Ford in Sync, But Out of Step

The Ford Motor Company had an impressive demonstration of its Sync system last night at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. Impressive, but in the long run, Sync has some serious limitations.

Sync, which is written by Microsoft, manages your phone calls, optionally with voice recognition, by a Bluetooth connection to your cellphone. It can also download your phoneâ''s address book, and even manage multiple family cellphones (and address books). Ford cars with Sync come with hard disks for music, which Sync can also play, with voice recognitionâ''a particularly impressive feature that can even handle hard-to-parse artist names like Sade, U2, and AC/DC. The system can even recommend songs, though it does so only by an internal database of genres and subgenres.

Sync also provides navigation, traffic, weather information, and sports scores through an eight-inch screen on the dashboard. In addition, you can query Sync about things like nearby movie theatres and where the gas station with the cheapest gas is. Sync even does emergency 911â''when an airbag is deployed, the car uses your cellphone to dial 911 after giving you a chance to cancel the call.

All in all, Sync was pretty impressive, and Spectrum will have a more complete video report on it soon. But I couldnâ''t help but think of some of its limitations when I went to a panel briefing on Sprintâ''s mobile broadband network, Xohm, which will be rolling out in a number of cities through 2008.

Spectrum picked Xohm as one of itâ''s â''Winnersâ'' for 2008, and more information is available in a feature article in our January issue. Briefly, though, Xohm uses IEEE 802.16e, known commercially as WiMax, to create a 2-4 Mb/s broadband connection that will work in mobile devices, even a moving car. (I'll have more about the panel discussion in an upcoming post.)

Sync, on the other hand, uses a one-way satellite connection provided by Sirius to deliver its information. Some, such as traffic, comes directly from Sirius, but the gas station price information comes from another company's database, while the music recommendations come from a third. Each relationship has to be worked out in detail by Ford and Sirius. If some other company comes along with, say, better music recommendations, maybe using an Amazon-like â''people who liked X also like Yâ'' system, too bad.

Sync, in other words, is a closed system, just like Verizonâ''s or, for that matter, the iPhoneâ''s. Services get added slowly, when, and only when, Ford and Sirius choose to. A Xohm-based service, on the other hand, would offer a bigger data pipe and it would work in both directions, letting you send video to the grandparents or update your blog directly from the car. You could subscribe to a better music system or a traffic information service you find to be more accurate. E911 would probably also be more reliable coming directly from the car than a phone that for many people would fly into the air from the center console in an accident.

I asked a Ford spokesperson whether he wished Xohm had been available at the time it developed the system. â''Weâ''re very happy with Sirius,â'' I was told. It didnâ''t really answer the question. But perhaps Ford really is happy with a closed system it can control and draw service revenue from, just like a traditional cellular phone company. Ford needs to watch out, though. Thereâ''s this thing called the Internet, and itâ''s going to take over the wireless world, just as it did the wired one.