Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Ready For Take-Off: Wi-Fi At Airports

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 16:50:00 -0400

Ready For Take-Off: Wi-Fi At Airports While the business case for Wi-Fi is varied
and not yet proven, some airport officials believe it will fly.

BY MARK ROCKWELL
AUGUST 1, 2003

Airports' Wi-Fi needs are climbing to cruising altitude these days, but
negotiating the details of advanced services contracts still can be a little like
trying to find the lowest fare to Albuequerque–it all depends on where you start.
Dozens of airports have rolled out hot spot networks for travelers in their
terminals in the last year. Many more are preparing to do the same. The next three
to six months will see some of the country's busiest and largest airports inking
deals for Wi-Fi and expanding voice capacity systems. But the flight plan for
implementing a Wi-Fi network and choosing operators is as individual as each
airport.

Bids are out on wireless networks that include some Wi-Fi subnetworks at Atlanta's
Hartsfield International Airport; Boston's Logan International Airport;
Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport; Memphis International Airport; Salt Lake
City International Airport and Washington, D.C.'s two regional airports–Ronald
Reagan National and Dulles International.

The contracts that cover these networks are complex and must accommodate many
different interests, say airport and vendor executives. With so many
wireless/Wi-Fi contracts set to close in the next few months, carriers and
airports are desperately seeking advanced services models and capabilities to
craft their agreements but are finding one template doesn't work for such diverse
locations and applications.

"Wireless local area networks in airports are the most complex out there because
of all the shared uses," says Harry Simpson, senior vice president of marketing
and business development at network management firm Roving Planet. By the end of
the year, half of the 300 major airports in the United States will be doing
something with wireless local area access and advanced applications, he says.

FROM FOUR TO 30 Last year at this time, about four airports offered 802.11b Wi-Fi
hot spot network access services from their terminals–other than
already-established services that were offered by airport tenants such as
Starbucks Coffee Co., says Carter Morris, executive director for the Wireless
Airport Association, whose board is made up of airport and airline executives.
"Now there are about a dozen airports offering the services. If you count airline
lounges, the number could rise to about 30 airports," Morris says. Applications
are growing more complicated as well. Internet access, the staple of hot spot
services, is being joined with data services that support airport security and
communications services, as well as data support for local vendors and store
operators in increasingly retail-savvy travel facilities.

The timing on the contracts is becoming crucial as demands for advanced data
services is driven forward by consumers increasingly used to anywhere/everywhere
wireless access to the Internet, their business and private e-mail, and other
next-generation services such as voice over IP and wireless video streaming.

The proliferation of hot spot access at those airports hasn't been
straightforward, however, because airport terminals and terminal tenants have
conflicting–sometimes bitterly conflicting–interests that have to be meticulously
worked out. Network and services vendors are finding there is no easy way to
address all of the interests at such complex places, even though they would
welcome a standard approach.

The deployment of Wi-Fi systems in airports also is creating business for some
firms that specialize in network management, such as Roving Planet and Concourse
Communications Group. Joe Beatty, CEO of Concourse Communications Group, says
airports don't want an in-house staff running the network. Rather, they want to
hand over operations to management firms or operators. Concourse Communications
has contracts with six major airports and has installed systems in most of them,
both for licensed voice and Wi-Fi.

REGAINING REVENUE Airports learned a decade ago that commercial telecom could
bring in supplementary income, and that revenue was lost as technology progressed.
"Airports are looking to replace the revenue they lost to cell phones," Morris
says. Before cell phones, payphones–banks of them–were popular in every airport.
Coin-operated, customer-owned phones were installed either privately or in
conjunction with the local telephone company in large transportation centers such
as airports. Airports received a cut of the profit from the telephones' owners and
installers in exchange for allowing those operators access to their sites. With
the advent of cell phones, however, payphones have become virtually obsolete and
the flood of revenue they presented 10 years ago has dried to a trickle.

Regaining some of that extra income is one aim of Wi-Fi. Another aim is to serve
an increasingly disparate community. It is a frustrating proposition. "We don't
get to go to an airport and say, 'Here we are, ready to install hot spots at the
airport,'" says Scott Schelle, director of strategic business development at
T-Mobile HotSpots. The company provides hot spot access in 15 North American
airports, as well as American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines' clubs
and lounges.
"This isn't like the [cell] tower business" where there are standard types of
agreements between the companies that build towers and the carriers that put their
transmission equipment on them, he says. Each airport facility has different
needs, including commercial services, as well as internal subnetworks that a
contractor must support.

Everyone wants to know what the model is for an airport, says Steve Fulford, vice
president of strategic business development at Wayport Inc., an Austin,
Texas-based supplier of high-speed wireless networks and services for airports and
hotels. "I say, 'We're trying to figure that out,'" he says. Fulford says the
contracts being drawn up between network suppliers and airports are probably going
to be less complex than those coming in the next couple of years, and the
contracts drawn now will help frame future efforts. Ultimately, the contracts
between airport and network vendors will be location specific, reflecting
individual airport needs and approaches.

RANGE OF MODELS Some airports are looking to incorporate wireless voice networks
and retain ownership of the network that a carrier installs. Other airports want a
vendor to build and operate the system, but repay the facility on a percentage
basis. And under some contracts, exclusivity for the carrier that provides the
network isn't necessarily guaranteed after a certain period, vendors say.

However, some rules of thumb have become apparent as suppliers work with airports.
"Airports lean toward leasing opportunities with providers," Fulford says.
"Airports are looking to share their customer base" with service providers, as are
other hospitality providers such as hotels. Both want a double-barreled network
that serves the public in the facility but also meets internal communications
needs. The internal network in some contracts, Fulford says, helps coordinate
existing wireless networks that vendors or tenants have installed, or replaces
them.

Such a "coordinated open system" approach–one that coordinates frequencies and
services is a must for network providers trying to sell advanced wireless networks
to airports. That integration has led to tensions between airports and airlines
that have installed their own wireless networks, he says.

Concourse Communications' Beatty says the whole idea of Wi-Fi nets in airports is
so new no one really knows if the networks will generate any significant income.
In fact, it will be a few years before the payback is known because that's how
long an airport may take to recoup its investment in the network.

A look at Sacramento International Airport's Wi-Fi business case shows airlines
had concerns over the quality of service from the airport's Wi-Fi network plan. In
that case, airlines were concerned with using the same public wireless network
without being able to guarantee bandwidth for internal business communications.
The airport is slated to turn on its Wi-Fi network this month and expects a payoff
of its system in 32 months, with a projected fee of $6.25 per user and an
estimated 37 passengers a day using the network.

Although some problems still linger between airlines and some airports over
wireless networks, those coexistence issues largely have been settled, in favor of
the coordinated, open network solution, Fulford contends. "The number of
individual networks complicates the larger system, creating islands of individual
services. There's still some of that, but all airports are moving to correct
that," he says.

The one thing airports have in common is attempting to keep Wi-Fi data costs low
for travelers. The same wireless Internet access service may fetch a higher price
at a hotel three blocks away, Fulford says. "The rate for a customer in an airport
for 24-hour access may be $6.95, while the same service in a hotel would get
$9.95," he says. "The customer is in the hotel longer than in the airport." A flat
fee, with no hidden charges for travelers, also is important, T-Mobile's Schelle
says. "People don't want to get nickel and dimed to death," he says.

Cops, Cruisers And Computers

Law enforcement agencies across the country are taking technology leaps by
installing Wi-Fi systems, but will these deployments hamper efforts to coordinate
emergency communications between agencies?

With its abilities to transmit data, photos, even video, over the air like a wired
local area data network, Wi-Fi is looking pretty handy to cash-strapped local
police departments looking to upgrade their old mobile radio communications
systems. However, the attraction may prove a bit of a problem in the bigger
picture of national coordination efforts for 911 systems.
In Price City, Utah, the police department installed a Wi-Fi-based communications
network to support its over-the-air data communications needs. The system allows
officers in police cruisers–armed with laptop computers as well as shotguns–and
police personnel in police headquarters facilities to securely access files,
download records and photos–including mug shots–and a variety of other data
applications, possibly including voice over IP services.

The network, designed around Alvarion's BreezeAccess 2.4 GHz infrastructure, was
purchased directly by the Price City police department. The secure system allows
the department to avoid monthly communications services bills from a wireless
provider. The system also allows bi-directional communications, just like an old
radio system, but has data throughput of 1.5-3 Mbps. Officers in patrol cruisers
can access traffic citation files, animal control, documents and even building
diagrams when needed. Officers also have Internet access directly from their cars
and could soon be using voice over IP communications, says Price City Police Chief
Aleck Shilaos.

The system jump-started the department's sluggish use of computers, even among
older officers who had shied away from technology before, he says.  "We can pull
up mug shots, jail records and pawn shop information" on the spot, he says. "This
keeps officers in the field, not at their desks looking up paperwork. There's a
police car on the corner instead of at the office."
While those applications are compelling, national emergency response officials are
scratching their heads over how advanced proprietary technology will affect
efforts to coordinate emergency communications between various agencies.
"My hat's off to this guy (Shilaos)," says Mike Amarosa, vice president of public
affairs at TruePosition, a maker of E911 location systems. Amarosa spent 24 years
as a civilian employee with the New York City Police Department, where he helped
implement new communications systems. "He's taken the initiative" in connecting
his department. However, the system apparently does nothing to help with overall,
national or regional, coordination of emergency communications systems, he says.
The rush of new wireless technologies into police departments is breathtaking and
could outrun such coordination efforts, Amarosa notes.

Steve Seitz, governmental affairs director at the National Emergency Number
Association, says the effects of having Wi-Fi communications systems in local
police departments are hard to determine because it's such a recent development.
There is a good side and a bad side, according to Seitz. Wi-Fi uses unlicensed
spectrum, which gets around a primary concern for law enforcement: spectrum
limitations. However, the past has shown that uncoordinated implementation of
radio systems in police departments results in adjacent jurisdictions being unable
to communicate with each other and complicating responses to emergency situations.

The responsibility for monitoring the implementation and coordination of advanced
technology in local law enforcement is in flux in Washington. The Department of
Justice, for instance, says it doesn't track local or regional law enforcement's
use of advanced technology or how to coordinate it. Apparently the Department of
Homeland Security does, but ongoing institutional development at the recently
inaugurated agency has clouded the issue of who's watching the details of local
and regional law enforcement communications.

The Safecom initiative grew out of the Public Safety Wireless Network
public/private network coordination effort, according to Ray Miller, a spokesman
for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which used to oversee the project.
Project Safecom, which had been headed up by the Department of Treasury, is a
government initiative to coordinate emergency communications public safety
personnel at the local, state and federal level. It involves state and local
agencies, as well as the Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Federal
Emergency Management Administration, United States Coast Guard, Department of
Agriculture, the National Guard and National Telecommunications and Information
Administration. According to Miller, the Safecom initiative was passed to the DHS
office of science and technology about six weeks ago. DHS officials couldn't be
reached for comment on the status of the project.

http://www.wirelessweek.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA314150&spacedesc=Features&stt=000

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