Subject: [NEXTEL-1] WI-FI'S GROWING PAINS

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 04:42:14 -0500

WI-FI'S GROWING PAINS

      How the Wi-Fi Future Might Look
      FEBRUARY 18, 2004

      From seamless switching among networks to
      making cell calls over the Net to beaming video
      from PC to TV, the possibilities seem unbounded

If you had told most people in the year 2000 that by the time
George W. Bush ran for reelection they would be able to
connect to the Net wirelessly, they would have called you
näively optimistic. If you had predicted that they could do so
at 100 times the speed of a dialup connection while sipping
coffee at Starbucks or sitting on their luggage waiting for a
plane, they would have called you nuts. So now that you can
do all that, what's next for the hottest technology du jour?

Anyone who claims to know for sure is probably wrong. But that hasn't
stopped the speculation about Wi-Fi's blue-sky future. By 2009,
estimates
Craig Mathias, president of Ashland (Mass.)-based wireless consultancy
Farpoint Group, the technology will be in half of all homes on the Net
at
any speed, up from 12% today. Mathias also expects it to be in 50% of
corporate offices, vs. 8% last year. But that's just a hint of where
Wi-Fi's
real promise lies, at least according to its promoters.

Within a decade, they predict, it'll be integrated into myriad networks,
devices, and services. So complete will this transformation be, says
Latina
Connelly, director of strategy for IBM's aptly named Pervasive Computing
division, that you won't need to buy the extra hardware you need now to
set
up a Wi-Fi network. The only clue that you're Wi-Fi-empowered will be
the
capability you suddenly have to beam streaming video from your PC to
your TV
without any cables.

NEW NETWORK

That should open a new era in mobile computing, made possible by
combining
Wi-Fi with the new cellular-data networks the biggest phone companies
are
rolling out. Once those arrive, you'll be able to check e-mail on your
personal digital assistant (PDA) or cell phone even as you walk beyond
the
150-foot range of your office Wi-Fi antenna, or hotspot, and out into
the
parking lot, where a cellular data network will take over.

Starting this summer, phone company SBC Communications will let
customers in
some markets download special software onto their laptops or PDAs that
will
enable them to switch between Wi-Fi and a new, more ubiquitous cellular
data
network as they wander in and out of the range of hotspots, says SBC
Chief
Technology Officer Ross Ireland. Verizon Wireless, a joint venture
between
phone companies Verizon and Vodafone, will introduce a similar, though
faster, service in many markets this year, says Jim Straight, Verizon
Wireless' vice-president for multimedia services.

IBM is already ahead of the game, with software for laptops and PDAs
that
makes it possible to roam between Wi-Fi, satellite, and advanced
wireless
networks such as those implemented by Verizon Wireless and Cingular, a
joint
venture between SBC and BellSouth. The Cingular software automatically
switches Web access from one network to another and in the future may
also
automatically select the cheapest and most efficient network for
particular
applications, such as video, says Connelly. Another piece of software
will
consolidate charges for these different networks onto one bill, she
says.

ON CALL, EVERYWHERE

The next step will be to build Wi-Fi capability into cell phones, which
should eventually make it possible to use Wi-Fi to make phone calls over
the
Web. At Nortel Networks, this capability, called voice over Wi-Fi, has
shaved 57% off of employee calling-card bills, says Chief Information
Office
Albert Hitchcock, citing a three-month experiment last year involving
5,000
employees.

Cell phones combining Wi-Fi with the carriers' wireless technologies
will
come out in large numbers within the next year: Already, an alliance of
No.
2 mobile-phone maker Motorola, equipment maker Avaya, and broadband
hardware
maker Proxim is testing a dual-mode phone that can make calls both over
a
cellular network and, via Wi-Fi, over the Net. Every other cell-phone
maker
is close behind.

Even on equipment that offers Wi-Fi functionality exclusively -- such as
phones customized for very specific jobs, such as those used in hospital
emergency rooms -- Wi-Fi will be more integrated with information
systems.
Wi-Fi devices for nurses made by phone maker SpectraLink already are
being
combined into a system that pages a nurse whenever a patient presses the
"call" button. That allows nurses more mobility, so they don't have to
sit
at their nursing stations to receive messages.

In the future, this handheld might also dip into databases containing
patient charts, so the nurses can make quick decisions about patient
care,
says John Elms, president and CEO of SpectraLink in Boulder, Colo.

BOUNCING OFF THE WALLS

Wi-Fi is also being incorporated in consumer devices, from the fridge to
the
gaming console to the printer. Since Wi-Fi captures the exact location
of
anyone who is using a hot spot, a mobile worker who needs a printer
could
ask the corporate network to find the nearest one to the café he or she
is
in, says Larry Birenbaum, a senior vice-president at Cisco, the world's
largest maker of Wi-Fi hardware.

Some of these future capabilities are, for now, strictly the stuff of
geek
lore. In a few years, experts think, special software -- already
available
but not widely used -- will allow for so-called mesh networking. With
mesh,
instead of going directly from the family PC to the stereo, a downloaded
song would hop from the PC to the Wi-Fi-enabled TV to the fridge and
thence
to the stereo -- dodging interference from walls and increasing the
speed of
the transmission, says Rick Rotondo, vice-president for technical
marketing
at privately held MeshNetworks in Maitland, Fla., whose investors
include
networking gear maker 3Com.

These leaps could happen at 100 to 200 megabits per second when a new
Wi-Fi
standard called 802.11n is ratified by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical
&
Electronics Engineers), probably by late next year. Such speeds --
roughly
100 times that of current Wi-Fi -- could lead to new applications, such
as
relaying video from a PC wirelessly to a flat-screen TV on the wall. The
first TVs using the new standard should come out in 2006, says Tony
Grewe,
director of strategic marketing for the Client Systems Group at Wi-Fi
chipmaker Agere.

OTHER TECHNOLOGIES

Wi-Fi will also enable new consumer services. For instance, instead of
turning in a camera's memory stick to have photos developed, customers
could
simply beam the photos from a Wi-Fi-enabled digital camera onto a
store's
equipment, says Martin Dunsby, vice-president of operations at wireless
consultancy InCode Telecom in San Diego. For businesses, enabling such
extra
convenience might cost as little as $200.

Of course, Wi-Fi must surmount many challenges before it reaches nirvana
-- 
particularly as alternative wireless technologies proliferate. Some
analysts
see lots of promise in ultrawideband (UWB) technology for such digital
home
tasks as streaming a song from a PC to the stereo. UWB offers speeds of
more
than 100 megabits per second. It's also cheaper and uses much less
power.

Chances are, though, that by the time a lot of these other technologies
arrive, Wi-Fi will have a commanding lead. Assuming, of course, that
behind
these blue-sky plans is a lot more than a king-size dose of wishful
thinking.

By Olga Kharif in Portland, Ore.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2004/tc20040218_1565_tc140.htm

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