A powerful new wireless solution that capitalizes on the speed of broadband and coverage of cellular service is giving the nation's road warriors positive proof that the battle to keep productivity up, customer satisfaction high, and costs low is on the verge of being won.

Results of a three-month pilot program testing the efficiency of CDMA2000 1xEV-DO-based enterprise solutions show that sales executives equipped with laptops and wireless modems that support the new high-speed network were able to spend more hours per week with their customers than they did before, as well as more hours connected to critical corporate applications.

While preliminary, these results indicate that many of the productivity and access issues that have dogged the nation's mobile workers may be resolved by leveraging the emerging CDMA2000 1xEV-DO or EV-DO networks. Trial participants praised the speed of EV-DO, which delivers average data speeds of hundreds of kilobits per second and peak data speeds of 2.4Mbps, and reported being able to respond to customer and colleague requests in real time, all the time.

Participants also said they could tap into their corporate networks and have access to such business-critical capabilities as video conferencing and transfer of large files in locations that had previously defied connectivity such as airports, trains, and customer offices. By eliminating the down time associated with such dead zones, participants boosted their productivity significantly, and presumably, decreased their frustration levels.

The findings have tremendous import for businesses racing to support the growing numbers of mobile workers. Research firm International Data Corporation. estimates that nearly two-thirds of the U.S. workforce - or 105 million employees - will be classified as mobile by 2007. Identifying the technological solutions that will enable these employees to work effectively and cost-efficiently has become one of the most pressing mandates of the global business community.

While the incentives to deploy wireless initiatives are compelling, the investment costs can be more than a little daunting. In an environment characterized by razor-thin profit margins, the business case for technology investments has to be sound, strong, and incontestable. Without this proof, a CTO's carefully planned strategy may not make it out the CFO's front door.

To help CTOs assess the risks and rewards associated with EV-DO, IBM, in partnership with QUALCOMM, Inc., the San Diego-based company that pioneered EV-DO technology, launched a pilot aimed at measuring how an EV-DO-based wireless enterprise solution might benefit high-earning sales teams. In November 2003, 142 IBM sales executives in Washington, DC and San Diego began using EV-DO-enabled laptops with IBM's mobile encryption client, WebSphere Everyplace Connection Manager.

After three months, participants calculated that EV-DO allowed them to spend three additional hours per week with customers and estimated that with additional use, that could grow to as much as 14 extra hours per week. Given that the time/money connection is more pronounced for sales people than perhaps any other mobile worker, the added hours are expected to translate into significant gains.

Overall, 75% of the participants were satisfied, citing increased productivity, the ability to respond more quickly to customer issues, improved work/life balance, and enhanced collaboration with marketing and technical support. While it may take an additional year for the numbers to bear out, you can assume that the increased productivity and time will yield significantly higher sales.

Stephen Dunn, IBM client executive, is on the road and at client sites two days per week. That ability to bypass client networks is critically important, to be sure, and not just at presentation time. Dunn values the independence the mobility solution gives him, saying it allows him to get down to business at client locations much more quickly and with fewer headaches than ever before. Today Dunn doesn't have to worry about problems, complications, and time delays associated with getting through a client's secure networks. Instead, when he wants to get to work at a client site, he simply pops the EV-DO card into his laptop and accesses the Internet, his e-mail, or office applications in seconds.

The solution is even more valuable to Dunn when he's outside of his own or his clients' offices and in places where previously there was slow or no connectivity at all. For example, Dunn said he plugs his wireless card into his laptop at airports to make good use of his regular hour-long layovers in the Dallas airport. Prior to the solution, Dunn had to wait until he arrived at the hotel of his destination city to check e-mail or complete other work that required an Internet connection - which, as a sales executive, means most of his work. When he arrived at the hotel, he inevitably would be faced with slow, 56K, expensive connections that frequently required him to wait at least an hour to download e-mail and documents. Today, if he hasn't completed most of that work in the Dallas airport, Dunn simply bypasses the hotel connection in favor of his EV-DO card and completes his work far more rapidly, without incurring the hotel's high-priced connection charges.

The flexibility doesn't just streamline his time on the road, but benefits his day-to-day business and personal life. The father of two young karate enthusiasts, Dunn shares the responsibility of driving his children to and from class and waiting during their lessons with his wife. Before the solution, the time spent at karate had to be made up during the evenings or sacrificed altogether on days when he needed to be in touch with clients or the home office all day long. But today, he's able to plug in his card, respond to e-mails, and collaborate with clients and colleagues while his boys are in class.

"For me personally, this technology has helped me achieve a better work/life balance," said Dunn. With my new wireless capabilities, I find myself working during those two hours of karate which has improved my weekly productivity and brought peace at home as well. My wife especially appreciates this technology because now she doesn't have to drive them all the time."

Dunn says such productivity gains - at the airport, at client sites, at karate classes and at home - currently total about three hours per week on nontravel weeks and upwards of six hours per week when he is on the road. He believes that once the program is past pilot stage those numbers will increase, in part because all the deployment kinks will be resolved in an official rollout and also because connection speeds are on the rise. Dunn said he achieved speeds of about 600K in the first few weeks, but maintains they increased later on in the program, although he hadn't tracked how much.

While productivity gains and connection speeds are easily measured benefits of the solution, another achievement realized by the technology is far more difficult to quantify, but important to note, Dunn said, because it will confer long-term competitive advantages to the user.

The ability to access e-mail regardless of location is important not just for the productivity aspects, but also for keeping sales teams apprised of critical information. Dunn cites an instance in which the technology didn't just save the day, but possibly saved a project from the scrap bin. On his way to a sales presentation, a price change was approved by the home office. Because he could check e-mail in the car, he learned of the change before walking into the meeting. In the lobby of the client's building, Dunn was able to download an updated version of the presentation that contained the new price.

"Walking into that meeting with the new information was very important to me," said Dunn. "It would have been awful, of course, to give the presentation and then learn of the change after the fact. I would have had to call the customer back and tell him of the change."

Eliminating information lags, then, allows users of the mobility solution to present the most informed, updated, and professional face to each and every customer, which gives those users an edge over competitors who can't accommodate on-the-fly changes. And while it's impossible to attach hard numbers to this particular benefit, it's not difficult to see how such real-time information sharing can help to facilitate strong customer relationships and loyalty.

Dunn also praised the user-friendliness of the solution, something affirmed by other pilot program participants. In fact, 66% said it took them less than an hour to complete initial setup, which consisted of installing the wireless PC card modem and connecting to the network - an important fact for sales executives who have little time to spare.

Although initial results indicate that a strong business case can be made for using EV-DO, challenges do exist, specifically the limited footprint of the current network, as well as interoperability among competing networks and cost of access.

If high-speed wireless mobility solutions are to become viable on a national - and worldwide - basis, wireless broadband networks must not be limited to select metropolitan areas like San Diego or Washington, DC. Fortunately, at least in the case of EV-DO, the U.S. footprint is set to grow. In March, Verizon Wireless announced plans to expand its EV-DO-powered BroadbandAccess service to cover one-third of its network, approximately 75 million Americans, by the end of 2004. Verizon Wireless has already begun a phased, two-year national rollout of BroadbandAccess.

As the footprint expands, EV-DO technology will continue to evolve and improve to match this growth, providing even faster wireless data speeds and better support for advanced multimedia services and low latency applications.

Recent enhancements to EV-DO technology will enable higher maximum data speeds of 3.1Mbps on the forward link and 1.8Mbps on the reverse link. The ability to deliver multimedia content to many users and recent Quality of Service (QoS) improvements to the technology should also greatly improve user experience.

While availability elsewhere is almost sure to grow, and the capabilities of technology will certainly improve, the proliferation of wireless broadband will be accompanied by interoperability issues as well as load concerns. Will the high speeds that give the networks their value be compromised as increasing numbers of users take to the airwaves?

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the price of access has to drop before wireless broadband can become more practice than promise. The current connection rates of nearly $80/month put the service out of financial reach of many organizations. While some argue that a financial case for $80/month access can be made by substituting EV-DO for reimbursable home DSL/cable, few mobile workers will volunteer for that until questions around footprint and load have been resolved.

"Reduction in the amount of lost time at the airport has been great. Also, avoiding the $10 per night high-speed Internet fee for dial-up phone charges at hotels has allowed for great savings," said Dunn.

Despite these hurdles, the high-speed, high-capacity connections that EV-DO and similar services enable support a wealth of exciting, important, and beneficial application possibilities that stretch beyond sales into every industry.

For example, among the more intriguing - and desperately needed - applications under development is one aimed at bringing medical diagnostic services to underserved populations. IBM is currently at work developing a solution that can help reduce incidences of diabetes-related blindness. The intention is to allow technicians to use the specialized devices to scan the eyes of diabetics and electronically transmit images to off-site physicians for diagnosis.

At present, scans are transmitted by expensive satellite connections that, consequently, limit the number of scanning centers. If EV-DO becomes widespread, then the scans could be transmitted at a significantly lower cost, allowing scanning centers to proliferate in areas where they are needed most - poor, rural, and other underserved areas. It's an exciting example of the broad utility that EV-DO-enabled mobile applications will have once wireless broadband becomes more pervasive.

Other industries can be expected to follow the healthcare industry's lead. Businesses with a high percentage of mobile employees, like real estate and insurance firms, are a natural fit for adoption of EV-DO-based solutions. Many such companies have already experienced success with mobile solutions based on established technologies, such as CDMA2000 1x. So with a system and more importantly, wireless work habits, in place, upgrading to a higher-speed, data-specific wireless technology is a logical next step.

Until then, pilot programs such as the IBM/QUALCOMM sales initiative will continue to make the case for investing in secure global connectivity as a prerequisite for the successful mobile workforce.