Andrew Seybold: How smart can you build your application?

Wireless broadband and slower-speed data services are becoming ubiquitous. We now have WiFi hotspots in a zillion places, some free and some not, and, according to Clearwire, we will have a high-speed wireless data network up and running on WiMAX in the next couple of years.

Just as speed and capacity varies across all of these networks, so does pricing. Hotspots might be free or cost up to $10 per access. Wide-area networks might have unlimited data for a monthly fee or, as we have seen, the all-you-can eat wireless data days are gone and we will pay by the megabyte or gigabyte for our wide-area data services. Networks are adding pay-by-the-hour or day to their contracts. Data roaming is available but can cost a lot of money. Third and fourth-generation networks have quality of service built in and some of the newer 3G technologies coming to market in the next year will have special modes to handle higher-speed burst transmissions.

What does this have to do with content? Well, content has to be moved from the cloud to the device using a browser or an application and sometimes from the device back up to the cloud. Applications that simply send and receive data on a command from customers could end up costing them a lot of extra money.

Smart applications for content would know the speed of the connection and perhaps even the type of network and could make recommendations to the customer based on these and other parameters. Suppose the program was smart enough to be able to track the amount of data used by a customer in a given month, or obtain that information from the network operator? For example, some carrier plans are based on 50 MB of data per month and then an overage charge kicks in. If customers wanted to download large files or other content, the program would warn them that they would exceed their data allowance for the month and they might want to wait until they are connected to a WiFi hotspot or even a wired connection.

The application could be even smarter by suggesting they could defer delivery of the files until they are on a different network or until the middle of the night if they did not need it right away. The program would then automatically cue up the file and the next time the device was connected via a faster and/or cheaper network, the download would take place automatically.

Today, most applications and content downloads are based on the assumption that there is a reasonably fast data connection and the cost of that connection is not material to the transaction. This follows the Internet model where, at the moment, we subscribe to a DSL, cable or FiOS connection, pay our monthly fee and don't worry about how much data we use.

But wireless bandwidth is shared bandwidth and the tricky part of managing that bandwidth from a network operator's point of view is to make sure it is available to anyone who wants it and to provide access for as many people as possible. In a given cell sector, it only takes one or two customers downloading streaming video to have an adverse impact on the performance of the network for other customers within the same cell sector. The networks are getting smarter and are able to throttle down the speed of data being delivered to preserve capacity for others in the cell sector. But applications that are aware of these issues and can help customers navigate around the various speed, capacity and monetary variables would go a long way toward helping both customers and network operators.

This type of automatic network monitoring might be ideal for iPhone applications since the iPhone will have three distinct data speeds available in almost every country where it is available. First, there is the 3G wide-area network speed in the 800 kbps-1.2 Mbps range. Where 3G is not available, the device will fall back to EDGE and 80-120 Kbps data rates and, finally, when it finds a WiFi hotspot, it might be able to send and receive in the 1-2 Mbps range depending on a number of variables. In most combination UMTS/EDGE systems, if the customer moves from UMTS to EDGE and then re-enters an area with UMTS, the device will stay on EDGE until the session is terminated.

The final point for developers to understand is that we are in an always on, sometimes connected world. There will be times when, right in the middle of a download, the signal will be lost. The most successful applications are those that can re-establish the session without causing the customer to manually start over again.

The bottom line: Writing applications and providing content in a wireless environment is not the same as using the wired Internet, and the applications that work best on wireless are those that are built from the start to be wirelessly aware.

Andrew Seybold is an authority on technology and trends shaping the world of wireless mobility. A respected analyst, consultant, commentator, author and active participant in industry trade organizations, his views have influenced strategies and shaped initiatives for telecom, mobile computing and wireless industry leaders worldwide. Andrew Seybold University will take place Sept. 9 at the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment conference in San Francisco.  Check here for more details.