Using data compiled from iPass’ quarterly Mobile Workforce Project reports, the institute’s study (you can see the full text here) found that most remote and mobile workers make the most of their freedom, allowing them to better manage when and where they are on the clock,  the study’s author Carolyn Axtell said at GigaOM’s Net:Work conference on Thursday. These employees effectively use downtime such as commuting or waiting for an appointment to get work done in discreet chunks. Those workers are aided by new mobile technologies like smartphones and tablets to get instant access to their workflow — rather than, say, booting up the laptop — which increases their overall productivity. They’re “moving the ball along,” said iPass CTO Barbara Nelson, which is a very efficient way to use a employee’s time.

But the study also found that a sizable number of workers, 26 percent, are using their newfound flexibility to essentially overwork, clocking 15 hours or more a week of extra time. Those extra hours lead to burnout, causing frustration, fatigue and even leading to mistakes or lack of attention to detail.

“If you’re not giving yourself an opportunity to recover and recharge your batteries, it will have an impact on your well-being and your productivity,” Axtell said. The work you do is no longer your best work, and the drop off in efficiency could lead to little net gain or even an overall decline in output and quality.

How do remote employees head off that inclination to overwork? Axtell said it can often be as simple as defining an action that allows a worker to draw a mental line between work and leisure. One home worker surveyed would simply go out the front door, walk around the house and go back inside, creating the illusion of coming home from the job. If you’re a remote worker, how do you draw the line?

Photo by Pinar Ozger.

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More surprising was how those additional hours affected people: About a third told iPass the extra flexibility (and attendant jump in hours worked) added stress to their lives; another third disagreed completely, responding that mobile work made them more relaxed. (It’s assumed the remaining third or so were about equally relaxed with or without mobile work.)

What’s going on here? Dr. Carolyn Axtell of the Institute of Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield recently analyzed the numbers (and will be speaking about her findings at Net:Work), trying to sort out why some workers respond well to the connected lifestyle and some suffer. In the process, she identified three “buffers” that insulate connected workers from the worst effects of a constant connection to professional demands. She describes them as:

Achievement. Many professional workers are lucky enough to be in a position where they really enjoy what they do. They become truly involved and engaged in their work because their jobs provide challenge, recognition, financial rewards and even power. Their work is interesting and motivating and gives them a sense of mastery and achievement, and these characteristics are related to greater well-being and satisfaction

Control. Having greater control over setting one’s own schedule means that work demands can be moved around other obligations to a more suitable time. Research consistently shows that having greater control and autonomy is related to higher wellbeing.

Support. It might be that some of these mobile workers are able to work so many extra hours because they receive a lot support at home for childcare or household duties (e.g., hired help; a spouse who takes on the majority of the childcare duties) and they may also have more support at work (e.g., people to delegate work to). Certainly research has shown that professional managers who work long hours often have such support available. Research has consistently shown that having more support acts as a protection against the greater stress that can result from high job demands.

Certainly having a nanny or a spouse who is handy in the kitchen and willing to man the washing machine is helpful, but not something companies can be expected to provide. Nor are most organizations able to create a sense of achievement in a worker who feels his job is unimportant or uninteresting. But there are things organizations can do to help boost these insulting factors that keep employees safe from connected work stress, according to Axtell.

For example, organizations can allow workers “greater control over their ‘off-job’ time,” which presumably translates to not bombarding them with communications and requests at all hours. This also might amount to giving workers as long a lead time as possible before a task is due, so they can set their own schedule and won’t feel intense pressure to work all hours to meet a tight timeline.

Companies should also “ensure that employees have the right resources to do their job and have the necessary support to overcome obstacles.” This support can come in the form of concrete help like necessary training and adequate information, or as emotional support, such as providing opportunities for employees to bond and relax.

Finally, Axtell suggests managers explicitly encourage workers to set firm boundaries and find time to recharge. Rather than phoning up at 11 p.m. to ask about that meeting next Tuesday, bosses should, “encourage employees to maintain a boundary between home and work and not work excessive hours.”

Is this akin to expecting Darth Vader to ask Luke to stay away from the dark side? At the end of the day, whose responsibility is it to set work-life boundaries in a world of perpetual connectivity, the worker’s or the organization’s?

Image courtesy of Flickr user dullhunk.

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That will come as no surprise to plugged-in professionals who have taken a look around at their colleagues lately (though the finding that, for the first time, iPhones have unseated BlackBerry devices  as the top choice for respondents may come as happy news to Apple fans), but what impact is this near-universal adoption of smartphones having on knowledge workers’ lives?

In one sense, the impact is grim. The survey of 2,300 mobile employees worldwide found that many are giving up exercising and sleep in favor of a constant connection to work.

• One in three respondents told iPass they sleep less due to work, with one in four mobile workers reporting less than six hours of shut eye a night
• More than half exercise erratically or not all, and 60 percent of the loafers blamed work for their sedentary lifestyle

We’re also emotionally dependent on our gadgets; 59 percent of plugged in workers said they’d be disoriented, lonely or even distraught without their smarthphone.

But one thing smartphones aren’t guilty of, surprisingly, is being a major time suck. We waste only about as much time checking emailing and Facebook and handling technical hiccups than we used to spend on cigarette breaks when that was the most common office addiction: a measly 28 minutes a day.

So in the one column, we’re filling our lungs with fewer toxic chemicals and getting massive amounts of stuff done. But in the other, the new way of working means little sleep and next to no exercise.

Are we better off?

Image courtesy of Flickr user shnnn.

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In the coming year, Wi-Fi will become a different animal than what we currently know and love. Thanks to carriers getting more involved in using Wi-Fi for network offload — as well as more devices seeking a Wi-Fi signal — this hippie technology is about to get the layers of security, authentication and manageability once reserved for cellular networks.

“Wi-Fi is just in this second renaissance,” iPass’ CEO Evan Kaplan said in an interview. “People are building out Wi-Fi like crazy, and it [has] become a viable network for carriers and changes the industry landscape and allows them to offer service they can’t get their with licensed spectrum. There is a recognition [among carriers] that there is a role for Wi-Fi, and certain mobile services should not go through the 4G core.”

Kaplan anticipates that in the next four to five years Wi-Fi will become a carrier-dominated phenomenon. Of course, Kaplan is pitching his new service, which acts like an authentication and billing layer between Wi-Fi networks and enables carriers to track and charge those who roam onto Wi-Fi networks much the way data roaming happens today. It’s an awesome concept, but it has a downside for consumers: This level of service won’t be free.

Despite his interest in carrier-dominated Wi-Fi, Kaplan isn’t alone in his views. Ronald J. de Lange, the CEO of Tekelec, a company providing carrier gear, believes that Wi-Fi is here to stay, and that carriers are looking for ways to ensure reliability and track it across their networks. He sees an opportunity for startups — such as WeFi and Skyhook, which are building Wi-Fi databases — to offer services that carriers will pay for as they seek to implement roaming and perhaps charge their end users.

It’s hard to imagine a carrier like AT&T,which operates its own Wi-Fi hot spot network, will suddenly charge users for a service it currently provides as part of its mobile broadband (and wireline) service. But once roaming is widely implemented, it could charge users a fee for access to international hot spots. Under that scenario, AT&T gets new revenue, and so do potential roaming partners AT&T could end up paying for the privilege of its subscribers roaming onto their Wi-Fi networks.

It’s also likely that other providers who aggregate services, such as Boingo or even startups such as Macheen, will gain traction as Wi-Fi becomes more integral for connectivity and thus, worth more to consumers. Even if folks don’t pay a carrier, they may pay someone be it a service like Boingo or even a retailer or device maker selling a service created by iPass or Macheen.

Even if carriers can’t find a way to milk better Wi-Fi, Kaplan is right: Wi-Fi is hot, and carriers are interested. Just last week, KDDI announced that it will build 100,000 hot spots, and earlier this year China Telecom said it would deploy 1 million. Kaplan said iPass currently authenticates users across more than 500,000 hot spots: a number Kaplan expects to rise to seven-hundred-something thousand by the end of this year.

So now that Wi-Fi is clearly hot and clearly necessary, we’ll see carriers try to monetize it. Get ready for carrier-grade Wi-Fi and a new sales pitch.

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Speaking this morning at our Net:Work 2010 event, Evan Kaplan said this mobilocracy expects certain support and services, which he called the “mobile worker bill of rights.” Kaplan, the president and CEO of iPass, an enterprise mobility provider, says these expectations include: staying connected, choice of device, being free of security threats, full I.T. support and a single account in the enterprise. For these rights to be realized by the mobilicracy, Kaplan said enterprises must design infrastructure and services with moblity as a primary factor, not as an afterthought.

Why should companies cater to mobile workers? One key stat from iPass’s research of their 2.5 million users tells the story: those in the mobile workforce end up working much more, to the tune of 240 extra hours per year. These workers find more pockets of time to work on various devices in the new hardware stack, which Kaplan says is a smartphone, tablet and a laptop. Each of these on their own are nothing without supporting services from I.T. and infrastructure, however. The best way to design with mobile in mind, Kaplan said, is to lean on those resources that are already tech-savvy in mobile and cater plans for them. For an extra six weeks of productivity, admitting to the rise of the mobile workforce and then catering to it sure seems like an investment with nothing but upside.

Rebtel
When mobile voice goes mobile VOIP, what happens to the carriers that have made their business selling voice minutes to customers? In 1990, there were 10 billion minutes of international calling, but now it’s 400 billion minutes, according to Rebtel CEO Andres Bernstrom. But Bernstrom believes that technology has advanced so that the folks who own the pipes no longer own the connection between users. Other services are now leading the way for international calling, including Skype, Google Voice and Vonage, as they push the boundaries of technology and price. Facebook is also moving into the space, which would mark an enormous shift, as the network already owns the social graph, knows your friends, and knows who you want to talk to. The big question is who will win this trillion-dollar land grab. The answer is that it’s likely not going to be the mobile operators who own the pipes.

iPass
It used to be that having a BlackBerry handset meant workers were on a shorter leash, but now the tables have turned. According to iPass President and CEO Evan Kaplan, smartphones and new wireless capabilities have changed the global workforce. Kaplan says that a bleeding edge of 10 percent of mobile workers, led mostly by millennials, are defining the future of the mobile web. These “rainmakers,” as Kaplan calls them, use networks differently than other users do today, and show how users will work in the future. At any given time, these users have more than one device and lean toward consumer technologies, causing enterprise IT departments to follow suit. Kaplan believes that users need a new “Enterprise Mobility Bill of Rights” that allows IT departments and service providers to serve these leading users. To do that, companies need to provide connectivity all the time, allow their employees to choose the device they want to use and allow them to determine the network and the services they want to use. If enterprise and service providers do that, Kaplan says those users will be more productive and useful to their organizations.

Skyhook
Beyond mobile apps like Foursquare or Facebook, most apps aren’t made for purely social usage. But even those that aren’t implicitly social need to begin leveraging social capabilities, according to Skyhook CEO Ted Morgan. Apps that integrate social network capabilities do better than others, according to Morgan, and location is becoming a key part of that social experience. Not just that, but using social networks and using location gets people to use the app more. If you integrate social networking features, Morgan said, people become more loyal to the app.

Motricity
The mobile Internet has provided a vast opportunity for new capabilities and services on smart phones and other devices. But according to Motricity Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Jim Ryan, there’s a much bigger opportunity and a better mobile experience that can be provided, designed just for end users. To do so, Ryan said mobile Internet services need to know more about you. Therefore, users have to trust the mobile carrier with their data to make service more personalized and relevant. The carriers need to act as the good stewards for data, in order for the most valuable information and data to be delivered to the end user. Ryan argued that mobile companies shouldn’t allow mobile Internet to be just the Internet on the mobile phone, but something different and something better.

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iPass has just weighed in on which side of that debate its enterprise clients fall on. The enterprise mobility service just announced that it has added Aircell to its available network of services. This means that iPass Mobile Network users will be able to connect to Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi, while staying within the iPass network. Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi is available on all AirTran and Virgin America flights, and on limited American Airlines, Delta, US Airways, United and Air Canada flights. Customers will be charged $4.95 for flights less than 1.5 hours, $9.95 for flights 1.5 to three hours, and $12.95 for flights more than three hours long for using Gogo through iPass.

In the product announcement, iPass explained that this will benefit employees of iPass Mobile Network customers, as connecting to Gogo will be more convenient with iPass, since they will be able to avoid the multiple steps of paying via credit card and filing expense reports after the fact for reimbursement. For enterprises, it should simplify accounting, allow companies access to detailed reports on in-flight network usage, and allow enforcement of VPN and security policies.

For regular users of other airlines, iPass says it expects to add more in-flight Wi-Fi services to its offering in 2010.

iPass leaves no doubt in its announcement that mobile workers are now expected to be working constantly when traveling — even when they are at 30,000 feet:

“The age of inflight Internet connectivity is here and is a huge productivity win for business travelers who need to stay connected and work securely online while in the air,” said Evan Kaplan, president and CEO of iPass. “Airplanes have been the last bastion of mobile worker downtime and iPass and Gogo Inflight Internet provider Aircell are here to close this gap in a way that meets the simplicity, visibility and control requirements of the enterprise.”

Say goodbye to the days of settling back in your seat and watching a movie or reading a book and getting some recharging before that big meeting while you cruise at 30,000 feet. When enterprises consider in-flight Wi-Fi a needed function of their mobile networks, the writing is obviously on the wall (or in the clouds): your airplane seat is now an extension of your office.

Does in-flight Wi-Fi make you feel obligated to work? Would that change if it were part of your employer’s mobile network?

The premiere iPod in Apple’s line of media players, the iPod touch has been described as an iPhone without the phone bits, and that’s pretty accurate — but it is capable of placing VoIP calls. The ability to have voice calls over the Internet for low cost or even free is easily done with the iPod touch due to the Wi-Fi functionality, but you don’t hear Apple selling that function. Doing so would raise the hackles of AT&T and Apple’s other carrier partners who, as a rule, don’t like the competition VoIP provides for their voice networks.

But do callers really need a carrier? If a company stepped in with a gadget similar to the iPod touch, equipped with heavily-promoted VoIP capabilities, such a device could be well received by the mobile crowd. A handset that trumpeted its ability to put “Skype in your pocket” (or a similar promotion) could be an instant hit with today’s cord-cutting consumers.

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Creating an easy user experience through seamless connectivity between networks and software can be done, but Nelson laid out several challenges to executing it. Most of them are related to business models rather than technical challenges, among them:

• Authentication Issues — Different networks decide if you can use their network based on different criteria. To access a Wi-Fi network you need a user name and password, but to get on a cellular network you need a SIM card, which is attached to a device. WiMAX certifies the device but then accepts a user name and password. Nelson believes associating connectivity with a user is ideal since users may own a great number of devices.
• Billing Model Issues — Users buy Wi-Fi connectivity based on a measure of time (such as a day pass) while cellular operators charge for access based on the number of megabytes of data a user downloads. For the user it may make sense to use a cellular network for checking email rather than paying for a Wi-Fi day pass, but it’s hard for a user to figure that out, especially since most users have no idea how to define a megabyte. Nelson also was frustrated by the variability in roaming charges when trying to get on 3G networks internationally.
• Policy Issues — Building a software client that can help users decide whether it’s best to choose a network with the lowest costs, fastest data rates or best signal strength for a task is hard. It requires the client to be able to figure out how strong a signal is and weigh that against how many users are on a network. For example a strong cellular signal is good, but if a lot of people are sharing that cell site, there’s too much congestion, which lowers the data throughput. So given a choice between that and weak Wi-Fi signal with faster data rates, a Wi-Fi network would be best. But the average user doesn’t want to think about this.

There are a host of issues that basically stem from trying to mesh the worlds of unlicensed spectrum dominated by Wi-Fi to the heavily controlled world of licensed spectrum owned by network operators. Nelson notes that these complications are keeping users who are worried about incurring costs or using the wrong network away from the web when they’re mobile. As she put it, “We’re building this global Internet, and users are scared to get on it.”

photo courtesy of iPass

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Vivek Gupta, a wireless architect at Intel, talked about emerging standards at the IEEE that deal with creating building blocks to reconfigure spectrum based on the type of device or application that is trying to access the network. One of these standards, called 1900.4, was published in February of this year. Another standard, called 802.21, which deals with handovers from network to network,  also was published this year. The 802.21 standard may have the most utility, as it would likely connect Wi-Fi and WiMAX networks, and enable seamless handovers from one network to another. The seamless handover is important, because it means people won’t experience an interruption in service as they move from network to network. This would be especially important during a VoIP call or while watching streaming video. Gupta says we might see that happening within the next 12 to 18 months.

The hope is that 802.21 would also work with cellular standards proposed by the 3GPP, which controls the fourth-generation wireless LTE standard. However, carrier adoption of an IEEE standard is unlikely since they like to develop their own, said Gupta. He said the idea of creating a seamless handoff between networks using licensed and unlicensed spectrum is “a difficult proposition.”

However, the demand for constant connectivity and the expense of providing mobile access are both rising. An executive from iPass, which provides Wi-Fi and 3G data access globally to corporate customers, noted at the meeting that software or a method for determining which employees in an enterprise need to access the most expensive networks (such as Wi-Fi on a plane) will help bring down costs. Even being able to determine if a device would be better off moving onto a Wi-Fi network rather than a 3G network for reasons of cost, reliability or speed becomes more important. Brand Communications makes a software client to run on a device that bands several networks together to boost bandwidth and provide redundancy for mobile connectivity to create a true broadband cloud, rather than seamless access from one network to another.

Essentially, folks here are talking about a bandwidth cloud, but making that a reality will require a review of business models as well as hammering out technical standards.

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