[no subject]

But now, people like Bill Phillips of Albany are signing up for broadband
service instead of installing a second phone line. 

Phillips' teenage daughter wanted her own line so she could talk while
Phillips, a survey researcher for the University of California at Berkeley, was
online. 

But after calculating the cost of getting DSL versus the cost of Pacific Bell's
installation fee on a new line and monthly charges, he found that getting DSL
made more sense. 

"And now we have much better (online) computer access," Phillips said. 

However, the phone companies don't necessarily lose money on customers like
these. Pacific Bell offers DSL service to 1.3 million subscribers and owns 60
percent of Cingular, the second-largest wireless company. 
***************
San Francisco Chronicle
SPECIAL SECTION: TELECOM U.S. not getting wireless message
If you use your mobile phone to send and receive text messages, browse the Web
(or even a stripped-down derivative) or do just about anything else that
involves data -- not voice -- communications, you're a rare bird in North
America. 

That's not the case elsewhere. Phone users in Europe now send about 30 billion
text messages per month -- up from less than 1 billion just three years ago --
using a technology called SMS (Short Message Service), a rough equivalent to
instant messaging on computers. 

And in Japan, nearly a quarter of the population -- more than 30 million people
-- now subscribes to i-mode, a 3-year-old wireless data service provided by the
country's largest cellular carrier, NTT DoCoMo. 

But here in the United States, the nation that prides itself on leading the
digital revolution, data on phones is an idea whose time hasn't come. 

Although phone manufacturers and their carrier customers launched what they
called "Web-enabled" handsets here a couple of years ago with a flurry of hype,


people sized up the limitations of these devices and promptly decided to stick
with voice communications on the phone. They didn't like the tedious input and
navigation systems; unreliable connections and glacial data rates; dim,
postage-stamp-size screens; and high prices. 

No one seems to know how often U.S. phone users send messages or browse data,
but "the numbers hardly matter, they're so minuscule right now," said Andrew
Seybold, a noted industry analyst and editor in chief of a monthly newsletter
called Forbes/Andrew Seybold's Wireless Outlook. 

The industry isn't giving up, however. Handset manufacturers look to advanced
phones to compensate for slowing growth and declining margins on mainstream
models, while carriers are counting on revenue from data applications to help
cover the staggering cost of building out next-generation networks. 

And powerhouses in other digital domains -- Microsoft, Intel, Sun Microsystems,
America Online, Palm and Handspring, among others -- see advanced phones
incorporating their technologies as their way to move into new markets that
could dwarf their current businesses, in units if not in dollars. 

No one expects U.S. users to catch up overnight with our counterparts in Japan
and Europe, but some developments now unfolding could lead to substantial
changes during the next few years. 


MESSAGING RAMPING UP
First of all, U.S. carriers are finally waking up to the potential of text
messaging. In recent months, several have launched ad campaigns pitching
messaging as a hot hip trend, and there's some evidence they are having an
effect. In January, Cingular reported that its SMS traffic had soared 450
percent during the previous six months -- though the basis for the comparison
was undoubtedly tiny, and the company declined to give absolute numbers. 

In Europe, SMS really took off only when it became possible to exchange
messages across the continent, regardless of carrier. That kind of
interoperability is a tougher challenge here, where customers are divided not
only among competing carriers but also across incompatible technologies, but U.
S. carriers are finally beginning to work out the economic and technical issues
involved. 

They're also linking SMS to e-mail, so mobile users can communicate easily with
deskbound friends and colleagues. 

To Alan Reiter, head of a Chevy Chase, Md., consulting company called Wireless
Internet & Mobile Computing, the wonder is that the industry didn't resolve
these problems long ago. 

"It's amazing that carriers in the U.S. have to expend any brain cells at all
on interoperability -- it's so obviously good for business and good for
customers," he said. "But it's like water dripping on their skulls -- after 10
years it's finally penetrating." 

It remains to be seen, however, whether text messaging will ever be as popular
here as in other parts of the world. One difference is that here computers are
more readily available, e-mail and instant messaging more entrenched, and voice
calling less expensive than in Europe or Asia. 

In particular, analyst Seybold argues, carriers need to move quickly to
integrate SMS with instant messaging, which already has more than 100 million
users in this country. Again, though, the carriers seem to be catching on: All
the major carriers are reportedly in negotiations with leading instant
messaging providers such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo. 


NEW NETWORKS
While simple text messaging doesn't require much bandwidth, multimedia-
enriched messaging, Web browsing and other more-advanced data applications
demand faster connections than U.S. wireless carriers have previously been able
to supply. But new technologies being rolled out this year by all major U. S.
carriers will begin to alleviate that problem. 

These new networks, based on technologies known as GPRS (classified as 2. 5G)
and 1xRTT (technically, although barely, 3G), are not yet fully deployed, and
the carriers are still testing and tweaking their infrastructure. But by the
end of this year, analyst Reiter said, "You'll have a fighting chance of
getting nationwide data service at real-life speeds of 20 or 30 to 60 Kbps." 

Those speeds are well short of what most users are accustomed to on their
desktop computers and nowhere near fast enough to support applications like
videoconferencing and streaming movie clips, which past industry hype has led
many users to think were right around the corner. But the new networks are
three or four times faster than the best the carriers could offer before, and
they should be more reliable for data connections. 

One big question, though, is how much these services will cost. Initially,
prices are steep -- Verizon, for example, charges a $30 monthly access fee,
before standard per-minute or (as of last week) per-megabyte charges for its
new 1xRTT Express Network. Cingular recently lowered its rate for data to $6.
95 for the first megabyte per month, but still charges $30 for each subsequent
megabyte, according to Seybold. 

While these plans are intended for enthusiastic early adopters and corporate
executives, many analysts believe they are too high even for the intended
markets. 

Seybold, for example, said his group's survey shows that corporate IT
departments generally have a threshold of pain of about $50 per month for
wireless service, and the carriers' initial price plans for the new networks
will likely put most users well above that level. 

But Reiter and other industry watchers are now looking to Sprint, which is
scheduled to roll out 1xRTT service this summer, in hopes that it will adopt
more-aggressive pricing and force competitors to follow suit. 


NEW DEVICES
While many of today's phones can handle text messaging, more-advanced
applications require more memory and processing power, more-sophisticated
software, better displays and, some analysts argue, keyboards (physical or
virtual) instead of the conventional phone keypad. 

Some such phones, such as the the LG 3000W, the Kyocera QCP-6035 SmartPhone and
the color-screen Samsung I300, reached the market last year and won critical
acclaim but modest sales. 

This year, though, should bring an accelerating stream of new options. Some, 

like Research in Motion's new Blackberry 5810; the Jornada 928 announced by
Hewlett-Packard last month; and the Audiovox Thera, a new Pocket PC device to
be announced today, combine familiar personal digital assistant designs with
voice-call capabilities. 

Others, such as the recently released Handspring Treo, fall somewhere between
phone and PDA in terms of design. And all of the top phonemakers are developing
new "smartphones" -- devices that look basically like traditional phones and
are designed primarily for voice calling, but include data- application
software and slightly larger screens (many soon in color) than today's phones. 

Manufacturers face a variety of options for software as well as design, and
their choices are as much political as technical. Nokia and other phone
manufacturers continue to support Symbian, a mostly European consortium
developing its own smartphone software. Qualcomm has chimed in with its own
platform, known as BREW. 

And many companies, including RIM, Motorola and Sprint, are increasingly
focusing on Sun's Java -- specifically, a version known as J2ME, or Java 2
Micro Edition -- as their primary platform for the development of new
applications. 

Microsoft, however, is pushing hard to get into the market, both with its
Pocket PC PDA software and with a new, phone-specific software product formerly
known as Stinger and now officially branded Smartphone 2002. The latter in
particular has had little success so far, but Cingular will announce today that
it plans to bring to market a phone based on it (the color-screen Sendo Z100)
later this year. 

"The cellular industry doesn't want to be controlled by Microsoft -- they've
seen what happened in the PC world," said Reiter. Besides, he said, Microsoft's
software has generally required too much memory, processing power and battery
capacity for the mainstream market. 

"But you can't write Microsoft off," he said. "They're the Borg, and they keep
on coming." 

How all this will sort itself out is hard to figure. "We're at a place where
you really can't project," said Seybold. "We just have to get more services and
more devices out into the marketplace and see what the customer wants." 

He predicts that most voice-oriented phones will soon include limited data
capabilities -- mostly messaging -- and that these devices will continue to
dominate the mobile market in terms of unit sales. But, he said, "Where we
think the real action will be (in wireless data) over the next few years is in
PDA-type devices with built-in keyboards plus voice capabilities" -- devices
like the BlackBerry 5810 and the Treo. 

His reasoning: "People in the U.S. are not going to spend a lot of time
triple-tapping out messages (on a standard phone keypad) -- they just aren't." 

Others aren't so sure. Gartner Dataquest analysts Todd Cort and Bryan Prohm
foresee strong growth in the PDA market through 2003, but after that, Cort
said, "smartphones will start eating into their lunch." 

Along with advances in technology and new usage patterns, analysts expect major
changes in mobile-phone business models. Today, each manufacturer develops its
own design, including custom circuitry. 

But that's an expensive and time-consuming processes, and some companies --
most notably PC behemoths Microsoft and Intel -- are instead promoting standard
reference designs that would allow just about any manufacturer, including Asian
suppliers with limited capital and research and development capabilities, to
turn out up-to-date phones quickly and cheaply. 

If that model takes hold, it could ripple back to transform the way phones are
marketed to end users, because any company in any industry that wanted to sell
phones bearing its own brand could -- so the theory goes -- simply order them
from a low-cost offshore manufacturer. 

"Three or four years from now, if I'm right," Seybold said, "we won't buy a
Nokia or a Motorola phone -- you'll buy a Gap or Old Navy phone, or an MTV
phone, that comes with a subscription." 
***************
Government Computer News
Transportation mulls smart cards for security

The Transportation Security Administration is accepting proposals for a
smart-card system to authenticate transportation workers such as pilots and
flight attendants, an expert said today at FOSE 2002 in Washington. The cards
could ?get a much better handle on the workers, not only at airports but for
all modes of transportation,? said Richard Wright, prime technology consultant
to the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, Mass.
The smart cards would work in conjunction with biometric identifiers such as
fingerprints, iris scans or encoded photographs, Wright said. Each worker would
also have a personal identification number for extra security, he said. But the
system design ?has to be one that does not impede the flow of air traffic,?
Wright said. If TSA decides to go ahead, he said, transportation workers would
be required to carry the smart cards. Travelers could choose to participate
voluntarily. There is a possibility that such a system might also be used to
identify people who rent cars and trucks at airports, Wright said. TSA would
face many challenges in implementing such a system, he saidfor example,
integration with Justice and State Department systems and real-time updating.
People would want to feel confident of the system?s security, and it must also
be ?somewhat crashproof,? he said. If it stopped working, TSA would need
contingency plans for manual searches or airport closings.
***************
Government Computer News
State and local governments: coping

The states, though besieged by budget deficits, terrorist attacks and an
economic downturn, are surprisingly OK. That was the word from Federal Sources
Inc.?s 8th annual State of the States conference yesterday in Washington.
Federal Sources president Jim Kane characterized the state and local market at
last year?s conference as a ?buy.? This year, he called it a ?hold? but said
the market remains attractive. Keynoter Rock Regan, Connecticut?s CIO, said the
top issues facing state CIOs are ?e-gov, homeland security and oh, by the
way--both.? Cybersecurity gets ?scarier every day,? Regan said, to the point
that he meets with his security team daily. ?Cyberattacks are becoming worse,
more complex, more frequent,? he said. ?Every day we see new viruses. And the
biggest challenge is the end user.? Although Connecticut has tried to educate
users about viruses, he said, ?You?d be surprised how many people will still
open an e-mail attachment.? Costas Toregas, president of Public Technology
Inc., spoke about the ?state of the local.? Homeland security ?is like having
Y2K every day,? Toregas said. Other CIOs shared their experiences in trying to
make e-government workable. James Dillon, CIO of New York, said he once was a
Greyhound bus driver and kept getting lost. ?My motto then was, ?I?m lost, but
I?m making such good time I don?t want to stop.? That?s still my motto.? Ohio
CIO Gregory Jackson agreed with Dillon and Arun Behati, director of e-gov for
California, that communications between federal and state governments could
stand improvement. ?Although I?m pleased with the appointment of Mark Forman as
e-gov czar,? Jackson said, ?I don?t see the one-on-one dialogue between feds
and states that I think there should be.? Otto Doll, CIO of South Dakota, and
Suzanne Peck, chief technology officer of the District of Columbia, gave a
presentation on citizen protection. Alisoun Moore, CIO of Montgomery County,
Md., joined David Molchany, CIO of Fairfax County, Va., and Norman Jacknis, CIO
of Westchester County, N.Y., to discuss outsourcing. Ronald Miller, CIO of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency, said FEMA director Joseph Albaugh heard
that firemen at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 were sending runners with
handwritten reports because their communications radios were overwhelmed.
Albaugh thought the failure was one reason why so many firemen died, Miller
said.
***************
FOSE visitor?s shopping list calls for middleware

When Defense Department personnel managers want to know the number of officers
in a particular rank across the service branches, they have to hunt out the
counts from various personnel systems and add them up by hand. 

Nancy Johnson, executive director of the eBusiness Program Office at the
Defense Logistics Agency, said her mission at the FOSE trade show today is to
find intelligent middleware to make such information easily accessible in one
place. 

Between attending panel discussions and booth duty, Johnson said, she is
hunting for middleware that can pull data from various systems forward in real
time. Fusing data from disparate systems is one of DLA's biggest challenges,
she said. 

DLA's eBusiness office provides electronic commerce services, business process
improvement, content management and distribution, and architecture and
standards across DOD. 
***************
Technology Briefs

LA Times

Hoping to gain a foothold in one of the fastest-growing Internet markets,
online auctioneer EBay Inc. has bought a 33% stake in Chinese auction site
EachNet for $30 million.

ICANN Director Sues for Access to Records
The group that oversees the Internet's domain-name system was slapped with a
lawsuit by one of its directors, who says he has been denied access to the
organization's corporate records. Karl Auerbach, a director of the Internet
Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, filed suit to gain access to travel
records, payroll figures and other day-to-day details of the organization that
oversees the system that guides e-mail and Web browsers.

______________________


Lillie Coney
Public Policy Coordinator
U.S. Association for Computing Machinery
Suite 507
1100 Seventeenth Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20036-4632
202-659-9711