FedEx signs five-year mobile data pact with AT&T Wireless

Computerworld - ORLANDO -- FedEx Corp. has signed a five-year deal to use AT&T Wireless Services Inc.'s next-generation mobile data network to support new, high-bandwidth applications used by its 40,000 couriers, a move that analysts said indicates commercial mobile data services have started to become a reality for enterprise users.

FedEx also disclosed that it has selected the Microsoft Corp. Pocket PC operating system as the future technology for its next-generation mobile scanner and package-tracking device, which will be called PowerPad.

Ken Pasley, FedEx's director of wireless systems development, said the AT&T Wireless General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network "gives us significantly more bandwidth" than the company's private network and will allow FedEx to expand the types of applications used on tracking devices. The throughput of the GPRS network is approximately 20K to 40K bit/sec., compared with the 19.2K bit/sec. FedEx gets on its private nationwide network. This will allow couriers to send "fat" files such as digital signatures and could also support voice recognition technology, Pasley said.

Pasley, interviewed at the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association's annual trade show here, said that the airtime price Memphis-based FedEx negotiated with Redmond, Wash.-based AT&T Wireless will be about the same as the cost of maintaining the aging private network. For competitive reasons, Pasley declined to provide details of the pricing he negotiated with AT&T.

FedEx doesn't have to pay airtime charges for the 20-year-old private wireless network, Pasley said, but the company will have to maintain towers and the network of 750 radio repeaters, devices that send a signal from one tower to another, as well as the wire line networks that hook the wireless network into its systems.

Rod Nelson, chief technology officer at AT&T Wireless, said he views the FedEx deal as a solid endorsement of the capabilities of the company's GPRS network. The network is a high-speed data service built on top of the European-standard-based Global System for Mobile (GSM) network that AT&T is building as an overlay to its existing Time Division Multiple Access network. "FedEx has deep and broad expertise in wireless," Nelson said.

FedEx intends to use the AT&T Wireless network and capacity to initially supplement its private network in large metropolitan areas with the resources of the private network redeployed to serve smaller areas, Pasley said.

Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc., said this makes sense "since cellular carriers like AT&T will equip high-population or well-traveled areas with GSM/GPRS." But carriers won't put towers in rural areas because there's "no money to be