Welcome to the new wireless culture: from personal digital assistants to pagers and cell phones, wireless technologies are greatly influencing the nature of business.

• Author: Phillips, John T.
• Position: Tech Trends

On a Monday morning as a doctor commutes to work, she checks her PalmPilot to review clinical data gathered on patients by nurses during the early morning hours. Her patients' medical information is updated hourly on her personal digital assistant (PDA), allowing the doctor to plan her immediate visits upon arriving at the hospital and to respond quickly by cell phone with instructions for intervention required for critical cases.

At the same time, on the outskirts of town, a truck driver at a remote storage warehouse uses a computer application on a digital phone to check special computer listings of freight to be transported and selects the shipment that best matches his truck's capacity.

Downtown, a busy executive traveling in a limousine receives a beep on his pager and reads downloaded stock quotes from an Internet Web site indicating that it is definitely time to call his broker!

What do all these information-intensive professionals have in common? They are all taking advantage of wireless communications technologies. No strangling telephone cords limiting personal movement, no computer wires strung like spider webs around office corridors, and no more being "out of touch" because one is "disconnected" from information repositories and data flows.

Twenty-four-hour information accessibility and communications capability from anywhere to anywhere: that is the goal of wireless technologies. Today's handheld communications devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs, and pagers, are both trendy gadgets for faddish techno-wizards and inarguably useful devices for enhancing the productivity and communications capabilities of almost everyone.

As with all technologies, wireless devices have advantages and disadvantages and present new opportunities and hidden dangers. Wireless technologies bring mobile connectivity to information sources and enhance communications capabilities. The use of cell phones, PDAs, and personal pagers can result in greater professional productivity, competitive advantages for businesses, and enhanced personal safety while traveling in remote locations. However, the current complex mix of wireless technology communications standards and numerous varieties of equipment in the marketplace can make the selection and use of these devices very challenging. In fact, it is often difficult to understand the differences between various wireless devices, how they are supported by service companies, and in what manner the data and documents they hold can be shared or exchanged between seemingly unrelated systems. For this reason, a concise review of wireless technologies is needed to bring an understanding of how to best use and deploy this increasingly vital suite of products and services.

Cutting the Wire Chains

Most computer users are attached to their workstations as though they are physically chained to a stake driven into the ground. Any person who wants to show someone in another office the information on his desktop computer monitor must print out the information and carry the sheet of paper to the other office because the desktop computer is wired into the wall, requiring electrical supply and network data connections to be operational. Having the freedom to be productive while mobile in cars, trains, buses, boats, and airplanes or even on foot is the primary reason for using wireless technologies, such as pagers, cell phones, and PDAs. The concept of "wireless" is the ability to transmit data without using wires to physically connect. computers or to enable communications devices that can span several technologies.

Wireless computer systems transmitting data by using earth-orbiting satellites combined with land-based data-transmission relay towers can send voice and data communications among corporate systems and a variety of mobile units, thus eliminating the need for them to be wired physically together. Cell phone, radio, and television broadcast frequencies have used this infrastructure for many years. In fact, even infrared light beamed directly between a desktop computer and a peripheral piece of equipment can be used to send data from a system unit to a printer when there is a line-of-sight "connection" possible for the light to be both transmitted and received. Many individuals use cordless telephones at home using radio frequencies for short-range wireless communications with base units that are actually connected to home telephone system wiring. And of course, walkie-talkies are short-range wireless devices that use radio frequencies to communicate directly between individuals roaming...