When todd almasi was offered a job as a branch manager and investment advisor at GMP Private Client Ltd. in Calgary, he knew it would mean spending a lot of time in hotels and on airplanes. He’d be travelling back and forth among his Calgary office, his home province of Saskatchewan, where most of his clients are located, and GMP’s head office in Toronto.

But he knew doing the job was possible, thanks to the wonders of wireless technology, which keeps him connected to the office while on the road. “It was an important factor to have it,” says Almasi, who took the job six months ago.

Almasi is no stranger to the benefits of wireless. In fact, he is part of a wireless revolution that is underway in the business world and getting renewed attention from the financial services industry as it looks to wireless to boost advisor productivity — especially now that security issues are diminishing.

This wireless revolution touches not only handheld devices such as cellphones or Research In Motion Corp. ’s BlackBerry PDA but also extends to laptop computers, as businesses try to make mobility a strategic advantage for their workforces.

“Wireless is becoming an important area,” says Daniel Therrien, marketing manager at Cisco Systems Canada Co. in Montreal, a company that makes the hardware that runs wireless networks. Cisco has seen wireless grow at a 20% clip in the past few years, as more businesses and clients adopt wireless as the technology improves.

Wireless technology certainly makes Almasi more efficient on the road. When he travels, by using his laptop and a wireless card, he can log into his firm’s computer network from his hotel or the airport or even “sitting at a client’s kitchen table” if the client has a wireless hot spot.

Almasi has likewise installed a wireless network at home. A few years ago, he set one up in his then-home office for a “few hundred bucks,” which allowed him online access using his laptop anywhere in the house. Now, he has set one up in his new Calgary home that automatically connects him to the firm’s office from virtually any room. “I don’t have to drive back down [to the office] in the evenings,” he says.

All you need to create a wireless network at home is a laptop with a wireless card, a wireless router and a wireless access point or hot spot, which acts as the antenna and sends out the signal to your computer. Your phone line or cable company simply hooks into your high-speed modem, which connects to the wireless router. The router then links to the access point and — voila! — your high-speed Internet connection is a wireless hot spot and you can check e-mail from the sanctity of your bedroom or the leisure of your deck. And it costs less than $300 to set up.

And wireless is everywhere. Cafés are offering wireless hot spots so their clients can log onto the Internet while they sip their lattés. Viva, a new transit system launched in the Greater Toronto Area, plans to allow riders to tap into a wireless network en route to their homes or offices. Hotels and airports are going wireless.

That’s because it is now easier to send large amounts of data over wireless networks. Previously, the modems and routers designed to handle wireless were limited in speed and capacity compared with hard-wired connections. However, wireless routers today can easily handle large files and move data as quickly and efficiently as wire lines.

Financial advisory firms are taking wireless seriously and studying how wireless can make their staff more productive. For example, Winnipeg-based Richardson Partners
Financial Ltd. is eyeing wireless connectivity as an extension of the Cisco IP phone system the firm adopted when it opened its doors in 2003. The firm declined to comment on its plans because they are still in the early stages of testing.

Proponents, however, say the benefits are many. “The business case to deploy [wireless] is rather compelling,” says Chris Langdon, director of business and enterprise solutions at Telus Mobility in Vancouver. He has seen a return on investment in as little as six months for some deployments.

@page_break@Susan Bateman, a wireless consultant with CM IT Solutions in Boulder, Colo., who has helped investment advisors introduce wireless to their operations, says mobility is the
chief benefit. “You can move around,” she says.

Advisors have the freedom to leave the office, but still connect when necessary. With a laptop, they can tie into the firm’s computers and obtain up-to-date data when meeting with clients. Bateman’s own financial advisor visits her from Denver and simply connects to his office using her wireless hot spot connection.

But there can be problems if there is a cordless phone operating in the 2.4-megahertz range at that location — it can disrupt the wireless connection.

The biggest threat to wireless, however, is security, although experts say that concern is diminishing. Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) used to be the main security protocol for a wireless local area network (WLAN). If you have a home office, for example, you turn on the WEP when setting up your wireless router (some routers automatically have WEP engaged). Critics say WEP is not good for sending mission-critical data, because sophisticated hackers can break into the network. So WEP is giving way to a new protocol experts say is more secure: Wi-Fi Protect Access (WPA). Created by the Wi-Fi Alliance, a non-profit industry trade group that promotes development of WLANs, WPA uses more sophisticated encryption techniques to protect data.

When it comes to a corporate network, however, more safeguards are needed. Cisco’s Therrien says a wireless network is only as secure as the underlying telephone network off of which it leverages. The best method of security is to use additional software and technology to create a sophisticated virtual private network, which Therrien describes as a “secure tunnel” between the connecting computer and the company computer that hosts the applications and data the advisor is accessing. “It prevents anyone from listening or tampering with the information,” he says.

So, more effort goes into building a secure corporate wireless network. For example, Almasi notes, “Our system does not allow a non-company-provided laptop to access the system.”

Almasi hasn’t encountered a security problem using wireless, but he notes he is very careful. For example, at the Calgary airport there are different ways to access wireless.

“I don’t go to the connections I don’t trust,” he says. As well, his home wireless network has been given the OK by GMP’s IT department.

Company IT departments are a valuable resource and one with which advisors should check before implementing any home wireless solution, Almasi says: “They can identify problems and know what security is in place.”

He marvels at the technology he has to work with, noting it is an important selling feature in recruiting advisors. Yet not all advisors or firms are up to speed on the opportunities wireless technology presents. Says Almasi: “It amazes me that our industry doesn’t take better advantage of technology.” IE