ABSTRACT

The wireless industry has seen a steady high growth rate in the demand for services enabled by wireless data, spurred in large part by the introduction of smartphones and the enormous popularity of services such as social networking and video downloading and streaming. New areas of applications for wireless data are continually opening up, ranging from marketing, sales, and customer support to social networking, and health-care delivery. While the wireless data industry continues to become increasingly diverse, one can observe that two mainstreams of the industry are dominant. The chapter discusses the characteristics of wireless data networks and reviews the principal existing and evolving wireless data networks and the related standards activities currently in progress. From the perspective of the data user, the basic requirement for wireless data service is convenient, reliable access to data services over a geographical area appropriate to the user's pattern of daily business or social activity.