Mobile and Wireless Network Operators have started offering local businesses and consumers a range of new data services including Internet access, secure corporate Intranet access, mobile e-mail and more. Are Service Level Agreements (SLAs) on mobile data performance key to wooing the enterprise customer? A recent article at Telecommunications Online looks at SLAs on mobile data services.

Asking questions about emerging industry trends is a lot easier than coming up with convincing answers. The world of mobile is no exception, particularly when it comes to SLAs (service level agreements) for the enterprise customer.

What type of SLAs, for example, will mobile operators offer on data performance? Do enterprises really expect such SLAs anyway, or do they have other priorities? Will mobile SLAs, due to the inherently unpredictable nature of the wireless network, be forever restricted to customer care issues (such as handset replacement in an agreed time frame in the event of loss or theft)?

As with any contentious subject, answers to these questions vary according to who you speak to.

“Due to enterprises’ growing reliance on wireless data services, there has been a change in their mindset,” says Kieran Moynihan, CTO of Vallent. “They are putting more pressure on their service providers to commit to minimum standards of network performance on such things as accessibility, retainability [connections maintained], latency, throughput and MTTR [mean time to repair].”