Will 3G packet-switched l-commerce with fixed wireless PCS-based handsets outpace smart GPS PDAs using WAP?

Don't worry if you didn't understand that sentence. With the dizzying pace of wireless innovation comes the equally confusing growth of acronyms and terminology describing mobile communication.

Wireless communication has come a long way since 1978 when 2,000 Chicago residents tested the first cellular phone system. Today, Sprint PCS, one of North America's largest digital networks, boasts 8 million customers.

Those customers aren't only talking on wireless phones, either. Along with cellular phones (or handsets) is a plethora of mobile devices including personal digital assistants (PDAs), pagers, laptops and hand-held computers. With the functions of wireless devices increasingly shared, a new category of 'smart phones' is now available. By 2004, 16.7 million wireless devices will be sold, says research firm Cahners In-Stat Group.

Networks linking both mobile and stationary wireless systems can seem like a cacophonous jungle of competing voices. Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) was the analog protocol used by the first wireless devices. In 1987, the U.S. started Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), the country's first digital technology.

In 1994 came the Personal Communications Services system (PCS), the first entirely digital wireless network in the U.S. With PCS came voice mail, faxing and messaging.

You've likely heard much discussion about additional ways wireless devices communicate. The lion's share of such commentary surrounds Bluetooth. Bluetooth is a wireless networking protocol creating Personal Area Networks (PANs) composed of a myriad of devices located within a 30-foot range of low-powered radio signals. Although questions remain on several fronts, the protocol has great potential.

For those seeking a high-speed wireless Local Area Network (LAN) for the office, both the 802.11b — best known by users of Apple's AirPort wireless networking devices — and HomeRF are sure contenders.

The era of wireless communication doesn't seem old enough to span three generations, but experts are already lauding the approach of third-generation mobile networks and the rainbow of products and services that will be available.

Third-generation technology — often referred to as 3G in industry shorthand — marks faster networks suited to the growing number of mobile Internet connections. In order for current second-generation (2G) networks to get to that point without bankrupting themselves over costly upgrades, an intermediate step — 2.5G — will be employed.

You can't mention 3G technology without talking about the success of i-mode, Japan's state-run Internet service pushing cartoons, horoscopes and stock updates to the young people, housewives, and business people of that island nation. The service is slowly making its way into Europe and North America.

A beneficiary of the faster, more desktop-like mobile networks, will be WAP. It is a method of piping the enormity of the World Wide Web onto the tiny monochrome screens of most mobile devices. A victim of its own hype, the Wireless Application Protocol allows handsets and PDAs to access a small number of Web sites converted to a special Wireless Markup Language (WML). Although often derided for its slowness and incompatibility with HTML, WAP has become the defacto method for accessing online content while on the go.

A growing portion of the wireless Web involves mobile commerce. Unlike e-commerce, whose customers may conduct business in bunny slippers, many m-commerce customers are on the road and in search of plane tickets, hotel reservations and navigation help.

Navigation is the tip of location-commerce (l-commerce), the infant mobile industry of serving up maps, tracking packages and sending localized advertising.

This primer but scratches the surface of today's wireless activities. As the industry continues to expand, so will the terminology.

Latest