.

“I just got this one at home: it’s a service we offer that gives you caller ID on your television screen,” he says enthusiastically. “The phone rings and the caller’s name pops right up on your screen.

It’s the ultimate couch-potato device. You don’t even have to move to decide if you want to answer the phone or not.”

He laughs. “People loved that feature in the focus groups.”

Bell has other space-age ideas, too. Like VoiceNet, a wireless service that lets you check e-mail and browse the Web on a cellphone just by talking. You tell your phone you want to hear the e-mail from your boss. The system actually understands what you’re asking for and reads the e-mail back to you.

“It’s totally two-way voice communication; it’s especially good for when you’re in the car. You can get sports or weather or news read to you,” Fisher says. “We’ve already signed up more than 100,000 customers.”

And perhaps the most exciting—and important—of Bell’s cutting-edge offerings is something currently under testing in five condominium complexes in Toronto: television delivered via 48

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existing phone lines. It’s called VDSL (Video Digital Subscriber Line) and it can actually deliver broadcast-quality moving images not just to your computer, but to your home theatre.

As the line blurs between phone companies and cable TV companies—essentially, they’re both in the business of delivering electrical impulses to and from your home—many believe the television market will be the biggest prize.

“We think television is a critical area for Bell in winning the digital home,” Fisher says. “This is where the big battle with the cablecos will happen.”

And Bell’s approach has a good shot. For example, some highrise apartment buildings don’t allow residents to install satellite dishes on the building, a hurdle this solution overcomes. Better yet, because VDSL gives you your own direct link with Bell’s servers, you could theoretically watch whatever you want to watch, whenever you want to watch it.

“We’ll be able to offer one-to-one service, true content on demand,” Fisher says. “Say you want to watch the Bill Murray classic Meatballs, you’ll be able to pick it right out of the library.

Instead of going to the video store you just turn on your set.”

But just because Bell is on the cusp of developing the technology that could actually deliver video on demand doesn’t mean the race is nearly won. Fisher knows there’s also a psychological battle his company must fight: convincing customers they can trust what was once a dusty old phone company to deliver Jetsons-style futurama.

“We’re a company with a 100-year-old brand that screams telephones and reliability,” Fisher says. “It’s still early in the game

“We think television is a critical area for Bell in winning the digital home.”

for Bell to be offering something else to consumers.”

So instead of diving right in with video on demand and such, the company is charting a slow and careful course, with the goal of convincing customers into the idea that Bell is more than just a phone company.

Its first real success story in adding value to its service is the anti-virus firewall and content filtering package that Sympatico Internet customers can buy for about $10 a month. So far, more than 100,000 subscribers have signed on.

“It shows the degree to which customers trust a Bell compared to the relatively new software companies who are selling off-theshelf virus-protection solutions,” he says.

There are spin-off benefits, too.

“We’re building a base of customers who feel safe and secure on the Internet,” Fisher says. “That means they’ll extract more value from their Sympatico accounts and potentially buy more from us and others over the Internet.”

Right now, Bell is hoping they’ll buy music and games. Like the virus protection, Bell is offering large libraries of both using the monthly subscription model.

And here’s where the road gets a little bumpy. “We haven’t been offering them for very long, and they’re still a different kind of service for Bell to be offering.

“But we’re starting to get uptake. And we know that once people really begin to see what we’re offering now they will be interested,” Fisher says. ■ BUSINESS ON THE GO

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Some of these devices, such as analog-only cellphones, have outlived their usefulness and are sent to a recycling facility where they are shredded and in turn used to “create new and useful items,” says Roger Muzzin, Bell Mobility’s Senior Associate Director, Customer Loyalty and Management.

Ninety-six per cent of each phone can be reused. The only portion not yet recyclable are rubber keypads.

Those units that still have useful life in them are sent to a refurbishing facility where they are checked over and scrubbed of all data, such as phone numbers, e-mail messages and other personal information. These units are then redistributed, with some given to charitable causes and the rest sold to recoup the cost of the Redial program itself.

In the first five months of the program, Bell Mobility collected nearly 20,000 handsets, equivalent to 3,250kg of waste. Of those units, 6,500 were recycled, with the rest resold or redistributed.

“Bell Mobility has a corporate responsibility to both our environment and our community,” Muzzin says. "We've already prevented thousands of kilograms of waste from being dumped in landfills and sent a lot of good phones out to people who need

them the most. But there are still millions of old cellphones in Canada and it's up to all of us to make an effort to donate these units now."

People in need The main recipients of the devices donated to charity are shelters which help abused women and their children.

Bell Mobility donates 10 cellphones to each of more than 150 women’s shelters in Ontario, Québec, Alberta and B.C. The phones come with unlimited local airtime, call display and 911 access and are loaned to women while they are at the shelter.

“Cellphones help these women stay in touch, and the phones also have call display so they know who is calling them. Obviously, for women in a shelter, privacy is an important factor,” says Andrea Morrell, Bell Mobility Associate Director, Community Relations.

In fact, for women in crisis situations a cellphone can mean the difference between remaining in a shelter 24 hours a day and feeling safe enough to venture out for periods of time, says Lori Sarginson, Program Director of the Yorktown Shelter in Toronto.“ For these women a cellphone gives them the safety to actually go out, to have a coffee with a friend for example. If they find themselves in an emergency situation, if their abuser finds them, they can call 911.

“These women are highly traumatized, and just having that phone in their hands can really make a difference.”

Cellphones also help these women secure employment, as they can give out the cell number as their point of contact. “A lot of women don’t want to give a potential employer the shelter’s 50

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The numbers on recycling

In 2005, according to Environment Canada’s National Office of Pollution Prevention, 4,328 tonnes of telephone, fax machines and mobile phone waste will be disposed of in Canada, 3,729 tonnes will be reused, 786 tonnes will be stored and 4,087 tonnes will be recycled. phone number, because they don’t want the stigma that may cause,” Sarginson says, and mobile phones solve that problem.

As these women and their children move out of shelters and begin their new lives they can also benefit from Bell Mobility’s Second Stage program, in which they are given a cellphone along with a significantly-discounted monthly rate plan.

There are currently more than 300 subscribers involved in this second-stage program, with approximately 30 being added every month, according to Bell Mobility’s Morrell. “It makes me feel great to be involved in this program. We have the technology and the ability to help people, and it fills me with pride knowing that we’re helping to meet a very real need.”

Bell Mobility’s work with women’s shelters also extends beyond cellphones, as employees regularly volunteer their time.

“One group of our employees went in on Easter Sunday to cook dinner for 25 kids and women in a shelter,” Morrell says. “This was their own family time, and I think that really tells you about our employees.”

Another group of employees recently painted Yorktown Shelter from top to bottom, Sarginson says. “Things like painting the walls means the difference between this place being like a warehouse, somewhere for these families to simply be, and actually making this into a home atmosphere. That creates a lot less stress and makes families feel not just safe but also comfortable.”

And this kind of community support is vital, because shelters operate on slim budgets. “We spend all of our money supplying the basic necessities for the women and the children, plus programs such as job and life skills programs,” Sarginson says. “All of our money goes there, so when it comes to things like painting the walls, it’s generally not in our budget to do things like that.”

And if the shelters have scant financial resources, the residents often have none. Which makes times like holidays and backto-school especially difficult.

“We got a call from Bell Mobility in August asking how many children we had in the shelter,” Sarginson says. “I gave them a list of the number of boys and girls we had and they sent backpacks filled with school supplies.

“That made a huge difference.”

And then there are very personal stories. “If we have a family that is moving out and they have nothing—no furniture, no household items—I can call Bell Mobility and give them a list of the things the family needs. And Bell Mobility has literally furnished entire apartments through donations from the staff. ■ M O R E I N F O R M AT I O N

Recycle Reuse Redial recyclereuseredial@mobility.com Charitable programs charity@mobility.com

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