CDPD premortem

The demise of the CDPD (cellular digital packet data) analog cellular network in and of itself may not be the cause of any major disruptions in your business processes. But it should give you pause, forcing you to think about the future as you deploy your wireless systems in the present.

First a bit of background: CDPD was created by scientists at IBM and was used for the company’s own field force. AT&T was and AT&T Wireless now is one of the two major CDPD network providers; Verizon is the other.

CDPD has a low-speed, 19.6Kbps data rate, which in its day was good enough. Today, it is primarily used by public-safety organizations, in the health care and transportation industries and in other vertical markets where just getting the data transmitted is more important than high performance.

The Federal Communications Commission decided a while back to allow the CDPD providers off the hook, ruling that they no longer had to support this low-bandwidth, unprofitable service. AT&T Wireless stopped selling the service last month and will discontinue the service as of June 2004.

Verizon representatives told me the company will continue to support it. But the truth is that the equipment manufacturers have already stopped making CDPD equipment, and according to a source familiar with CDPD industry equipment suppliers, the carriers are scrambling around for spare parts, having to cannibalize one system to fix another.

Current users relying on CDPD face a further dilemma: Most of the equipment they have uses embedded CDPD modems and they are supporting technology that is not worth upgrading. With the demise of this network, public-safety outfits and others — some strapped for capital as it is — will be forced to perform a complete upgrade.

The typical notebook stays deployed for between three and eight years, especially in public safety. In the meantime, carriers are rolling out CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution), EvDO (Evolution Data Only), and who knows what else. IT managers need to be thinking about what equipment they will be buying, or they will go through the same thing again.

I spoke with Dave Johnson, director of wireless technology at Spokane, Wash.-based Itronix, maker of a rugged laptop that still supports CDPD as well as other wireless networks. I wanted to speak with him because his company seems to have already done some forward thinking. Itronix notebooks are network-upgradable from CDPD to whatever comes down the pike.

Although CDPD is less expensive on a flat-rate basis, Johnson advises companies to investigate whether they really need a flat rate. “People pick a flat rate because they are risk-adverse. But many applications have predictable usage levels, so if you are only using 1MB, 5MB, or 10MB per month, buy a plan that gives you that, and most will save money,” Johnson said.

So, the lesson here is obvious. As you decide that wireless has value for your own field force, whether it’s used in the cab of a truck, on a laptop mounted in a patrol car, or in the back of a van, make sure that whatever equipment you buy can be swapped out. And with the economics of the wireless industry being what they are, it is more than likely that a carrier will give you more bandwidth at a cheaper rate for the newer technology.

If your company is making the transition from CDPD to something else, I would like to hear from you.