Internet Anywhere

Downloads by Hand

The hottest news in wireless hardware, however, involves smaller devices--both handhelds (like the Palm Pilot) and cell phones and pagers--that let you download e-mail and browse the Web.

On the PDA front, the Palm VII offers out-of-the-box wireless access to the Internet via 3Com's Palm.net access service. Owners of the Palm III, IIIx, or IIIe can use Novatel's $369 Minstrel III modem and service for e-mail and text browsing. And this fall, Novatel expects to ship the Minstrel E-15 modem for Casio's E-15 Windows CE palmtop.

Two-way pagers like Motorola's new PageWriter 2000x and Research in Motion's Inter@ctive Pager let you send and receive e-mail. They also come equipped with microbrowsers, which grab stock quotes, news stories, and other Web information in a format small-screen devices can read. Unfortunately, composing mail on these pagers' teensy-weensy keyboards is no fun. (The PageWriter does let you select from a menu of brief prewritten messages such as 'Thank You' to save you typing.) Pager networks are slow--Skytel's maximum speeds are 9.6 kbps for downloads, 6.4 kbps for uploads--but access doesn't feel slow. E-mail messages arrive with a beep, like any other incoming page. But reading small text on a pager's dimly lit screen can strain your eyes, and most paging services will truncate long incoming messages.

You'll find similar capabilities in a host of new digital cellular phones, such as Qualcomm's QCP-860 and QCP-1960 thin phones (the 860 works on both digital and analog cellular networks, while the 1960 is digital only) and the NeoPoint 1000. These so-called smart phones let you send e-mail and receive some Web information; most also include built-in address books and contact managers. Screen quality tends to be better (but screen size is no larger) than on pagers; however, composing messages is even more irritating because you enter letters via a telephone keypad (hitting the 7 key three times to get the letter S, for instance).

Networks, Networks

Hardware alone is not enough. Notebooks and handhelds connecting via a digital cell phone can simply dial up a standard ISP. If you're using a wireless modem, however, you need a special data account--using the CDPD (Cellular Digital Packet Data) protocol--from your cellular service. The reason: Whereas your cell phone connects to the public telephone system (through which you then connect to your ISP), wireless modems are designed to connect only to wireless data networks.

Bell Atlantic, AT&T, GTE, and Ameritech all offer CDPD accounts nationally; OmniPoint and others do the same thing regionally. Prices for these services have dropped in some instances. Bell Atlantic, for example, introduced its service at $55 per month for unlimited access, and now charges $40. Unfortunately, unlimited pricing applies only within your network. If you roam, you incur steep charges for accessing other networks: AT&T charges 5 cents per KB, and Bell Atlantic 8 cents.

Wireless data networks are not universal. As the map at www.wirelessdata.org/maps shows, CDPD coverage is extensive in major metropolitan areas of the U.S. but sparse elsewhere. If your business takes you to Montana, upstate New York, or the rural South, for example, your wireless modem may suddenly be useless. Similarly, Metricom's proprietary 28.8-kbps Ricochet Internet access service is available only in Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, D.C., and 12 major airports nationwide.

Phones Get Smart

Handhelds, pagers, and phones are another story. AT&T's pioneering PocketNet service began delivering Web-based content to CDPD cell phones last year. But now major carriers including Sprint, GTE, and AT&T are rolling out new data services for smart phones on their digital networks, identified by such obscure acronyms as CDMA, TDMA, and PCS1900. These networks support more connections and will eventually move data at higher speeds than today's CDPD-based services. But initially the new services will run at a poky 14.4 kbps, so from a speed standpoint, CDPD--which can attain a maximum speed of 19.2 kbps--should remain attractive for now. Metricom's coming service--Ricochet2, due to arrive next summer in 12 cities--will reach 128 kbps. Cellular carriers say a third-generation type of digital cellular service, due in or after 2001, will improve bandwidth further.