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by Paul Desmond
At 7:00 a.m., Dave wakes to the tune of the U2 song, "Beautiful Day," the custom alarm tone he downloaded to his Internet-connected watch. He crawls out of bed and gets in his car to get coffee and the morning paper. Outside the coffee shop, he sees a classic Ford Mustang with a "For Sale" sign stuck in the windshield. Knowing his friend Bob has been looking for a 1977 Mustang for months, he pulls over, grabs his digital camera, snaps a photo of the car and e-mails the image to Bob via the camera's Internet connection.  A short time later, Dave's watch displays a message from Bob saying the car was indeed a 1977 Mustang and that he has already contacted the owner. Dave takes his sleek new phone out of his shirt pocket and calls Bob to get all the details.
While this fictional vignette may sound like something out of a James Bond movie, it is theoretically possible today. But it is unlikely to apply to the average consumer. The reason? The price a customer would have to pay for the various devices and connections required to send photos, receive e-mail and talk to friends, all using wireless services, would be out of reach. Additionally, devices like the watch would be too bulky to be practical. But if there were a way for Dave's camera, watch and phone to all share the same, always-on wireless connection, and be available to him at a fraction of the cost of similar devices today, the story becomes far more plausible.
There is a way, and it is called a personal mobile gateway (PMG), a device the size of a mint box that provides a 2.5G or 3G cellular connection that can be shared by various wireless-enabled devices. Alternatively, a PMG can be implemented in a traditional mobile phone. A PMG acts as the liaison, or communications hub, for multiple distributed mobile devices.
Creating the PAN
PMGs support the growing number of devices users carry that require wide-area connectivity. These include not only cameras, watches and slim phones or headsets, but also PDAs, notebook computers, music players, gaming consoles, voice-memo pens, toys, messaging devices and various types of application-specific devices. Together, these devices can be thought of as a personal-area network, or PAN.
Each device communicates with the PMG and sometimes to each other by way of Bluetooth, a standard protocol that enables mobile devices to transmit data wirelessly up to 30 feet at speeds as fast as 1Mbps on the 2.45GHz radio band.
Although Bluetooth creates the wireless link among multiple connected devices within a PAN, it is not a panacea. The only way an application-specific device from Company A can interoperate with a Bluetooth phone from Company B is for both companies to cooperate closely to develop appropriate drivers for the phone, for example. While the Bluetooth community has defined profiles to try to address this issue, customization is still often required.
The PMG approach, however, ensures ease of use and interoperability at the application level, which is the only level consumers care about. Consumers purchase devices to perform one or more functions, not for the "joy" of configuring connections.
Finding the Value
To better understand the value of the PMG, consider the USB metaphor. Imagine it's 1998 and you buy a USB mouse to connect to your laptop. The laptop recognizes the mouse and it works right away. Later you upgrade to a mouse with a wheel to make surfing the Web or browsing through documents easier. The laptop recognizes the new mouse but doesn't know what to do with the wheel. You are prompted to insert a CD-ROM or search the Web for a new driver. After installing the driver, which tells the laptop what to do with the wheel, you're finally ready to use the mouse.
The lesson here is that the first mouse was a simple device with a well-known configuration that was pre-programmed in the laptop, very much like headsets today have a predefined profile in a Bluetooth phone. But the second mouse had new functionality, requiring that a new program be downloaded to the laptop. It would be years before all laptops came preconfigured to recognize a mouse with a wheel.
Similarly, Bluetooth phones will initially recognize the first simple Bluetooth headsets on the market but will lack the capability to work with new or radically changed Bluetooth devices, no matter how many profiles are defined and constantly enhanced. The PMG remedies this situation, because service providers can push new drivers over the air, ensuring application-level interoperability and ease of use.
The value of the PMG goes far beyond overcoming interoperability issues. A variety of stylish, service-oriented and affordable personal devices will increase revenue for operators and manufacturers by shortening time to market, providing management capability and building loyalty through targeted services and offerings.
Today, phones selling for $100 or less account for more than 70% of the cellular phone market. The value-added services that operators can provide to this category of phones are limited, yielding an average revenue per user (ARPU) of only $20 for the two years that most consumers use a given phone. With the PMG, operators can provide new services incrementally with sleek devices that communicate with the PMG in the PAN, yielding an estimated ARPU of $36. Similarly, manufacturers can potentially sell more attractive and profitable devices to the same consumer, instead of just selling a phone and the pouch that goes with it.
The PMG also uses a server/router setup that maintains a constant connection to the Internet, which means providers can push time-sensitive content such as timetables and weather forecasts directly to various devices. That means providers could offer services that perform functions such as resetting watches and notebook clocks as users traverse time zones when traveling, and forwarding messages to the device of the user's choosing at any given moment. The PMG also provides access to features such as call management, instant messaging and terminal services notifications all under the control of the individual, who decides whether to take a call, answer a message or recharge a battery.
The PMG value chain extends from software developers to manufacturers to operators and service providers, and ultimately to retailers and end users. Dedicated software allows mobile network operators and service providers to remotely maintain PMG devices and control the PAN via a Web interface. This makes it possible to improve customer service by reducing wait times and providing troubleshooting. A platform for new billing methods, enabling providers to charge customers for each message, photo or application, can also be provided. In addition, operators can gather customer statistics such as behavior and usage patterns, while keeping individual customer identities and data secure.
The PMG makes it possible to offer more "sticky" services, leading to increased customer acquisition and retention. Entirely new classes of distributed devices and services are waiting to be created, engendering enormous potential for application and device developers. The potential exists to create devices, applications and services tailored to the requirements and budgets of specific, segmented markets.
In short, PMG and PAN devices create revenue opportunities for various cellular industry participants while solving key form factor, usability and price issues for end users. By providing a server/router solution that links distributed mobile devices, the PMG concept lowers the total cost of production while speeding up product delivery.
PMGs are expected to be available in the second half of 2003 from Lite-On Technology Corp., as well as from a number of major cellular phone manufacturers and network operators, although none have yet publicly disclosed their plans. IXI Mobile is providing the reference PMG design and core technology.
Desmond is editor in chief of PMGWorld magazine. He is also founder and president of Paul Desmond Editorial Services, a technology publishing company in Framingham, Mass.
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