Online anywhere

Home Office Computing, Jan, 1995 by Wayne Rash, Jr.

WHEN JAN ZIFF TRAVELS, THERE ARE TWO THINGS SHE can't afford to be without. The first is her sound equipment; the second is her connection to CompuServe. Ziff, producer and host of the CBS radio program Sound*Bytes, pursues the subjects of her interviews wherever they may be, and that often means going far from her Washington, D.C., home office. While she's tracking down industry notables, she's also producing radio scripts that she sends via CompuServe to her technical editor in Spain.

Though Ziff's job may sound exotic, she is typical of many mobile professionals who work from home but still need the connectivity they leave behind. These people require the ability to grab files from the computers back in their offices, to gather information from remote electronic databases, and to receive e-mail while they're on the road or at a customer's location. "I have to be on CompuServe every day, sometimes six or seven times a day," Ziff says.

The problem is, at a construction site or in a rental car, for example, telephone wires just aren't handy. Ziff, for instance, frequently travels to areas where the information highway has yet to be built and says the only way she can make contact is through her cellular modem. Most people, however, experience more ordinary problems--such as having to access database information while traveling by car or needing to check for urgent e-mail when you're in an airport terminal. Heeding these needs, mobile entrepreneurs are among the first to use wireless computing.

A Packet Full of Data Wireless computing can mean many things. For people who work in corporations, it can apply to local area networks (LANs). For example, workers using handheld devices can check the warehouse's inventory on its corporate server. For most people, though, wireless e-mail connectivity is the key. These professionals already have their own e-mail accounts and need to be able to send and receive messages even when they're away from the office. For them, a technology called packetswitched radio, such as that provided by the wireless messaging service RadioMail Corp., works best.

According to Mark Elderkin of RadioMail, packet-switched communications work well for wireless messaging. "With a packet network, messages are broken into small pieces," he says. RadioMail's network sends each message segment, or packet, to wherever your computer may be. The radio system can tell if the receiving computer hasn't received each packet correctly and retransmits them until the entire message has been received. That way, if a person is in the middle of receiving a message and turns off his computer or drives through a tunnel, the delivery of the message resumes when contact is next made.

Because of its unique characteristics, some packet-switched radio services--such as those provided by RadioMail through a national wireless network like RAM Mobile Data or ARDIS--require special equipment that's normally available from the service provider. RadioMail sells the Ericsson/GE Mobidem or the Motorola InfoTac, starting at $299 (the exact price depends on the service plan you select). The Mobidem (a radio modem) and software from RadioMail allow you to use its service with any notebook computer and with some PDAs. Currently, the Mobidem is about the size of a pocket cellular phone (a credit card-size version is expected soon) and is frequently sold by RadioMail and other companies in a package that includes a Hewlett-Packard HP 100LX or 200LX palmtop computer.

One advantage of packet-based wireless communications is that the system works the same way, regardless of where you are. The service is available in virtually all metropolitan areas in the United States, so even while traveling, all you have to do is make sure the Mobidem, or other such modem, is turned on, and you're ready to send and receive messages. That process is essentially automatic. If you're not in an area where signals are available--packet radio covers less ground than cellular lines--your messages are simply stored until you can receive them.

An added advantage to RadioMail is that messages travel over the Internet, which enables the service to communicate with nearly any e-mail network around the world.

Investment banker Warren A. Knight says he "just loves" RadioMail. Knight of Knight and Co. runs his banking business from his home office in New Orleans; his seven employees work at offices in New York and Bellvue, Washington. Knight says he particularly likes the ability of RadioMail's packet-based system to reach him wherever he is in the U.S. so that he's always accessible to his business.

More important, Knight says that the ubiquitous nature of a packet-based e-mail service means that he's vastly more productive. "I no longer have to play phone tag," Knight says, noting that most of the people he needs to communicate with are always in meetings or on the phone. Because of his extensive travel schedule, Knight can't depend on being in one place long enough to use regular e-mail (which would require finding and connecting to a standard phone line), so without wireless communications, he'd never be able to work like he does.