The Future’s Here

Passing through Denver airport on a re-cent trip to the US, I was amazed to

see that almost all the boarding gates had become wireless ‘hot spots’. Take

out your computer, click your browser and you are on the Web faster than you can

even say ‘PDA’. With the number of ‘hot spots’ expected to soar from a

few hundred in 2003 to over a hundred thousand by the end of the decade and with

cellular providers like Sprint and Verizon boosting the capabilities of their

wide area networks to facilitate high-speed data transfer, the world is changing

faster than many of us would imagine.

What has been the sequence of events leading up this movement of wireless

technologies into the mainstream of business?

“The cost of setting up and moving wireless networks is becoming a fraction of wired Ethernet. And third-party software will address security concerns before long” Ganesh Natarajan

The ill-fated Apple Newton introduced in 1993 was probably the first attempt

in this area but it was the introduction of the Palm Pilot three years later

that really set off the revolution in handheld computing. And now notebook

computers with Intel’s Centrino technology come with inbuilt-wireless

capabilities, while PDAs–with wireless connectivity through national and

international carriers, smart phones and pocket PCs are beginning to merge in

terms of features and functionalities. Tight integration between computing and

communications is enabling seamless handling of voice, data e-mail and text

messages with MMS services.

Public Wi-Fi systems are becoming the order of the day with more and more

people slipping a wireless LAN card in their computers and connecting at

airports, bookstores, and coffee shops. Airlines like Lufthansa and SAS have

introduced the service on their flights and SBC plans to make countrywide access

points a reality, starting with 13 states in the US. The proliferation is being

helped by substantial reductions in costs of routers, access points, LAN cards,

and other devices. Also, the cost of setting up and moving wireless networks is

now becoming a fraction of traditional wired Ethernet. And as the 802.11b

standard yields the more advanced standards with higher bandwidths and higher

ranges, more advanced applications like video will be enabled. The only concern

that remains is one of security against hackers, but newer third-party software

will result in industry-strength features in this area as well.

The concept of ubiquitous computing that makes wireless so attractive is also

being extended to global positioning satellite (GPS) technologies, wireless cash

registers, and radio frequency identification (RFID) systems. Logistics firms

running delivery operations across vast geographies are able to schedule and

service customer needs better and faster using GPS; retailers and manufacturers

are able to track supplies and inventory across the supply chain using RFID; and

the day is not far when all these facilities will get fully integrated and the

science fiction dream of locating a restaurant, making a reservation, finding

the lowest prices and paying without cash are all available to completely

transform the day-to-day processes of working and living. I remember writing in

this column a couple of years ago about the modern man in a smart world leaving

his office in a car that receives a message from the refrigerator at home that

there is no milk, and how the car routes its journey via the grocer’s store,

where the order has already been placed and is ready for pickup. All that and

more is waiting to happen in the very near future.

Will the wireless revolution transform this country soon? Of course it will,

as some industry leaders like RPG Retail, Hindustan Construction, and Star TV

begin to emulate the global best in class. And if there is one area where

Indians are already ahead of their US corporate brethren, it is SMS. Sitting in

a plane at Newark airport one morning and busy sending and receiving messages to

my office in Pune, it was wonderful to watch the amazement on the face of my

American neighbor to witness this wireless transaction happening across

thousands of miles, which reminded me of what Alvin Toffler said once:

"Some mortals would suffer the dizzying disorientation caused by the

premature arrival of the future!"

Ganesh Natarajan



The author is deputy chairman & managing director of Zensar Technologies
and chairman of Nasscom’s SME Forum for Western India