With an ambitious "Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere" agenda, wireless communication is trying to bring all the paradigms together. Keshav Chandra gives an update on this industry and says it’s high time industry players pay more attention to convergence

In recent times, no technology has shown as much promise and evoked as much interest as wireless communication. It is believed that this technology would change the way people work, communicate and even live.

For businesses, wireless technologies mean a new way to stay in touch with customers, suppliers and employees.
Wireless communication is dependent on and embodies computers, communication, networking and applications, all rolled into one. It is expected to converge all manifestations of computer and phone usage onto one device, providing a single window to the world.

Building blocks
Some of the realms that are guiding the evolution of the new wireless communication idioms are:

• Communication: Standar-dised, wireless service—anytime, anywhere.
• Networking: Secure, high bandwidth medium/pipe.
• Devices: That can provide features and punch.
• Operating systems and core services: That are scalable, easy to integrate with the rest of the IT superstructure and most importantly, provide the foundation for building applications that would revolutionise the world.
• Software: Applications that are intuitive and natural for handheld usage.
• Integration: Fully integrated, wireless personal space—at office, at home and on the move.

In a nutshell, these features would bring the world onto your palmtop. In this world, the user would have a desktop PC, a mobile phone and a Personal Digital Assistant, in a single handheld device.

Convergence: A Reality?
Though each of the above mentioned domains are progressing pretty well and in the right direction, the final product does not meet the end-user’s expectations. This is because the advances made in individual domains do not translate into tangible products. To overcome this, the industry is now looking at convergence. The vision propagated by Palm and other PDA evangelists of a truly personal device with no hangovers from other domains such as PCs, sounds logical and should address a substantial section of the market.

But vendors like Microsoft and HP have obvious reasons to miniaturise the PC, and thus extend their hold to the handheld space as well. However, at this stage it is too premature to hazard a guess as to who would win the race. It could well happen that the market would be split between the two camps for a while longer or till applications on both devices start appearing similar.

Another class of players in this field are companies such as TI and Intel, who are working on chips/chipsets that would address the requirements of these future devices. Some of the chips that have emerged in this context are TI’s ARM processor complemented by its OMAP chipset, and Intel’s Strong Arm processor.

Convergence of networks
This is one area where there are multiple standards and multiple approaches that have been in existence for a relatively longer period. As of today there are networks conforming to 802.11b, 802.11a, Bluetooth, Triband GSM, GPRS and other standard/protocols. All of these attempt to realise part of the 2.5G and 3G visions (visions with performance standards laid out, such as 2 Mbps bandwidth, etc.) to varied degrees. Even though some of these standards/protocols address different requirements and different sub-domains, and differ in the approach to usage measurement or packet devices, broadly, the industry is divided along Palm/Epoch operating systems and WinCE. This industry is still in turmoil and lot of alignments and realignments are underway.

State of the mart
The overall picture that emerges in today’s wireless communication industry is that of an evolving industry undergoing growing pains. Unlike the PC phenomenon driven by IBM, or the Internet phenomenon driven by Sun, there is no single company driving the wireless initiative. Yes it’s true that this is too large a canvas for any single company to handle individually, yet most players seem to be working independently, pursuing divergent agendas.

Even the tie-ups and joint concerted efforts towards varying degrees of convergence that are taking place seem to lack the coherence that is required. Short-term business considerations appear to be the driving force.
There is a school of thought that says fragmentation and divergence is the best way to address this issue, as individual players will then focus on specific tasks. But the fact remains that the absence of a guiding authority with representation from all concerned has created a void in the industry.

Crystal ball gazing
As individual domains reach the desired threshold, the focus would move onto convergence of devices, networks and content. The end-user experience of the technology and value additions that this technology would bring, will gain in importance.

However, the reality is far from what was projected. After a lot of wait, hype, and disappointment, the mood now is one of guarded optimism. C K Keshav Chandra is part of the wireless and embedded group of telecom practice at HCL Perot Systems