Subject: [NEXTEL-1] WiFi, 3G and Ten Million Landlords

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 21:51:54 -0500

WiFi, 3G and Ten Million Landlords

By Rich Mironov
www.mironov.com 

In the US, WiFi usage has skyrocketed, while 3G adoption limps slowly along. We might
expect WiFi to completely supplant 3G, but there are some interesting problems to solve
before that happens.

First, some background: WiFi is a hot set of market- driven, fast-moving standards for
short-range wireless networking.  You may know WiFi as the gear that lets your laptop roam
throughout your house, or something labeled 802.11b (and .11a and .11g).  Dozens of
vendors have rushed dirt-cheap products to market, driving spontaneous adoption in homes,
small offices and some enterprises. Gartner forecasts more than 26 million new WiFi nodes
will ship this year, and appear in more than half of all new office laptops. The general
business press has been kept busy with the human-interest side of the story: coffee shop
access and warchalking. 

WiFi is a classic Internet technology: cheap, addictive, somewhat chaotic, and built on a
rapid cascade of increasingly good standards.  Intel's announcement of WiFi support in its
upcoming chip will drive even cheaper gear and faster adoption.   

In contrast, US 3G networks have taken a very slow trip to market.  3G technology adds
data services on top of the major cellular providers' existing voice network.  It is wide-
area wireless coverage for all kinds of devices (handhelds, PCs, phones) using licensed
radio spectrum, competing with voice calls for the carriers' bandwidth and attention. The
major US carriers have split on technical standards (Sprint and Verizon are on CDMA 1XRT;
AT&T, Cingular and T-Mobile are on GSM/GPRS), locking customers into carrier-specific
hardware. 

Surprising no one except the carriers themselves, 3G suffers from all of the classic
big-carrier ills: slow roll-out, high prices, incompatible hardware, slow data rates,
incomplete coverage, carrier-style customer dis-service, and slower-than-planned market
adoption. My cell carrier will let me sip data for $10 per month, but wants $100 monthly
for heavy traffic. For those who remember ISDN, 3G is its younger cousin.

Today, the American 3G market is a combination of trendy consumers sending short messages
(IM, SMS, light email) and corporate customers who urgently need broad data mobility (such
as package delivery services).

Therefore, we should expect WiFi to eradicate 3G, leaving only write-offs on the carriers'
financial statements.  For the home and small business, I heartily agree.  (Come heavily
armed if you want to take away my home office WiFi.)  There is some obvious work to make
this happen, though, plus more subtle issues for businesspeople who travel.  Let's
consider the simple items first.

Three Easy Pieces

To mimic earlier mass-market technology adoption patterns, we will need:

-- Dirt-cheap cards and Access Points.  This month, WiFi cards are under $60. As support
moves onto Intel and AMD chipsets, look for WiFi support below $35.  By December, business
laptops without wireless networking will be in the discount rack.
 
-- Really easy to install and configure. Don't hold your breath here for 2003 - perhaps
early in 2004. Windows XP can detect wireless Access Points, but it won't be truly
friendly or compatible until the second or third release. (Remember Windows 1.0 and 2.0?) 
Meanwhile, free Microsoft client software will squash all innovative competitors, since
they need revenue to survive. 

-- Decent WiFi data security based on stable standards. This doesn't matter for home or
hot spot use, but enterprise network managers are fearful of weak WiFi security. Since
this is big topic, February's column is a walk through the acronym forest (WEP, WPA,
802.11i) and a critique of attempts to use VPNs where they were never intended. 

Given good execution, everything is in place for consumers to WiFi their houses, and for
companies to wireless-enable their employees at their main offices. Trade magazines are
filled with optimistic forecasts and product announcements, so it must be true.

Then What's the Problem?

Businesses still face the "roaming" problem. When business users leave their campuses,
they visit customers and suppliers.  In person.  In other people's office buildings,
across the table from their partners.  Once they've become addicted to always-on
connections, corporate road warriors are increasingly nervous working without a net. In
contrast, they spend as little time as possible in airport lounges and hotels and coffee
shops, because that's not where useful work happens. Wayport and STSN are addressing the
marginal edges of a business traveler's day. 

Here's where the physics of WiFi becomes important.  At its best, WiFi users must be
within 300 feet of a wireless access point.  Most office buildings are wider than 300
feet, which means that external service providers can not deliver WiFi in the places that
most business users want it: in someone else's office.  Cometa's plan to deliver
ubiquitous wholesale WiFi may bump into both ownership and physical limitations.  

Tyranny of Ten Million Landlords

Each business, then, becomes the sole supplier of WiFi within its walls. Every local
network administrator can control whether visitors have local WiFi access privileges.
Imagine ten million businesses, each with its own unique policies for "who's allowed to
surf" and "what's the secret handshake".  Today, there's no incentive or agreed solution
to manage WiFi visitor privileges.

In order for WiFi to become a resource in other peoples' offices, we need a few more
things:

-- A motivator for corporations to grant each other access. This might start bilaterally,
with a few big companies giving limited public access to key partners. 

-- A solid technical solution that gives visitors a quick route to the public Internet,
yet solidly protects the network owner from unauthorized users.  I'm still looking for a
simple, workable solution. 

-- A massive clearinghouse for authorizations and payments.  Today, iPass does for dial-up
what Visa does for credit cards: linking thousands of customers to hundreds of providers.
If we scale this up another 1000-fold, the numbers get interesting. 

-- Huge numbers of access points.  Spaced every 100 yards, the continental US is about
56,000 access points wide and 28,000 high. 

(I'm toying with approaches to the first two items.  Drop me a line to compare your white
board solutions with mine.)

On the other hand, wide area networking is... well... wide area. 3G easily passes through
walls and over corporate campuses.  If your cell phone works inside, then 3G should too. 
Corporate roamers can plug in their (overpriced) 3G cards almost anywhere, and (over)pay
for 3G data services in most conference rooms.  It looks like business travelers will be
supporting both solutions until WiFi ranges get much longer or carriers deliver a truly
competitive service.

Sound Bytes

WiFi will dominate home networking this year, and in-your-own-office connections next
year. Creating shared access for outsiders on corporate WiFi networks and in transit seems
much harder.

Rich Mironov ([email-masked] , www.mironov.com) consults on product strategy and product
management to technology companies in networking, security, enterprise software and
Internet services. Reprinted with permission, (c) 2003 Rich Mironov.

http://www.developer.com/ws/other/article.php/1579691

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