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With all the grace and subtlety of a buffalo stampede,
Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) finally appears to be open for business. I say "appears to be" because the effort required to penetrate the dust cloud kicked up by McCaw's three-year,
multimillion dollar PR campaign an exercise in overhanging the market that would shame even Microsoft has sorely tested the credulity of an industry yearning for a big win in this promising but unproven field.
But if the proof of the pudding is in the eating, this stuff is actually starting to taste good. Mind you, the current CDPD coverage footprint remains woefully inadequate to support the serious traveling professional, and seamless roaming remains a promise yet unfilled. But selected local and regional areas are coming on-line at a respectable rate and, best of all, the underlying technology puzzle is beginning to fit together quite nicely.
A recent "Report Card" issued by the CDPD Forum shows that some sort of CDPD service now exists in 19 metropolitan areas. It classifies 11 of these as "commercial," that is, the service includes authentication, published pricing, billing and customer service. Unfortunately, in only four commercial systems does the CDPD coverage match the full cellular footprint Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and San Jose. Amazingly enough, McCaw seems to have fallen behind Bell Atlantic, Ameritech and GTE in getting its systems commercial-ready. Perhaps this is because McCaw chose to do its own systems integration, a daunting task, given the multivendor character of this open architecture. But through it all, one of the most complex, expensive and long-awaited wireless data systems ever conceived by a committee is actually coming to life.
It's time, then, to go back and examine some of the myths and realities of CDPD.
Where Voice and Data Meet Back in 1992, when the CDPD road show first electrified the press, one of the key selling points was that CDPD used "off-the-shelf cellular technology" with a "flexible architecture and ability to offer both voice and data." Well, here we are in 1995 and the only suppliers of CDPD modems that are actually shipping are three well-qualified but unproven newcomers to the modem business Sierra Wireless, PCSI and Cincinnati Microwave....