THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 23, 1995 TAG: 9510210210
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, BUSINESS WEEKLY
LENGTH: Long : 169 lines
On a sunny weekday afternoon earlier this month, Tim Allmond joined the list of believers in the power of the mobile office. He was motoring his Ford Bronco on a backwoods stretch of Route 58 near Emporia. His mission: to deliver a small stack of CD-ROMs packed with legal documents to a customer in Raleigh, a prominent law firm.
Allmond's cellular phone rang. One of the law firm's clients, a fired corporate executive, was about to give a deposition in a suit he'd brought against his former employer. The lawyers needed a copy of a certain contract critical to their client's case - and they needed it right away.
Allmond pulled to the roadside, grabbed his notebook computer, slid in the necessary disk and faxed off the document via his cell phone. The law firm went on to settle the case in its client's favor. And NetTel Research Inc., Allmond's Newport News company that scans stacks of paper documents onto easy-to-use computer disks, had greatly satisfied a very important customer.
``Yes, there is a Santa Claus,'' the lanky Allmond jokes.
Stories like Allmond's aren't yet abundant. But in a few years they likely will be.
Portable computers and software programs are gaining power at a spitfire pace, making on-the-go workers increasingly well-armed to handle complex assignments.
At the same time, wireless communications providers are rapidly retooling their networks to handle the massive amounts of data zipping from one computer to another in this information-intensive economy.
Meanwhile, more and more employers are yanking chairs out from under their deskbound workers and putting them on the road - to spend more time with customers, suppliers and business partners.
This ``convergence of critical components,'' as wireless communications analyst Mark Lowenstein refers to it, is revolutionizing the way that tens of
millions of Americans spend their working days - and nights.
Lowenstein, who tracks the industry for The Yankee Group, a Boston consulting firm, foresees a proliferation of workaday wireless devices and portable computers.
By 2000 in the U.S., he predicts:
62 million cellular-phone users, up from 30 million now.
55 million pagers, up from 35 million.
38 million portable computers, up from 10 million.
And 10 million mobile workers will regularly use cellular or other wireless networks to transmit data by decade's end, he says. That would be a tenfold increase in just five years.
With pagers or cell phones that follow one everywhere, electronic mail and voice-messaging systems that can be dialed up from the most remote locations, and wireless faxes and modems, the tether to the work place, while invisible, will grow stronger than ever.
That - if one detests always being on call - is the down side.
On the other hand, with an increasingly in-the-loop work force able to get more and more done on the run, U.S. productivity and Americans' standard of living are bound to surge in the decades ahead. No other nation is keeping pace with America's info-revolution.
``This is real, it's here, it's happening,'' Lowenstein says.
As my wife tells me, `Welcome home,' '' Don York says as he flings open the front passenger door of his slate-green Lincoln Continental Mark VIII. ``This is my mobile home, man, a four-wheeler.''
York is a broker with Rose & Krueth Realty Corp. in Virginia Beach. After rising from private to major in a 23-year Army career, he retired four years ago and started listing and selling real estate - with considerable success.
One reason, York believes, is his embrace of technologies that allow him to do more on the fly.
He packs a traveling techno-punch: a notebook computer with CD-ROM, a pen-activated pocket organizer, a pager, a miniature printer and a tiny digital camera that transfers photo images right into his PC. Along with a credit-card-sized PC modem card, a special phone cable and a few other devices, the entire setup cost him about $7,000. But it's worth it, he contends.
Consider his most recent client, a Long Island plant-nursery owner who needed a local home during visits to his Hampton Roads branch.
York picked up the man at his Norfolk motel early last week and quickly offered him a list and photos of the 31 properties he'd identified as potential purchases. Moments later, York plugged his PC into his phone and the two scanned the multiple listing service electronically while they sat in the parking lot at McDonald's.
``He said, `We're not going into the office?'' York chuckles. No need, the broker replied. Anything they needed was a phone call away. By week's end, the man signed a contract on a home in Chesapeake.
Only a handful of real-estate brokers in Hampton Roads have bet on technology as York has. In 10 years, he says, ``all full-time professional Realtors will be doing this. Or they'll be out of the business.''
To the average Joe, mobile computing was almost unheard of five years ago - even though wireless networks from satellites to ham radio have been used for many years to transmit data of some kind.
The spread of computing to the mobile masses has so far largely been confined to fields like public safety, transportation and utilities. Police officers, firefighters and emergency-services personnel in many cities now travel in vehicles equipped with computers that send and receive information. So do many package deliverers and cable-TV and phone technicians.
Now that cellular carriers, paging services and a few specialized radio networks are pushing the data envelope, a fully functional mobile office is within reach of tens of millions more workers.
The wireless wonders never cease.
Last month, SkyTel Corp. launched the nation's first ``two-way'' paging system that lets people send messages and get responses back without either person having to use a telephone.
And within the next few years a whole new wave of wireless providers in a portion of the radio spectrum reserved for something called Personal Communications Services will burst into the market. Data is a big part of their plans.
Many analysts think the cellular carriers - because of their established customer base and their rapid introduction of new data-transport technologies - are best positioned to capitalize on the mobile-office trend.
The Yankee Group's Lowenstein says he wouldn't be surprised if 30 percent of cellular carriers' traffic is data by 2010. It's only 2 percent now. Voice makes up the rest.
Cellular has its own hoped-for ``killer application'' where data are concerned. It's known as Cellular Digital Packet Data. CDPD chops data transmissions into little bursts that hop from channel to channel in search of openings - such as pauses in voice conversations. The result is faster and more reliable transmissions than sending a constant data stream via the traditional cellular route, which is still prone to dropping data.
Cellular carriers have been aggressively laying this more advanced digital system on top of their existing analog system all over the country. Both Sprint Cellular Co. and GTE Corp.'s GTE Mobilenet unit, formerly Contel Cellular, say they will have near-blanket coverage of Hampton Roads with CDPD by mid-1996.
Their announced rates for the new service are all based on the amount of data transferred. That's a big departure from regular cellular pricing based on air time, so many customers haven't figured out if they'll save money using CDPD.
Both Sprint and GTE say CDPD is best suited for short faxes and e-mails, small file transfers and for remote monitoring, such as traveling salespeople doing inventory checks or technicians periodically checking how electronic equipment is functioning.
The latter would suit Bill Lovejoy just fine - anything to help him get his work done quicker.
For about the last year, he has occasionally plugged his portable PC into his cell phone to check the electronics that his employer, PrecipTech Inc., makes for pollution-control equipment.
During one recent weekday lunch, Lovejoy was golfing in Newport News when his cell phone rang with a call from an out-of-state customer. The customer's new equipment was about to start up and Lovejoy was needed to do some quick monitoring of the electronic controls.
He could have driven home or over to his Newport News office to set up his computer modem and phone. Instead he whipped out his portable PC and did the job right there on the sixth tee - via cellular.
It took 20 minutes.
``A lot of people said this stuff would never work, but it does,'' Lovejoy attests. ``It makes my life easier. I don't have to turn around and go into work. I can do it and then go back to whatever I'm doing.''
Now if it would only improve his golf game. MEMO: [For a related cover story, see page 13 for this date.]
ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
GOING MOBILE
[Drawing]
[Color Photos]
GARY C. KNAPP
Tim Allmond
MOTOYA NAKAMURA
The Virginian-Pilot
Don York
by CNB