Wireless Services Ready for Takeoff
Thursday, November 4th, 1999 TechnologyWireless data services are positioned to take off next year, according to market-research firm Cahners In-Stat Group. Wireless data currently accounts for only 2 or 3 percent of traffic for cellular-phone compa-nies, but that‘s about to pick up significantly as the number of subscribers in the U.S. is expected to rise from 1.7 million in 1999 to 23.9 million in 2003. Consumers have been slow to adopt wireless data services because of high cost, poor security, sparse geographic coverage, and slow transmission speeds, according to Cahners, but services on all those fronts are improving. Among the most recent entrants are wireless data networks from both Nextel and Sprint. A handful of Internet-ready mobile phones are also available now. Cahners expects that business users will want wireless access from more than one type of device, including notebook computers, phones, PDAs, and pagers.
