Sixty Percent of Enterprise Customers Want Wireless WAN

Feb. 1, 2003
Flarion Technologies, the architect of the IP friendly flash-OFDM mobile broadband system for mobile operators, announced the key findings from the Yankee

Flarion Technologies, the architect of the “IP friendly” flash-OFDM mobile broadband system for mobile operators, announced the key findings from the Yankee Group report, "Bridging LANs with Wireless WANs: Overcoming Technology Challenges for Wireless Data."

The report, commissioned by Flarion, found that 60 percent of corporate enterprise customers would prefer to wait for the availability of a wireless WAN technology that meets enterprise requirements for: network reliability, speed, compatibility with existing LANs, security, device compatibility, and ubiquity of coverage and network latency.

Key findings from the report found:

• Currently, there are no commercial networks available from licensed mobile operators that offer a LAN-like experience.

• 60 percent of respondents would prefer to wait for the availability of a WWAN technology that meets their requirements, rather than deploying an inadequate solution.

• 98 percent of respondents would recommend a LAN-like WWAN technology to their management.

• 88 percent cite operational cost savings as being a business benefit of this type of solution.

• 42 percent anticipate new business and sales opportunities.

The report also identifies the key applications driving the need for a wide area wireless provider. The leading wireless data applications for enterprises include:

• Remote access to specific corporate data or applications (91%);

• Wireless email and calendar access (80% and 63%);

• Workforce automation (56%);

• Browsing and Web services (44%);

• Customer facing applications (43%).

Furthermore, the report found that in moving to an all-packet switched transport infrastructure, wireless LAN to WAN, there would be a 10 percent to 15 percent savings derived by corporate customers from using a WWAN technology that requires minimal changes to existing LAN environments.

"The Yankee report underlines the inherent demand that exists for a next generation wireless solution that offers voice and data over an all-packet switched network, end-to-end," said Mike Gallagher, president, Flarion Technologies. "Today's circuit-based wireless technologies were built to carry voice traffic, but do not scale to the data demands of the enterprise for data."

With Flarion's IP friendly flash-OFDM technology, mobile operators can seamlessly connect corporate LANs with a wireless Wide Area Network with the speed and low packet latency that exceed stringent corporate network requirements. This, along with large-scale IP Quality of Service (QoS) control, enables mobile enterprise users to experience comparable performance, security and bandwidth allocation as they would in an office on a shared Local Area Network (LAN) environment, without making any modifications to user settings, applications, protocols, content or devices.

Key findings from the Yankee Report: "Bridging LANs with Wireless WANs: Overcoming Technology Challenges for Wireless Data," is available at www.flarion.com; reference data from other mobile and wireless reports from The Yankee Group can be found at www.yankeegroup.com.