I’ve predicted for years that phones plugged into a wired grid will go the way of the B&W television set. Hey, finally looks like I got one!

I’ve been intrigued by a currently-running Sprint commercial that talks about how Ford Motor Company ditched wired phones in favor of going cellular. Thinking the commercial was probably 3 parts hype and 1 part reality, I Googled it. Turns out that it’s legit.

Ford has so far cut the cord from about 8,000 desktop phones and, as replacements, supplied cell phones—mostly those used by Product Development engineers.

In 2004, the company set a record, it says, by introducing 40 new (or substantially new) products in just one year. (I’ll have to research that one. They’ve got the new GT, ‘Stang, Freestyle, and Five Hundred…with the Fusion appearing in dealers now. Forty just doesn’t quite make sense, however. Hmm. Maybe when you include their other companies such as Volvo, et al.)

With products moving from concept to reality so remarkably quickly, it’s no surprise that the company made such a change not within management, not within marketing, not within purchasing, but engineering. These professionals have to be mobile as well as easily accessible—not something that was easy to do with wired phones and pagers. That’s all they—or we, for that matter—need: more numbers to keep track off and things that go beep in the night. ‘With Product Development stretched out over multiple facilities like the Proving Grounds, the Wind Tunnel or the Certification Test Lab, and states, it was not realistic for them to always be at their desks to take a call. A critical question could go unanswered until the engineers were back at their desks. Pagers allowed a more urgent contact, but did not always mean receiving an immediate response. The engineer still had to find a phone or free computer, which was not always easy if in a meeting or at the Proving Grounds.’

“It’s really about mobility,” says Jeff Lemmer, IT manager of telecom services at Ford. Product development “is a group that tends to physically move around a lot. It is real important from a communication standpoint that they are able to interact openly and freely with each other.” To make things even easier, phone directories are loaded into the cell phones before they’re issued to employees.

Product Development requested of IT that it find a single-device solution that was found in a customized solution provided by Sprint. Cell phones enabled push-to-talk access around the country, the advantages of cell phone functionality for longer conversations, and text messaging to enable fast responses when a voice conversation might be inappropriate or unfeasible. Some special RF magic by Sprint boosted the signal of the public network in Ford’s Dearborn facilities. Strategically-placed antennas boosted signal strength to reduce dropped calls.

Consultant Bob Egan thinks that such scenarios will create financial challenges, with wireless costing up to three times more than traditional phone service. Also, while up to 16% of consumers are giving up their wired service exclusively for cellular, only 5% of businesses indicated in the same In-Stat/MDR study that they would consider such a move.

Seems like a logical, productive winner to me, and as more companies implement the shift to cellular, economies of scale will make the price more attractive.

What do you think? Cell phones for everyone or do you want to hold onto that wired desk model?

REFERENCES

Network World
Ford to Cut Cord on 8,000 Phones
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/012405ford.html

Sprint
Ford Motor Company Case Study
http://www.sprint.com/business/products/whySprint/cs-ford.jsp

Sprint (PDF)
A Single Device is Extending the Workplace for Ford Motor Company Engineers
http://www.sprint.com/business/resources/CaseStudy_Ford.pdf

Global Technology Forum
Wireless Wonderland
http://globaltechforum.eiu.com/index.asp?layout=rich_story&channelid=4&categoryid=28&title=Wireless+wonderland&doc_id=7698