mis - chapter 06 - mobile, wireless, and pervasive computing

PA R T I I

The Web Revolution

236

4. Network Computing: Discovery, Communication, andCollaboration

5. E-Business and E-Commerce6. Mobile, Wireless, and Pervasive Computing�

C H A P T E R

6Mobile, Wireless, andPervasive Computing

Minicases: (1) Hertz / (2) Washington TownshipFire Department

LEARNING OBJECTIVESAfter studying this chapter, you will be able to:

� Discuss the characteristics and attributes ofmobile computing and m-commerce.

� Describe the drivers of mobile computing.� Understand the technologies that support mobile

computing.� Describe wireless standards and transmission

networks.� Discuss m-commerce applications in financial

and other services, advertising, and providing ofcontent.

� Describe the applications of m-commerce withinorganizations.

� Understand B2B and supply chain applicationsof m-commerce.

� Describe consumer and personal applications ofm-commerce.

Describe some non-Internet m-commerceapplications.

Describe location-based commerce (l-commerce).� Discuss the key characteristics and current uses

of pervasive computing.� Describe the major inhibitors and barriers of

mobile computing and m-commerce.

NextBus

6.1Mobile Computing and Commerce:

Overview, Benefits, and Drivers

6.2Mobile Computing Infrastructure

6.3M-Commerce Applications in

Financial Services

6.4Mobile Shopping, Advertising,

and Content-Providing

6.5Mobile Intrabusiness andEnterprise Applications

6.6Mobile B2B and Supply Chain

Applications

6.7Mobile Consumer and Personal

Service Applications

6.8Location-Based Commerce

6.9Pervasive Computing

6.10Inhibitors and Barriers of Mobile

Computing and M-Commerce

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237

NEXTBUS: A SUPERB CUSTOMER SERVICE

➥ THE PROBLEM

Buses in certain parts of San Francisco have difficulty keeping up with the postedschedule, especially in rush hours. Generally, buses are scheduled to arrive every20 minutes, but at times, passengers may have to wait 30 to 40 minutes. Theschedules become meaningless, and passengers are unhappy because they wastetime.

➥ THE SOLUTION

San Francisco bus riders carrying an Internet-enabled wireless device, such as acell phone or PDA, can quickly find out when a bus is likely to arrive at a par-ticular bus stop. The system tracks public transportation buses in real time.Knowing where each bus is and factoring in traffic patterns and weather reports,NextBus (nextbus.com) dynamically calculates the estimated arrival time of thebus to each bus stop on the route. The arrival times are also displayed on theInternet and on a public screen at each bus stop.

The NextBus system has been used successfully in several other cities aroundthe United States, in Finland, and in several other countries. Figure 6.1 shows howthe NextBus system works. The core of the NextBus system is a GPS satellite that

GPS Satellites

Web

WirelessCommunications

FIGURE 6.1 NextBus operational model. (Source: NextBus.com/corporate/works/index.htm, 2002. Used withpermission of NextBus Information Systems.)

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238 CHAPTER 6 MOBILE, WIRELESS, AND PERVASIVE COMPUTING

can tell the NextBus information center where a bus is at any given time. Based ona bus’s location, the scheduled arrival time at each stop can be calculated. Users canaccess the information from their cell phones or PCs, anytime, anywhere. NextBusschedules are also posted in real time on shelter signs and public displays.

Currently, NextBus is an ad-free customer service, but in the near future ad-vertising may be added. As the system knows exactly where you are when yourequest information and how much time you have until your next bus, it maysend you to the nearest Starbucks for a cup of coffee, giving you an electronicdiscount coupon for a cup of coffee as you wait.

➥ THE RESULTS

Passengers in San Francisco are happy with the NextBus system; worries aboutmissing the bus are diminished. A similar system is used in rural areas in Finland,where buses are infrequent and winters are very cold, passengers can stay in awarm coffeehouse not far from the bus stop rather than waiting in the cold for abus that may be an hour late. Also, using the system, a bus company can do bet-ter scheduling, arrange for extra buses when needed, and improve its operations.

Sources: Compiled from ITS America 2001; Murphy, 1999; and nextbus.com, accessed 2003.

➥ LESSONS LEARNED FROM THIS CASE

This opening vignette is an example of location-based e-commerce, which is anapplication of mobile commerce, in which EC services are provided to customerswherever they are located at the time they need them. This capability, which isnot available in regular EC, may change many things in our lives. The vignettealso exemplifies pervasive computing, in which services are seamlessly blended intothe environment without the user being aware of the technology behind thescenes. This application is also a part of mobile computing, a computing paradigmdesigned for workers who travel outside the boundaries of their organizations orfor travellers of any kind.

Mobile computing and commerce are spreading rapidly, replacing or supple-menting wired computing. Mobile computing involves mostly wireless infra-structure. Mobile computing may reshape the entire IT field (see Intel, 2002;Sadeh, 2002; and Menneckeand Strader, 2003). The technologies, applications,and limitations of mobile computing and mobile commerce are the main focusof this chapter. Later in the chapter, we will look briefly at futuristic applicationsof pervasive computing.

6.1 MOBILE COMPUTING AND COMMERCE: OVERVIEW,BENEFITS, AND DRIVERS

In the traditional computing environment it was necessary to come to the com-puter to do some work on it. All computers were connected to each other, tonetworks, servers, etc. via wires. This situation limited the use of computers andcreated hardship for people and workers on the move. In particular, salespeople,repair people, service employees, law enforcement agents, and utility workers,can be more effective if they can use information technology while at their jobs

The MobileComputingLandscape

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6.1 MOBILE COMPUTING AND COMMERCE: OVERVIEW, BENEFITS, AND DRIVERS 239

in the field or in transit. There are also mobile vacationers, people on holidaywho wish to be connected with home or office.

The first solution was to make computers small enough so they can be eas-ily carried about. First, the laptop computer was invented, and later on smallerand smaller computers, such as the PDAs and other handhelds, appeared. Thesecarriable computers are called mobile devices. They have become lighter withtime and more powerful as far as processing speed and storage. At the end ofthe day, mobile workers could download (or upload) information from or to aregular desktop computer in a process known as synchronization. To speed up the“sync,” special connecting cradles (docking stations) were created (see Minicase 2at the end of this chapter and the Maybelline Minicase in Chapter 2).

These devices provided the first application of mobile computing, acomputing paradigm designed for workers who travel outside the boundaries oftheir organizations or for any other people traveling outside their homes. Sales-people were able to make proposals at customers’ offices; a traveler could readand answer all of the day’s e-mails while on a plane. One could work with themobile device as long as the battery was working.

For example, Millstone Coffee equipped its 300 drivers with handhelddevices and mobile applications for use while they are on the road sellingroasted coffee beans to 13,000 stores in the United States. Using the devices thedrivers can track inventory, generate invoices, and capture detailed sales andmarketing data at each store. The system does not use wireless; instead, thedrivers synchronize (“sync”) their handhelds with the company’s main system atthe end of the day, a process that takes only 2 minutes. This strategy has provento be cheaper for Millstone than going wireless, at least with the 2002 tech-nology (see Cohen, 2002).

The second solution to the need for mobile computing was to replace wireswith wireless communication media. Wireless systems have been in use in radio,TV and telephones for a long time. So it was natural to adopt them to the com-puting environment (for more, see Wired, 2003).

The third solution was a combination of the first two, namely to use mobiledevices in a wireless environment. Referred to as wireless mobile computing,this combination enables a real-time connection between a mobile device andother computing environments, such as the Internet or an intranet. This innova-tion is creating a revolution in the manner in which people use computers. It isspreading at work and at home. It is also used in education, health care, enter-tainment, and much more. The new computing model is basically leading toubiquity—meaning that computing is available anywhere, at any time. (Note:Since many mobile applications now go wireless, the term mobile computing todayis often used generally to describe wireless mobile computing.)

Due to some current technical limitations, we cannot (yet) do with mobilecomputing all the things that we do with regular computing. However, as timepasses we can do more and more. On the other hand, we can do things in mobilecomputing that we cannot do in the regular computing environment. A majorboost to mobile computing was provided in 2003 by Intel with its Centrino chip.This chip, which will be a standard feature in most laptops by 2005 (Estrada,2002), includes three important capabilities: (1) a connection device to a wirelesslocal area network, (2) low usage of electricity, enabling users to do more workon a single battery charge, and (3) a high level of security. The Centrino isexpected to make mobile computing the common computing environment.

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A second driving development of mobile computing is the introduction ofthe third- and fourth-wireless generation environments known as 3G and 4G.We will describe these later on.

While the impact of mobile computing on our lives will be very significant, asimilar impact is already occurring in the way we conduct business. This impactis described as mobile commerce (also known as m-commerce and m-business),which is basically any e-commerce or e-business done in a wireless environment,especially via the Internet. Like regular EC applications, m-commerce can bedone via the Internet, private communication lines, smart cards, or other infra-structures (e.g., see Sadeh, 2002; Mennecke and Strader, 2003; and Kalakota andRobinson, 2001).

M-commerce is not merely a variation on existing Internet services; it is anatural extension of e-business. Mobile devices create an opportunity to delivernew services to existing customers and to attract new ones. Varshney and Vetter(2001) classified the applications of m-commerce into 12 categories, as shownin Table 6.1. (A classification by industry is provided at mobile.commerce.net. Alsosee mobiforum.org.)

Many of these applications, as well as some additional ones, will be dis-cussed in this chapter. According to Sarshar (2003), as much as $1.8 trillion inconsumer transactions could be made from mobile devices by the year 2005.The Yankee Group forecasted that mobile transactions will exceed $15 billionin the U.S. alone (TechLive, 2001).

Let’s build a foundation for further discussion by defining some common mobilecomputing terms:

● Global positioning system (GPS). A satellite-based tracking system that en-ables the determination of a GPS device’s location. (See Section 6.8 for moreon GPS.)

Mobile Commerce

TABLE 6.1 Classes of M-Commerce Applications

Class of Applications Examples

1. Mobile financial applications (B2C, B2B)2. Mobile advertising (B2C)

3. Mobile inventory management (B2C, B2B)4. Proactive service management (B2C, B2B)

5. Product locating and shopping (B2C, B2B)6. Wireless reengineering (B2C, B2B)7. Mobile auction or reverse auction (B2C)8. Mobile entertainment services (B2C)9. Mobile office (B2C)

10. Mobile distance education (B2C)11. Wireless data center (B2C, B2B)12. Mobile music/music-on-demand (B2C)

Banking, brokerage, and payments by mobile usersSending user-specific and location-sensitive advertising to

usersLocation tracking of goods, boxes, troops, and peopleTransmitting information related to distributing components

to vendorsLocating/ordering certain items from a mobile deviceImprovement of business servicesServices for customers to buy or sell certain itemsVideo-on-demand and other services to a mobile userWorking from traffic jams, airports, and conferencesTaking a class using streaming audio and videoDownloading information by mobile users/vendorsDownloading and playing music using a mobile device

Source: Varshney and Vetter (2000, pp. 107–109).

Mobile ComputingBasic Terminology

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● Personal digital assistant (PDA). A small portable computer, such as thefamily of Palm handhelds and the Pocket PC devices from companies like HP.

● Short Message Service (SMS). A technology, in existence since 1991, thatallows for the sending of short text messages (up to 160 characters in 2003)on certain cell phones. Data are borne by the radio resources reserved incellular networks for locating mobile devices and connecting calls. SMS mes-sages can be sent or received concurrently, even during a voice or data call.Used by hundreds of millions of users, SMS is known as the e-mail ofm-commerce.

● Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS). An extension of SMS that is capa-ble of simple animation, tiny pictures, and short melodies.

● Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). The next generation of wirelessmessaging, this technology will be able to deliver rich media.

● Bluetooth. A chip technology wireless standard designed for temporary,short-range connection (data and voice) among mobile devices and/or otherdevices (see bluetooth.com).

● Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). A technology that offers Internetbrowsing from wireless devices (see Section 6.2).

● Smartphones. Internet-enabled cell phones that can support mobile appli-cations. These “phones with a brain” are becoming standard devices. Theyinclude WAP microprocessors for Internet access and the capabilities of PDAsas well.

● Wi-Fi (short for wireless fidelity). Refers to a standard 802.11b on whichmost of the wireless local area networks (WLANs) run.

● WLAN (wireless local area network). A broad term for all 802.11 standards.Basically, it is a wireless version of the Ethernet networking standard. (Fordiscussion of the Ethernet standard, see Technology Guide 4.)

With these terms in mind, we can now look more deeply at the attributes anddrivers of mobile computing.

Generally speaking, many of the EC applications described in Chapter 5 can bedone in m-commerce. For example, e-shopping, e-banking, and e-stock tradingare gaining popularity in wireless B2C. Auctioning is just beginning to take placeon cell phones, and wireless collaborative commerce in B2B is emerging. How-ever, there are several new applications that are possible only in the mobile envi-ronment. To understand why this is so, let’s examine the major attributes ofmobile computing and m-commerce.

SPECIFIC ATTRIBUTES OF MOBILE COMPUTING AND M-COMMERCE. Mobilecomputing has two major characteristics that differentiate it from other formsof computing: mobility and broad reach.

● Mobility. Mobile computing and m-commerce are based on the fact thatusers carry a mobile device everywhere they go. Mobility implies portability.Therefore, users can initiate a real-time contact with other systems fromwherever they happen to be if they can connect to a wireless network.

● Broad reach. In mobile computing, people can be reached at any time. Ofcourse, users can block certain hours or certain messages, but when userscarry an open mobile device, they can be reached instantly.

Attributes andDrivers of Mobile

Computing

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These two characteristics break the barriers of geography and time. Theycreate the following five value-added attributes that drive the development ofm-commerce: ubiquity, convenience, instant connectivity, personalization, andlocalization of products and services.

Ubiquity. Ubiquity refers to the attribute of being available at any location atany given time. A mobile terminal in the form of a smartphone or a PDA offersubiquity—that is, it can fulfill the need both for real-time information and forcommunication, independent of the user’s location.

Convenience. It is very convenient for users to operate in the wireless envi-ronment. All they need is an Internet enabled mobile device such as a smartphone.Using GPRS (General Packet Radio Service, a cell phone standard), it is easier andfaster to access the Web without booting up a PC or placing a call via a modem.Also, more and more places are equipped with Wi-Fi, enabling users to get onlinefrom portable laptops anytime (as was shown in the Dartmouth College case inChapter 1). You can even watch an entire movie on a PDA (see pocketpcfilms.com).

Instant Connectivity. Mobile devices enable users to connect easily andquickly to the Internet, intranets, other mobile devices, and databases. Thus, wire-less devices could become the preferred way to access information.

Personalization. Personalization refers to the preparation of customizedinformation for individual consumers. For example, a user who is identified assomeone who likes to travel might be sent travel-related information and adver-tising. Product personalization is still limited on mobile devices. However, theemerging need for conducting transactions electronically, combined with avail-ability of personalized information and transaction feasibility via mobile portals,will move personalization to new levels, leading ultimately to the mobile devicebecoming a major EC tool. The process of personalization is illustrated in Figure6.2 and is described by Dogac and Tumer (2002).

Localization of Products and Services. Knowing where the user is physicallylocated at any particular moment is key to offering relevant products and ser-vices. E-commerce applications based on localization of products and services areknown as location-based e-commerce or l-commerce. Precise location information isknown when a GPS is attached to a user’s wireless device. For example, you mightuse your mobile device to find the nearest ATM or FedEx drop box. In addition,the GPS will tell others where you are. Localization can be general, such as toanyone in a certain location (e.g., all shoppers at a shopping mall). Or, even bet-ter, it can be targeted so that users get messages that depend both on where theyare and what their preferences are, thus combining localization and personaliza-tion. For instance, if it is known that you like Italian food and you are strollingin a mall that has an Italian restaurant, you might receive a SMS that tells you thatrestaurant’s “special of the day” and gives you a 10 percent discount. GPS may bea standard feature in many mobile devices by 2005.

Vendors and telecommunication carriers can differentiate themselves in thecompetitive marketplace by offering new, exciting, and useful services based onthese attributes. Such services will help vendors attract and keep customers andincrease their revenues.

DRIVERS OF MOBILE COMPUTING AND M-COMMERCE. In addition to thevalue-added attributes just discussed, the development of mobile computing andm-commerce is driven by the following factors.

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fpoauthor supplied

e- file not availablefor final art

FIGURE 6.2 How a Wireless System Provides Personalized Information (Source: Dogac and Tumer (2002), p. 40.)

Widespread Availability of Mobile Devices. The number of cell phonesthroughout the world exceeds 1.3 billion (cellular.co.za/stats/stats-main.htm). It isestimated that within a few years, about 70 percent of cell phones will haveInternet access. Thus, a potential mass market is available for conducting dis-covery, communication, collaboration, and m-commerce. Cell phones are spread-ing quickly in developing countries. In 2002, for example, the number of cellphones in China exceeded 200 million, virtually equally the number of fixed linephones in that country (CellularOnline 2002). This growth enables developingcountries to leap-frog to m-commerce.

No Need for a PC. Because the Internet can be accessed via smartphone orother Internet-enabled wireless device, there is no need for a PC to access theInternet. Even though the cost of a PC, such as the Simputer (a “simple com-puter”), that is used primarily for Internet access can be as low as $300 (or evenless), that amount is still a major expense for the vast majority of people in theworld. Furthermore, one needs to learn how to operate a PC, service it, andreplace it every few years to keep it up-to-date. Smartphones and other wirelessdevices obviate the need for a PC.

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The Handset Culture. Another driver of m-commerce is the widespread useof cell phones, which is becoming a social phenomenon, especially among the 15-to-25-year-old age group. These users will constitute a major force of online buy-ers once they begin to make and spend reasonable amounts of money. The use ofSMS has been spreading like wildfire in several European and Asian countries. Inthe Philippines, for example, SMS is a national phenomenon in the youth mar-ket. As another example, Japanese send many more messages through mobilephones than do Americans, who prefer the desktop for e-mail.

Vendors’ Push. Vendors also are pushing m-commerce. Both mobile com-munication network operators and manufacturers of mobile devices are advertis-ing the many potential applications of mobile computing and m-commerce so thatthey can sell new technologies, products, and services to buyers.

Declining Prices and Increased Functionalities. With the passage of time, theprice of wireless devices is declining, and the per-minute pricing of mobile ser-vices is expected to decline by 50 to 80 percent before 2005. At the same time,functionalities are increasing.

Improvement of Bandwidth. To properly conduct m-commerce, it is necessaryto have sufficient bandwidth for transmitting text; however, bandwidth is alsorequired for voice, video, and multimedia. The 3G (third-generation) technology(described in Section 6.2) provides the necessary bandwidth, at a data rate of upto 2 Mbps. This enables information to move 35 times faster than when 56Kmodems are used. Wi-Fi moves information even faster, at 11 Mbps.

Like EC, m-commerce is a complex process involving a number of operationsand a number of players (customers, merchants, mobile operators, and the like).The key elements in the m-commerce value chain (for delivering m-commercecontent and applications to end users) are summarized in Table 6.2. Severaltypes of vendors provide value-added services to m-commerce. These include:

M-Commerce Value Chain andRevenue Models

TABLE 6.2 M-Commerce Value Chain

Link Function Provider

Transport

Enabling services

Transaction support

Presentation services

Personalization support

User applications

Content aggregators

Maintenance and operation of the infrastructure supporting data communication between mobile users and application providers

Server hosting, data backup, and system integration

Mechanisms for assisting with transactions, security, and billing

Conversion of content of Internet-based applications to applications suitable for mobile devices

Gathering of users’ preferences, information, and devices in order to provide individualized applications

General and specialized applications for mobile users

Design and operation of portals that offer categorized information and search facilities

Technology platform vendors

Infrastructure equipment vendors

Application platform vendor

Application developer

Content developer

Mobile service provider

Mobile portal provider

Source: Compiled from Siau et al. (2001).

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6.2 MOBILE COMPUTING INFRASTRUCTURE 245

mobile portals, advertisers, software vendors, content providers, mobile portal,mobile network operator and more (See Sadeh 2002, pg 34 there)

The revenue models of m-commerce are the following: access fees, sub-scription fees, pay-per-use, advertisement, transaction fees, hosting, paymentclearing, and point-of-traffic (Coursaris and Hassanein, 2002).

6.2 MOBILE COMPUTING INFRASTRUCTURE

Mobile computing requires hardware, software, and networks. The major infra-structure components of mobile computing are described in this section.

To conduct m-commerce, one needs devices for data entry and access to theInternet, applications, and other equipment. Several mobile computing devicesare used in m-commerce. The major ones are:

● Cellular (mobile) phones. All major cell phone manufacturers are making (orplan to make) Internet-enabled phones, also known as smartphones. These cellphones are improving with time, adding more features, larger screens, key-boards, and more. Over 35 percent of the new cell phones have color screens(Pilato, 2002), for example. An example of an Internet-enabled cell phone isthe Nokia 3510i, which includes Internet access, multimedia messaging(MMS), support for small Java applications (like games), a calculator, sched-ule, address book, and more. Note that even phones without screen displays(regular or cellular phones) can be used to retrieve voice information fromthe Web (see tellme.com and the discussion of voice portals in Section 6.2).

● Attachable keyboard. Transactions can be executed with the regular handsetentry keys, but it is fairly time-consuming to do so. An alternative is to usea larger cell phone such as the Nokia 9290 that contains a small-scale key-board. Yet another solution is to plug an attachable keyboard into the cellphone. (Attachable keyboards are also available for other wireless devices,such as PDAs.)

● PDAs. Personal digital assistants (PDAs) with Internet access are now avail-able from several vendors, and their capabilities are increasing. Using specialsoftware, users can connect these PDAs to the Internet via a wireless mo-dem. PDAs for corporate users include additional capabilities, such as e-mailsynchronization and exchange of data and backup files with corporate servers.(Examples of PDAs for corporate users are Jornada from HP, IPAQ fromCompaq, Sony NX70V, and MobilePro from NEC.)

● Interactive pagers. Some two-way pagers can be used to conduct limited mo-bile computing and m-commerce activities on the Internet (mainly sendingand receiving text messages, such as stock market orders).

● Screenphones. A telephone equipped with a color screen, possibly a key-board, e-mail, and Internet capabilities is referred to as a screenphone.Initially, these were wire-lined; that is, they were regular phones connectedby wires to a network. As of 2000, wireless screenphones became available.

● E-mail handhelds. To enhance wireless e-mail capabilities, one can usedevices such as the BlackBerry Handheld (blackberry.net). This device, whichincludes a keypad, is an integrated package, so there is no need to dial intoan Internet provider for access. A variety of services for data communication

Mobile ComputingHardware

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enable users to receive and send messages from anywhere. For example, thelaw firm of Paul, Hastins, Janofsky, & Walker (with offices in major U.S.cities) has deployed Blackberry handhelds to its 900 lawyers, who can nowreceive their e-mail in real time and can enter billing information while onthe road. Furthermore, they can be altered whenever they have a voice mailor fax waiting. A third of the company’s lawyers have returned their laptops,and the company has saved $260,000 each year. New applications are com-ing with each new version of the handhelds (for details see Cohen 2002).A product demo is available at blackberry.net.

● Other devices. Many other wireless support devices are on the market. Forexample, the Seiko SmartPad (siibusinessproducts.com) allows you to hand-write from a notepad instantly to a cell phone or PDA screen, overcomingthe small screen size of these devices. Some new cell phones have built-incameras; you can take a picture and e-mail it immediately from your mobilelocation. Finally there is a wireless mouse, which works up to 15 feet, so itcan be used for presentations. For an overview of devices see Kridel, 2003.

There is a significant trend toward the convergence of PDAs and cell phones.On the one hand, the PDA manufacturers are providing PDAs with cellular orwireless capabilities. On the other hand, the cellular phone manufacturers andsystems providers are offering phones with PDA capabilities

In addition to the hardware described above, m-commerce also requires thefollowing infrastructure hardware, most of which the user does not see or knowabout, but which is essential for wireless connectivity:

● A suitably configured wireline or wireless WAN modem, wireless LAN adapter,or wireless MAN (metro-area network) adapter.

● A Web server with wireless support, a WAP gateway, a communications server,and/or a mobile communications server switch (MCSS). Such a Web serverprovides communications functionality that enables the handheld device tocommunicate with the Internet or intranet infrastructure (see mobileinfo.com).

● An application or database server with application logic and a business appli-cation database.

● A large enterprise application server.

● A GPS locator that is used to determine the location of the person carryingthe mobile computing device. This is the basis for location-based applica-tions, as described in Section 6.8.

Developing software for wireless devices is challenging because, as of 2002,there is no widely accepted standard for wireless applications. Therefore, soft-ware applications need to be customized for each type of device with which theapplication may communicate. The major software products required for mobilecomputing are presented in Table 6.3.

At the core of most mobile computing applications are mobile networks. Theseare of two general types: the wide area and the local area. The wide area net-works for mobile computing are known as wireless wide area networks(WWAN). The breadth of coverage of WWANs directly affects the availabilityof services (see Intel, 2002). Breadth of coverage depends on the transmissionmedia and the generation of wireless.

Mobile ComputingSoftware

Wireless Wide AreaNetworks (WWANs)

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The global communications and cellular phone companies operate most of thewireless wide area networks. A very simple mobile system is shown in Figure 6.3.At the edge of the system are the mobile handsets. A mobile handset consistsof two parts—terminal equipment that hosts the applications (e.g., a PDA) and amobile terminal (e.g., a cell phone) that connects to the mobile network.

TRANSMISSION MEDIA. Several transmission media can be used for wirelesstransmission. These media differ in both capabilities and cost. The major onesare shown in Online File W6.1.

TABLE 6.3 Software for Mobile Computing

Software Description

Microbrowser A browser with limited bandwidth and memory requirements. Provides wirelessaccess to the Internet

Operating system (OS) for An OS for mobile devices. Examples: Palmos, Windows 2001NT, Win CE.mobile-client Specialized OSs: Blackberry and Web browser.

Bluetooth (named for a Chip technology for short-range (30 meters, 2003) communication among wireViking king) less devices. Uses digital two-way radio frequency (RF). It is an almost universal

standard for wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) for data and voice. Seebluethooth.com.

User interface Application logic for handheld devices. It is often controlled by the microbrowser.Legacy application software Residing on the mainframe, it is a major source of data to wireless systems.Application middleware Provides connecting among applications, databases, and Web-based servers.Wireless middleware Links wireless networks to application servers.Wireless Application A set of communication protocols that enables wireless devices to “talk” to a

Protocol (WAP) server on a mobile network, so users can access the Internet. Specially designedfor small screen. A competing standard is the J2ME platform that offers bettersecurity and graphics (see wapforum.org).

Wireless Markup An XML-based scripting language for creating content for wireless systems.Language (WML)

Voice XML An extension of XML designed to accommodate voice.

Mobile Network

MobilePhone

MobilePhone

Wirelesstransmission

MobileNetwork

Base StationController

(BSC)

MobileSwitching Station

(MSC)

Fixed TelephoneInfrastructure

CommunicationTower

FIGURE 6.3 MobileSystem Architecture

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COMMUNICATION GENERATIONS OF WIRELESS WIDE AREA NETWORKS. Thesuccess of mobile computing depends on the capabilities of the WWAN com-munication systems. Four generations of communications technology are dis-tinguished:

● 1G. The first generation of wireless technology. It was an analog-based tech-nology, in effect from 1979 to 1992.

● 2G. The second generation of digital wireless technology. In existence today,2G is based on digital radio technology and mainly accommodates text.

● 2.5G. An interim technology based on GPRS (General Packet Radio Services)and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evaluation) that can accommo-date limited graphics.

● 3G. The third generation of digital wireless technology, which supports richmedia such as video clips. It started in 2001 in Japan, and reached Europein 2002 and the United States in 2003. As of 2003, the number of 3G cellphones in operation was around 150 million (a small percentage of the totalnumber cell phones in use today) (Dunne, 2001).

● 4G. The expected next generation after 3G. The arrival of 4G, which willprovide faster display of multimedia, is expected between 2006 and 2010.Experimental HGs were used in Japan as early as 2003.

For details on transmission media, see Sadeh (2002) and Mennecke and Strader(2003).

SOME NETWORK COMPONENTS. Some mobile handsets, especially in Europe,contain a subscriber identification module (SIM) card. This is an extractablestorage card that is used not only for identification but also for providingcustomer location information, transaction processing, secure communications,and the like. A SIM card makes it possible for a handset to work with multiplephone numbers.

The mobile handset communicates with a base-transceiver station. There arethousands of these throughout the world. A base-transceiver station is connectedto a base-station controller that handles the handoff from one transceiver to thenext as the customer or user travels from one place to another. The various base-station controllers are connected to mobile switching centers that connect themobile network with the public wired phone network.

COMMUNICATION PROTOCOLS IN WWAN. One of the major problems facing themobile communication system providers is how to service extremely large num-bers of users given limited communication bandwidth. This can be done throughmultiplexing protocols (see Technology Guide 4). In today’s mobile world (2003),there are three main protocols:

● Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA). Used by 1G systems, thisprotocol gives each user a different frequency to communicate on.

● Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA). Used with some of the morepopular 2G systems, this protocol assigns different users different time slotson a given communications channel (e.g., every 1�8 time slot).

● Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). Used with most 2.5G and 3Gsystems, this protocol separates different users by assigning different codes tothe segments of each user’s communications.

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In today’s mobile world most of the networks rely on either TDMA orCDMA. The relationships between these two multiplexing methods and themajor network standards are detailed in Online File W6.2 along with the evo-lution of these standards from today’s 2G world to tomorrow’s 3G and 4G world.

For the past few years, much of the discussion about mobile computing andm-commerce has revolved around WWANs with cellular technologies, espe-cially the 3G one. Slowly but surely, another technology (one that has beenaround for at least a decade)—wireless local area networks—has been makingits way to the forefront as the market factors impeding its growth are beingaddressed. As the name implies, a wireless LAN (WLAN) is like a wired LANbut without the cables. WLANs transmit and receive data over the airwaves.

In a typical configuration, a transmitter with an antenna, called a wirelessaccess point, connects to a wired LAN from a fixed location or to satellitedishes that provide an Internet connection. A wireless access point providesservice to a number of users within a small geographical perimeter (up to a cou-ple hundred feet), known as a “hot spot” or hotspot zone. Several wirelessaccess points are needed to support larger numbers of users across a largergeographical area. End users can access a WLAN with their laptops, desktops,or PDAs by adding a wireless network card. As of 2002 most PC and laptopmanufacturers incorporate these cards directly in their PCs. (as an option). Forhow to connect your PC quickly and securely with no wires, see Stafford andBrandt, 2002.

WLANs provide fast and easy Internet or Intranet broadband access frompublic hotspots like airports, hotels, Internet cafes, and conference centers.WLANs are also being used in universities (recall the Dartmouth case inChapter 1), offices, and homes, in place of the traditional wired LANs. In thisway users are free to roam across the campus, office, or throughout theirhomes (see weca.net).

Most of today’s WLANs run on a standard known as 802.11b that was devel-oped by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers). That standardis also called Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity). WLANs employing this standard havecommunication speeds of 11 mbps. While most wired networks run at 100 mbps,11 mbps is actually sufficient for many applications. Two other new standards,802.11a and 802.11g, support data transmissions at 54 mbps. The 802.11g stan-dard is beginning to show up in commercial products because it is compatiblewith the 802.11b standard. While PCs can take advantage of 54 mbps, today’s(2003) PDAs cannot, because their expansion (network) cards are limited to the11 mbps speed. As of 2003 there is even hardware and software that supportsvoice over Wi-Fi (telephony).

The major benefits of Wi-Fi are its lower cost and its ability to provide sim-ple Internet access. As a matter of fact it is the greatest facilitator of the wirelessInternet (see Anderson, 2003). The Wi-Fi market got a boost at the end of 2002when AT&T, Intel, and IBM, along with two global investment firms, joinedforces to create Cometa Networks, Inc. Cometa (cometa.com) works with majorretail chains, hotels, universities and real estate firms to deploy Wi-Fi hotspotsthroughout the top 50 U.S. metropolitan areas.

WIRELESS PERSONAL AREA NETWORKS (WPANs). A wireless personal area net-work (WPAN) is a kind of WLAN that people have at their home offices. With


Wireless Local AreaNetworks and Wi-Fi

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such a network, one can connect PCs, PDAs, mobile phones, and digital musicplayers that detect each other and can interact. Also, one can also add a digi-tal payment system and personal security technologies. The network maintainsconstant connectivity among devices, which is useful for users in office settings,including those who use wearable devices.

ILLUSTRATIVE APPLICATIONS OF WI-FI. The year 2003 may be a breakthroughyear for wireless networking in offices, airports, hotels, and campuses aroundthe United States. Each month brings new examples of businesses that haveadded Wi-Fi services for their employees or customers. Several examples arepresented below. Many more examples of Wi-Fi are included in this chapter andthroughout the book.

● Like a number of airports in the United States, the Minneapolis-St. PaulInternational airport is served by Wi-Fi. The Northstar Crossing concessionarea, the Northwest Airlines’ World Club lounge, the United Airlines’ RedCarpet Club, and many of the main terminal concourses provide wirelessInternet access to anyone with a laptop or handheld device and a Wi-Fi net-work card. iPass is hosting the Internet service. The fee is $7.95 for unlimiteddaily access.

● Lufthansa offers in-flight Wi-Fi service on its long-haul fleet. The hotspotson the aircrafts are connected to the Internet via satellites. While a newschannel is free, there is a charge of $25 for use during the flight (BloombergNews, 2003).

● In 2002, T-Mobile installed Wi-Fi networks in approximately 2,000 Starbucksstores in the United States. Starbucks has plans to add Wi-Fi to 70 percentof its 6,000 locations worldwide over the next few years. T-Mobile is alsoinstalling Wi-Fi in hundreds of Borders Books & Music Stores. T-Mobile ischarging $30 a month for unlimited access, with walk-in customers paying$2.99 for the first 15 minutes and 25 cents a minute thereafter.

● McDonald’s piloted a program in April 2003 in which it initially offeredWi-Fi wireless access in 10 restaurants in New York City (mcdwireless.com).The company has an access point (hotspot) in each of these restaurants. Ifyou buy a “value meal” you get one hour of free access. Alternatively, youcan pay $3 an hour (which is significantly cheaper than the $12 an hourcharged by Kinko’s and many others for using regular desktop computers).McDonald’s will eventually offer the program in thousands of its restaurants(watch for the window sign on the restaurants, that will combine McDonald’sarches with an “at” (B) symbol). With tens of thousand McDonald’s restau-rants worldwide, this service can greatly help travelers accessing the Internet.Furthermore, if you have an Internet access via AOL or other ISPs, you willget the services free, even without buying the value meal.

● Similarly, Panera Bread Company has added hotspots in many of its restau-rants in St. Louis, Missouri, where Panera is headquartered. The addition ofhotspots is a marketing tactic aimed at attracting customers.

● Using wireless ticketing system, Universal Studios in Hollywood is shorten-ing the waiting lines for tickets at its front gate. The ticket sellers, armed withWi-Fi–enabled devices and belt-mounted printers, not only sell tickets butalso provide information. For details, see Scanlon (2003).


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● CVS Corp., the largest retail pharmacy in the United States, uses Wi-Fi–baseddevices throughout its 4,100 stores. The handheld computers support a va-riety of in-store applications, including direct store delivery, price manage-ment, inventory control, and receiving. Benefits include faster transferrates, increasing productivity and performance, reduced cost, and improvedcustomer service. For details see symbol.com, 1998.

BARRIERS TO COMMERCIAL WI-FI GROWTH. Two factors are standing in theway of Wi-Fi market growth: cost and security. First, some analysts question whyanyone would pay $30 a month, $7.95 a day, or any other fee for Wi-Fi accesswhen it is readily available in many locations for free. Because it’s relatively inex-pensive to set up a wireless access point that is connected to the Internet, a num-ber of businesses offer their customers Wi-Fi access without charging them forthe service. In fact, there is an organization, Freenetworks.org, aimed at sup-porting the creation of free community wireless network projects around theglobe. In areas like San Francisco, where there is a solid core of high-tech pro-fessionals, many “gear heads” have set up their own wireless hotspots that givepassersby free Internet connections. This is a part of a new culture known aswar chalking and war driving (see A Closer Look 6.1).

One of the primary aims of people engaged in war driving is to highlight thelax security of Wi-Fi hotspots. This is the second barrier to widespread accept-ance of Wi-Fi. Using radio waves, Wi-Fi can be interrupted by walls (resultingin poor quality at times), and it is difficult to protect. Wi-Fi does have a built-insecurity system, known as Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP), which encrypts thecommunications between a client machine (laptop or PDA) and a wireless accesspoint. However, WEP provides weak encryption, meaning that it is securedagainst casual hacking as long as the person setting up the network remembers

Free Wi-Fi Internet hubs are marked in some places bysymbols on sidewalks and walls to indicate nearby

wireless access. This practice is called war chalking. It wasinspired by the practice of hobos during the Great Depres-sion who used chalkmarks to indicate which homes werefriendly.

A number of people have also made a hobby or sportout of war driving. War driving is the act of locating wire-less local area networks while driving around a city orelsewhere (see wardriving.com). To war drive, you need avehicle, a computer or PDA, a wireless card, and somekind of an antenna that can be mounted on top of or posi-tioned inside the car. Because a WLAN may have a range

that extends beyond the building in which it is located,an outside user may be able to intrude into the network,obtain a free Internet connection, and possibly gain accessto important data and other resources. The term war driv-ing was coined by computer security consultant PeterShipley and derives from the term war dialing, a tech-nique in which a hacker programs his or her system tocall hundreds of phone numbers in search of poorly pro-tected computer dial-ups. The term war dialing in turncame from the movie WarGames, which features MatthewBroderick performing the technique.

Source: Compiled from Kellner (2003).

A CLOSER LOOK6.1 WAR CHALKING AND WAR DRIVING

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Mobile Computingand M-Commerce

Security Issues

Voice Systems forM-Commerce

to turn on the encyrption. Unfortunately, many small businesses owners andhomeowners with wireless LANs fail to do just that. For more on WEP, seeOnline File W6.3.

In 2001 a hacker sent an e-mail message to 13 million users of the i-mode wire-less data service in Japan. The message had the potential to take over the recip-ient’s phone, causing it to dial Japan’s emergency hotline (1-1-0). NTT Docomo,which provides the i-mode service, rapidly fixed the problem so no damage wasdone. At the beginning of 2002, researchers in Holland discovered a bug in theoperating system used by many Nokia phones that would enable a hacker toexploit the system by sending a malformed SMS message capable of crashingthe system. Again, no real damage was done.

Today, most of the Internet-enabled cell phones in operation are incapableof storing applications and, in turn, incapable of propagating a virus, worm, orother rogue program from one phone to another. Most of these cell phones alsohave their operating systems and other functionalities “burned” right into thehardware. This makes it difficult for a rogue program to permanently alter theoperation of a cell phone. However, as the capabilities of cellular phonesincrease and the functionality of PDAs and cell phones converge, the threat ofattack from malicious code will certainly increase.

Just because a mobile device is less susceptible to attack by malicious codedoes not mean that m-commerce is more secure than e-commerce in thewired world. By their very nature mobile devices and mobile transactions pro-duce some unique security challenges. See Raina and Harsh, 2002, and OnlineFile W6.4.

Because m-commerce transactions eventually end up on a wired Internet,many of the processes, procedures, and technologies used to secure e-commercetransactions can also be applied in mobile environments. Of particular impor-tance is the public key infrastructure (see Chapter 5 Online Files). The securityapproaches that apply directly to mobile devices and networks are presented inOnline File W6.5.

The most natural mode of human communication is voice. When people needto communicate with each other from a distance, they use the telephone morefrequently than any other communication device. Voice communication cannow also be done on the computer using a microphone and a sound card. Ascomputers are getting better at recognizing and understanding the human voice,voice systems are improving and the number and types of voice technology appli-cations are growing. (For further discussion of voice recognition, see Kumagai,2002, and Chapter 12 of this book.)

Voice technologies have various advantages: The most obvious one is porta-bility; users do not have to go to a stationary computer. The hands- and eyes-free operations of voice technologies increase the productivity, safety, and effec-tiveness of mobile computer users, ranging from forklift drivers to military pilots.Also, for those users in dirty or moving environments, voice terminals operatebetter than keyboards because they are more rugged. Voice technologies alsoenable disabled people to tell a computer to perform various tasks. Anotheradvantage is speed; people can communicate about two-and-a-half times fastertalking than typing. In most circumstances, speaking also results in fewer data

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6.3 MOBILE APPLICATIONS IN FINANCIAL SERVICES 253

entry errors than does keyboard data entry, assuming a reliable voice recogni-tion system is used.

Voice and data can work together to create useful applications. For exam-ple, operators of PBXs (private branch exchanges, which are basically thecommand center of intracompany phone systems) are letting callers give sim-ple computer commands using interactive voice response (e.g., spelling the lastname of the person one is calling).

VOICE PORTALS. A voice portal is a Web site with an audio interface. Voiceportals are not really Web sites in the normal sense because they are accessedthrough a standard or a cell telephone. A certain phone number connects youto a participating Web site where you can request information verbally. Thesystem finds the information, translates it into a computer-generated voice reply,and tells you what you want to know. (See the demo at 3iobile.com.) Several ofthese new sites are in operation. An example of this application is thevoice-activated 511 traveler information line developed by Tellme.com (seeChapter 1). Tellme.com and bevocal.com allow callers to request information aboutweather, local restaurants, current traffic, and other handy information (seeKumagai, 2002).

In addition to retrieving information, some sites provide true interaction.iPing.com is a reminder and notification service that allows users to enter infor-mation via the Web and receive reminder calls. In addition, iPing.com can calla group of people to notify them of a meeting or conference call.

The real value for Internet marketers is that these voice portals can helpbusinesses find new customers. Several of these sites are supported by ads; thus,the customer profile data they have available can deliver targeted advertisingvery precisely. For instance, a department-store chain with an existing brandimage can use short audio commercials on these sites to deliver a messagerelated to the topic of the call.

With the development of technical standards and continuing growth ofwireless technologies, the number of m-commerce applications is growing rap-idly. Applications are derived from providing wireless access to existing B2C,intrabusiness, and CRM applications and from creating new location-based andSMS-based applications. In Sections 6.3 through 6.8 of this chapter, we willstudy m-commerce applications in a number of diverse categories.

6.3 MOBILE APPLICATIONS IN FINANCIAL SERVICES

Mobile financial applications include banking, wireless payments and micropay-ments, wireless wallets, bill payment services, brokerage services, and moneytransfers. While many of these services are simply a subset of their wire-linecounterparts, they have the potential to turn a mobile device into a business tool,replacing banks, ATMs, and credit cards by letting a user conduct financial trans-actions with a mobile device, any time and from anywhere. In this section wewill look at some of the most popular mobile applications in financial services.

Throughout Europe, the United States, and Asia, an increasing percentage ofbanks offer mobile access to financial and account information. For instance,

Mobile Banking

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Merita Bank in Sweden pioneered many services (Sadeh, 2002); Citibank has adiversified mobile banking service. Consumers in such banks can use theirmobile handsets to access account balances, pay bills, and transfer funds usingSMS. The Royal Bank of Scotland uses a new mobile payment service (Lipset,2002), and Banamex, one of the Mexico’s largest banks, is a strong provider ofwireless services to customers. Many banks in Japan allow for all banking trans-actions to be done via cell phone. In the same vein, a study of banks in Ger-many, Switzerland, and Austria found that over 60 percent offered some formof mobile financial services (Hornberger and Kehlenbeck, 2002).

To date, though, the uptake of mobile banking has been minimal. Yet sur-veys indicate there is strong latent demand for these offerings; customers seemto be waiting for the technology and transmission speeds to improve. The samepicture holds true for other mobile financial applications like mobile brokering,insurance, and stock market trades.

Wireless payment systems transform mobile phones into secure, self-containedpurchasing tools capable of instantly authorizing payments over the cellular net-work. In Italy, for example, DPS-Promatic has designed and installed the first park-ing meter payable by mobile telephone (DPS-Promatic, 2002). In the United States,Cellbucks offers a mobile payment service to participating sports stadiums thatenables fan to purchase food, beverages, and merchandise by cell phone and haveit delivered to their seats. Any fan who is a member of the Cellbucks Network candial a toll-free number provided on a menu of choices, enter his or her pass codeand seat location, then select numbered items that correspond to desired menuselections. Once authorized, the purchase is passed on to stadium personnel andis in turn delivered to the fan’s seat. An e-mail detailing the transaction is sent tothe fan as further confirmation of the order. In Europe and Japan buying ticketsto movies and other events are popular (Sadeh, 2002).

If you were in Frankfurt, Germany, and took a taxi ride, you could pay the taxidriver using your cell phone. As discussed in Chapter 5, electronic payments forsmall-purchase amounts (generally less than $10) are called micropayments are.The demand for wireless micropayments systems is fairly high. An A.T. Kearneystudy (CyberAtlas, 2002) found that more than 40 percent of mobile phone userssurveyed would like to use their mobile phone for small cash transactions suchas transit fares or vending machines. The desire for such service was highest inJapan (50 percent) and lowest in the United States (38 percent). The percent-age of mobile phone users who had actually used their phones for this purposewas only 2 percent, reflecting the fact that very few vendors participate inmicropayments systems.

An Israeli firm, TeleVend, Inc. (televend.com), has pioneered a secure plat-form that allows subscribers to make payments using mobile phones of any typeon any cellular infrastructure. A customer places a mobile phone call to a num-ber stipulated by the merchant, to authorize a vending device to dispense theservice. Connecting to a TeleVend server, the user selects the appropriate trans-action option to authorize payment. Billing can be made to the customer’s bankor credit card account or to the mobile phone bill.

Micropayment technology has wide-ranging applications, such as makingpayments to parking garages, restaurants, grocery stores, and public transporta-tion. The success of micropayment applications, however, ultimately depends on


Wireless ElectronicPayment Systems

Micropayments

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6.3 MOBILE APPLICATIONS IN FINANCIAL SERVICES 255

the costs of the transactions. Transaction costs will be small only if there is alarge volume of transactions.

An e-wallet (see Chapter 5) is a piece of software that stores an online shopper’scredit card numbers and other personal information so that the shopper doesnot have to reenter that information for every online purchase. In the recentpast, companies like SNAZ offered mobile wallet (m-wallet, also known aswireless wallet) technologies that enabled cardholders to make purchases witha single click from their mobile devices. While most of these companies are nowdefunct, some cell phone providers have incorporated m-wallets in their offer-ings. A good example is the Nokia wallet. This application provides users witha secure storage space in their phones for information (such as credit card num-bers) to be used in mobile payments. The information can also be used toauthenticate transactions by signing them digitally. Microsoft is about to offerits e-wallet, Passport, in a wireless environment.

In addition to paying bills through wireline banking, or from ATMs (see Chap-ter 5), a number of companies are now providing their customers with theoption of paying their bills directly from a cell phone (Lipset, 2003). HDFC Bankof India (hdfcbank.com), for example, allows customers to pay their utility billsthrough SMS. An example of how bill payments can be made using a mobiledevice is shown in Figure 6.4. This service is offered by Nordea, a pioneeringprovider of wireless banking services in Scandinavia.

Mobile (Wireless)Wallets

Wireless BillPayments

FIGURE 6.4 Nordea’s WAP Solo Banking Portal. (Source: Sadeh (2002).)

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F P O


Like EC, m-commerce B2C applications are concentrated in three major areas—retail shopping, advertising, and providing content for a fee (see Rupp andSmith, 2002).

An increasing number of online vendors allow customers to shop from wirelessdevices. For example, customers who use Internet-ready cell phones can shopat certain sites such as mobile.yahoo.com or amazon.com. Shopping from wirelessdevices enables customers to perform quick searches, compare prices, use ashopping cart, order, and view the status of their order using their cell phonesor wireless PDAs. Wireless shoppers are supported by services similar to thoseavailable for wire-line shoppers.

An example of restaurant food shopping from wireless devices is that of ajoint venture between Motorola and Food.com. The companies offer restaurantchains an infrastructure that enables consumers to place an order for pick upor delivery virtually any time, anywhere. Donatos Pizzeria was the first chainto implement the system in 2002.

Cell phone users can also participate in online auctions. For example, eBayoffers “anywhere wireless” services. Account holders at eBay can access theiraccounts, browse, search, bid, and rebid on items from any Internet-enabledphone or PDA. The same is true for participants in Amazon.com Auctions.

An example of purchasing movie tickets by wireless device is illustrated inFigure 6.5. Notice that the reservation is made directly with the merchant. Thenmoney is transferred from the customer’s account to the merchant’s account.

6.4 MOBILE SHOPPING, ADVERTISING, AND CONTENT-PROVIDING

Shopping fromWireless Devices

Bank Merchant

FIGURE 6.5 Purchasing Movie Tickets with WAP Solo. (Source: Sadeh (2002).)

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F P O

6.4 MOBILE SHOPPING, ADVERTISING, AND CONTENT-PROVIDING 257

Knowing the current location of mobile users (using GPS) and their preferencesor surfing habits, marketers can send user-specific advertising messages to wire-less devices. Advertising can also be location-sensitive, informing a user aboutshops, malls, and restaurants close to where a potential buyer is. SMS messagesand short paging messages can be used to deliver this type of advertising to cellphones and pagers, respectively. Many companies are capitalizing on targetedadvertising, as shown in A Closer Look 6.2.

As more wireless bandwidth becomes available, content-rich advertisinginvolving audio, pictures, and video clips will be generated for individual userswith specific needs, interests, and inclinations. Also, depending on the interestsand personality types of individual mobile users, the network provider may con-sider using “push” or “pull” methods of mobile advertising on a per user basisor to a class of users (market segmentation). The number of ads pushed to anindividual customer should be limited, to avoid overwhelming a user with toomuch information and also to avoid the possibility of congestion over the wire-less networks. Wireless network managers may consider ad traffic to be of alower priority compared with ordering or customer interaction. Finally, since adpushers need to know a user’s current location, a third-party vendor may beused to provide location services. This will require a sharing of revenues with

TargetedAdvertising

The following are a few examples of wireless adver-tisement in action.

Vindigo.com (vindigo.com) has a large database of cus-tomers (over 600,000 in early 2003) willing to acceptpromotional materials on their wireless devices. This isknown as permission marketing. The users download specialsoftware on their PDAs that allows Vindigo.com to delivertimely, accurate information about places to go and thingsto do in their area. Along with every listing, the companycan deliver a customized message to the users at a timeand place where it is of most interest to them and theyare most likely to act on it.

The company targets ads by city (New York, SanFrancisco, Los Angeles, etc.) and channel (Eat, Shop, orPlay). Vindigo.com tracks which ads a user sees andselects, and even allows a user to request informationfrom an advertiser via e-mail. Vindigo.com determinesa user’s location through GPS or by asking which neigh-borhoods they want to be matched with. For example,if you own an Italian restaurant chain, you can useVindigo.com to send a message to anyone looking forItalian food within a few blocks of one of your loca-tions. You can give them directions to that restaurant

and even offer them the list of specials on the menuand discounts.

MyAvantGo.Com (avantgo.com) has over 2,500 contentchannels and over 7 million registered users (AvantGo,2002). The content is delivered to PDAs and handsets run-ning Palm or PocketPC operating systems. My Avantgo’soffers an m-business channel and direct promotions todeliver advertising from some of the world’s top brandsincluding American Airlines, Chevy Trucks, the Golf Chan-nel, CNN, the New York Times, and Yahoo. For details seeStanford (2002).

Hoping to become the king of location-based Webdomains, Go2Online (go2online.com) helps mobile travelersfind everything from lodging (choose go2hotels) to JiffyLube stations (choose go2oilchanges). Partnering with Sprint,NexTel, Verizon, and BellSouth, Go2 makes its servicesavailable on every Web-enabled phone, Palm i705, andBlackBerry RIM pager in America. Entering “JiffyLube” orhundreds of other brand names into the Go2 system willbring up the nearest location where a shopper can find thatproduct or service.

Sources: Compiled from the Web sites of Vindigo.com, AvantGo.com,and GO2Online.com.

A CLOSER LOOK6.2 WIRELESS ADVERTISING IN ACTION

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Mobile Portals

a location service provider. A futuristic area of advertisement, which is basedon GPS tracking, is described in Section 6.8.

GETTING PAID TO LISTEN TO ADVERTISING. Would you be willing to listen toa 10-second ad when you dial your cell phone if you were paid 2 minutes offree long-distance time? As in the wire-line world, some consumers are willingto be paid for exposure to advertising. It depends on which country you are in.In most places where it was offered in the United States, this service was a flopand was discontinued.

In Singapore, though, getting paid to listen to advertising works very well.Within a few months of offering the ads, more than 100,000 people subscribedto the free minutes in exchange for listening to the ads offered by SingTel Mobile(Eklund, 2001). Subscribers to SingTel’s service fill out a personal questionnairewhen they sign up. This information is fed into the Spotcast database andencrypted to shield subscribers’ identities—Spotcast cannot match phone num-bers to names, for example. To collect their free minutes—one minute per call,up to 100 minutes a month—subscribers dial a four-digit code, then the phonenumber of the person they want to talk to. The code prompts SingTel to for-ward the call to Spotcast and, in an instant Spotcast’s software finds the best adto send to the subscriber based on the subscriber’s profile.

THE FUTURE OF WIRELESS ADVERTISING. In 2002, the Yankee Group con-cluded that the U.S. wireless advertising market would be worth only $10 mil-lion by 2004, substantially below earlier estimates that pegged the market at$130 million by that year (Yankee Group, 2002). By 2003 almost all wirelessadvertising initiatives have been merely trials. As the Yankee Group noted, themost promising avenues of success for wireless advertising will incorporate itwith other advertising media (e.g., hardcopy advertising that directs consumersto wireless or mobile ads offering incentives) or wireless ads directing users toWeb sites or physical locations. According to the Yankee Group, many wirelessadvertising firms are betting their futures on the wide-scale acceptance of SMS,even in the United States where its usage currently is small.

A mobile portal is a customer channel, optimized for mobility, that aggregatesand provides content and services for mobile users (see Bughin et al., 2001;Sadeh 2002; and Chapter 4 for additional discussion of portals). Examples of best“pure” mobile portals (those whose only business is to be a mobile portal) areRoom 33 (room33.com) in Europe and zed.com from Sonera in Finland. Nordea’sSolo banking portal was illustrated in Figure 6.4. The world’s most-known mobileportal, with over 40 million members, mostly in Japan, is i-mode from DoCoMo.

The services provided by mobile portals include news, sports, e-mail, enter-tainment, and travel information, restaurants and event information, leisure-related services (e.g., games, TV and movie listings), community services, andstock trading. A sizeable percentage of the portals also provide downloads andmessaging, music-related services, and health, dating, and job information.Mobile portals frequently charge for their services. For example, you may beasked to pay 50 cents to get a weather report over your mobile phone. Alter-natively, you may pay a monthly fee for the portal service and get the reportfree any time you want it. In Japan, for example, i-mode generates revenuemainly from subscription fees.

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Increasingly, the field of mobile portals is being dominated by a few bigcompanies (Global Mobile Suppliers Association, 2002). The big players inEurope, for instance, are companies like Vodafone, Orange, O2, and T-Mobile;in the United States big players are Cingular, Verizon, and Sprint PCS. Also,mobile-device manufactures offer their own portals (e.g., Club Nokia portal, myPalm portal). And, finally, the traditional portals (such as Yahoo, AOL, andMSN) have mobile portals as well.

6.5 MOBILE INTRABUSINESS AND ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS

Although B2C m-commerce is getting considerable publicity, most of today’sapplications are used within organizations. According to Estrada, 2002, employ-ees connected to Wi-Fi increase their productivity by up to 22 percent due tobetter and faster connectivity. This section looks at how mobile devices andtechnologies can be used within organizations.

Mobile workers are those working outside the corporate premises. Examples ofmobile workers are salespeople in the field, traveling executives, telecommuters,people working in corporate yards and warehouses, and repair or installationemployees who work at customers’ sites or on utility lines. These mobile work-ers need the same corporate data available to employees working inside thecompany’s offices. Yet, using wire-line devices, even portable ones, may beinconvenient or impossible when employees are away from their offices.

The solution is a myriad of smaller, simple wireless devices—the smartphonesand handheld companions carried by mobile workers and the in-vehicle infor-mation systems installed in cars. Many of these wireless devices are wearable.

WEARABLE DEVICES. Employees who work on buildings, electrical poles, orother difficult-to-climb places may be equipped with a special form of mobilewireless computing devices called wearable devices. Examples of wearabledevices include:

● Camera. A camera is mounted on a safety hat. Workers can take digital pho-tos and videos and transmit them instantly to a portable computer nearby.Photo transmission to a wearable device or computer is made possible viaBluetooth technology.

● Screen. A computer screen is mounted on a safety hat, in front of the wearer’seyes, displaying information to the worker.

● Keyboard. A wrist-mounted keyboard enables typing by the other hand.(Wearable keyboards are an alternative to voice recognition systems, whichare also wireless).

● Touch-panel display. In addition to the wrist-mounted keyboard, mobile em-ployees can use a flat-panel screen, attached to the hand, which responds tothe tap of a finger or stylus.

● Speech translator. For those mobile employees who do not have their handsfree to use a keyboard, a wearable speech translator is handy (see Smailagicet al., 2001).

For an example of wearable devices used to support mobile employees, seeIT At Work 6.1 and wearable.com.au.

Support of MobileWorkers

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JOB DISPATCH. Mobile devices are becoming an increasingly integral part ofgroupware and workflow applications. For example, non-voice mobile servicescan be used to assist in dispatch functions—to assign jobs to mobile employees,along with detailed information about the task. The target areas for mobile deliv-ery and dispatch services include the following: transportation (delivery of food,oil, newspapers, cargo, courier services, tow trucks); taxis (already in use inKorea and Singapore); utilities (gas, electricity, phone, water); field service(computer, office equipment, home repair); health care (visiting nurses, doctors,social services); and security (patrols, alarm installation).

A dispatching application for wireless devices allows improved response withreduced resources, real-time tracking of work orders, increased dispatcher

For years mobile employees, especially those who hadto climb trees, electric poles, or tall buildings, were un-

able to enjoy the new technologies designed to make em-ployees work or feel better. Thus, their productivity andcomfort were inferior, especially where computers wereinvolved. That is all beginning to change.

On a cold, damp November day in Toronto, Chris Holm-Laursen, a field technician with Bell Canada (bell.ca), is

out and about asusual, but this timewith a difference: Asmall but powerfulcomputer sits in apocket of his orangemesh vest, a key-board is attachedto the vest’s upper-left side, and a flat-panel display screenhangs by his waist.A video camera at-tached to his safetyhat enables him totake pictures with-out using his handsand send them im-mediately to the of-fice. A cell phone is

attached as well, connected to the computer. A batterypack to keep everything going sits against his back. (Seenearby photo.)

Holm-Laursen and 18 other technicians on this pilotproject were equipped like this for 10 weeks during fall

2000. By summer 2003 an increasing number of BellCanada’s employees have been equipped with similar de-vices. The wearable devices enabled the workers to accesswork orders and repair manuals wherever they were.These workers are not typical of the group usually mostwired up, that is, white-collar workers. The hands-freeaspect and the ability to communicate anytime, fromanywhere, represent major steps forward for these utilityworkers. A wide variety of employees—technicians, med-ical practitioners, aircraft mechanics, and contractors—areusing or testing such devices.

So far, only a few companies make and sell wearablesfor mobile workers. Bell Canada’s system was developed byXybernaut, a U.S. company that in 2002 had more thana thousand of its units in use around the world, some inoperation and others in pilot programs (see xybernaut.com,2003). Minneapolis-based ViA is another supplier, mostof whose systems are belt-worn (bell.ca). Meanwhile,Bell Canada was impressed with the initial results, and isequipping most of its technicians with wearable.

Of course, a practical problem of wearable devices inmany countries is the weather: What happens whenthe temperature is minus 50 degrees or the humidity is 99percent? Other potential problems also exist: If you arewearing thick gloves, how can you use a keyboard? If it ispouring rain, will the battery short circuit? Various solu-tions are being developed, such as voice input, tapping on ascreen instead of typing, and rainproof electrical systems.

For Further Exploration: What are some other indus-trial applications of similar wearable devices? How do youthink wearable devices could be used in entertainment?

Sources: Compiled from XyberFlash, 2000, and xybernaut.com, 2003.

IT At Work 6.1WEARABLE DEVICES FOR BELLCANADA WORKERS

POM

1

3, 4

2

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F P O


efficiency, and a reduction in administrative work. AirIQ (edispatch.com), forexamaple, offers an interesting solution. AirIQ’s OnLine system combines Inter-net, wireless, GPS, digital mapping, and intelligent information technologies.The system tracks vital information about a vehicle’s direction, speed, andlocation which is provided by a device housed in each of the vehicles beingtracked. Managers can view and access information about the fleet on digitalmaps, monitor vehicles on the Internet, and maintain top operating conditionof their fleet. AirIQ promises savings of about 30 percent in communicationcosts and increases in workforce efficiency of about 25 percent.

IT At Work 6.2 provides a detailed description of a job-dispatching systembeing used by U.S. Fleet to benefit both itself and its customers.

POM

Started in 1997, U.S. Fleet Services URL (usfleet.com) hasgrown to be the leading provider of mobile, onsite fu-

eling in the United States with customers such as FedEx,Home Depot, Coca-Cola, Nabisco, and Office Max. Usingtrucks that resemble home fuel-delivery vehicles, U.S.Fleet travels to its customers, refueling the customers’ ve-hicles onsite, usually during off-hours. In 1999 U.S. Fleetconsidered building a wireless network for its drivers, butdecided against it. Managers considered the project toohard and too expensive given the expected return on in-vestment. However, toward the end of 2001, they changedtheir minds.

While a mobile wireless solution was the end goal, thefirst step in the project actually involved the implementa-tion of an ERP system. This was followed by a Web-basedapplication built on top of the ERP that provided customerswith information about their fuel consumption and localgas taxes, enabling them to do better fleet management.Finally, U.S. Fleet equipped its drivers with handhelddevices that could communicate with the company’sintranet using Wi-Fi.

The handheld device U.S. Fleet selected was the Inter-mec 710 (intermec.com). Besides having a built-in barcodescanner, this device also runs Microsoft’s Pocket PC operat-ing system, supports Visual Basic programs, handles Com-pactFlash cards, and has an integrated wireless radio forshort range Wi-Fi communications. The device is fairlylightweight with a drop-resistant case that is sealed toprotect against harsh weather conditions.

The way the system works is this: Branch managersenter a delivery route and schedule for each driver into acentralized database via the company’s intranet. Eachdriver starts his or her shift by downloading the route and

schedule over the company’s Wi-Fi network into a handheld.When the driver reaches a customer stop, the handheld isused to scan a barcode attached to the customer’s truck. Thisprovides the driver with the type of fuel required by thetruck. After the truck is fueled, a meter on the delivery trucksends a wireless signal to the handheld. The handheld thensyncs with the meter, capturing the type and quantity offuel delivered. The data are stored on the handheld’s Com-pactFlash memory card. When the driver returns to thehome base, the data are unloaded over the Wi-Fi networkto the central database. At this point, the data are availablefor U.S. Fleet and its customers to analyze using businessintelligence tools.

Before the handhelds were deployed, drivers wouldrecord the data manually. The data were then faxed fromthe branch offices to headquarters and entered by handinto the system. Not only were there delays but the datawere also subject to entry errors at both ends of theline. Now, the company and its customers have accuratedata in a timely fashion, which provides the company withfaster invoicing and cash flow. On average, the new systemhas also enabled drivers to service six to seven more stopsper shift.

For Further Exploration: What systems did U.S. Fleetput in place before implementing its wireless solution?Why did U.S. Fleet select the device? How does theIntermec 710 handheld device communicate with thecompany’s intranet? What are the major benefits that U.S.Fleet has realized by combining handheld devices withWi-Fi?

Sources: Compiled from Ludorf, 2002, intermec.com 2001, andusfleet.com 2003.

IT At Work 6.2U.S. FLEET SERVICES AND WIRELESS NETWORKING

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SUPPORTING OTHER TYPES OF WORK. Wireless devices may support a widevariety of mobile workers. The applications will surely grow as the technologymatures and as workers think up new ways to apply the functions of wirelessdevices to their jobs. Here are three examples.

1. Tractors equipped with sensors, onboard computers, and a GPS help farm-ers save time, effort, and money. GPS determines the precise location ofthe tractor and can direct its automatic steering. Because the rows ofplanting resulted form GPS-guiding are more exact, the farmers save bothon seeds and on fertilizers, due to minimized overlapping and spillage.Farmers can also work longer hours with the satellite-controlled steering,taking advantage of good weather, for example. Another saving is due toinstant notification to the service department of any machine that breaksdown. For details see Scanlon (2003).

2. Taco Bell provided its mystery shoppers (shoppers who visit restaurants toconduct a survey unknown to the owners) with handheld computers so thatthey can communicate more quickly with the company’s headquarters. Thevisitors must answer 35 questions, ranging from the speed of service to foodquality. Before the devices, information was provided by filling paper formsthat were mailed overnight. This information was scanned into computersfor processing. The information flow using the handhelds is both faster andmore accurate.

3. Like e-mail, MSM can be used to bolster collaboration; because of its reach ithas special applications. According to Kontzer (2003), the following are 10 ap-plications of SMS for mobile workers: (1) alerting mobile technicians to sys-tem errors, (2) alerting mobile execs to urgent voice messages, (3) confirmingwith mobile sales personnel that a faxed order was received, (4) informingtravelers of delays and changes, (5) enabling contract workers to receive andaccept project offers, (6) keeping stock traders up to date on urgent stock ac-tivity, (7) reminding data services subscribers about daily updates, (8) alertingdoctors to urgent patient situations, (9) enabling mobile sales teams inputdaily sales figures into corporate database, and (10) sending mobile sales repsreminders of appointments and other schedule details.

Supporting customers is the essence of customer relationship management(CRM) systems. Mobile access extends the reach of CRM—both inside and out-side the company—to both employees and business partners on a 24/7 basis, toany place where recipients are located. According to Eklund, 2002, 12 percentof companies in the United States provided corporate users with mobile accessto their CRM systems.

In the large software suites like Siebel’s CRM, the two CRM functions thathave attracted the most interest are sales force automation and field service. Forinstance, a sales person might be on a sales call and need to know recent billinghistory for a particular customer. Or, a field service representative on a servicecall might need to know current availability of various parts in order to fix apiece of machinery. It is these sorts of situations where mobile access to cus-tomer and partner data is invaluable. Two of the more recent offerings in thisarena are Salesforce.com’s Airforce Wireless Edition and Upshot’s Alerts(upshot.com) (see Hill, 2002). See A Closer Look 6.3 for descriptions of the use ofmobile applications for customer support.

Customer Supportand CRM

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Voice portal technology can also be used to provide enhanced customerservice or to improve access to data for employees. For example, customers whoare away from the office could use a vendor’s voice portal to check on the sta-tus of deliveries to a job site. Sales people could check on inventory status dur-ing a meeting to help close a sale. There are a wide variety of CRM applicationsfor voice portal technology. The challenge is in learning how to create the nav-igation and other aspects of interaction that makes customers feel comfortablewith voice-access technology.

Wireless applications in the non-Internet environment have been around sincethe early 1990s. Examples include such applications as: wireless networking,used to pick items out of storage in warehouses via PCs mounted on forklifts;delivery-status updates, entered on PCs inside distribution trucks; and collectionof data such as competitors’ inventories in stores and customer orders, using ahandheld (but not networked) device, from which data were transferred to com-pany headquarters each evening. (See the Maybelline minicase in Chapter 2,and the Hi-Life example in Chapter 4.)

Since then, a large number of Internet-based wireless applications have beenimplemented inside enterprises. Two examples of such intrabusiness applications

The following are two scenarios of wireless applicationsfor mobile employees.

SALES SUPPORT. Linda is a member of the field salesteam at Theru Tools (a fictitious company). Each day shedrives out to her customers in a van stocked with prod-ucts. For each sale, she has to note the customer name,the number and type of products sold, and any spe-cial discounts made. This record-keeping used to bedone manually, and many errors were made, leading tocustomer complaints and lost sales.

Theru implemented a system using low-cost but pow-erful handheld wireless devices. Using Mobile Sales (anapplication for handhelds), accessed via the mysap.comMobile Workplace, Linda and her coworkers in the fieldnow have information at their fingertips, includingupdates on new products and special promotions. Lindacan place orders without delay and get immediate feed-back on product availability and delivery times. What’smore, the system can prompt Linda as she enters orders,and it also can make plausibility checks on the orders,eliminating many of the errors associated with the man-ual process. It also checks to see if she is giving the rightdiscounts to the right customer, and immediately triggersthe invoicing process or prints out a receipt on the spot.

CUSTOMER SERVICE SUPPORT. Michael works forEuroblast, Inc. (another fictitious company) as a serviceengineer. It is his job to provide time-critical mainte-nance and support for the company’s customers’ electro-mechanical control systems. To do so, he needs to knowimmediately when a customer’s system is faltering, whatis malfunctioning, and what type of service contract isin effect.

Michael does not need to carry all of this informationin his head, but instead has it in the palm of his hand.With only a few taps of a stylus, Michael accesses themysap.com Mobile Workplace for all the data he requires,including the name and address of the next customer heshould visit, equipment specifications, parts inventorydata, and so forth.

Once he has completed the job, he can report back onthe time and materials he used, and these data can beemployed for timely billing and service quality analysis.In addition, his company is able to keep track of hisprogress and monitor any major fluctuations in activities.As a result, both Michael and his supervisors are betterinformed and better able to serve their customers.

Source: Compiled from SAP AG Corp. (2000) (advertisement).

A CLOSER LOOK6.3 MOBILE WORKPLACE APPLICATIONSFOR CUSTOMER SUPPORT

WirelessIntrabusinessApplications

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are described below. For other examples, see Online File W6.6 at the book’sWeb site.

1. Employees at companies such as Telecom Italia Mobile (Republica IT 2001)get their monthly pay slips as SMS messages sent to their mobile phone. Themoney itself is transferred electronically to a designated bank account. Themethod is much cheaper for the company and results in less paperwork thanthe old method of mailing monthly pay slips.

2. Kemper Insurance Company has piloted an application that lets property ad-justers report from the scene of an accident. Kemper attached a wireless dig-ital imaging system to a camera that lets property adjusters take pictures inthe field and transmit them to a processing center (Henning, 2002; Nelson,2000). The cameras are linked to Motorola’s StarTac data-enabled cellularphone service, which sends the information to a database. These applicationseliminate delays in obtaining information and in film processing that existwith conventional methods.

As just these two examples indicate, a variety of intrabusiness workflowapplications are possible. Table 6.4 shows typical intrabusiness workflow appli-cations before and after the introduction of wireless services. Some of thesecan be delivered on a wireless intranet; some are offered on the Internet. (Fordetails on intrabusiness applications, see mdsi-advantex.com and symbol.com.The advantages offered by intrabusiness wireless solutions can be seen throughan examination of workflow applications at mdsi-advantex.com.)

Mobile intrabusiness applications are very popular and are typically easierto implement than interbusiness applications, such as B2B and supply chain,discussed next.

Work orders are manually assigned bymultiple supervisors and dispatchers.

Field service technicians commute todispatch center to pick up paper workorders.

Manual record keeping of time, workcompleted, and billing information.

Field service technicians call in for new assignments and often wait because ofradio traffic or unavailable dispatcher.

Complete work orders dropped off at dispatch center at the end of the day formanual entry into the billing or trackingsystem. Uncompleted orders are manu-ally distributed to available technicians.Overtime charges often result.

Work orders are automatically assignedand routed within minutes for maxi-mum efficiency.

Home-based field service techniciansreceive first work order via mobileterminal and proceed directly to firstassignment.

Automated productivity tracking, recordkeeping, and billing updates.

Electronic transmittal of additional workorders with no waiting time.

Technicians close completed workorders from the mobile terminals asthey are completed. At the end of theshift, the technicians sign off and gohome.

Source: From the publicly distributed brochure “RALI Mobile” from Smith Advanced Technology,Inc., 2001.

Before Wireless With Wireless

TABLE 6.4 Intrabusiness Workflow Applications

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6.7 MOBILE CONSUMER AND PERSONAL SERVICE APPLICATIONS 265

Mobile computing solutions are also being applied to B2B and supply chainrelationships. Such solutions enable organizations to respond faster to supplychain disruptions by proactively adjusting plans or by shifting resources relatedto critical supply chain events as they occur. With the increased interest incollaborative commerce comes the opportunity to use wireless communica-tion to collaborate along the supply chain. For this to take place, integrationis needed.

An integrated messaging system is at the center of B2B communications.By integrating the mobile terminal into the supply chain, it is possible to makemobile reservations of goods, check availability of a particular item in thewarehouse, order a particular product from the manufacturing department, orprovide security access to obtain confidential financial data from a managementinformation system.

One example of an integrated messaging system is wireless telemetry, whichcombines wireless communications, vehicle monitoring systems, and vehiclelocation devices. (Telemetry is described further in Section 6.8.) This technologymakes possible large-scale automation of data capture, improved billing timeli-ness and accuracy, less overhead than with the manual alternative, andincreased customer satisfaction through service responsiveness. For example,vending machines can be kept replenished and in reliable operation bywirelessly polling inventory and service status continually to avert costlymachine downtime.

Mobile devices can also facilitate collaboration among members of thesupply chain. There is no longer any need to call a partner company and asksomeone to find certain employees who work with your company. Instead, youcan contact these employees directly, on their mobile devices.

By enabling sales force employees to type orders straight into the ERPwhile at a client’s site, companies can reduce clerical mistakes and improvesupply chain operations. By allowing them to check production schedules andinventory levels, and to access product configuration and available-to-prom-ise/capacity-to-promise (ATP/CTP) functionality to obtain real-time deliveryquotes, they empower their sales force to make more competitive and realis-tic offers to customers. Today’s ERP systems tie into broader supply chain man-agement solutions that extend visibility across multiple tiers in the supplychain. Mobile supply chain management (mSCM) empowers the workforce toleverage these broader systems through inventory management and ATP/CTPfunctionality that extend across multiple supply chain partners and take intoaccount logistics considerations.

6.6 MOBILE B2B AND SUPPLY CHAIN APPLICATIONS

6.7 MOBILE CONSUMER AND PERSONAL SERVICE APPLICATIONS

A large number of applications exist that support consumers and provide per-sonal services (see Coursaris and Hassanein, 2002, and Sadeh, 2002). As anexample, consider the situation of a person going to an international airport.Tasks such as finding the right check-in desk, checking for delayed flights, wait-ing for lost luggage, and even finding a place to eat or the nearest washroomcan be assisted by mobile devices. Online File W6.7 at the book’s Web site lists

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12 problem areas at airports that can be solved using mobile devices. The capa-bilities shown in the table are now possible in some places and are expected tobe more widely available by 2005.

Other consumer and personal service areas in which wireless devices canbe used are described in the following sections. (See also attws.com.)

In the handheld segment of the gaming market, Nintendo has been the long-time leader. In contrast, Nintendo has shown minimal interest in online ormobile games. Here, Sega has capitalized on the popularity of games such asSonic the Hedgehog to garner 2.5 million Japanese subscribers for its mobilegames and entertainment services (Becker, 2002). In Japan, where millions ofcommuters kill time during long train rides, cell phone games have become acultural phenomenon.

With more than one billion cell phones in use today (CellularOnline,2003), the potential audience for mobile games is substantially larger than themarket for other platforms, Playstation and Gameboy included. Because ofthe market potential, Nokia has decided to enter the mobile gaming world, pro-ducing not only the phone/console but also the games that will be deliveredon memory cards. It seeks to develop and market near-distance multiplayergaming (over Bluetooth) and wide area gaming (using cellular networks)(Nokia, 2002).

In July of 2001 Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, and Siemens established theMobile Games Interoperability Forum (MGIF) (mgif.org) to define a range of tech-nical standards that will make it possible to deploy mobile games across multi-game servers, wireless networks, and over different mobile devices. Microsoft ismoving into this field as well.

A topic related to games is mobile entertainment, discussed in Online FileW6.8. Mobile gambling, another related topic, is extremely popular in somecountries (e.g., horse racing in Hong Kong and racing and other events in Aus-tralia). For more on mobile gambling, see sportodds.com.au.)

A number of hotels now offer their guests in-room, high-speed Internet con-nection. Some of these same hotels are beginning to offer Wi-Fi Internet accessin public areas and meeting rooms. One of these is Marriott, which manages2,500 hotels worldwide. After a seven-month test, Marriott has partnered withSTSN (stsn.com), an Internet service provider specializing in hotels, to provideWi-Fi services in the 400 Marriott hotels that already have in-room broadbandInternet access (Reuters, 2002). In the same vein, AT&T has partnered withWayport Inc. to offer Wi-Fi in 475 hotels throughout the United States. In Indiathe Taj Group is offering Wi-Fi access in its hotels (Taj Hotel, 2002), andMegabeam (a wireless provider in England) is starting to offer the same servicein select Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza hotels in London.

While Wi-Fi provides guests with Internet access, to date it has had mini-mal impact on other sorts of hotel services (e.g., check-in). However, a smallnumber of hotels are testing use of the Bluetooth technology. Guests are pro-vided with Bluetooth-enabled phones that can communicate with access pointslocated throughout the hotel. This technology can be used for check-in andcheck-out, for making purchases from hotel vending machines and stores, fortracking loyalty points (see tesalocks.com), and for opening room doors in placeof keys (Mayor, 2001). In 2001, Classwave signed a deal with Starwood Hotels


Mobile Games

Hotels ServicesGo Wireless

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& Resorts worldwide to enable Bluetooth solutions within Starwood’s hotels(Houck, 2001).

For a comparison of traditional and m-commerce hotel services, see OnlineFile W6.9. These capabilities are now available only in some locations, but areexpected to be widely available by 2006.

Today there are two different kinds of technology used for telemedicine applica-tions: (1) storage of data and transferring of digital images from one location toanother, and (2) videoconferencing used for “real-time” consultation betweena patient in one location and a medical specialist in another. In most of thereal-time consultations, the patient is in a rural area and the specialist is in anurban location.

There are a number of impediments to telemedicine. Some states do notallow physicians to provide medical advice across state lines. The threat of mal-practice suits is another issue since there is no “hands-on” interaction betweenthe physician and patient. In addition, from a technical standpoint, manytelemedicine projects are hindered by poor telecommunications support. How-ever, those who are looking ahead to the needs of the aging population are see-ing opportunities to meet some of those needs in emerging technologies. Thenew wireless and mobile technologies, especially the forthcoming generation, notonly offer the possibility of overcoming the hurdles imposed by remote locationsbut also open a number of new and novel application opportunities. Examplesinclude the following.

● Typically, physicians write a prescription and you take it to the pharmacywhere you wait 15–30 minutes for fulfillment. Instead, some new mobilesystems allow physicians to enter the patient prescription onto a palm sizedevice. That information goes by cellular modem (or Wi-Fi) to Med-i-net’s(or similar companies’) services. There, the information is checked for in-surance eligibility and conformity to insurance company regulations. If allchecks out, the prescription is transformed electronically to the appropriatepharmacy. For patients that need refills, the system tracks and notifies physi-cians when it is time to reorder, and the doctor can reissue a prescriptionwith a few clicks.

● At the first warning signs of a heart attack, people are advised to contact emer-gency facilities as soon as possible. Manufacturers are working on wearableheart monitors linked to cell phones that can automatically contact doctors orfamily members at the first sign of trouble.

● The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology is designing portable devices thattransmit the vital signs of avalanche victims up to 80 meters away (Baard,2002). Not only does the device provide location information but it alsoprovides information about body orientation that helps reduce injuries asrescuers dig for the victims.

● In-flight medical emergencies occur more frequently than one might think.Alaska Airlines, for example, deals with about 10 medical emergencies per day(Conrad, 2002). Mobile communications are already being used to attend tomedical emergencies occurring on planes. MedLink, a service of MedAire inPhoenix, provides around-the-clock access to board-certified emergency physi-cians. These mobile services can also remotely control medical equipment, likedefibrillators, located on board the plane.

6.7 MOBILE CONSUMER AND PERSONAL SERVICE APPLICATIONS 267

WirelessTelemedicine

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SVC

● The military is involved in developing mobile telesurgery applications thatenable surgeons in one location to remotely control robotic arms for surgeryin another location. The technology proven to be particularly useful battle-field situations during the 2003 Iraq War.

Many other mobile computer services exist for consumers, in a variety of ser-vice categories. Examples include services providing news, weather, and sportsreports; online language translations; information about tourist attractions(hours, prices); and emergency services. Other services for consumers are listedin Online File W6.10 at the book’s Web site. Also, see the case studies atmobileinfo.com.

Non-Internet mobile applications for consumers, mainly those using smart cards,have existed since the early 1990s. Active use of the cards is reported in trans-portation, where millions of “contactless” cards (also called proximity cards) areused to pay bus and subway fares and road tolls. Amplified remote-sensing cardsthat have an RF (radio frequency) of up to 30 meters are used in several coun-tries for toll collection. IT At Work 6.3 describes one use of proximity cards fortoll collection.

Other Mobile-Computing Services

for Consumers

Non-InternetMobile-Computing

Applications forConsumers

Route 91 is a major eight-lane, east-west highway nearLos Angeles. Traffic is especially heavy during rush

hours. California Private Transportation Company (CPT)built six express toll lanes along a 10-mile stretch inthe median of the existing Highway 91. The express lanesystem has only one entrance and one exit, and it is totallyoperated with EC technologies. The system works asfollows.

Only prepaid subscribers can drive on the road. Sub-scribers receive an automatic vehicle identification (AVI)device that is placed on the rearview mirror of the car. Thedevice, about the size of a thick credit card, includes a mi-crochip, an antenna, and a battery. A large sign over thetollway tells drivers the current fee for cruising the expresslanes. In a recent year it varied from $0.50 in slow traffichours to $3.25 during rush hours.

Sensors in the pavement let the tollway computer knowthat a car has entered; the car does not need to slow orstop. The AVI makes radio contact with a transceiverinstalled above the lane. The transceiver relays the car’sidentity through fiber-optic lines to the control center,where a computer calculates the fee for that day’s trip. Thesystem accesses the driver’s account and the fare is auto-

matically deducted from the driver’s prepaid account. Amonthly statement is sent to the subscriber’s home.

Surveillance cameras record the license numbers of carswithout AVIs. These cars can be stopped by police at theexit or fined by mail. Video cameras along the tollway alsoenable managers to keep tabs on traffic, for example, send-ing a tow truck to help a stranded car. Also, throughknowledge of the traffic volume, pricing decisions can bemade. Raising the price as traffic increases ensures that thetollway will not be jammed.

The system saves commuters between 40 and 90minutes each day, so it is in high demand. An interestingextension of the system is the use of the same AVIs forother purposes. For example, they can be used in paidparking lots. Someday you may be even recognized whenyou enter the drive-through lane of McDonald’s and avoice asks you, “Mr. Smart, do you want your usual mealtoday?”

For Further Exploration: What is the role of the wire-less component of this system? What are the advantages ofthe system to commuters?

Source: 91expresslanes.com, 2002.

IT At Work 6.3 THE HIGHWAY 91 PROJECT

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6.8 LOCATION-BASED COMMERCE 269

As discussed in Section 6.1, location-based commerce (l-commerce) refersto the localization of products and services. Location-based services are attrac-tive to both consumers and businesses alike. From a consumer’s or businessuser’s viewpoint, l-commerce offers safety (you can connect to an emergencyservice with a mobile device and have the service pinpoint your exact location),convenience (you can locate what is near you without having to consult a direc-tory, pay phone, or map), and productivity (you can optimize your travel andtime by determining points of interest within close proximity). From a businesssupplier’s point of view, l-commerce offers an opportunity to provide servicesthat meet customers’ needs.

The basic l-commerce services revolve around five key areas:

● Location: determining the basic position of a person or a thing (e.g., car orboat).

● Navigation: plotting a route from one location to another.

● Tracking: monitoring the movement of a person or a thing (e.g., a packageor vehicle).

● Mapping: creating maps of specific geographical locations.

● Timing: determining the precise time at a specific location.

Providing location-based services requires the following location-based and net-work technologies:

● Position Determining Equipment (PDE). This equipment identifies the loca-tion of the mobile device (either through GPS or by locating the nearest basestation). The position information is sent to the mobile positioning center.

● Mobile Positioning Center (MPC). The MPC is a server that manages thelocation information sent from the PDE.

● Location-based technology. This technology consists of groups of servers thatcombine the position information with geographic- and location-specificcontent to provide an l-commerce service. For instance, location-basedtechnology could present a list of addresses of nearby restaurants based onthe position of the caller, local street maps, and a directory of businesses.

● Geographic content. Geographic contents consists of streets, road maps, ad-dresses, routes, landmarks, land usage, Zip codes, and the like. This informa-tion must be delivered in compressed form for fast distribution over wirelessnetworks.

● Location-specific content. Location-specific content is used in conjunctionwith the geographic content to provide the location of particular services.Yellow page directories showing the location of specific business and servicesexemplify this type of content.

Figure 6.6 shows how these technologies are used in conjunction with oneanother to deliver location-based services. Underlying these technologies areglobal positioning and geographical information systems.

GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM (GPS). As indicated at the start of the chapter,a global positioning system (GPS) is a wireless system that uses satellites to

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L-CommerceTechnologies

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enable users to determine their position anywhere on the earth. GPS equipmenthas been used extensively for navigation by commercial airlines and ships andfor locating trucks and buses (as in the opening case study).

GPS is supported by 24 U.S. government satellites that are shared world-wide. Each satellite orbits the earth once every 12 hours on a precise path, atan altitude of 10,900 miles. At any point in time, the exact position of eachsatellite is known, because the satellite broadcasts its position and a time signalfrom its onboard atomic clock, which is accurate to one-billionth of a second.Receivers also have accurate clocks that are synchronized with those of thesatellites.

GPS handsets can be stand-alone units or can be plugged into or embeddedin a mobile device. They calculate the position (location) of the handsets (orsend the information to be calculated centrally). Knowing the speed of the satel-lite signals (186,272 miles per second), engineers can find the location of anyreceiving station (latitude and longitude) to within 50 feet by triangulation, usingthe distance from a GPS to three satellites to make the computation. GPS soft-ware then computes the latitude and longitude of the receiver. For an onlinetutorial on GPS, see trimble.com/gps.

GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM (GIS). The location provided by GPS isexpressed in terms of latitude and longitude. To make that information usefulto businesses and consumers it is necessary in many cases to relate those mea-sures to a certain place or address. This is done by inserting the latitude andlongitude onto an electronic map, which is known as a geographical infor-mation system (GIS). The GIS data visualization technology integrates GSPdata onto digitized map displays. (See Steede-Terry, 2000, for an explanation ofhow this is done.) Companies such as mapinfo.com provide the GIS core spatial

Find Location

Visualize

Directions

Intelligence

Geocoding

Location-basedServices & Solutions

● Enhanced Billing

● Personalized Portals

● Buddy Finder

● Emergency Assistance

● Service Call Routing

● Find Nearest Services

Mapping

Routing

Content

FIGURE 6.6 Location-based Services InvolvingMaps (Source: Mapinfo.com,2001.)

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FP

O

6.8 LOCATION-BASED COMMERCE 271

technology, maps, and other data content needed in order to power location-based GIS/GPS services (see Figure 6.7).

An interesting application of GPS/GIS is now available from several carmanufacturers (e.g., Toyota, Cadillac) and car rental companies (e.g., Hertz,Avis). Some cars have a navigation system that indicates how far away thedriver is from gas stations, restaurants, and other locations of interest. The GPSknows where the car is at any time, so the application can map the route forthe driver to a particular destination. Any GPS application can be classified astelemetry, a topic discussed further later on.

LOCATION-BASED ADVERTISING. Imagine that you are walking near a Star-bucks store, but you do not even know that one is there. Suddenly your cellphone beeps with a message: “Come inside and get a 15 percent discount.”Your wireless device was detected, and similar to the pop-up ads on your PC,advertising was directed your way (Needleman, 2002). You could use permis-sion marketing to shield yourself from location-based advertising; if the sys-tem knows that you do not drink coffee, for example, you would not be senta message from Starbucks.

Another use of wireless devices for advertising is described by Raskin (2003).In this case, a dynamic billboard ad will be personalized specifically for youwhen your car approaches a certain billboard and the system knows what youlikes and preferences are. Your car will be tracked by a GPS, every 20 seconds.A computer scans the areas in which billboards are visible, and by cross-referencing information about your location and your likes, a personalized adcan be placed on the billboard so you will see it as you pass.

Yet another method of location-based advertising involves putting adson the top of taxicabs. The add will be changed based on the taxi location.For example, a taxi cruising in the theater district in New York City might showan ad for a play or a restaurant in that area; when the cab goes to another

Internet

Cellular Phone Station

Location Server

GPS Satellites

ServiceCenter

ContentsCenter

FIGURE 6.7A Smartphone with GPSSystem in L-Commerce

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neighborhood, the ad might be for a restaurant or a business in the other areaof the city.

If someone dials 911 from a regular wired phone, it is easy for the emergency 911service to pinpoint the location of the phone. But, what happens if someone placesa 911 call from a mobile phone? How can the emergency service locate the caller?A few years ago, the U.S. Federal Communication Commission (FCC) issued adirective to wireless carriers, requiring that they establish services to handlewireless 911 (e-911) calls. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this require-ment, more than 156,000 wireless 911 calls are made every day, representing morethan half the 911 calls made daily in the United States (Sarkar, 2003).

The e-911 directive is to take effect in two phases, although the specifics ofthe phases vary from one wireless carrier (e.g., AT&T, Cingular, Sprint, etc.) toanother. Phase I requires carriers, upon appropriate request by a local Public SafetyAnswering Point (PSAP), to report the telephone number of a wireless 911 callerand the location of the cellular antenna that received the call. Phase II, whichis being rolled out over a four-year period from October 2002 to December 2005,requires wireless carriers to provide information that will enable the PSAP tolocate a caller within 50 meters 67 percent of the time and within 150 meters95 percent of the time. By the end of Phase II, 100 percent of the new cellphones and 95 percent of all cell phones will have these location capabilities. Itis expected that many other countries will follow the example of the UnitedStates in providing e-911 service.

Some expect that in the future cars will have a device for automatic crashnotification (ACN). This still-experimental device will automatically notify thepolice of an accident involving an ACN-equipped car and its location. Also, fol-lowing a school bus hijacking in Pennsylvania, the state legislature is consideringa bill to mandate satellite tracking in all school buses.

Telematics refers to the integration of computers and wireless communica-tions in order to improve information flow (see Chatterjee et al., 2002, andZhao, 2002). It uses the principles of telemetry, the science that measures phys-ical remoteness by means of wireless transmission from a remote source (suchas a vehicle) to a receiving station. MobileAria (mobilearia.com) is a proposedstandards-based telematics platform designed to bring multimedia servicesand m-commerce to automobiles.

Using mobile telemetry, technicians can diagnose maintenance problems inequipment. Car manufacturers use the technology for remote vehicle diagnosisand preventive maintenance. Finally, doctors can monitor patients and controlmedical equipment from a distance.

General Motors Corporation popularized automotive telematics with itsOnStar system. Nokia has set up a business unit, called Smart Traffic Products,that is focusing solely on telematics. Nokia believes that every vehicle will beequipped with at least one Internet Protocol (IP) address by the year 2010.Smart cars and traffic products are discussed in more detail in Section 6.9.

What is holding back the widespread use of location-based commerce? Severalfactors come into play:

● Accuracy. Some of the location technologies are not as accurate as peopleexpect them to be. However, a good GPS provides a location that is accurate

E-911 EmergencyCell Phone Calls

Telematics andTelemetry

Applications

Barriers toL-Commerce

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6.9 PERVASIVE COMPUTING 273

up to 15 meters. Less expensive, but less accurate, technologies can be usedinstead to find an approximate location (within about 500 meters).

● The cost-benefit justification. For many potential users, the benefits ofl-commerce don’t justify the cost of the hardware or the inconvenience andtime required to utilize the service (e.g., Hamblen, 2001). After all, theyseem to feel, they can just as easily obtain information the “old-fashioned”way.

● The bandwidth of GSM networks. GSM bandwidth is currently limited; it willbe improved as 3G technology spreads. As bandwidth improves, applicationswill improve, which will attract more customers.

● Invasion of privacy. When “always-on” cell phones are a reality, a numberof people will be hesitant to have their whereabouts and movements trackedthroughout the day, even if they have nothing to hide. This issue will beheightened when our cars, homes, appliances, and all sorts of other consumergoods are connected to the Internet, as discussed in the next section.

6.9 PERVASIVE COMPUTING

Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi thriller Minority Report depicts the world of 2054. Basedon a 1956 short story by Philip K. Dick, the film immerses the viewer in theconsumer-driven world of pervasive computing 50 years from now. Spielbergput together a three-day think tank, headed by Peter Schwartz, president ofGlobal Business Network (gbn.com), to produce a realistic view of the future(Mathieson, 2002). The think tank projected out from today’s marketing andmedia technologies—Web cookies, GPS, Bluetooth, personal video recorders,barcode scanners, and the like—to create a society where billboards beckon youby name, newspapers are delivered instantly over broadband wireless networks,holographic hosts greet you at retail stores, and cereal boxes broadcast live com-mercials. While the technologies in the film were beyond the leading edge, nonewas beyond the realm of the plausible.

A world in which virtually every object has processing power with wireless orwired connections to a global network is the world of pervasive computing.(The term pervasive computing also goes by the names ubiquitous computing,embedded computing, or augmented computing.) The idea of pervasive computing hasbeen around for years. However, the current version was articulated by MarkWeiser in 1988 at the computer science lab of Xerox PARC. From Weiser’s per-spective, pervasive computing was the opposite of virtual reality. In virtual reality,the user is immersed in a computer-generated environment. In contrast, pervasivecomputing is invisible “everywhere computing” that is embedded in the objectsaround us—the floor, the lights, our cars, the washing machine, our cell phones,our clothes, and so on (Weiser, 1991, 2002).

By “invisible,” Weiser did not mean to imply that pervasive computing deviceswould not be seen. He meant, rather, that unlike a desktop computer, theseembedded computers would not intrude on our consciousness. Think of a pairof eyeglasses. The wearer doesn’t have to think about using them. He or shesimply puts them on and they augment the wearer’s ability to see. This isWeiser’s vision for pervasive computing. The user doesn’t have to think about

Invisible ComputingEverywhere

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how to use the processing power in the object; rather, the processing powerautomatically helps the user perform a task.

Invisible is how you would describe some of the new embedded technologyalready in use at Prada’s “epicenter” stores in New York, San Francisco, and LosAngeles (Duan, 2002). Prada is a high-end fashion retailer. In the company’sepicenters, the items for sale have an RFID (radio frequency identification)tag attached. The tag contains a processor and an antenna. If a customer wantsto know about a particular item, she or he can move with the item toward oneof the many displays around the store. The display automatically detects theitem and provides sketches, video clips of models wearing the item, andinformation about the item (color, cut, fabric, materials, and availability). If acustomer takes a garment into one of the dressing rooms, the tags areautomatically scanned and detected via an antenna embedded in the dressingroom. Information about the item will be automatically displayed on aninteractive touch screen in the dressing room. The dressing rooms also have avideo-based “Magic Mirror.” When the customer tries on the garment and turnsaround in front of the mirror, the images will be captured and played back inslow motion. (See Section 6.10 for a related privacy issue).

Invisible is also a term that characterizes a device manufactured and soldby Fitsense Technology (fitsense.com), a Massachusetts developer of Internetsports and fitness monitors. With this 1-ounce device that is clipped to ashoelace, runners are able to capture their speed and the distance they haverun. The device transmits the data via a radio signal to a wrist device that cancapture and transmit the data wirelessly to a desktop computer for analysis.Along the same lines, Champion Chip (championchip.com), headquartered in theNetherlands, has developed a system that keeps track of the tens of thousandsof participants in very popular long-distance races. The tracking system includesminiature transponders attached to the runners’ shoelaces or ankle bracelets andantenna mats at the finish line that use radio frequencies to capture start times,splits, and finish times as the runners cross them.

Active badges can be worn as ID cards by employees who wish to stay intouch at all times while moving around the corporate premises. The clip-onbadge contains a microprocessor that transmits its (and its wearer’s) location tothe building’s sensors, which send it to a computer. When someone wants tocontact the badge wearer, the phone closest to the person is identified auto-matically. When badge wearers enter their offices, their badge identifies themand logs them on to their personal computers.

Similarly, memory buttons are nickel-sized devices that store a small data-base relating to whatever it is attached to. These devices are analogous to abar code, but with far greater informational content and a content that issubject to change. For example, the U.S. Postal Service is placing memory but-tons in residential mailboxes to track and improve collection and deliveryschedules.

For a short list of the technical foundation of pervasive computing, seeOnline File W6.11 at the book’s Web site.

Location can be a significant differentiator when it comes to advertising services.However, knowing that the user is at the corner of the street will not tell youwhat he or she is looking for. For this, we might need to know the time of day,or access our user’s calendar or other relevant contextual attributes. Context


ContextualComputing and

Context Awareness

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awareness refers to capturing a broad range of contextual attributes to betterunderstand what the consumer needs, and what products or services he or shemight possibly be interested in.

Context awareness is part of contextual computing, which refers to theenhancement of a user’s interactions by understanding the user, the context, andthe applications and information being used, typically across a wide set of usergoals (see Pitkow et al., 2002 for details). Contextual computing is about activelyadapting the computational environment for each user, at each point of computing.

Contextual computing and context awareness are viewed by many as theHoly Grail of m-commerce, as contextual computing ultimately offers theprospect of applications that could anticipate our every wish and provide uswhat the exact information and services we are looking for—and also help usfilter all those annoying promotional messages that we really do not care for.Such applications are futuristic at the present time, but as shown in IT At Work6.4 they already exist in a research university.

According to Estrin et al. (2000), 98 percent of all processors on the planet arenot in traditional desktop computer systems, nor even in laptops. They are inhousehold appliances, vehicles, and machines. Such existing and future appli-cations of pervasive computing are illustrated in Figure 6.8. Notice that all 15devices can be connected to the Internet. Several of these applications aredescribed in the remaining of this section. We will look at four applications inparticular: smart homes, smart appliances, smart cars, and smart things.

In a smart home, your home computer, television, lighting and heating controls,home security system, and many appliances within the home can ”talk” to eachother via the Internet or a home intranet. These linked systems can be con-trolled through various devices, including your pager, cellular phone, television,home computer, PDA, or even your automobile.

In the United States, tens of thousands of homes are already equipped withhome-automation devices, and there are signs that Europe—which has muchlower home Internet penetration levels—is also warming to the idea. Forinstance, a 2001 study by the UK’s Consumers’ Association found that almosthalf those surveyed were interested in having the functions a “smart home”could offer, if they were affordable (Edgington, 2001).

Here are some of the tasks and services supported today by home automa-tion systems:

● Lighting. You can program your lights to go on, off, or dim to match yourmoods and needs for comfort and security.

● Energy management. A home’s HVAC (heat, ventilation, and air condition-ing) system can be programmed for maximum energy efficiency andcontrolled with a touch panel. When you leave in the morning, your auto-mated system calibrates to the right temperature so that you don’t waste en-ergy when you’re not around. Conversely, you can get a head start in crank-ing up the heat or air conditioner before you get home by calling theautomated system via your telephone or PDA.

● Water control. What if you are on a trip and the water hose to your dish-washer bursts? Watercop (watercop.com) is a device manufactured byDynaQuip Controls Corporation that can handle this situation. The device

Applications ofPervasive

Computing

Smart Homes

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SVC

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is known for itsadvanced science projects including robotics and

artificial intelligence. Students participate in a context-awareness experiment in the following manner: Eachparticipating student is equipped with a PDA from whichhe or she can access Internet services via the campusWi-Fi network. The students operate in a context-awareenvironment whose architecture is shown in the attachedfigure.

messages, determine what to show to the students, andwhen. For example, while attending classes the studentmay block all messages, except from her boyfriend. That is,certain messages will be shown only if the student is in acertain place and/or time; others will not be shown at all.

A user’s context information can be accessed by acollection of personal agents, each in charge of assisting withdifferent tasks, while locating and invoking relevant Internetservices identified through services registries (see the figure).

IT At Work 6.4 CONTEXT-AWARE ENVIRONMENT AT CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

A user’s content (left of figure) includes his or her:

● Calendar information.

● Current location (position), which is regularly up-dated using location-tracking technology.

● Weather information, indicating whether it is sunny,raining, or snowing, and the current outside tempera-ture (environment).

● Social context information, including the student’sfriends and his or her teachers, classmates, and soforth.

The preferences of each student are solicited andentered into system, as is a personal profile. This is shownas the “preferences and permissions” in the figure. All ofthe above information helps the system to filter incoming

An example of a simple agent is a restaurant concierge thatgives suggestions to students about places to have lunch, de-pending on their food preferences, the time they have avail-able before their next class, their location on campus, andthe weather. For example, when it is raining, the agent at-tempts to find a place that does not require going outside ofthe building where the student is located. The recommenda-tion (usually several choices) appears on the PDA, with anoverall rating and a “click for details” possibility.

For Further Exploration: Does the usefulness of such aservice justify the need to disclose private preferences? Cansuch a system be developed for consumers who are notmembers of a defined community such as a university?

Source: Compiled from Sadeh (2002).

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relies on a series of strategically placed moisture-detection sensors. When themoisture level rises in one of these sensors, it sends a wireless signal to theWatercop control unit, which turns off the main water supply.

● Home security and communications. The window blinds, garage doors, frontdoor, smoke detectors, and home security systems can all be automated froma network control panel. These can all be programmed to respond to sched-uled events (e.g., when you go on vacation).

● Home theater. You can create a multi-source audio and video center aroundyour house that you can control with a touch pad or remote. For example,if you have a DVD player in your bedroom but want to see the same moviein your child’s room, you can just click a remote to switch rooms. Ditto forthe music you want to pipe into different rooms.

Analysts generally agree that the market opportunities for smart homes willtake shape over the next three to five years. These opportunities are being

fpoauthor supplied

e- file not availablefor final art

FIGURE 6.8 Embedded Computing Devices Everywhere (Source: Estrin et al., 2000, pp. 38–39.)

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driven by the increasing adoption of broadband (cable and DSL) services andthe proliferation of wireless local area networks (Wi-Fi) within the home andby the trend to integrate currently independent devices. Online File W6.12shows a wireless connected house.

One of the key elements of a smart home is the smart appliance, an Internet-ready appliance that can be controlled by a small handheld device or desktopcomputer via a home intranet (wire or wireless) or the public Internet.

One organization that is focused on smart appliances is the Internet HomeAlliance (internethomealliance.com). The alliance is made up of a number of appli-ance manufacturers (e.g., Whirlpool and Sunbeam), computer hardwarecompanies (e.g., IBM and Cisco), retailers (e.g., Best Buy), and vendors spe-cializing in home automation (e.g., Lutron Electronics). The mission of thealliance is to accelerate the process of researching, developing, and testing newhome products and services that require a broadband or persistent connectionto the Internet. Online File W16.13 exemplifies some the types of smart appli-ances being developed by members of the alliance; in this case, however, theappliances are being used for commercial purposes, not in the home.

The appliance manufacturers are interested not only in the sale of appli-ances but also in service. In most cases, when an appliance is purchased andtaken home, the manufacturer loses touch with the appliance unless thecustomer registers the product for warranty purposes. Potentially, a networkedappliance could provide a manufacturer, as well as the owner of the appliance,with information that could be used to capture or report on the operation, per-formance, and usage of a device. In addition, the networked appliance couldprovide information for diagnostic purposes—for monitoring, troubleshooting,repairing, or maintaining the device (Pinto, 2002).

To date, however, consumers have shown little interest in smart appliances.As a result, the manufacturers of these appliances are focusing on improvingpeople’s lives by eliminating repetitive, non-quality tasks. One example is Sun-beam’s corded HLT (Home Linking Technology) products that communicate withone another using an embedded technology called PLC (Power Line Commu-nication). For instance, an HTL alarm clock can coordinate an entire morning’sroutine: The heating system, the coffee maker, and the lights in the kids’ roomsgo on, and the electric blanket goes off.

Whether offerings of this sort will prove is an open question. In the nearterm, one of the biggest technical barriers to widespread adoption of smart appli-ances will continue to be the fact that most homes lack broadband connectionto the Internet. However, this situation is rapidly changing.

Every car today has at least one computer on board to operate the engine, reg-ulate fuel consumption, and control exhaust emissions. The average automobileon the road today has 20 or more microprocessors, which are truly invisible. Theyare under the hood, behind the dash, in the door panels, and on the undercar-riage. Microprocessors control the radio, decide when your transmission shouldshift gears, remember your seat position, and adjust the temperature in the pas-senger cabin. They can make the suspension work better, help you see in thedark, and warn when a tire is low. In the shop, the onboard microprocessors areused to diagnose problems. Car computers often operate independently, but someswap data among themselves—a growing trend. The microprocessors in a car


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Smart Cars

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require little maintenance, continuing to operate through extreme temperature,vibration, and humidity.

In 1998, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) identified eightareas where microprocessors and intelligent systems could improve or impactauto safety (www.its.dot.gov/ivi/ivi.htm). The list included four kinds of colli-sion avoidance, (see Jones, 2001), computer “vision” for cars, vehicle stabil-ity, and two kinds of driver monitoring. The automotive industry is in theprocess of testing a variety of experimental systems addressing the areas iden-tified by the DOT. For example, GM in partnership with Delphi AutomotiveSystems has developed an Automotive Collision Avoidance System thatemploys radar, video cameras, special sensors, and GPS to monitor traffic anddriver actions in an effort to reduce collisions with other vehicles and pedes-trians (Sharke, 2003).

There is also a growing trend to connect car microprocessors to mobile net-works and to the Internet (see Moore, 2000). Emergency assistance, drivingdirections, and e-mail are some of the services these connections can support.To increase safety, drivers can use voice-activated controls, even to access theWeb (Bretz, 2001) GM’s OnStar system (onstar.com) already supports many ofthese services (see Online File W6.14).

OnStar is the forerunner of smart cars of the future. The next generationof smart cars is likely to provide even more automated services, especially inemergency situations. For instance, although OnStar will automatically signalthe service center when the air bags are deployed and will immediately contactemergency services if the driver and passengers are incapacitated, what OnStarcannot provide is detailed information about a crash. Newer systems are underdevelopment that will automatically determine the speed upon impact,whether the car has rolled over, and whether the driver and passengers werewearing seat belts. Information of this sort might be used by emergencypersonnel to determine the severity of the accident and what types of serviceswill be needed.

Ideally smart cars eventually will be able to drive themselves. Known as“autonomous land vechicles” (ALVs), these cars follow GIS maps and use sen-sors in a wireless environment to identify obstacles. These vehicles are alreadyon the roads in California, Pennsylvania, and Germany (on an experimentalbase, of course).

Several other devices and instruments can be made to be “smart.” Some exam-ples are discussed below.

BARCODES. A typical barcode, known as the Universal Product Code (UPC), ismade up of 12 digits, in various groups. The first two show the country whereit was issued, the next four represent the manufacturer, and the remaining sixare the product code assigned by the manufacturer. On a package the code isrepresented by a series of bars and spaces of varying widths.

Barcodes are used at various points in the supply chain to track inventoryand shipments and to identify items at the point of sale. A barcode scanner isrequired to support these tasks. It consists of a scanning device for reading thecode and translating it into an electrical output, a decoder for converting theelectrical output to data that a computer or terminal can recognize, and a cablethat connects the decoder to a computer or terminal.

Smart “Things”

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Barcodes have worked pretty well over the past 25 years. But, they havetheir limitations. First, they require line-of-sight of the scanning device. This isfine in a store but can pose substantial problems in a manufacturing plant, awarehouse, or on a shipping/receiving dock. Second, they are printed on paper,meaning that they can be ripped, soiled, or lost. Third, the barcode identifiesthe manufacturer and product, not the item. For example, every carton of milkof a given producer has the same barcode, regardless of when it was produced.This makes a barcode useless in determining things like the expiration date.There is an alternative identification method, called Auto-ID, that overcomesthe limitations of barcodes.

AUTO-ID. This method has been promoted over the past couple of years by theAuto Identification (Auto-ID) Center (autoidcenter.org), a joint partnershipamong more than 87 global companies and three of the world’s leading researchuniversities—MIT in the U.S., the University of Cambridge in the U.K., and theUniversity of Adelaide in Australia. The companies include manufacturers (e.g.,Coca-Cola, Gillette, and Canon), retailers (e.g., Wal-Mart, Tesco in the U.K.),shippers (e.g., UPS and the U.S. Postal Service), standards bodies (e.g., UniformCode Council), and government agencies (e.g., the U.S. Department of Defense).

The mission of the Auto-ID Center goes well beyond replacing one codewith another. Its stated aim is to create an Internet of “things,” a networkthat connects computers to objects—boxes of laundry detergent, pairs of jeans,airplane engines. This Internet of things will provide the ability to track indi-vidual items as they move from factories to store shelves to recycling facilities.This will make possible near-perfect supply chain visibility.

The key technical elements of the Auto-ID system and the explanation howit work are provided in Online File W6.15.

RFID: CAPABILITIES AND COST. RFID has been around awhile. During WorldWar II, RFIDs were used to identify friendly aircraft. Today, they are used inwireless tollbooth systems, such as E-Z Pass. In Singapore they are used in asystem called Electronic Road Pricing, which charges different prices to drive ondifferent roads at different times, encouraging drivers to stay off busy roads atbusy times. Every car has an RFID tag that communicates with card readers onthe major roads (similar to the story of Highway 91 in IT At Work 6.3).

Until now the problem with RFID has been the expense. Tags have cost atleast 50 cents, which makes them unusable for low-priced items. A Californiacompany called Alien Technology (alientechnology.com) has invented a way tomass-produce RFID tags for less than 10 cents apiece for large production runs.In January 2003, Gillette placed an order with Alien Technology for 500 mil-lion RFID tags (RFID Journal, 2002). Gillette uses the tags in a number of trialprograms. In one of the early trials, Gillette attached the tags to the Mach 3razors they ship to Wal-Mart, whose store shelves are equipped with specialRFID readers. The overall success of RFID tags in the market place will dependon the outcome of trials such as this.

Smart appliances, cars and barcodes can certainly make our livees more com-fortable, but pervasive computing can make even larger contribution when largenumber of computing devices are put together, creating massive intelligent


Large-ScalePervasive Systems

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systems. These systems include factories, airports, schools, and even entire cities.At the moment most of them are experimental and on a relatively small scale.Let’s look at some examples.

SMART SCHOOLS. The University of California at Los Angeles is experiment-ing with a smart kindergarten (Chen et al., 2002). Exploring communicationbetween students, teachers, and the environment, the project aims to create asmart learning environment.

Intelligent Elder-Care. The increased age of the population in many coun-tries brings a problem of caring for more elderly for longer times. Long-termcare facilities, where different patients require different level of care, bring theproblem of how to provide such care efficiently and effectively. The experi-mental project titled Elite-care has demonstrated the benefits of using pervasivecomputing in such settings, as described in IT At Work 6.5.

SMART OFFICES. The original work of Weiser (1991) centered around anintelligent office. And indeed several projects are experimenting with such asenvironment which can interact with users through voice, gesture, or move-ments and can anticipate their activities. By monitoring office employees, theSmartOffice (Le Gal et al., 2001) even anticipates user intensions and augmentsthe environment to communicate useful information.

DIGITAL CITIES. According to Ishida (2002a) the concept of digital cities is tobuild an area in which people in regional communities can interact and shareknowledge, experiences, and mutual interests. Digital cities integrate urbaninformation (both real time and stored) and create public spaces for people liv-ing in or visiting the cities. Digital cities are being developed all over the world(see Ishida, 2002a, 2002b). In Europe alone there are over 100 projects (e.g.,Amsterdam, Helsinki).

In the city of Kyota, Japan, for example, the digital city complements andcorresponds to the physical city (Ishida, 2002a) Three layers are constructed:The first is an information layer, where Web archives and real-time sensory dataare integrated to provide information any where, any time. The second layer is2D and 3D interfaces, which provide views of car, buses, and pictures that illus-trate city services (for attractive and natural presentation). Finally, there is aninteractive layer. Extensive use of GIS supports the project. One area of empha-sis is a digital tour guide to visitors. Also, the system use avatars (animated com-puter characters) that appear on a handheld device and “walk” with visitorsaround the city in real time.

Another digital-city experiment is the city of Lancaster (U.K), wirelessdevices are being used to improve services to both visitors and residents (Davieset al., 2002). The experimental Lancaster City Guide is based on a network ofWi-Fi context-sensitive and location-aware applications. One area that was devel-oped first is services to tourists. By knowing where the tourist is (using a GPS)and his (her) preferences, the system can recommend tourist sites in the samegeneral area. (This application is similar to the Carnegie Mellon applicationdescribed in IT At Work 6.4.)

For other digital-city experiments, see Raskin, 2003, Mankins, 2002, and Flecket al., 2002. For information onother large-scale pervasive computing projects, seeWeise, 2002, and Standford, 2002b.

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6.10 INHIBITORS AND BARRIERS OF MOBILE COMPUTING

Several limitations are either slowing down the spread of mobile computing or areleaving many m-commerce customers disappointed or dissatisfied (e.g., see Islamand Fayad, 2003). Representative inhibitors and barriers of mobile computing arecovered in the following discussion.

SVCIT At Work 6.5USING PERVASIVE COMPUTING TO DELIVER ELDER CARE

Delivering health services to the elderly is becoming amajor societal problem in many countries, especially

in countries where there are relatively fewer and feweryoung people to take care of more and more elderly. Theproblem is already acute in Japan, and it is expected to bevery serious in 10 to 15 years in several European coun-tries and in China. Managing and delivering health care in-volves large number of diversified decisions, ranging fromallocation of resources to determining what treatment toprovide to each patient at each given time.

Elderly residents in assisted-living facilities require dif-fering levels of care. Some residents need minimal assis-tance, others have short-term memory problems, and yetothers have more severe problems like Alzheimer’s diseaseso they require more supervision and help. At Elite Care’sEstates Cluster Residential Care Facility in Milwaukie, Ore-gon, pervasive computing is being used to increase the au-tonomy and care level of all of its residents, regardless oftheir individual needs.

Elite Care, a family owned business (elite-care.com), hasbeen built from the ground up to provide “high tech, hightouch” programs. Its advisory committee, which includesamong others representatives from the Mayo Clinic, Har-vard University, the University of Michigan, the Universityof Wisconsin, and Sandia National Laboratory, has con-tributed a number of ideas that have been put into practice.

The entire facility is wired with a 30 miles network of(wireline and wireless) of unobtrusive sensors and other de-vices including: biosensors (e.g., weight sensors) attached toeach resident’s bed; movement sensors embedded in badgesworn by the residents and staff (wearable computers); panicbuttons used to call for help; Internet access via touchscreens in each room; video conferencing using Webcams;and climate control, lights, and other regulated appliances.These devices and others allow the staff to monitor variouspatient activity. For example, staff can determine the loca-tion of any patient, to tell whether he or she is in anexpected area of the facility. Devices that monitor length of

absence from bed might alert personnel that the patient hasfallen or is incapacitated in other ways. Medical personnelcan watch for weight loss (possibly indicating conditions likeimpending congestive heart failure), restlessness at night(indicating conditions like insufficient pain medication), andfrequency of trips to the bathroom (indicating medical prob-lems like infection). Also, close monitoring of conditions en-ables staff to give medicine and/or other treatments asneeded, rather than at predetermined periods. All of thesecapabilities enable true one-to-one care, which is both moreeffective and less expensive.

One of the initial concerns with these monitors is that theprivacy of the residents would be unnecessarily invaded. Toalleviate these concerns, residents and their families aregiven the choice of participating or not. Most choose to par-ticipate because the families believe that these monitors pro-vide better tracking and care. The monitors also increase theautonomy of all the patients because their use reduces theneed for staff to constantly monitor residents in person, es-pecially those with more acute care needs.

All of these sensors and systems are connected througha high-speed Ethernet (see Tech Guide 4). The data pro-duced by the sensors and systems is stored in a databaseand can be used to alert the staff in real-time if necessary.These data are used for analytical purposes or for develop-ing individualized care programs. The same database is alsoused for administrative purposes such as monitoring staffperformance in timely delivery.

A similar concept is used in Swan Village of Care inBentley, Australia. At the present time such projects areexperimental and expensive, but some day they will beaffordable to many.

For Further Exploration: What types of data do thesedevices provide? How can pervasive computing increasethe quality of elder care? How to consider the privacy issue?

Sources: Compiled from Stanford, 2002, elite-care.com, and ECC.online.wa.gov.au/news (January 14, 2003).

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When mobile Internet users visit mobile Internet sites, the usability of the siteis critical to attract attention and retain “user stickiness” (the degree to whichusers stay at a site). There are three dimensions to usability, namely effectiveness,efficiency, and satisfaction. However, users often find current mobile devices to beineffective, particularly with respect to restricted keyboards and pocket-sizescreens, limiting their usability. In addition, because of the limited storagecapacity and information access speed of most smartphones and PDAs, it isoften difficult or impossible to download large files to these devices.

Mobile visitors to a Web site are typically paying premium fees for connec-tions and are focused on a specific goal (e.g., conducting a stock trade). There-fore, if customers want to find exactly what they are looking for, easily andquickly, they need more than text-only devices with small screens. In 2003,many WAP applications were still text-based, and had only simple black-and-white graphics. This made tasks such as mobile shopping difficult. Becauseall the transactions were essentially text-based, mobile users could not “browse”an online picture-based catalog. However, more and faster multimedia arebecoming available as 3G spreads.

The major technical and other limitations have slowed the spread of m-commerce are summarized in Table 6.5.

Several ethical and legal issues are unique to mobile computing. For example,fashion retailer Benetton Group SpA was considering attaching RFID “smart

The UsabilityProblem

TABLE 6.5 Technical and Other Limitations of Mobile Computing

Limitation Description

Insufficient bandwidth

Security standards

Power consumption

Transmission interferences

GPS accuracyWAP limitations

Potential health hazards

Legal issues

Human interface with device

Complexity

Sufficient bandwidth is necessary for widespread use and it must beinexpensive. It will take a few years until 3G is in many places. Wi-Fisolves some of the problem.

Universal standards were not available in 2003. It may take 3 or more yearsto have them.

Batteries with long life are needed for mobile computing. Color screens andWi-Fi consumer more electricity, but new chips are solving some of thepower-consumption problems.

Weather and terrain problems as well as distance-limited connection existwith some technologies. Reception in tunnels and some buildings is poor.

GPS may be accurate in a city with tall buildings.According to mofileinfo.com, in 2002 there were only about 50,000 WAP sites

(compared to millions Web sites). WAP still is a cumbersome process towork with.

Potential health damage from cellular radio frequency emission is notknown yet. However more car accidents are related to drivers who weretalking (some places bar the use of cell phones while you drive). Also, cellphones may interfere with sensitive medical devices.

Potential legal issues against manufacturer of cell phones and against serviceproviders exist, due to the potential health problems (Borland, 2000).

Screens and keyboards are too small and uncomfortable and tedious formany people to use.

Too many optional adds-on are available (e.g., battery chargers, externalkeyboards, headset, microphone, cradles). Storing and using the optionaladd-ons is a problem to some.

Ethical and Legal Issues

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tags” to its Sisley line of clothing to help track shipping, inventory, and sales inthe company’s 5,000 stores worldwide. (Also, the tags could help prevent shoplift-ing.) The idea was to integrate the RFID tag into the clothing labels. Using thetags, the store would know where each piece of clothing is, at any given time.However, privacy groups expressed concern that the tags could also be used totrack buyers, and some groups even urged that the company’s clothing be boy-cotted. As a result, Benetton backed away from the plan, at least until an impactstudy is done (Rosencrance, 2003).

According to Hunter (2002) privacy is in a great danger in the world of ubiq-uitous computing because of the proliferation of networked devices used by indi-vidual, businesses and government. The Elite-Care project described in IT At Work6.5, for example, raised the issue of protecting information collected by sensors.Also, privacy is difficult to control in other types of context-aware systems (e.g.,see Jiang and Landay, 2002). As indicated earlier, security is especially difficult inWi-Fi systems.

For pervasive (ubiquitous) systems to be widely deployed, it is necessary to over-come both the technical and ethical/legal barriers associated with wireless com-puting, plus overcoming other barriers unique to pervasive computing. Davies andGellersen (2002) provide a comprehensive list of both technical challenges, socialand legal issues, economic concerns (including finding appropriate business mod-els) and lack of experiences in deploying ubiquitous systems. They also citeresearch challenges such as component interaction, adaptation and contextualsensitivity, user interface interaction, and appropriate management mechanisms.

As with any other technology, especially a new one, there have been many fail-ures of both applications as well as entire companies in mobile computing and m-commerce. It is important to anticipate and plan for possible failures as well as tolearn from them. The case of Northeast Utilities provides some important insights.According to Hamblen (2001), Northeast Utilities (located in Berlin, Connecticut),which supplies energy products and services to 1.2 million customers from Maineto Maryland, embarked on a wireless project in 1995 in which its field inspectorsused wireless devices to track spills of hazardous material and report them to head-quarter in real time. After spending a year and a half and $1 million, the projectfailed. Some of the lessons learned are:

● Do not start without appropriate infrastructure.

● Do not start a full-scale implementation; use a small pilot for experimentation.

● Pick up an appropriate architecture. Some users don’t need to be persistentlyconnected, for example.

● Talk with a range of users, some experienced and some not, about usabilityissues.

● Users must be involved; use bi-weekly meetings if possible.

● Use wireless experts if you are not one.

● Wireless is a different medium from other forms of communication. Rememberthat people are not used to the wireless paradigm.

Having learned from the failure, Northeast made its next wireless endeavora success. Today, 15 field inspectors carry rugged wireless laptops that are


Challengesin Deploying

Ubiquitous Systems

Failures in MobileComputing and

M-Commerce

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6.10 INHIBITORS AND BARRIERS OF MOBILE COMPUTING 285

connected to the enterprise intranet and databases. The wireless laptops are usedto conduct measurements related to electricity transformers, for example. Thenthe laptops transmit the results, in real time, to chemists and people who pre-pare government reports about hazardous materials spills. In addition, time issaved, because all the information is entered directly into proper fields of elec-tronic forms without having to be transcribed. The new system is so successfulthat it has given IT workers the confidence to launch other applications suchas sending power-outage report to executives via smart phones and wirelessinformation to crews repairing street lights.

➥ MANAGERIAL ISSUES1. Comparing wireless to synchronized mobile devices. In many cases, transmit-

ting data in the evening, using a docking device, is sufficient. In others, realtime communication is needed, justifying a wireless system.

2. Timetable. Although there has been much hype about m-commerce in thelast few years, only a small number of large-scale mobile computing appli-cations have been deployed to date. The most numerous applications are ine-banking, stock trading, emergency services, and some B2B tasks.Companies still have time to carefully craft an m-commerce strategy. Thiswill reduce the number of failed initiatives and bankrupted companies. Forcalculating the total cost of wireless computing ownership and how to justifyit, see Intel, 2002.

3. Setting applications priorities. Finding and prioritizing applications is apart of an organization’s e-strategy. Although location-based advertising islogically attractive, its effectiveness may not be known for several years.Therefore, companies should be very careful in committing resources tom-commerce. For the near term, applications that enhance the efficiencyand effectiveness of mobile workers are likely to have the highest payoff.

4. Just a buzzword? In the short run, mobile computing, m-commerce, andespecially l-commerce, may be just buzzwords due to the many limitationsthey now face. However, in the long run, the concepts will be increasinglypopular. Management should monitor the technological developments andmake plans accordingly.

5. Choosing a system. The multiplicity of standards, devices, and supportinghardware and software can confuse a company planning to implement mobilecomputing. An unbiased consultant can be of great help. Checking the ven-dors and products carefully, as well as who is using them, is also critical. Thisissue is related to the issue of whether or not to use an application serviceprovider (ASP) for m-commerce.

ON THE WEB SITE… Additional resources, including an interactive runningcase; quizzes; additional resources such as cases, tables, and figures; updates;additional exercises; links; and demos and activities can be found on the book’sWeb site.

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KEY TERMS1G (p. •••)

2G (p. •••)

2.5G (p. •••)

3G (p. •••)

4G (p. •••)

802.11b (p. •••)

Auto Identification (Auto-ID)Center (p. •••)

Automatic crash notification(ACN) (p. •••)

Bluetooth (p. •••)

Code Division Multiple Access(CDMA) (p. •••)

Context awareness (p. •••)

Contextual computing (p. •••)

Enhanced messaging service(EMS) (p. •••)

Frequency Division Multiple Access(FDMA) (p. •••)

Geographical information system(GIS) (p. •••)

Global positioning system(GPS) (p. •••)

Hotspot (p. •••)

Internet of things (p. •••)

Location-based commerce(l-commerce) (p. •••)

M-wallet (mobile wallet) (p. •••)

Mobile commerce (m-commerce,m-business) (p. •••)

Mobile computing (p. •••)

Mobile devices (p. •••)

Mobile employees/workers (p. •••)

Mobile handset (p. •••)

Mobile portals (p. •••)

Multimedia messaging service(MMS) (p. •••)

Personal digital assistant(PDA) (p. •••)

Pervasive computing (p. •••)

Radio frequency identification(RFID) (p. •••)

Screenphones (wireless) (p. •••)

Short messaging service(SMS) (p. •••)

Smartphone (p. •••)

Subscriber identification modulecard (SIM) (p. •••)

Telematics (p. •••)

Time Division Multiple Access(TDMA) (p. •••)

Ubiquity (p. •••)

Voice portal (p. •••)

Wearable devices (p. •••)

Wireless 911 (e-911) (p. •••)

Wireless access point(for Wi-Fi) (p. •••)

Wireless Application Protocol(WAP) (p. •••)

Wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) (p. •••)

Wireless local area network(WLAN) (p. •••)

Wireless Markup Language(WML) (p. •••)

Wireless mobilecomputing (p. •••)

Wireless wide area networks(WWAN) (p. •••)

CHAPTER HIGHLIGHTS (Numbers Refer to Learning Objectives)

� Mobile computing is based on mobility and reach.These characteristics provide ubiquity, convenience,instant connectivity, personalization, and product andservice localization.

� The major drivers of mobile computing are: largenumbers of users of mobile devices, especially cellphones; no need for a PC; a developing “cell phoneculture” in some areas; vendor marketing; decliningprices; increasing bandwidth; and the explosion of ECin general.

� Mobile computing and m-commerce require mobile de-vices (e.g., PDAs, cell phones) and other hardware, soft-ware, and wireless technologies. Commercial servicesand applications are still emerging. These technologiesallow users to access the Internet anytime, anywhere.

� For l-commerce, a GPS receiver is also needed.

� Standards are being developed by several organizationsin different countries, resulting in competing systems. Itis expected that with time some of these will converge.

� Many EC applications in the service industries (e.g.,banking, travel, and stocks) can be conducted with

wireless devices. Also, shopping can be done frommobile devices.

� Location-based advertising and advertising via SMSson a very large scale is expected.

� Mobile portals provide content (e.g., news) to millions.

� Large numbers of intrabusiness applications, includinginventory management, sales force automation, wire-less voice, job dispatching, wireless office, and moreare already evident inside organizations.

� Emerging mobile B2B applications are being inte-grated with the supply chain and are facilitating coop-eration between business partners.

� M-commerce is being used to provide applicationsin travel, gaming, entertainment, and delivery ofmedical services. Many other applications for individ-ual consumers are planned for, especially targetedadvertising.

Most non-Internet applications involve various typesof smart cards. They are used mainly in transportation,security, and shopping from vending machines and gaspumps.

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 287

Location-based commerce, or l-commerce, is emerg-ing in applications such as calculating arrival time ofbuses (using GPS) and emergency services (wireless911). In the future, it will be used to target advertisingto individuals based on their location. Other innova-tive applications also are expected.

� This is the world of invisible computing in whichvirtually every object has an embedded microproces-sor that is connected in a wired and/or wireless fash-ion to the Internet. This Internet of Things—homes,appliances, cars, and any manufactured items—willprovide a number of life-enhancing, consumer-centric, and B2B applications.

� In context-aware computing, the computer captures thecontextual variables of the user and the environmentand then provides, in real time, various services to users.

� The major limitations of mobile computing are: smallscreens on mobile devices, limited bandwidth, high cost,lack of (or small) keyboards, transmission interferences,unproven security, and possible health hazards. Many ofthese limitations are expected to diminish over time.The primary legal/ethical limitations of m-commercerelate to privacy issues.

REVIEW QUESTIONS1. Define mobile computing and m-commerce.

2. Define the following terms: PDA, WAP, SMS, GPS,Wi-Fi and smartphone.

3. List the value-added attributes of mobile computing.

4. List at least five major drivers of mobile computing.

5. Describe the major hardware devices used for mobilecomputing.

6. List the major software items used for mobile com-puting.

7. Describe the major components of a mobile network.

8. Define the terms FDMA, TDMA, and CDMA.

9. List the major standards used by mobile phone systems(e.g., GSM).

10. Describe the major components of a WLAN.

11. Define 1G, 2G, 2.5G, 3G, and 4G.

12. List some of the key security issues in an m-commercetransaction.

13. List some of the uses of voice portals.

14. Discuss mobile micropayments.

15. Describe the m-wallet and wireless bill payments.

16. Describe how mobile devices can be used to shop.

17. Explain targeted advertising in the wireless environ-ment and in pervasive computing.

18. Describe mobile portals and what kind of informationthey provide.

19. Describe wireless job dispatch.

20. Discuss how wireless applications can be used to pro-vide customer support.

21. List some of the major intrabusiness wireless applica-tions.

22. Describe wireless support along the supply chain.

23. How can telemetry improve supply chain operations?

24. Describe the application of wireless and mobile tech-nologies to games and entertainment.

25. Discuss some of the potential applications of Wi-Fi andBluetooth technologies in hotels.

26. Describe some potential uses of mobile and wirelesstechnologies in providing medical care.

27. Describe some of the potential uses of l-commerce.

28. Discuss the technologies used in providing l-commerceservices.

29. Describe GPS and GIS.

30. Discuss telematics.

31. List some of the barriers to l-commerce.

32. Define pervasive computing.

33. List some of the major properties of pervasive com-puting.

34. Discuss some of the ways that pervasive computingcan be used in the home.

35. Describe a smart car.

36. Describe some of the ways that microprocessors arebeing used to enhance the intelligence of appliances.

37. What is contextual computing?

38. Discuss the role that usability plays in the adoption ofm-commerce.

39. List the technical limitations of m-commerce.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS1. Discuss how mobile computing can solve some of the

problems of the digital divide (the gap within a countryor between countries with respect to people’s ability to

access the Internet). (See International Communica-tions Union 1999 and Chapter 16).

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2. Discuss how m-commerce can expand the reach ofe-business.

3. Explain the role of protocols in mobile computing.

4. Discuss the impact of wireless computing on emer-gency medical services.

5. How do smartphones and screenphones differ? Whatcharacteristics do they share?

6. How are GIS and GPS related?

7. List three to four major advantages of wireless com-merce to consumers, presented in this chapter, andexplain what benefits they provide to consumers.

8. You can use location-based tools to help you find yourcar or the closest gas station. However, some peoplesee location-based tools as an invasion of privacy.Discuss the pros and cons of location-based tools.

9. Discuss how wireless devices can help people with dis-abilities.

10. Discuss the benefits of telemetry-based systems.

11. Discuss the ways in which Wi-Fi is being used tosupport mobile computing and m-commerce. Describethe ways in which Wi-Fi is affecting the use of cellularphones for m-commerce.

12. Which of the applications of pervasive computing—smart cars, homes, appliances, and things—do youthink are likely to gain the greatest market acceptanceof the next few years? Why?

13. Which of the current mobile computing and m-commerce limitations do you think will be minimizedwithin 5 years? Which ones will not?

14. Describe some m-commerce B2B applications alongthe supply chain.

15. It is said that Wi-Fi is winning a battle against 3G. Inwhat sense this is true? In what sense this is false?

GROUP ASSIGNMENTS1. Each team should examine a major vendor of mobile de-

vices (Nokia, Kyocera, Motorola, Palm, BlackBerry, etc.).Each team will research the capabilities and prices of thedevices offered by each company and then make a classpresentation, the objective of which is to convince therest of the class why one should buy that company’sproducts.

2. Each team should explore the commercial applications ofm-commerce in one of the following areas: financial ser-vices, including banking, stocks, and insurance; market-ing and advertising; manufacturing; travel and trans-portation; human resources management; public services;and health care. Each team will present a report to theclass based on their findings. (Start at mobiforum.org.)

3. Each team will investigate a global organizationinvolved in m-commerce, such as gmcforum.com and

openmobilealliance.com. The teams will investigate themembership and the current projects the organization isworking on and then present a report to the class basedon their findings.

4. Each team will investigate a standards-setting organi-zation and report on its procedures and progress indeveloping wireless standards. Start with the following:atis.org, etsi.org, and tiaonline.org.

5. Each team should take one of the following areas—homes, cars, appliances, or other consumer goods likeclothing—and investigate how embedded microproces-sors are currently being used and will be used in thefuture to support consumer-centric services. Eachteam will present a report to the class based on theirfindings.

INTERNET EXERCISES1. Learn about PDAs by visiting vendors’ sites such as Palm,

SONY, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Phillips, NEC, Hitachi,Compaq, Casio, Brother, Texas Instruments, and others.List some m-commerce devices manufactured by thesecompanies.

2. Access progressive.com, an insurance company, fromyour cell phone (use the “Go to...” feature). If youhave a Sprint PCS wireless phone, do it via the Financemenu. Then try to visit mobileprogressive.com from awireless PDA. If you have a Palm i705, you can down-load the Web-clipping application from Progressive.Report on these capabilities.

3. Research the status of 3G and the future of 4G byvisiting itu.int, 4g.newstrove.com, and 3gnewsroom.com.Prepare a report on the status of 3G and 4G based onyour findings.

4. Explore nokia.com. Prepare a summary of the types ofmobile services and applications Nokia currently sup-ports and plans to support in the future.

5. Enter kyocera-wireless.com. Take the smart tour and viewthe demos. What is a smartphone? What are its capa-bilities? How does it differ from a regular cell phone?

6. Enter www.i3mobile.com. Run the Pronto demo. Whattypes of services are provided by Pronto? What types of

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INTERNET EXERCISES 289

users would be more likely to use Pronto rather than asmart phone?

7. Enter ibm.com. Search for wireless e-business. Researchthe resulting stories to determine the types of wirelesscapabilities and applications IBM’s software and hard-ware supports. Describe some of the ways these appli-cations have helped specific businesses and industries.

8. Using a search engine, try to determine whether thereare any commercial Wi-Fi hotspots in your area. Enterwardriving.com. Based on information provided at thissite, what sorts of equipment and procedures couldyou use to locate hotspots in your area?

9. Enter mapinfo.com and look for the location-based ser-vices demos. Try all the demos. Find all of the wirelessservices. Summarize your findings.

10. Visit ordersup.com, astrology.com, and similar sites thatcapitalize on l-commerce. What features do these sitesshare?

11. Enter packetvideo.com and microsoft.com/mobile/ pocketpc.Examine their demos and products and list their capa-bilities.

12. Enter internethomealliance.com and review their white-papers. Based on these papers, what are the major ap-pliances that are currently in most U.S. homes? Whichof these appliances would most homeowners be likelyto connect to a centrally controlled network?

13. Enter onstar.com. What types of fleet services doesOnStar provide? Are these any different from the ser-vices OnStar provides to individual car owners?

14. Enter autoidcenter.org. Read about the Internet ofThings. What is it? What types of technologies areneeded to support it? Why is it important?

15. Enter mdsi-advantex.com and review the wireless prod-ucts for the enterprise. Summarize the advantages ofthe different products.

16. Enter attwireless.com/mlife and prepare a list of the ser-vices available there.

17. Enter wirelesscar.com. Examine all the services providedand relate them to telemetry.

18. Enter the site of a wireless e-mail provider (Black-Berry, T-mobile, Handspring); collect informationabout the capabilities of the products and comparethem.

19. Enter zilog.com/about/partners/011600.html and find in-formation about smart appliances.

20. Enter hel.fi/infocities and write a report on the digitiza-tion of the city of Helsinki.

21. Enter med-i-nets.com and find information aboutPharm-i-net. Trace the supply chain and the support ofwireless. Make a diagram.

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The car rental industry is very competitive, and Hertz(hertz.com), the world’s largest car rental company, com-petes against hundreds of companies in thousands of loca-tions. The competition focuses on customer acquisition andloyalty. In the last few years, competition has intensified,and profits in the industry have been drifting downward.Hertz has been a “first mover” to information technologiessince the 1970s, so it has naturally looked for new tech-nologies to improve its competitive position. In addition todata warehousing and mining, a superb executive informa-tion system, and e-commerce, Hertz has pioneered somemobile commerce applications:

● Quick rentals. Upon arrival at the airport, Hertz’s curb-side attendant greets you and transmits your namewirelessly to the renting booth. The renting-booth em-ployee advises the curbside attendant about the loca-tion of your car. All you need to do is go to the slotwhere the car is parked and drive away. This system,which once operated over a WLAN, is now part of anational wireless network that can check credit cards,examine your rental history, determine which airlineto credit your loyalty mileage to, and more.

● Instant returns. Pioneered by Hertz in 1987, a hand-held device connected to a database via a wireless sys-tem expedites the car return transaction. Right in theparking lot, the lot attendant uses a handheld deviceto calculate the cost of the rental and print a receipt forthe renter. You check out in less than a minute, andyou do not have to enter the renting booth at all.

● In-car cellular phones. Starting in 1988, Hertz beganrenting cell phones with its cars. Today, of course, thisis not as “big a deal” as it was in 1988, when it was amajor innovation.

● NeverLost Onboard. Some cars come equipped withan onboard GPS system, which provides route guid-ance in the form of turn-by-turn directions to manydestinations. The information is displayed on a screen

with computer-generated voice prompts. An elec-tronic mapping system (GIS) is combined with theGPS, enabling you to see on the map where you areand where you are going. Also, consumer informationabout the locations of the nearest hospitals, gas sta-tions, restaurants, and tourist areas is provided.

● Additional customer services. Hertz’s customers candownload city guides, Hertz’s location guide, emer-gency telephone numbers, city maps, shopping guides,and even reviews of restaurants, hotels, and entertain-ment into their PDAs and other wireless devices. Ofcourse, driving directions are provided.

● Car locations. Hertz is experimenting with a GPS-based car-locating system. This will enable the com-pany to know where a rental car is at any given time,and even how fast it is being driven. Although thecompany promises to provide discounts based on yourusage pattern, this capability is seen by many as an in-vasion of privacy. On the other hand, some may feelsafer knowing that Hertz knows where they are at alltimes.

Hertz has been the top car rental company and stillmaintains that position. It is also a very profitable companythat is expanding and growing continuously. Its success isattributed to being customer-centric, as facilitated by itsuse of wireless technologies and EC.

Questions for Minicase 1

1. Which of these applications are intrabusiness in nature?

2. Identify any finance- and marketing-oriented applica-tions.

3. What are the benefits to Hertz of knowing exactlywhere each of its cars is? As a renter, how do you feelabout this capability?

Source: hertz.com (2003) and Martin (2003).

Minicase 1Hertz Goes Wireless

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MINICASE 2 291

The Washington Township Fire Department (WTFD) islocated just north of Columbus, Ohio. WTFD responds tomore than 4,500 emergency medical services (EMS) callsevery year. Time is critical when WTFD is responding toemergencies, which range from heart attacks to fire in-juries to highway accidents. The service is run by emer-gency medical technicians (EMTs).

Rushing victims to the hospitals is only one part of theservice offered by these dedicated technicians. Providingfirst aid at the accidents’ scene and while transporting theinjured in the ambulances is the other part. When a patientis transferred to the hospital, the EMTs must also provideinformation on what treatments and medications were ad-ministered, and what health-related signs they observed inthe patient. Such patient care reports are critical to the con-tinuance of the treatment in the hospital, and they becomea permanent part of the medical record. The information isalso used to keep EMS records for planning, budgeting,training, and reporting to the state of Ohio.

In the past, the department had problems using8” � 14,” multipart, multicopy paper forms. According toJack McCoy, using paper forms caused several problems.First, not everyone’s handwriting is legible, so it was oftendifficult for hospital personnel as well as the WTFD officepeople to decipher the information. Second, on many oc-casions, the information was incomplete, or even inaccu-rate. To restore the information it took considerable valu-able time. Office employees at WTFD had to spend close to1,800 hours a year processing information after the com-pletion of the patient care report. In fact, 85 percent of onefull-time office employees were required just to re-enterdata that was already entered on the paper reports. But themajor problem was the time spent by EMTs filling outforms, since this prevented them from returning quickly tothe station, responding to other emergency calls.

A solution to the paperwork problems was a mobiledata collection device (Mobile EMS of Clayton I.D.S. Corp.powered by SQL Anywhere Studio from Sybase Corp.).The device allows EMTs to collect patient informationquickly, easily, and accurately at the scene and to deliver

that information to the hospital in a print-out. This is doneby using a series of data entry screens with drop-downmenus containing vital information such as diagnoses,treatment rendered, drug administered, and even streetnames. It also includes a signature capture feature that al-lows EMTs to document a patient’s refusal of treatment aswell as transfer of care to the hospital.

Once the incident data is entered into the system’sembedded SQL database, printing reports is simple. Thetechnician beams the information form MobilEMS to thehospital printer’s infrared port and a clear document is pro-duced. Back at the station, the EMTs synchronize the datain their handhelds with the department computer systemsby placing MobilEMS in a docking station.

According to McCoy, it takes about 15 seconds to movethe data into the system. This is a significant improvementover manual re-keying; using MobileEMS has reduced costsby more than 90 percent. Also by eliminating handwritingand mandating the completion of required data fields thatpreviously could have been skipped, the accuracy increasedsignificantly.

Finally, the system is customizable. Fields can be addedand additional information can be stored. Thus, additionalapplications are leading to a completely paperless environ-ment.

Question for Minicase 2

1. The system uses a mobile device with a docking station fordata synchronization, but no wireless is used. Would yourecommend adding wireless? What for? Why or why not?

2. What are the potential legal issues in this case?

3. The system is based on electronic forms with check-marks. Why not use a similar set of paper forms?

4. What are the benefits of the mobile system to the pa-tient, to the hospital, and to the employees?

5. What are the benefits to WTFD?

Source: Compiled form Sybase.com (2003).

Minicase 2Washington Township Fire Department Goes Wireless

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While you were sitting at The Wireless Café’s counter havinga soda and thinking about data flows, you noticed that thewait-staff made a lot of trips to the kitchen counter to placeorders and to check up on order readiness. You rememberedseeing an ad for a product called Wireless Waitress (http://wirelesswaitress.com/) when you were browsing through someindustry publications in Jeremy’s office and decided to dosome research on the genre of wireless products for wait-staffto present to the three shift managers.

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3. It is clear that restaurants and The Wireless Café areheaded in the direction of wireless applications. Preparea memo to Barbara and Jeremy with your advice onhow they should strategically position The Wireless Cafévis-a-vis wireless applications.

Virtual Company AssignmentMobility and The Wireless Café

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mis - chapter 06 - mobile, wireless, and pervasive computing

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