Sector Spotlight: Down to the Wireless

Imagine five healthy adults in a potato sack race. This is about where nationwide mobile telephone companies are in the competition to develop wireless Internet services. One may jump faster than the rest, but they're all confined by the same circumstances.

Sprint PCS(PCS Quote) launched its wireless Internet service last September -- seven months ahead of the competition -- and, seemingly, has been the most aggressive in advertising and promoting the product. But Jane Zwieg, a telecom consultant with Herschel Shosteck Associates, calls today's wireless Internet services "a limited proposition" and notes that no one mobile phone carrier has a true technical edge over competitors when it comes to offering unique access to the Web.

Sprint PCS's apparent lead could be both positive and negative for the company, Zwieg says. On one hand, its marketing moxie may help it grab the lion's share of subscribers looking for Web-enabled mobile phones, but "the reality is the advertisements could create false expectations among end-users," she says. ...