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Verizon Offers Internet Access on Cell Network in Sacramento, Calif., Area

Posted on: Tuesday, 30 August 2005, 15:00 CDT

Aug. 30--Traditionally, those looking for a laptop wireless Internet connection generally were limited to hunting for a Starbucks or McDonald's, where they could go online for a fee.

The more adventurous might hope to stumble across a free Wi-Fi signal in a cafe or library.

Today, however, Verizon Wireless will announce that it has blanketed the Sacramento area from Folsom to Elk Grove with a technology that allows subscribers to get a broadband connection via the cellular network.

In July, Sprint PCS began offering a similar service in the area for the same $80 monthly price Verizon charges. But its coverage -- at least for now -- is slightly less comprehensive than Verizon's.

Cingular Wireless also promises a high-speed service but doesn't yet have a schedule for Sacramento deployment.

To get service, customers must install software and slip a special card with a small antenna (about $100 to $150 with a two-year service contract) into their laptop's PC card slot. Launching the software will connect the user to the network if the computer is within range.

The system promises download speeds of 400 to 700 kilobits per second, approximately the same as home DSL service. The technology, known as "evolution data optimized" or EVDO, eventually may help deliver on the promise of speedy wireless Internet access anyplace and anytime.

A salesman, for instance, could go online to update inventory figures from the front seat of his car. Or a confused driver could pull over, open up a laptop and pull up Google Maps to get directions to a destination.

Lisa Pierce, an analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., said that EVDO is a natural outgrowth of business's embrace of wireless devices -- ranging from cellular phones to Wi-Fi laptops to Blackberry e-mail appliances. The more people use these gadgets, the more they will demand increased capability and speedy technology like EVDO provides, she said.

"It might start out with e-mail, but then a company will want an automated sales tools or online expense reporting while on the road," Pierce said. "It really depends on how important it is for people to utilize their time when they aren't (in the office). ... In many cases people aren't driving by a Starbucks or staying in a (Wi-Fi-equipped) hotel."

Using cellular service to go online is nothing new. For several years, people have been able to use their cellular phones as a modem to get dial-up connections to their laptops. But those connections were painfully slow, and impractical for chores other than sending e-mail.

More recently, companies like T-Mobile and Verizon have offered speedier connections using a small card that slides into a laptop's PC slot. But even that technology delivered speeds of only about 150 kilobits per second.

With EVDO, however, the speeds approach what people now enjoy through their office or home broadband connections.

A recent demonstration of the Verizon system in Sacramento showed that Web pages downloaded at a blazing 1 megabit per second, though uploads were a pokey 60 kilobits, barely better than dial-up modem speed.

For now, EVDO is limited to about 60 metropolitan areas in the United States where Verizon and Sprint have grafted it onto their existing networks.

Verizon says it could extend its service along the Interstate 80 corridor later this year, allowing train commuters, for instance, to stay connected all the way to the Bay Area and back.

For now, EVDO's $80 monthly fee likely will keep it in the arena of business people willing to pay for the convenience of being able to go online at the click of a mouse.

"This could have a bigger market, but it will first show up with people who will pay $80 or $90 a month to use it," said Ken Hyers, an analyst with ABI Research in Oyster Bay, N.Y.

The market will have to expand beyond that to justify the billions of dollars the wireless companies are spending on such technology.

Verizon is already double-dipping on the EVDO network, using its capacity to offer enhanced services called VCast to cellular phone users.

For an additional $15 a month, cellular customers can download and play brief entertainment videos or news clips and three-dimensional games.

Sprint has a similar service called Sprint Vision that piggybacks on its EVDO network.

"They are hoping for the 20- to 30-year-olds," said Hyers, of a demographic that's already accustomed to paying a premium for features like downloading ring tones and sending text messages.

But cell phones with the larger screens, memory and other technology needed to handle multimedia are -- at $200 or more -- too expensive for mass adoption by younger users, Hyers said.

EVDO and similar services likely will bump up against such nascent technologies as WiMax, a wireless system now under development that can beam Internet data up to 30 miles.

But WiMax isn't expected to be broadly available until the end of the decade, by which time many devices might be able to handle both WiMax and EVDO, Hyers said.

"There will be all sorts of things out there," he said, "and they will all be intermeshed."

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

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Source: The Sacramento Bee

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