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Cingular: Driving Data on Business, Consumer Fronts

Posted on: Sunday, 24 April 2005, 03:00 CDT

Fresh off its integration of AT&T Wireless and a strong fourth quarter, Cingular Wireless is set on raising the bar on the consumer and business fronts with enhanced voice and data services, including EDGE and WiFi. Senior Editor Sean Buckley spoke to Jeff Bradley, vice president of business data solutions at Cingular, during the recent spring CTIA 2005 conference to discuss the adoption of wireless data services and how the operator will scale to meet customer demand.

Q. What's your take on the wireless date opportunity?

A. I think the big opportunity is to help enterprises extend beyond e-mail. The initial adoption of wireless data was with e- mail, followed by general access from a laptop: being able to leverage the WAN and get access to business systems and data. We're seeing companies enabling business processes and getting that next level of value from wireless data infrastructure.

Q. Is Cingular seeing a big demand for wireless data in specific market segments?

A. I think government has been one, especially in the area of public safety. Just about any industry that has a mobile field workforce has a tremendous ROI opportunity and has been an early adopter. We're also seeing a lot of adoption in insurance, specifically property and casualty claims adjustment. Another one on the cusp of widespread adoption is the consumer products group, where they use the wireless data to collaborate better with people who serve their retail customers. It's a business process called direct store delivery. They use wireless data to help the person who delivers and stacks the product, sells it and merchandises it to plan better.

Q. One other area we're hearing about is wireless managed services. Is that something Cingular will pursue?

A. We're certainly looking into it. We want to make sure what we do is an appropriate role for a wireless carrier. Our parents offer different forms of managed service today, so it would be natural for us to collaborate with them on extending what they can do for our enterprise customers.

Q. There's a lot of talk about wireless/wireline integration. Since your parents are both wireline companies, do you see this as a potential service element Cingular could offer to its customers?

Jeff Bradley, Business Markets Group, Cingular Wireless

A. I think wireline is certainly a more mature infrastructure, not only in the base technology hut also in how the technology is supported. Leveraging that learning and foundation and extending it to the wireless network is definitely what we are focused on.

We have a number of people in our business markets group who came from the wireline industry and understand what it means to offer an enterprise SLA, be part of a customer's help desk, and provide on- site technical support beyond what wireless carriers would have been expected to do.

Q. Cingular is in the process of a GSM/EDGE migration. How have things gone?

A. Well, EDGE is working great. We launched that in November 2003, and we were one of the first carriers in the world to do it, so we had to wring that one out a bit. We spent three to four months tuning it and getting it to work right. Since then we have seen tremendous adoption, primarily with customers that were giving their mobile workforce access to business systems through laptops. Initially, it was just enabling laptops wirelessly. Now, we increasingly are seeing it applied more in PDAs and in handsets as well. In the next couple of quarters our entire device portfolio will he EDGE-enahled. It has gone very well, and today is the fastest, nationally deployed data network in the U.S.

Q. You just signed another deal with Wayport for WiFi connectivity. How does that play into your overall data strategy?

A. We do see WiFi as a natural complement, and it does a couple of things. One, it gives very high speed access in places where a business traveler naturally wants to access business systems and download files, so it's a convenience thing. It also gives us the benefit of offloading traffic from our core wireless network and putting it onto a network that's built for veiy large transport.

Q. Cingular's acquisition of AT&T Wireless is a sign of wireless service consolidation. How has the integration of the two companies gone, and how will it provide a better service experience for your customer base?

A. Cingular brought resources, assets and a commitment to be the best in the industry. With AT&T Wireless' focus on the business segment and data, it was a veiy good blend. We focused on the best of the best trying to bring together what each of the previous companies did really well, and so far it's working tremendously.

We are ahead of schedule on our integration efforts. It's a big project to integrate two big companies on multiple levels. That's gone very well. Our customers immediately see the benefit of having the largest voice and data network, so they immediately got a benefit as the two companies came together. That will only increase as we combine the assets more directly.

-Sean Buckley

Copyright Horizon House Publications, Inc. Apr 2005

Source: Telecommunications Americas

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