Unified messaging may be the next big differentiator, and it should get a boost from IP, 2.5G and WAP.

Soon, it will be hard to remember how anyone got anything done when voice mail, e-mail, fax and paging each required separate systems and devices. In the age of unified messaging (UM), you'll get all your messages from a single in-box, accessible from any device, anywhere and anytime. You won't worry about the medium used to send or receive messages. Instead, you'll choose the most convenient device, whether it's a PC, PDA or wireless phone.

Analysts anticipate explosive growth in the UM market. Frost and Sullivan says sales of UM software, hardware and services totaled $329 million last year and will top $5 billion by 2005. Strategy Analytics predicts 90 million UM users by 2003, and IDC projects UM revenues of $3 billion by 2003.

Although UM has long been called "the next big thing" in wireless data, so far, it's progressed slowly. But today, with the advent of WAP, 2.5G and improved applications, UM's potential seems greater than ever.

The State of UM
GTE Internetworking recently launched its UM service, where business customers can access a single platform from anywhere in the United States for a flat monthly fee. It targets the millions of mobile workers who currently must access different systems to get messages while away from the office.

GTE delivers UM over its Global Network Infrastructure (GNI) backbone, which means subscribers use local access numbers to get messages and thus avoid per-minute or long-distance charges, said Dana Love, chief architect of GTE Internetworking's IP telecom group. By using a browser or text-to-speech phone commands, users can prioritize how they receive messages and differentiate them by content. GTE's service will be in 30 cities by the end of the summer.

Many other providers are testing UM services. Bell Mobility subscribers will be able to read e-mail or listen to voice mail with a regular phone, wireless Internet phone or Web site. Norm Silis, Bell Mobility director of wireless-data services and e-commerce, said that subscribers are eager for the opportunity to access both e-mail and voice messages from a combined mailbox.

"It's all about accessing messages from different devices in different places," Silis said. "The excitement is about freeing people from having to go to a specific phone and get their messages."

Bell Mobility's UM offering, which will be in trials until later this year and then launched early next year, will allow subscribers to create their own data centers to access their e-mail, schedules, addresses and corporate network through one universal entry point.

UM Challenges
In recent years, IP-based systems have proved the best way to transport voice in UM. The bighurdle is converging voice technologies seamlessly into IP systems. James Healy, Call Sciences director of product management, said that IP messaging lets providers offer UM via a centralized, universal message store rather than from distributed, integrated message stores.

"Next-generation wireless networks will be IP-based and capable of seamlessly integrating with centralized message stores," Healy said. "Bundling services like UM with the wireless account enables the customer to receive voice, fax and e-mail messages from their wireless phones. However, the service must be integrated with the provider's network such that the network can route calls/messages to the UM platform."

Another key element is IP interfaces, said J.J. L'hospital, Lucent Technologies general manager, service provider and messaging.

"This is not the plain voice world the way we used to know it," he said. "With UM, you have a converged offering that ties together voice, data, the Internet and the wireless network, so you're getting into sophisticated services. It becomes even more complicated when you're mixing and matching technologies."

Silis would agree. Bell Mobility, like many other incumbent providers, has some legacy network elements and interfaces that aren't truly IP-based. Deploying a UM service that uses the Internet means accommodating IP interfaces.

"A challenge for us is to take existing legacy components — applications, voice-mail products, peripheral products that relate to the switch or, from a billing perspective, legacy IS/IT applications — (and) interface (those) into an IP-based structure," Silis said.

For GTE Internetworking, deploying UM meant modifying a central component of the service: Software.com's e-mail-server application. Software.com's directory structure was strengthened, enabling UM to support millions of users at once. GTE also changed the 170 Cisco IP-telephony routers supporting GNI so they could be configured automatically to handle UM.

Expanding UM'S Horizons
One advantage of a WAP-ready UM system is that it supports a wider range of devices, protocols and networks.

"WAP is a good way to build net-works," said Lucent's L'hospital. "The protocol allows (providers) to deploy a new set of services, which means you get more revenue and more differentiation."

"As WAP evolves into more of a broad-based standard, it will merge with widely accepted applications-development environments like J2ME (Java) where one can write once across multiple devices," said Janet Boudris, BellSouth Wireless Data senior vice president of strategic marketing. "Centralized message stores based on industry standards allow for rapid deployment and development of additional platforms and protocols."

Brett Francis, mediagate director of engineering, said WAP and UM will be each other's catalyst.

"The joke is, 'how much can you fit on your business card?'" he said. "I have this phone number, cell number, fax number and e-mail address. UM has always been about minimizing that, and it's well on its way to doing that."

But there are deployment requirements.

"The underlying network has to have data capability; we have to deploy it within the framework of our infrastructure and get handsets that have browsers in them so you could access that gateway," Silis said.

The beauty of WAP and UM together is anywhere, anytime access to any message.

"In an IP-based service, if you're a Toronto subscriber in Florida, when you turn on your phone down there and try to launch the service, it will route back to your home gateway server and from there, hop on the Internet," Silis said. "The advantage is that home gateway server has a profile of who you are, and you're using the tailored personalization available from your carrier processing through your gateway and going to your preferences on the Internet."

As the definition of UM expands to include more than just voice mail and e-mail, new technologies and applications will require more bandwidth, which will open up more UM applications. If you add 2.5G, UM will become less text-based, and there will be more graphic opportunities, more information, larger screen sizes, better clarity and color, Silis said.

"(2.5G) gives you two really exciting capabilities: Increased speed, and (the) packet network allows optimization from a carrier point of view and (more) applications from a customer point of view," he said.

With UM services supported by 2.5G and WAP, providers can offer a major differentiator, and subscribers will never miss their messages — whether they want to or not.