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HOME PAGE FOR THE WORLD'S BUSINESS LEADERS

Home > Technology > Personal Tech

Mobile Phones

Can Lightning Strike Twice?

Arik Hesseldahl, 12.06.02, 7:00 AM ET

NEW YORK - Sit down with Martin Cooper and he can discuss mobile phones all day. He has strong opinions about all their features, on the subtle nuances of their industrial design and which models will succeed.

"I buy them all," he says with a grin.

He can be forgiven for what seems like an eccentric habit. After all, he invented the first handheld cellular telephone.

In 1973 it was Cooper, then an engineer for Motorola
(nyse:
MOT -

news
-

people
), who made the first call from a handheld mobile phone. Walking outside the New York Hilton Hotel in Manhattan, he called his rivals at Bell Labs, then part of AT&T
(nyse:
T -

news
-

people
), on a prototype handheld phone that Motorola dubbed the DynaTrac. It took ten years to get it to market, and the first units cost $4,000.

The rest of the story you know. Now Cooper wants to shake up the wireless business again. At 73, he is heading up a startup called Arraycomm that is promising to break through the confusing array of wireless technologies for delivering data.

While voice phone still makes up most of the wireless business, it is the delivery of data that service providers such as Verizon Communications
(nyse:
VZ -

news
-

people
), Deutsche Telekom's
(nyse:
DT -

news
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people
) T-Mobile and AT&T Wireless
(nyse:
AWE -

news
-

people
) are focused on. Mobile phones are evolving into conduits for e-mail and Web data, while handheld computers and laptops are starting to adapt to a new array of wireless technologies.

But the 3G wireless utopia the wireless industry has been promising has only arrived in fits and starts, with little to show for all the hype it has generated. Consumers seem only marginally interested in getting e-mail and Web pages on their phones. And other wireless networking technologies such as Wi-Fi are gaining popularity, but mostly for short-range networks in offices and homes.

Arraycomm has developed a technology called i-Burst that it says can deliver a sustained data speed of one megabit per second over distances as far as five miles from the base station, during testing in Sydney, Australia. Compare that with average speeds of between 50 and 70 kilobits per second on Sprint PCS'
(nyse:
PCS -

news
-

people
) PCSVision service, or about 57 kbps for GPRS services.

The system, which Arraycomm deployed in partnership with Vodaphone Australia and OZEmail, Australia's biggest Internet service provider, will be available for paying customers by March, Cooper says. The service will cost $30 to $40.

There are many important eyes watching the tests. Arraycomm's investors include Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony
(nyse:
SNE -

news
-

people
). For Sony, the technology could conceivably give it an edge in the nascent online gaming market. Earlier this year it launched a network adapter for its PlayStation 2 gaming system that lets customers play against each other over the Internet using either a dial-up modem or a broadband connection. The problem for broadband users is that relatively few homes have the home network needed to connect both a PC and a handful of other devices to a single cable modem or digital subscriber line.

Arraycomm's next step is to attack the U.S. market. Cooper says in April 2003 the company will bid on some radio frequency spectrum about to become available from the Federal Communications Commission. He expects U.S.-based market trials of the i-Burst technology to start by the end of 2003.

The key difference between i-Burst and other wireless technologies is what Arraycomm calls the smart antenna. When you make a wireless connection, the signals between you and the base station scatter off in multiple directions, but only a fraction of the signal actually hits its intended target. Adding some simple brains to the antennas on both sides of the conversation can make the signals between the base station and the user more direct.

Arraycomm's approach allows the base station to constantly adapt the characteristics of the signal as the user moves around, keeping it focused, increasing spectrum efficiency and reducing interference from all the other signals permeating the air.

Cooper's plans for the company call for it to look a lot like Qualcomm
(nasdaq:
QCOM -

news
-

people
), which licenses its CDMA wireless phone technology to phone and telecom gear manufacturers. Like Qualcomm, Arraycomm is designing chip technology that manufacturers will license. Already Japan's Kyocera
(nyse:
KYO -

news
-

people
) and South Korea's LG Electronics have taken out licenses based on Arraycomm's technology.

While it certainly shows promise, it's going to be entering a crowded marketplace that already has consumers scratching their heads. Wireless carriers such as T-Mobile, Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless are offering wireless data services that connect computers, phones and PDAs to the wireless Internet. The trick for Arraycomm will be convincing those carriers to offer yet another data service while they're still pushing the ones they've already built.

It will need a truly compelling application, and Cooper thinks it's photography. In case you've missed it, wireless phone manufacturers are suddenly crazy about embedding small digital cameras into the bodies of their latest models to get consumers interested in buying phones again. That strategy is starting to meet some success. But the photos that a phone can take are generally of a lousy quality.

"Photography is ridiculously complex," Cooper says. "If you think of how it ought to be, you should be able to take a picture, press a button and send the picture to someone you want to send it to. If that were possible, why would anyone want to buy a roll of film again?"

More From Forbes

Dead Air 11.25.02
Open airwaves are everywhere, but the businesses desperate to use them--cell phones and the wireless industries of the future--cannot. A new band of rebels hopes to liberate the air.

Wireless: The Next Quarter Century 06.06.02
What will the technology look like in 25 years? We asked five really smart people for their ideas.

The Great Wi-Fi Hope 03.18.02
Why "junk" spectrum may revive high tech.

Slide Show: Wireless Evolution 06.03.02
After 25 years of commercial use, we take a walk down the memory lane of cellular phones.

Commander Of The Airwaves 04.29.02
FCC Chairman Michael Powell oversees industries with $1 trillion in annual sales, from cable to the Internet. Can he revive them by taming Washington's worst bureaucracy.

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AWE

7.02

+ 0.00

News

People

DT

12.48

+ 0.07

News

People

KYO

63.01

+ 1.67

News

People

MOT

9.77

- 0.08

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People

PCS

5.51

+ 0.00

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QCOM

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SNE

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