I was reviewing "The top ten issues in wireless - 2004," a piece I wrote last January, and was thinking about writing a similar column for you today. But one issue from that column really jumped out at me, and I've decided to focus on it here. This, of course, is despite the fact that I really scored with my industry consolidation prediction (I predicted four nationwide carriers by the end of 2004, and the Sprint/Nextel deal got me in under the wire on that one). But I just covered that merger, after all, so here I want to hit what I think will be the biggest issue of 2005: ease of use.

As I noted in a recent column on benchmarking wireless LANs, I've spent a lot of time recently, well, benchmarking wireless LANs. One element of this process that really struck me is how often it is that wireless LAN equipment is simply too hard to use - and I've been using, working on, and evaluating wireless LANs for over 13 years! And it's not just wireless LANs - cell phones, PDAs, and wireless products of all forms suffer from this malady. I hate to admit it, but I occasionally sit baffled, tempted to prove I'm a wimp and call tech support, because nothing useful is happening. So, I'm thinking, if it's this bad for me, it must be really awful for many others. In my January 2004 column, I offered the theory that programmers just get tired sometimes, and that extra detail work (which makes the quality difference, for example, between the cars of today and those produced, say, in the U.S. in the 1970s) just doesn't get done. I've learned a lot about detail engineering over the years; it might account for 50 percent of the engineering cost, but only affect perhaps 5 percent of the product. Still, it's that 5 percent that makes the difference between happy customers and less-than-happy customers who find out how little the folks in tech support really know. And how much do all those tech support calls and returned products actually cost? How much does a bad reputation cost companies whose otherwise good products are accompanied by bad documentation?

I mention documentation here because, even with less-than-adequate detail engineering, good documentation can often compensate to a large degree. But note that I'm not talking about manuals: as a rule, I don't read them. Oh, sure, a cursory flip-through is always fun, but I've found that manuals in general fall into one of two camps. Either they are so brief as to be useless (and often not even written in acceptable English), or so complex that I can't find what I need. I recently installed an enterprise-class wireless-LAN switch; the manual for this product runs over 1,200 pages! As if I'm going to read such a document, or even refer to it - that's not going to happen.

In fact, I often tell our clients in the manufacturing space that they can by-and-large junk the manual if they just do two things: add context-sensitive help to the various management screens, and add balloon help to each option. Simple. But that involves programmers, not tech writers, so it's unlikely to happen on a large scale anytime soon. Combine the lack of effective documentation with general software errors ("bugs" - everyone has them) and configuration problems that just aren't obvious, and, well, you have a less-than-satisfying experience. Wireless is like any other element of high tech. We need to make the technology accessible to the mere mortals that buy the stuff. We need a satisfying out-of-the-box experience in every case. I don't care if we're talking a cell phone or an enterprise-class WLAN switch. This really isn't that difficult a problem to solve, and every firm should re-commit itself, in this time of new beginnings, to this goal, right now, for this year. Your customers, and your bottom line, will thank you.

Consultants and analysts like me, it has been said, earn our livings from complexity, and we thus have little incentive to fix the problem. There's no need to call a professional, after all, if the product just works and you don't have to crack a 1,200-page manual. But I am one analyst that is appealing for a limitation on the possibilities for our revenue in 2005. We, as customers, have suffered far too long. This isn't, as I noted above, all that hard. Let's just get it done, starting today.

Enough ranting - despite the above, the state of the wireless industry and its fundamental technology are both good as we begin the new year. And this will be a year of new applications, new products, and continual progress. I have always considered it a privilege to work in wireless, and I'm looking forward to one of our best years ever. We've got some very interesting columns in the works for you this year - stay tuned.

Farpoint Group

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