Submitted by: Harry Martin, Regional Director for Advanced Technologies, Verizon Wireless
VoIP, netbooks, video conferencing, Twitter and Facebook. Businesspeople are more tech savvy than ever and with good reason given today’s 24/7/365 business environment. The stakes are high for businesses that know they need the latest tech tools to stay competitive in this challenging environment. One of these tools is the smartphone which has become widely adopted by businesses, both large and small.
A recent Forrester study revealed that 49 percent of small business owners reported owning a smartphone. Additionally, Gartner, another research firm, confirmed consumers’ affinity for smartphone technology reporting that smartphones account for nearly one in five of all phones sold.
While earlier 2G wireless communications networks delivered digital voice and text messaging, today’s 3G networks enable smartphones to provide untethered, mobile access to a range of capabilities, including e-mail access, mobile messaging, high-speed web-browsing and calendar-syncing.
In addition, these devices, backed by a network five to ten times faster than earlier systems, offer other capabilities that can give your business an edge over the competition such as secure, instant access to records and research information that can help mobile employees be more responsive to customers while outside the office. Improved workforce management is another benefit smartphones offer. For example, by using wireless technology, your business can locate and dispatch remote workers, collect and analyze employee timecard information, and quickly send customer service requests to team members in the field.
Businesses of all types can increase efficiency, productivity and drive sales through the use of wireless and smartphone technology. For example:
- The owner of a real estate company could use a smartphone to quickly search the latest MLS listings and show online images of houses on the market to clients while in the field.
- A trucking and storage company could utilize GPS technology via smartphones to give its drivers access to turn-by-turn directions when traveling to customer sites and also track its trucks in the field.
The future of the smartphone and its significant impact on business will continue to evolve by leaps and bounds with the advent of next-generation wireless technology such as 4G /LTE (Long Term Evolution). While today’s 3G networks will remain in place and continue to be a viable means to conduct business more productively and efficiently, 4G networks will change the world around us through increased connectivity – not just between people, but between devices, network and applications.
Verizon Wireless will launch its 4G LTE technology in 38 major metropolitan cities and more than 60 airports throughout the country by year end, delivering an immediate benefit to both large corporate and small-to-medium-size businesses. While it promises much more than speed, the first application of our company’s 4G LTE will offer both improved latency and lightning-fast speeds (10 times faster than today’s 3G high-speed wireless broadband and 100 faster than earlier 2G technology) for laptop connectivity.
Other potential 4G capabilities include the ability to carry data for utilities’ “smart grid” projects and deliver high-definition, glitch-free video for news media applications. In the medical arena, doctors will be able to stream data, via wireless tablets, from remote locations back to the hospital to enhance patient diagnosis and care. The possibilities are endless.
These are challenging times for companies of any size but the wise use of the first-large scale LTE network on the globe will offer businesses a competitive advantage that promise to yield tangible results for their bottom line.
Harry Martin is a regional director for advanced technologies at Verizon Wireless. E-mail him at Harry.Martin@VerizonWireless.com. For more information, visit http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/businessSolutions/index.jsp or www.verizonwireless.com.
