Now and Soon.

That our wired, wired world is in the process of going wireless is a simple, inescapable fact. But beyond the hype of 24-7 connectivity and high-tech devices so slim you can literally wear them on your sleeve, where is it all headed? And, more importantly, what do you have to do to get there first? Three wireless Internet gurus share their visions--and concerns--about the future of an unplugged world.

You've already heard some of what the future holds. In the new wireless world, you'll check your email on the fly. It's 10 a.m.; do you know where your children are? Just call up today's school records via your mobile device. Access inventory in Alaska or your executive vice president from England discreetly while riding the office elevator or from your seat on a plane to Peoria or a donkey down the Grand Canyon. One tiny wireless device will serve as phone, dictionary; music and video player, get you on the Internet, and may even replace your desktop PC. Kiss debit cards and cash good-bye and greet wireless barcoding.

Coming soon to your home is fixed wireless, which uses no satellite dish, just a phonebook-size antenna screwed to an outside wall that delivers connectivity to the entire house. On the road, smart antennae that are making radios effective in more places more of the time and offering higher data rates with further reach will ensure your conversations won't fade out.

By 2005, 177 million people, or 61 percent of the market, will be using mobile phones or other wireless devices, and 111 million people will access the Internet at least once monthly via wireless, according to Forrester Research. The birth of the wireless Internet has spawned mobile commerce, or m-commerce. With the Wireless Revolution thus upon us, it s time for business to cut the cords. CE talked with three gurus of the wireless Internet about the wireless technologies ahead--and how corporate leaders can make the most of what's in store.

DR. DAVID CLARK 

"I've always been very frustrated by wireless," states Dr. David Clark, senior research scientist in charge of the Advanced Network Architecture Group at MIT and a father of the Internet. "I've felt there was a tremendous potential there that has not been realized." One factor holding us back, he asserts, results from our view of spectrum as scarce.

"The FCC auctions off spectrum at high prices, necessitating conservative business plans by those who can afford it. By contrast, the whole history of the Internet is one of speculative innovation, of trying something new and seeing if it works. But how can you justify spending $2 billion to $4 billion dollars for a field-of-dreams experiment in wireless?"

As a result, he adds, "a few big firms with national footprints--the wired phone companies--own large parts of the spectrum. And they conservatively use the same business model they used for voice technology. So we have national companies putting up new antennae on lots of towers, and offering a monthly service contract. This has nothing to do with technology, but rather with business plans."

Clark, therefore, focuses as much on alternative economic models for wireless applications as on technology, foreseeing both as having a role in driving today's Internet. He'd like to see a democratic, local deployment of broadband, wireless local area network (LAN). He compares mobile service from today's phone companies at a few hundred Kbps, to the 11 Mbps you can get with the 802.11 standard, the unlicensed spectrum using the 2.4GH2 band. Broadband Internet connections today cost between $40 and $60 a month; Clark wants a "micropayment scheme" where individuals can buy and sell access to wireless.

"Why shouldn't someone hang an 802.11 radio out his apartment window and try to recoup costs by selling wireless access to people sitting in the park outside?" he wonders. "Why shouldn't we do wireless bottom-up as a grass roots market player, as well as top-down as a build-out in the national infrastructure? A restaurant might offer wireless access in exchange for coming in and having dinner there. We're talking about something that in very small doses has very small costs, so people might well give it to you as a perk."

Clark already uses the 802.11 spectrum for Web access. "I've got 802.11 radios in my office building and an 802.11 base station in my home. I have a laptop PC with an 802.11 card that I carry back and forth. I don't plug it in any more. I turn it on at work, and it's connected to the Internet. Same thing at home, and I can use it anywhere. I can work in the living room, which is a little more social than crawling off into another room to use the computer."

Another factor Clark sees stalling America's wireless progress stems from the erroneous view that with wireless come tiny screens. "People believe advertising won't work over wireless because there isn't any room on that stupid little display on your mobile phone for a banner ad," he says, warning that this limited vision will lead firms to cease focusing on Web pages and Internet ads--a negative for company and consumer alike. "The whole current e-commerce economic model, which is advertising-driven, will fall apart. We'll end up with a closed model."

Today's Internet has an open quality: You buy access from a provider, use a browser, go to any Web page you want, and a company pays to advertise on the home page. As we go wireless, the current providers--the national phone companies that achieve high margins from their vertical model of selling wires with the service--may initiate bidding wars for what appears on your small screen.

"They may say, 'We've got room here on the home page for one stock quote service,"' Clark warns. "It's not going to be open-access, consumer-picks anymore. What you see on the Internet will not be what URL you want to go to, but the result of who pays whom what kind of money. That whole sense of closing up the world arises from thinking banner ads won't fit on small screens. What a cosmic result to derive from such a simple little thing!"

In actuality, display technology has advanced far beyond the six lines that now pop up on cell phones. Clark describes a prototype in development at MIT as "a wireless telephone-like thing that has a magnifying glass inside, behind which is a full-size VGA display. We mount that on something that's got a cell phone form factor," and you can read a full page on a tiny screen. Radio technology (see "Bringing Up Bluetooth," page 67) has advanced to the point where you can carry several small devices connected by short-range radio links.

Clark scoffs at today's cell phone that requires holding to your head a microphone, a speaker, a keyboard, and a radio with enough RF power to transmit a signal several miles. He envisions a fountain pen-sized gadget with only microphone and speaker at your head. A short-distance radio hooks this gadget to the repeater gizmo in your briefcase or purse, and the repeater transmits to the cellular/802.11 infrastructure. This gizmo can hold heavier, longer lasting batteries than a cell phone because you're not holding it up to your head, and you'll get less RF to your brain. Moreover, your wristwatch-cum-caller ID will communicate with the repeater, saving you from fumbling around in your pocket whenever your phone rings.

ALEX LIGHTMAN

Alex Lightman, cofounder, president, and chairman of Charmed Technology, wants to send a wireless wake-up call to American companies. "Just when you've got your servers and network and your Web pages running and you think you've come to terms with the dot-coin economy, along comes wireless, which is 90 percent different and will revolutionize how business operates. Certain visionary companies have already given employees Internet access from home. But now to beat the competition, you must do that with wireless," says Lightman. Not only will you enable constant, instant communication between executives, employees, and sales forces wherever they're scattered across the globe, but you'll also facilitate access to information. After all, "anyone who's connected to the Internet all the time is simply more powerful," asserts Lightman.

For companies, the only real stumbling block to equipping employees comes from the phone companies, because employees could run up huge charges on per-minute rates, and budgeting would be, at best, a huge unknown. Currently, any flat rate mobile service includes parameters that, if exceeded, mean rising costs. But Lightman sees no reason that a U.S.-based provider can't offer a global flat-rate. He points out that the U.S. can find a competitive advantage in connected employees, since European countries can't offer a flat fee to customers without loss of government tax revenues. He urges CEOs, "Right now, today, give voice for a flat fee and start negotiating with the phone companies."

He may think globally, but when it comes to electronics, Lightman also thinks small. "In computers, the next big thing is always a surprise move to the next small thing, never recognized before it happens," he muses. "First we had mainframe computers; then minicomputers surprised us. Then we had microcomputers, and in the inevitable march toward smaller and smaller, along came the laptop, such a surprise to American leaders that the Japanese continue to dominate the market. Next came the Palm, unexpected to the extent that the undervalued company sold for $45 million, only to be bought by U.S. Robotics for $8 billion.

"The next big thing--being the next small thing--is the mobile phone, the first time in the history of computers they found a form factor that already existed. It's predicted that within three years, more people will be accessing the Internet through mobile phones than with desktop PCs. And, again, people think there's no smaller thing, but they're missing something."

Charmed Technology, formerly called InfoCharms, makes smaller things: tiny, portable computers that perform multiple functions, including Internet access. Soon, GEO and staff alike may sport small, wearable computers, wireless devices ready-to-hand, lips, ears, so whenever the need or desire hits, you can send e-mails and connect with offices and colleagues. Or you can use such devices to turn on your VCR, dial your phone, start your car, or get directions.

One such device, the "Communicator" weighs in a one pound. It connects to the Internet and serves as a personal PC. You can tickle a tiny key board, the "Twiddler," while it's buried in a pocket or purse. The eyepiece inconspicuously attaches to your glasses--appearing as the equivalent of a full-size monitor to your proximate eye. The device has an Intel StrongARM processor; semiconductor memory; wireless Internet connectivity; audio output circuitry; and an expansion bus for adding GPS, remote control MP3, Internet telephony, a one gigabyte matchbox-size hard disk, and various displays, from flat panel LCDs to 3D goggles.

Soon with a device like the Communicator, you'll connect to the Internet for free "when you walk into a 'charmed' location, one we've wired," explains Lightman. The company plans to "charm" office buildings, restaurants, limousines, trains, and so on, identifying such places with a four-leaf clover. The system will use the unlicensed spectrum 802.11, fast enough to download a movie to your cell phone in just a few minutes.

In the "Brave New Unwired World" fashion shows sponsored by Charmed, models wear such items as the Lizzy, a waist-mounted computer, or the SQUI, a cell phone, organizer, e-mail, and Web browser worn like jewelry. Another small thing in Charmed's wearable wireless warehouse serves as an e-business card. A one-ounce badge you attach at conventions, it saves time and boredom in explaining what you do or what you have available.

Lightman distributes these at conferences, on free loan. You program and tailor your own demographics, and if you wish, include hobbies for "affinity matching to show what you have in common with others at the convention. It will break the ice," he says. The badge contains four infrared receivers and transmitters, four binary buttons for programming secret codes, a four-bit microcontroller, and a watch battery. At the end of the conference, you transfer the badge's data to a disk-to-go, or print it out at a designated kiosk, and presto: access to all those accumulated, detailed business cards so you no longer wonder, "Who was this guy?" when you find the card in your pocket two months later.

Wireless wearables will also serve you on a personal level. Variations on a theme include a device that monitors your heart rate and warns you when your stress levels increase. It can be programmed to release your asthma medication as needed, or to serve as your personal conscience, nagging you when you're going off your diet.

More fanciful, Charmed's "sensory designs" will disseminate aerosol sprays, perfumes, or perhaps even pheromones when you most need to make a conquest. After all, in today's 24/7 economy, we need a speedy, sure way of attracting not only customers, but romance, and Lightman believes "wearable computers should be fun."

MICHAEL MOON 

How many CEOs have thought through how to present their brand over the wireless Internet, the means by which stakeholders increasingly are accessing products and services? Michael Moon, cofounder and president of GISTICS, a California research and executive education firm in new technologies, urges companies to reconceive how they convey brand in the Internet age and the brand new world of m-commerce, which--at least for today--rely mostly on voice technology or small screens.

"The Internet already has altered how companies relate to their customers, trade partners, staff, investors, and stockholders," claims Moon. "These relationships have turned interactive in ways they've never been before. At the lowest level they're occurring via pagers, faxes, and interactive voice response systems. Then there are Web sites, extranets, intranets, and other ways of passing information, be they messages or digital objects like a Powerpoint slide show, a PDF, or a piece of media. Internet relationships now happen 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

Moon sees opportunities for conveying critical information fast via wireless. Likening branding to storytelling, he calls the CEO "the chief branding officer, doing that through an ability to relate and an ability to tell stories. Some of the most important stories he tells are to institutional investors, buy- and sell-side analysts, retail stockholders, employees, and spouses of employees." An interactive annual report, an investor relations Web site all become important storytelling platforms.

"Wireless applications can pay huge dividends here," suggests Moon. "The CEO now has the ability to check a stampede to sell stock by making an immediate personal invitation to all stockholders--via e-mail and other wireless applications--to visit the Web site to hear the full story, instead of getting sucked down the black hole promulgated by the media. It's a way to reach out to hundreds of thousands of investors in short order, to counter negative publicity or call attention to the good stuff."

In his forthcoming book Firebrands, Moon expands the notion of brand for the Internet era. He theorizes that online, brand involves not only an image or idea of a company, product, or service, but also "the satisfaction that a customer derives from the experience of buying and using a product or service. Brand storytelling involves communicating with customers over a satisfaction life cycle, moving customers through five stages: awareness, involvement, trial, commitment, and referral. When you shift to dot-com space, you're talking about delivering a self-service satisfaction."

He describes the experience of a customer or stakeholder on the Net: "I just point and click and produce something for me. The dot-com self-service satisfaction derives from an interactive point-and-click where I get something done here that won't require waiting in line, or on the phone." In Moon's vision of e-business and m-business, "your digital brand derives from e-services that meet or exceed customer or stakeholder requirements for satisfaction, as well as value." Today, your online broker gives this kind of satisfaction when, so programmed, you get an alert when Apple stock hits 50 and it offers you the option to buy or sell with one click. A more far-out example would be a company that visits a dozen different Web sites, scrapes data off the screen, puts it into a little package, and then sends it on to you.

Moon posits that "the organizing principle for this next era is trust networks. These new interactive Internet relationships are about trust, reciprocity, and an ongoing fair exchange of value. It's a totally permission-based network." He draws a parallel with a precursor: an extant wireless network thriving in Japan. It's composed of teenage girls who use wireless phones to send messages to each other in the form of digital Pokemon characters, each representing an emotional state, like "I like you" or "I'd like to share a secret with you." Digital notes sailing silently through virtual space, they convey shorthand currencies of affection.

Customers in the dot-space, like secret-sharing teenagers, share confidential information with the seller, expecting the seller will use it only to better serve them. Of course, customers also use the Internet to exchange information about a company, offer recommendations and criticisms, and compare products and services. Making this work for you requires focusing on the interaction, says Moon. He advocates creating what he calls a "firebrand," defined as "a brand that has ignited in the hearts and minds of customers" as a result of good-faith interactions online. From this, a company's trust network expands.

A hot application for wireless lies in creating a digital object script, or designing icons with unique signatures, like those popular with Tokyo's teens. Moon is not alone in perceiving teens as at the vanguard of the mobile revolution. Forrester Research, in the May 2000 Forrester Report Mobile Internet Realities, finds that teens and 'tweens' are the ones bringing wireless devices into the home. But Moon finds that even "people in their 20s are so wired today that they go, 'Wired? What do you mean? I don't see any wires.' It's like water to fish." In this wired, wireless new world, Moon sounds a wake-up call: "Companies need to develop interactive, permission-based relationships based on trust, a fair exchange of value, and reciprocity, with people you'll never know, through an interactive infrastructure."