Dolphin swims against GSM tide with radio - digital public mobile radio - Company Business and Marketing

CommunicationsWeek International, Nov 15, 1999 by Jeremy Scott-Joynt

Conventional wisdom holds that Europe is streets ahead of the United States when it comes to wireless. But in one key respect conventional wisdom is way off target: Digital public mobile radio, a combination of "push-to-talk" technology and traditional cellular-style dial communications, is well ensconced in the United States thanks to Nextel Communications Inc., McLean, Virginia, which has a presence in 92 of the top 100 U.S. markets as well as overseas networks.

U.K. newcomer Dolphin is convinced it can exist alongside GSM operators by focusing its digital public mobile radio network on the business market.

In Europe the pioneer, Dolphin Telecom plc-a 77.8%-owned subsidiary of U.S.-based global wireless operator Telesystem International Wireless Inc. (TIW)--is only just climbing off the ground.

As a relatively late developer, Basingstoke, England-based Dolphin would seem to have a fight on its hands to get past the weight and coverage of the GSM networks in the United Kingdom--where its network went live in August, with 84% coverage of population at launch--Germany, France and the Benelux countries. But Mark Riley, Dolphin's vice president of sales and marketing, is certain that the company can carve itself a place in the market.

"We see ourselves very much as a business mobile communications provider," he said. "We just happen to be able to do public mobile radio. We can get over the problem of established GSM providers by being very clear indeed about the markets we're going after. No-one else is focused solely on business."

To do this it will need to stress two key points. Firstly, Tetra, the European standard for public mobile radio, should help businesses keep costs down by enabling intrabusiness user groups: no more expensive mobile bills between employees or between them and HQ.

For David Dowe, senior consultant in the mobile group at Cambridge, England-based consultancy Analysys Ltd., this could be the most important factor. Many companies with a mobile, distributed workforce have seen their wireless spend spiral out of control, he said. Dolphin might help make things more predictable by restricting how handsets can be used. "People won't abandon GSM," Dowe said. "But Tetra could run alongside it."

Cross-border billing

Secondly, Dolphin is building trans-border networks that should be fully transparent without the need for formal roaming agreements or the sometimes exorbitant roaming bills that GSM operators charge. "We'll have common billing and network management across borders," said Riley.

That said, Dolphin is relying on two different infrastructure sets, one sourced from Nokia the other from Motorola, and Riley admits they are not entirely interoperable yet. Analysys' Dowe believes it will take some time before these teething problems are worked out, and points out that roaming is "the big thing for business users."

The U.S. experience suggests that the roaming factor is significant. Up to a fifth of Nextel's 3.6 million customers--the bulk of whom are business users--make use of the fact that Nextel is one of only three coast-to-coast digital wireless operators. As one of Nextel's executives put it: "Everyone's our competitor and yet no-one is... we're seen as part of the same thing [as AT&T Wireless and Sprint PCS]... but no-one does what we do."

Terminal growth

Dolphin could well garner contracts far beyond the 16 or so it has already secured, according to David Tripp, chairman of the mobile special interest group of the U.K. Telecom Managers' Association. Perhaps worryingly, though, Frost and Sullivan, of Mountain View, California, published a report last month predicting that the public mobile radio terminal market in 2005 would be worth only $638.3 million, against $607.5 million in 1998.

What many users are really after, said Tripp, is private mobile radio; but there's no spectrum available for it. "You have to have control over the number of users to get guaranteed levels of service," he said, "and the fact that it's a revenue service [one based on pre-agreed payments for guaranteed service levels] may be a Problem."