Consultant and well-known forecaster Andrew Seybold has been described as the "wireless industry's advance guard."

His interest in wireless communications dates back to his days as a HAM radio operator when he was twelve years old. After spending time in the mainframe industry ("I found out very quickly that I wasn't meant to be a programmer") he became a two-way radio systems salesperson for Motorola and developed the first paramedic radio which he holds a co-patent on. After getting "bitten by the computer bug" while spending time with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as Apple Computers was getting started in the late 1970s, "it became very clear to me that there was going to be this convergence of wireless data, wireless voice and mobile community."

Almost two decades later, Andrew Seybold's Outlook is an essential read for anyone who makes decisions in the nascent wireless industry. He attends conferences like Wireless Agenda 2000 on a regular basis, giving his views on where the industry has been and where it should go. He took time out from being bombarded with requests for his expertise from virtually every person at the conference to sit down with AnywhereYouGo.com.

AnywhereYouGo.com: Why has the wireless revolution taken off with such ferocity in the last two years, after so many false starts?

Andrew Seybold: I think you have to blame that on the Internet. I mean, we were doing wireless e-mail in the early '90s, with companies like RadioMail, RAM and ARDIS. There were a lot of vertical things happening. In fact, I put mobile data terminals in the L.A. County Sherriff's vehicles in the mid-'70s, so there's been a lot of it around.

You know, one of the things that happened with cell phones when they first came out, and they were expensive and bulky. Companies started putting voice mail on them. It was that synergy between cell phones and voice mail that kicked the cell industry into high gear. Everybody realized that they had a new freedom. They had the freedom to stay out of their office, take care of their customers and still not miss anything.

With e-mail becoming just as mission-critical as voice mail, it's certainly the same kind of catalyst that I see pushing wireless.

AYG: In the University4Mobility opening session, you said that "What AT&T Wireless has done by offering 'all-you-can-eat' basic wireless access to the Internet will change the way carriers do business." How do you see the other carriers reacting to AT&T's pricing plan?

AS: Well, first of all, that was a bold move that AT&T made, but CDPD is an old, paid-for network, so they were able to do that. The issue is, wireless carriers went into the wireless Internet thinking that the wired carriers had dropped the ball and lost control of the Internet. The wireless carriers were going to provide control over who gets to do what over the Internet, what you were going to access, and of course, they were going to charge you for that.

The problem I have is, you take someone who thinks they might be interested in data, and you say to them, 'Okay, it's ten dollars per month, plus minutes.' They don't know the value. They can't say, 'That will be worth ten dollars a month to me, I'm gonna do it.' Because they don't have any experience [with wireless data].

What AT&T did by offering free Internet -- now, it's not totally free, for everything they offer -- but it's free enough that people can experiment with it. It is a move that says, "I have an interest, I wanna see if this works, it's not gonna cost me any money, I'm gonna buy a new phone and try it." And if I find that it's valuable, I can opt in to one of their upscale service offerings, so I can get e-mail and things. But, I think that a lot of people are going to have a lot of problems signing up for ten dollars a month without discovering first that this thing has a lot of value.

AYG: In the last couple of months, Microsoft has made a huge push into the wireless realm, not only with the new Pocket PC initiative but with the new Stinger smartphone and their Mobile Explorer browser. Will this help or hinder WAP development in America?

AS: Well, it depends on whether or not you think WAP has a future in America, which I do not. One of the things Microsoft has done is, they've built themselves a browser. It is a multi-functional browser, so whether it's WAP or HDML today, and XML in the future, it's the same browser. So they've actually allowed vendors to put a browser on their phone that will work regardless.

There's an awful lot of interest in WAP, there's a big community around WAP. WAP is not going to go away. I have a basic problem with the premise of having a browser on a phone. I believe that on a desktop, you use a browser, but on a mobile phone the last place you want to go to get information is a browser. We need to be able to access Internet information from within applications. So, I'm not a big advocate of browsers in any extent.

AYG: You've equated WAP to Citizen's Band, or CB radio over the last couple of days.

AS: Okay, this comes from the days when I was selling two-way radio for Motorola. My first customers were gas stations and tow trucks. I would go in and try to convince them of the advantages of two-way radio, to communicate with their tow truck. And I would tell them that the equipment I wanted to sell them was $6,000. I got a lot of push back from that. They went out and bought Citizens' Band radio, for several hundred dollars. What happened from that experience is that they learned the value of two-way radio, learned that they could save time and make their business more productive. But, because it was Citizens' Band, low power and all that, they could only talk over a few miles.

So, when I went back in with my fancy, sophisticated Motorola equipment, and sold them, I didn't have to teach them the value of two-way radio -- I only had to teach them that they could talk over 30 or 50 miles instead of two or three miles.

I believe that WAP is the same way. I think that WAP is going to get people exposed to the basics of data, and they're going to understand its value, but then they're going to look around for something more robust.

AYG: With all of the different device protocols and delivery methods, have we finally gotten to the point where there are too many conflicting technologies?

AS: There's always too many. What's interesting to me is, the handset vendors are actually bringing together this disparity of networks. You're seeing phones that are GSM / CDMA, you're seeing phones that are Nextel / GSM, you're seeing the AT&T phone which is TDMA on two different bands, analog and CDPD. So the phone vendors are actually making this disparity of carrier technologies disappear to the end-user.

AYG: If you could give one message to wireless developers, what would it be?

AS: It's real simple. Get rid of the browser, and let me get to my applications from inside the application. My partner [Barney Dewey] calls it 'active content.' If I have a calendar that already has my airplane listed, why do I have to go to a browser go to the American Airlines site, re-type the number of the flight to get information? I want to click on what's already in my calendar and have, in the backbround, all of the steps to get me my information.