More Convenience, Less Talk

Relentless innovation has revolutionised the paradigms of mobile communication. Plainly put, it's not just a phone any more. Charmaine Fernz writes on the changing face of mobile phones and its implications to business travel…

If you are stuck half way up in a traffic jam or just fancy a chat, your mobile is often your best friend. More importantly, as all decision makers in offices know, the mobile phone out of order is as good as man-hours lost. A global survey conducted last year indicates that the number of users worldwide surged past the billion mark - outstripping landlines for the first time. The impact of mobiles is becoming hard to overstate. From being an elite product a few years ago, they are a necessity now, at least in the urban working environment. This is especially true for the corporate traveller, who is persistently on the go and cut off from his office and colleagues by vast distances. So when the boundaries of mobile telephony, both in terms of hardware design and technological integration, is being pushed even as you read this, it means good news for the corporate road warrior.

But there is another revolution happening and that is in the very utility of the mobile phone. No longer is it just an equipment used to communicate with someone across states, countries and continents. A corporate looks to do more than the familiar banalities of talking or SMSing. He has considerable use for WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), GPS (Global Positioning System) and the like. As Harit Nagpal, vice-president-corporate marketing, Hutchison Max Telecom Ltd, puts it, "Mobiles have already become more than just talking devices, and have improved a businessperson's efficiency. Mobile telephony has redefined the concept of the physical office. A lot of businesspeople routinely conduct their business over the mobile phone."

What's on offer

Technology continues to improve everyday and in the case of mobile phones, manufacturers and service providers have for long colluded to emerge with bundles of conveniences that nudge users to upgrade. To cite an example, the Bangalore division of Motorola has the distinction of developing software for an array of its new generation mobile phones hitting the global market. They are all equipped with multimedia capability and enhanced colour display. These mobile phones work like PC platforms, wherein one can browse, play music or even turn into a digital camera. In certain cases, some mobiles can even act like a credit card - you can go into a shop and authorise payment because the SIM card inside works like an enhanced credit card.

What was once a premium offering in a mobile like multimedia messaging with in-built browsers and tight secure technology, are now standard expectations. Also, people are getting increasingly mobile-savvy even if they are not technology-savvy. A Ravindranath, COO of Envision, self-confessedly not a gizmo freak, says this is because mobile phones and all its myriad features are getting simpler to use. "I have a Communicator 9200 model that I use to store files, mainly Excel and Word documents. The model is the size of a small pencil box and has a colour CD panel screen. I also use the phone for daily appointment scheduling, as well as the alarm clock feature. On the services available I like to check the net for cricket scores and other information. My phone is user-friendly, which is of prime importance and I do not have to spend hours over the manual to figure out the options," he says.

Services & more

Like Ravindranath, there are scores of businessmen who use mobile updates, be it news, flight alerts or stock updates. Realising the huge demand for such services, even service providers have begun to innovate.

As a spokesperson with Reliance Infocomm, one of the major players in the Indian mobile phone industry, says, "While all applications have their niche users, news, city guides, cricket, ring tones, mobile banking, mobile credit card and the seasonal festival applications are the most widely used on R World, our Java-based suite of mobile applications. R Connect, the facility of using the phone as a modem for connecting laptops or PCs to Internet, is also a widely used value added service. There are over 100 applications currently deployed on R World, including many that are of great benefit to business people, who generally lead a busy life and need information on their finger tip. These includes access to real time news with a special category of business news, video streaming of major headlines, access to e-mails, city guides covering the 25 top cities in the country."

Reliance's other services include TV guides, currency exchange rates, mobile banking, credit card payment for services and purchases made through RIM phones.

Most service providers are offering services like these making the mobile an instrument of extraordinary utility. Services like ticket reservations, e-commerce transactions and a lot more are already on the way.

Shirish Purohit, director, Midas Communication, a mobile phone user, is not complaining. He is among the many who are relishing the added potency of the mobile phone. Purohit says, "I check cricket scores often on my mobile. My cell phone has also in fact become my alarm clock. One of the features that comes in handy is the speaker phone. I use this in the office, as well as in the car. Data connectivity is another feature that I use. Thanks to the GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) connection to my laptop I check mail on my phone on a regular basis."

Nagpal of Hutchison Max Telecom India has a slightly differing perspective. He says, "The single most important service for businesspeople is roaming since it gives them accessibility wherever they go. In addition to roaming, we have created special services such as sms@wrk which allows managers and their team members to feed and access information to and from a central server; group messaging which allows executives to send a single SMS to their entire team in a single go; stock quote alerts for specific stocks which are delivered via SMS; internet access through Hutch GPRS for those who want to log onto the web for accessing information."

Future Offerings

Current trends suggest a widespread inclination for camera phones. Nokia, Sony and Casio already have mobile phones sporting cameras which produce images of over one megapixel resolution making it almost competition to digital cameras. Services are also witnessing a sea change. Says the Reliance spokesperson, "For example, the user will be able to check what movie is playing at a particular theatre and buy the ticket online. Enterprise applications like email, ERP, intranet etc, which employees of a company can access from their handsets will also become very common."

The next generation mobile phone is also on its way. It is said that with the start of the so-called 'third generation' high-speed data transfer mobile phone services, a mobile could soon be transformed into a tourist terminal. NTT Docomo first introduced the 'third generation' mobile phone service in 2001 with the W-CDMA system, followed by the CDMA2000 system by KDDI in 2002. In Europe, this is referred to as the UMTS system (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System). The 'third generation' mobile phone offers high-speed data transfer at low cost making it possible to send large amounts of motion picture data. With these mobile phones, a tourist can use his mobile phone to do a web search for a restaurant which is both well recommended and near to his/her current location, view a promotion video of the restaurant, find out how to get there with a clear map accompanied by voice instructions, and even make reservations or order food from the menu. All they need to do is show up. In addition, many more uses will become possible like accessing information services based on a one-day schedule of sightseeing, searching and reserving hotels, train seats, and rental cars, etc. All that and whatever else, provided the handset is good enough. There is a great opportunity to send out and receive tourist information on mobile phones. Massive information and functionality will be on offer. Add to that, taking on the functions of a wallet, the ID card, house keys, and coin lockers, and you know why the cell phone will revolutionise, not just travel, but life itself.