TTI organizes conference & exhibition, “Wireless Devices as Applications Enablers,” at Washington Convention Center in Washington , DC

Conference and exhibition appreciated by attendees

Telecom Trends International (TTI) organized a conference and exhibition on wireless devices at the Washington Convention Center in Washington , DC on February 21, 2002 . The conference, titled "Wireless Devices as Applications Enablers," featured presentations by leading industry experts, followed by a vendor-sponsored exhibition. Feedback received after the conference was very positive with most attendees lauding the quality of presentations and exhibits.

Speaking at the conference, the President of Telecom Trends International, Naqi A. Jaffery, said the rebound of the telecom market is being spearheaded by emerging developments in the wireless sector. The two factors that are serving as catalysts in the revival of the market are the launch of next generation networks and the deployment of technologies to support FCC’s E-911 mandate, Mr. Jaffery said.

Chris Coles, President and CEO of GPNS Corporation, criticized the FCC for failing to meet its timescale to put E-911 in place. He said E-911 only specifies location, and the FCC has no plans for taking the technology capability forward into imaging, leaving the entire homeland defense community having to try and sort out their own solutions.

Mr. Coles, who was the keynote speaker, said the addition of new, powerful wireless chipsets to devices will create a new wireless revolution – Locatable Video Wireless (LVW) handsets. This will open the door to a multitude of applications, many stemming from the ability to create an image at a specified location and transmit that information anywhere, he said.

Bruce Myers, Vice President, Cingular Wireless, spoke of the importance of reducing churn and how retaining a customer is critical to carriers for competing successfully. He said introducing new innovative services is one way of both retaining existing customers and adding new ones.

Paul Burlingame, Qualcomm’s Senior Manager for BREW, outlined his company’s strategy in positioning the BREW platform for enabling applications over mobile devices. He said BREW is complementary to Java and will be widely used in mobile devices. With over 180 developers actively developing BREW applications, the number of applications based to the BREW platform has swelled to over 400, he said.

BREW has the support of 31 handset manufactures, and 17 carriers are planning to implement it, Mr. Burlingame said. Already, Korea Telecom FreeTel (KTF) has launched commercial services over the BREW platform, and Verizon has announced plans for a commercial launch in the U.S. , he said.

Paul Najarian, Director, ITS America , said the car is emerging as an information portal and telecomputing platform. He said worldwide, “telematics” will represent a $25- $30 billion industry by 2005/2006. With over 200 million cars in the U.S. , Americans spend 500 million hours per week in their cars, Mr. Najarian said. He showed a video to demonstrate the how developments in “telematics” are enabling new applications for deployment in mobile vehicles.

Nino Tarantino, Vice President, Anoto, described his company’s Bluetooth-based technology that allows the transmission of written text to a computer over a short range. He said Anoto envisages a world where one can send handwritten notes, doodles and sketches directly from paper to friends, colleagues, and organizations all over the world. Mr. Tarantino showed a video to demonstrate the applications of the technology.

Arpad G. Toth, Senior Vice President, Inciscent, said wireless data applications are “mission-critical” in enterprise and government/military. He described Inciscent’s network management tool that allows IT personnel to wirelessly manage business-critical IT infrastructure from virtually any handheld device.

Doug Rice, Vice President, Operations, mPortal, said end-users’ experience with mobile applications depends on their compatibility with the mobile device selected and the usability of the application interface. Mr. Rice said mPortal and Motorola University are working together to put Total Quality Management into the hands of the decision makers when they need it, wherever they are.

Malcolm Spicer, Wireless Market Editor, PBI Media, said modems for handhelds that work with next-generation networks are attracting attention. He said handset vendors can add PDA capabilities to their devices more efficiently than PDA vendors can add voice capability to theirs. The next big thing, he said, will be the addition of WAN/LAN handoff capability in devices.

Ozgur Aytar, Industry Analyst, Strategis Group, said handset sales will pick up in 2002 and double by 2005. She said factors driving the market include cut-throat operator competition, smaller and more attractive devices, data-capable networks, and the speed with which applications are being developed.

Vinod Jain, Senior Research Associate, Telecom Trends International, said security is a key enabler and provider of competitive advantage in the wireless value chain. He said security concerns have been a key barrier to the widespread growth of wireless services. Dr. Jain said for a while organizations deploying WLANs did not see security as an enabler and security took a back seat, but now that is changing. While a number of IT security providers are moving to introduce wireless-based solutions, their products have not yet become widespread enough to alleviate fears of compromised data among corporations, he said.

Companies that exhibited at the event included Nextel, Anoto, mPortal, and eVector Mobile.