On Monday, February 24, TiE- Boston presented a panel on Wireless Technology at the Burlington Marriott.

Panelists :
Gennedy Sirota, VP of Management & Marketing, Starnet Networks.
Mark Lowenstein, Managing Director, Mobile Ecosystem
Eric Janzem, CEO, Blue Socket

Moderator :
Vinit Nijhawan, CEO, Taral Networks.

More than 200 entrepreneurs were present at TiE-Boston’s monthly meeting titled “Wireless Technologies and solutions that will survive the slow economy.” The panelists, who were experts from the wireless industry, described the current state of affairs of Wireless Technologies and projections for the future.

"There are a billion subscribers of cell phone services today and it is going to be one and a half billion in future, though the growth rate of new subscribers has slowed down" said Vinit Nijhawan, the moderator of the panel. Wireless Technologies have made deep inroads in many parts of the world. "Some wireless technologies, for example SMS are more common in India," said Mr. Nijhawan.

Eric Janzen described the “ten must-solve customers problems” of the industry. Some of problems include: curtailing abuse of services by some users without causing inconvenience to others, controlling the unit in large system of WAN devices, persisting the sessions when users roam between subnets, load sharing across access points, enable choice of access providers, etc. In short, the industry aspires to make wireless services and the devices simple and easy to use.

Mark Lowenstein talked about the evolution from 2G to 3G and the opportunities this is going to provide. His company Mobile Ecosystems works with all the mobile devices that are “always in the ecosystem.” He feels that the market is driving towards multiple devices. Some will be dedicated devices, others may address multiple needs but none can address all needs. Needs include wireless phone, connectivity, SMS, wireless email, gaming etc. Mr. Lowenstein explained the differences between the consumer applications and the enterprise applications in the wireless industry and their position in the market.

“Integrating voice and data services and providing them anywhere, anytime and anyway is our goal,” said Ginnady Sirota. “Our service implementation strategy is to enable more services. Carrier’s concerns and market trends are some of the challenges faced by the industry,” he said.

He gave an example of the their customer, China Unicom where his company successfully deployed 1G service in 2002. China Unicom had 7 million subscribers at the end of 2002 and the predication is that it will have 20 million subscribers by 2003. “The formula for success is to focus on the end user, assist customer, contribute to overall growth and customer support,” said Mr. Sirota.

It was clear that for Wireless to be viable, the technology should be simple, cheap, and easy to use. Though the growth has slowed down there is opportunity for entrepreneurs to explore in service and applications arena. In a span of less than five years the industry has developed a jargon of acronyms that makes this technology rather difficult to understand. We have attached a list of these acronyms the bottom with some description about them.

Tie-Boston continues to present interesting panels and a range of other services. Gautam Prakash the President of TiE-Boston Chapter urged everyone to become members and take advantage of the member only features.

Acronyms
2G - Second generation wireless telecommunications technlogy.
2.5G- 2.5 generation wireless telecommunications technology
3G - Third generation wireless telecommunications technology
802.11 - A Wireless Local Area Network standard for small areas like airports, hotel lobbies and even coffee shops, enabling users to bring their own devices without having to hook up to any cables.
Bluetooth - Bluetooth is a low-power technology that enables data transfers at upto 720 kilobytes per second within small areas via wireless radio channels, enabling extensive machine-to-machine contact. For example mobile phones with desktop PCs with refrigerators with soda machines with headsets, etc. It is named after Harald Bluetooth, a 10th century viking king who united Denmark and Norway
CDMA - Code Division Multiple Access, the wireless telecommunications standard common in Latin America, the United States and Korea
GSM - Global System for Mobile communications, the wireless telecommunications standard used in all of Europe, most of Asia and growing parts of the Americas. Can transfer data at speeds of 9.6 kilobytes per second. Also known as 2G or second-generation technology.
LAN - Local Area Network, a data network for a relatively small area like an office.
MMS - Multimedia Messaging Service.
SMS - Short Message Service.
WAP - Wireless Application Protocol, the protocol for a technology for wireless Internet.
W-LAN - Wireless Local Area Network, the wireless version of LAN. WLAN is ideal for areas like airports, hotel lobbies and even coffee shops, enabling users to bring their own devices without having to hook up to any cables.

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