by Sean McManus
Staff Writer
In a city where people don’t bat an eye about spending an hour in the car getting from one place to the next, wireless phone providers are receiving an enthusiastic reception over new technology that makes those long drives more productive, or eliminates them all together.
Cellular modems have been around for a while, but now for about the price of a normal cell phone plan, customers can get a card installed in a laptop that makes it easy to surf the web and check company e-mail from the car or the beach.
“We’re getting huge interest in this,” said Dean Mathews, the business sales manager for Sprint’s business division, which sells wireless products to institutional clients. “It’s really revolutionizing the way a lot of people are doing business.”
The idea is that those who work on the road or from home can now access their company intranet from anywhere by dialing into Sprint’s wireless network. From the Sprint offices in Deerwood, Mathews dialed in from his computer repeatedly and the connection speed was almost as fast as a cable or DSL connection.
What has Mathews and his sales team enthused is the variety of industries that seem to be interested.
“We’re hearing from insurance adjusters who can now get real time quotes for people at their home,” said Mathews. “Or what if someone could tell you on the spot what percentage they can get on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage? There’s no more ‘I’ll get back to you tomorrow.’ ”
Mathews said real estate agents like being able to e-mail pictures right away. And he said warehouses that once had to stay open 24-hours can optimize productivity by utilizing remote representatives to take computer orders from their homes. In typical salesman style, Mathews said it’s got a great “return on investment.”
Last month, noted technology reporter Walter Mossberg tested the new connection card, as it’s called, which is made by Novatel Wireless, and it received good reviews. Mossberg’s only problem was the pricing plan, which he thought could be outrageous if users didn’t account for time on the web.
“But we’ve corrected that,” said Mathews.
Cost to use the connection card is based on the amount of data that is transferred from one place to another. Like a cell phone plan, there are minutes used but beyond that the charge is for data. To send and receive about 500 minutes per month, the cost is about $40. Surfing the web from a wireless laptop runs about $100.
But Sprint has designed it to be always on, like with a cable connection from home. If a web page is sitting idle, there’s no charge. If the user is moving from page to page, it’s counting minutes.
All of this comes as part of the launch of a third generation of cell phone technology that Sprint and other wireless carriers began promoting last month. Verizon and AT&T also offer similar products and services to make remote life more productive.
Jep Walter, the president of First Coast Online, a company that sets up Internet networks, said none of the wireless carriers have yet to smooth out all the kinks.
Walter uses Nextel to check his e-mail from his cell phone so he doesn’t yet have the need for that capability on his laptop. He said the third generation product is still a little too slow to make it highly functional.
None of the cell phones make it easy to do what Walter calls “freestyle,” or type messages quickly like on a keyboard. There are programs that allow users to send a handful of canned responses, but that’s only helpful in a few, isolated instances, he said.
Walter said there was a lot of interest in Jacksonville for companies who want their employees to have the capability to access a company intranet from anywhere, something that would enable people to pull up, for example, a revised Excel spreadsheet from a firm’s shared file from their laptop while at a meeting in another city.
“Companies are becoming more global,” said Walter. “People don’t think of the office in the traditional sense.”
According to Mathews, a local trucking company wants their truck drivers to be able to access invoices to see if any new orders have been placed near where they are.
“This makes things so much more efficient,” he said. “Everybody knows what’s going on right away.”
Mathews said lawyers have expressed interest also.
“Think about being able to pull up electronic files in the courtroom or connecting other attorneys in real time during a case. It can save money on travel and it can save time,” he said.
A company from Texas called ClearWire is bringing wireless DSL connections to Jacksonville, according to Walter. And that is something that will give Sprint, which is launching a variety of new gadgets as part of its new Vision push, more competition.