Cool Wireless Innovations – from the Hospitality Industry

I spoke this week to a packed house at HITEC 2010, the hotel industry’s annual technology conference. My part was a general overview of advances in wireless technology and mobile broadband, as well as a look at key mobile computer, communicator, and computing trends. It was heartening to see the huge (perhaps 300 people; enough to get real close to violating the local fire codes) audience, for a number of reasons. First, the recession really is coming to a close. This industry has been beaten down, but new investments in both properties and related technologies are underway. The mood was upbeat. And, of course, the audience here sees wireless as important to industry growth – and, as I’ll get to in a moment, there are opportunities all around. I spoke, for example, about using one’s handset for all hotel-related functions – check-in, room key (see below), local phone, local credit card, environmental, entertainment, and lighting controller, and lots more. The vision and promise of wireless are as strong here as anywhere.

But enough about me – let’s talk about some of the interesting products from the show floor:

 – Motorola announced their new and very flexible AP6511 802.11n Wall Plate Access Point, in many ways a logical progression of their T3 Cat-1 wallplate. This time, though, we’re talking .11n, meshing, modularity, and much more. This product is very well thought-out, easy to install, and very cost-effective. The only criticism I could offer was that backhaul is 100BaseT, but that won’t matter much in a hotel environment. I’d still like to see links to the outside world given more thought, though – many hotels I’ve stayed at still think a T1 is plenty.

– Sprint put together an impressive showing, with all of their 3G/4G products on display, including USB dongles, the HTC EVO 4G, and their edition of the MiFi (see everything here). They’re doing some heavy marketing to hotels, including using 4G for digital signage (a huge topic regardless), kiosks, video, and even back-up connectivity, which is, BTW, much faster than a T1. Hint, hint.

– I saw a demo of a very interesting physical security technology from OpenWays, which they call crypto-acoustics. It works like this: you pre-register with the hotel, and they send a text message to your handset with your room number. Upon reaching your room (you can bypass the usually helpful folks at the front desk, who unfortunately are often separated from you by long lines) and place the earpiece of your handset on the OpenWays adapter on the door lock. A tone is transmitted, and viola – you’re in. Very clever indeed.

Why not just use Bluetooth or Wi-Fi (or NFC or ZigBee, or whatever), you ask? I was told battery life issues (those card-key locks obviously have a battery); OpenWays is way more power-efficient. Or perhaps it is for now – I still believe Wi-Fi PANs will work just fine in this application. Still, very interesting.

– Control4, a leading supplier of residential-automation systems whose equipment I reviewed (very favorably, I might add) for the last Network World Holiday Gift Guide, was showing their systems designed for hotels. If you’re ever at CityCenter in Las Vegas, check out a really large-scale installation of their products. I’m currently investigating a home automation upgrade for my own place, and Control4 is on the list.

– Finally, the coolest products of all were also among the simplest. Enocean builds a line of wireless light switches and related devices that have no battery – the action of the switch alone generates enough energy to operate the radio, with the receiver at the other end turning the light (or whatever) on and off. This is installation flexibility, one of the hallmarks of wireless, at its finest. Some of their products use solar cells and capacitors, but this is a very cool, green, flexible solution to many wireless control applications. More on energy harvesting in general later.

All in all, despite the really toasty weather, a very productive visit to Orlando.