The next time you see a Bell Canada field technician up a pole pulling wires, don't be surprised if the technician pauses, looks at a compact device on his vest, pokes at a screen with a finger or stylus and then carries on working.
When it comes to using wearable wireless technology for dispatch or to access data on the corporate network, Bell Canada field technicians are on top of a wave industry analysts predict will have a major impact on the business, industrial and consumer markets over the next 10 years.
In October 2000, 19 Bell Canada technicians started a field trial of the Mobile Assistant (MA) from Fairfax, Va.-based Xybernaut Corp. They used the wearable wireless devices, which they wore as vests or belts, in all kinds of weather and under various work conditions.
The Bell Canada technicians were, admittedly, used to working without wires - but not up poles or in vaults. Before the MA field tests, they used IBM ThinkPad laptops that they kept in their trucks for remote data access. Using MA computing devices equipped with either head-mounted or flat-panel display screens for viewing images, the technicians accessed dispatch and technical data while on the job.
In August, Bell Canada and Xybernaut announced the successful completion of what the companies billed as "the world's first large-scale market trial of wearable computers."
"Wearable PCs performed extremely well in a number of environments, saving us time on repair calls and resulting in better customer service," says Brad Chitty, Bell Canada's general manager, mobile communication services.
According to Chitty, wearable portability reduced the need to return to vehicles to boot up laptops and enter data, saving each technician more than 50 minutes per day in run-around time. The MA's daylight readable screen contributed to a reduction in computing time and proved to be ideal for viewing plant schematic diagrams.
Constant access to portable information also eliminated the need for a great deal of paper information. And, since wearable, wireless PCs are in the same price range as laptops, the return on investment for Bell was almost immediate.
"To say that Bell Canada is extremely pleased with the results is an understatement. We had to literally beg trial participants to return the trial units," Chitty said.
Bell Canada is now outfitting 300 field service technicians with the Mobile Assistant V. Over the next couple of years, Chitty expects up to 2,000 technicians to be equipped with wearable wireless devices. The units will eventually replace the laptops that are used in the field by approximately 10,000 Bell Canada technicians.
Wearing It Out
The Bell technicians are part of a trend that will see, by 2007, more than 60 per cent of the European Union and North American population aged 15 to 50 carrying or wearing a wireless computing and communications device for at least six hours a day. By 2010, more than 75 per cent will do so, according to Electronic Workplace: Application Futures; Technology Futures, a Gartner research report.
Currently, wireless wearable computing devices occupy a fairly niche market, according to Jackie Fenn, an advanced technology and applications analyst with Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner. They tend to be used in airplane and automotive manufacturing and other sectors where technicians need to keep their hands free while accessing data.
However, as voice recognition and other data input methods improve and the cost of units moves south from the laptop range to the handheld range, an increasing number of BlackBerry, Palm and Pocket PC users will migrate to wireless wearable devices, she says.
She cites Waterloo, Ont.-based Research In Motion's BlackBerry as a device that closely resembles the future of wearable wireless. It's a compact, wireless device that combines PDA and word processing functionality with always-on, two-way e-mail messaging. However, rather than accessing wearables using standard QWERTY keyboards, users will take advantage of voice recognition, gestures or touch-sensitive screens to send and receive information.
"During the next decade, a number of technologies will coalesce to drive the widespread availability of always-on, mobile computing and communications devices, or wireless interactive devices (WIDs)," the Gartner report says.
WIDs will evolve from PDAs, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)-enabled telephones and other handheld computing technologies. The lightweight units will combine improved wireless access and user interface technologies (such as speech recognition and wearable displays). Features such as location sensing and built-in low-cost cameras will further enhance the range of WID applications, capabilities and services and will drive the market, Fenn says.
A Team Effort
Because wearables will resemble today's handheld computers and smart phones in some aspects of form and functionality, there is an opportunity for companies in the handheld and mobile phone markets to capture market share. However, they are so focused on slugging it out in their increasingly competitive markets that other companies, engaged in strategic partnerships, may emerge to rule the wearable roost.
Since its founding in 1990, Xybernaut has pioneered research, development and commercialization of computer technology, hardware, and related software for wearable systems. Although its MA units will replace IBM portable computers at Bell Canada, Xybernaut is not challenging IBM's relationship with Bell Canada.
In fact, the wearable PC trial was the culmination of collaborative work between Bell Canada, IBM Canada Ltd. and Xybernaut. IBM was contracted by Xybernaut to design, develop and manufacture the computer portion of the MA. Xybernaut also has relationships with companies like Hitachi and Texas Instruments.
The wearable computing industry has created some strange bedfellows. For instance, last August the European division of Levi Strauss and the Dutch electronics company Philips joined forces to create a new line of jackets with an embedded MP3 player and a mobile phone.
While wearable wireless will initially fulfil niche roles, the capabilities they offer "are fairly transformational," Fenn says.
As with other wireless devices, information can be pushed to the user, but with wearables, users do not have to stop what they are doing to process the information. They can be in transit, up a telephone pole or kicking back on the beach and literally view a World Wide Web of information overlaid on a sub-optimal screen.
Consumers will be able to find restaurants, review daily specials and book reservations while on the go or working around the home or office.
Cashless mobile commerce will also become popular. Phoenix, Ariz.-based Hypercom Corporation and WearLogic Inc. in Wakefield, Mass., are developing leather pocket wallets for wireless payments at checkout lanes equipped with Hypercom terminals.
Employees at the Nokia campus café in Irving, Tex., use wireless phones with embedded radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to charge items taken from RFID reader-equipped vending machines directly to their credit cards, no matter where their credit cards are.
"That's the power or wearable," Fenn says, but she suggests that people not hold their breath waiting for the full potential to be realized as it will take five to 10 years to develop and commercialize mass-market applications for wearable wireless.
It's a technology delay that has nothing to do with the dot-com and technology meltdowns and the market scepticism with which investors and venture capitalist now greet many new high-tech concepts, she says.
While high-tech research and development pools are not as deep as they once were, "innovation and investments" are still taking place in the wireless wearable market, Fenn says. The wireless, wearable market is not as crowded as other high-tech sectors and vendors who demonstrate success should not have major problems with funding, she says.
Wireless And Ready
When it comes to rolling out wearable wireless, there is good news for network managers who already have wireless network access strategies in place. They will not have to make major adjustments to back-end network applications or security.
For Bell Canada, for instance, backend integration was almost seamless because the wearable PC operating system was identical to the laptop OS, Chitty says.
However, there is the potential for wearable wireless privacy invasion as mass consumer adoption, complete with two-way communication and location-based push services, hits the market. To reach a mass audience, the wearable wireless industry will have to take a page out of the electronic commerce industry and implement effective privacy measures to overcome consumer resistance, Fenn says.
As consumer resistance to e-commerce demonstrates, privacy assurance can be a tough sell. Privacy guarantees must be built into the development of wearable wireless or wary consumers will not add wireless to their wardrobe.
Sidebar
Not only was a Canadian company involved in one of the most comprehensive wearable wireless tests to date, a Canadian company supplied the all-important graphics chip for Xybernaut's Mobile Assistant V used in the Bell Canada tests.
Xybernaut used the Rage Mobility M1 graphics chip from Markham, Ont.-based ATI Technologies Inc.
The wearable PC end-user wants a small, lightweight unit with long battery life and excellent display capabilities in a variety of lighting situations. The Rage Mobility M1 enabled Xybernaut to incorporate these features in the MA V because the M1 is a compact, tightly integrated graphics product with low power consumption, says ATI spokesperson, Trupty Vora.
The M1 graphics processor was used to drive the all-light readable touch-screen flat panel display and the direct view head-mounted display (HMD).
The head-mounted SVGA display measures just 1.1 inches diagonally, but provides the same full-colour, full-screen view as a desktop monitor. And the M1 provides the MA V with razor-sharp 24-bit colour, 8MB of integrated memory and an advanced graphics feature set.
ATI's M1 accelerator features a single component graphics sub-system solution that replaced the need for more than six individual chips, used in earlier generations, and provides memory and graphics functions. The single sub-system design, combined with power management technology, resulted in reduced component cost and reduced power consumption without compromising performance.