Wireless Web anywhere

It's all about the handoff between 802.11b LAN technology and wireless WAN standards.

You're in a hotel lobby, using its 11M bit/sec 802.11b wireless LAN to download e-mail to your laptop, when your cab arrives. You get in, and your laptop continues downloading, though at a slower rate, all the way to the airport.

At the airport, you proceed to a passenger lounge where the transfer rate picks up again thanks to another 802.11b  network. All this happens seamlessly, with no indication, other than the change in data rate, that you are moving from a LAN to a WAN to another LAN.

You can't do this today because wireless LANs based on IEEE 802.11 protocols can't talk with wireless WANs that use data-over-cellular standards such as GSM, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Code Division Multiple Access. However, the major wireless carriers, including AT&T Wireless, Nextel, Sprint PCS, T-Mobile and Verizon , are expected to begin supporting such LAN/WAN handoffs, with the first implementations possibly later this year.

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You're in a hotel lobby, using its 11M bit/sec 802.11b wireless LAN to download e-mail to your laptop, when your cab arrives. You get in, and your laptop continues downloading, though at a slower rate, all the way to the airport.

At the airport, you proceed to a passenger lounge where the transfer rate picks up again thanks to another 802.11b  network. All this happens seamlessly, with no indication, other than the change in data rate, that you are moving from a LAN to a WAN to another LAN.

You can't do this today because wireless LANs based on IEEE 802.11 protocols can't talk with wireless WANs that use data-over-cellular standards such as GSM, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Code Division Multiple Access. However, the major wireless carriers, including AT&T Wireless, Nextel, Sprint PCS, T-Mobile and Verizon , are expected to begin supporting such LAN/WAN handoffs, with the first implementations possibly later this year.

Let's take a step back to describe how we got to this point. Soon after the Wi-Fi or 802.11b wireless LAN standard was ratified in 1999, the technology began taking over public access hot spots such as airports and hotel lobbies.

Initially, cellular operators saw the new wireless LAN standard as competition. They had hoped to charge by the byte for data services such as text messaging, Web surfing and downloading or sending e-mail on 3G  networks in which they had invested billions of dollars. They didn't want high-speed public LANs "stealing" that traffic.