Mobile WANs v. public 802.11 LANs
 
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A healthy portion of the educational sessions at the recent Comdex trade show in Chicago examined the relationship between emerging packet-switched mobile WANs and IEEE 802.11-based LAN services in public places.
In a keynote address, for example, Cingular Wireless CTO Bill Clift mildly pooh-poohed the effect of 802.11 LANs on enterprise use of 2.5G/3G services from places such as airports and hotels. He implied that users would find it too inconvenient to buy multiple subscription fees or have to pull out their credit cards for on-the-fly connections. His comments, though, didn't account for the fact that aggregation services are emerging from companies such as Boingo Wireless that enable users to purchase one subscription fee for coverage across multiple wireless ISP (WISP) public LAN services.
Other experts on a " 3G versus 802.11 " panel had other ideas. " This is the year that major service providers and PTTs enter the [public wireless LAN] market, " said John Rasmus, vice president of business and corporate development at GRIC Communications, an aggregator of dial-up Internet services that is branching out into the WISP market. He expects about 10,000 hot spots to be available globally (up from under 2,000) by the end of the year.
Jim Thompson, founder of Musenki, a self-funded startup focused on the convergence of wireless LANs, wireless PBX voice systems and cellular networks, goes so far as to envision 802.11-enabled payphones in airports. He also noted that Nokia has announced a dual Global Package Radio Service (GPRS)/802.11 card for mobile devices. Alan Reiter, a wireless industry veteran and independent editor, noted that Sprint is one of Boingo's investors. All these activities would seem to bode well for public wireless LAN services future.
On the other hand, Reiter said, " the cellular industry will buy, crush, or ignore 802.11; they have that much power. "
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Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Campbell, Calif., who has spent most of her career analyzing trends and news in the computer networking industry. She welcomes your comments on the articles published in this newsletter, as well as your ideas for future article topics. Reach her at joanie@jwexler.com.
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