Wi-Fi is not dead
Are Wi-Fi hot spots going the way of public telephone booths?
Johan Bergendahl, chief marketing officer for wireless-equipment maker Ericsson, thinks they are. During his keynote address on Monday at the European Computer Audit, Control and Security Conference in Stockholm, Bergendahl told an audience that as more people use wireless broadband fewer people will use Wi-Fi hot spots in public places.
"Hot spots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era," Bergendahl was quoted as saying in a post by the IDG News Service.
Bergendahl argued that wireless broadband is growing faster than mixed or fixed telephony. And that eventually people will have no need to connect to hot spots, because wireless broadband will be baked into their laptops and other devices. And service will be available everywhere.
Of course, these comments should be taken with a pinch of salt. Ericsson sells wireless equipment to cell phone companies. It doesn't make Wi-Fi gear. So it shouldn't come as a shock that the company would publicly slam Wi-Fi, while promoting its own flavor of wireless broadband, called HSPA (High Speed Packet Access).
In some ways, I agree with Bergendahl. Wi-Fi has its limitations. But I don't see the technology fading into the sunset just yet, or going the way of the public telephone booth anytime soon.
The pros and cons of Wi-Fi
It's true that Wi-Fi signals don't travel over long distances, making coverage spotty at best. This also means that because hot spots are often independently run within the confines of a limited space, like coffee shops or airports, there's no seamless, ubiquitous coverage. I'm the first to admit that I'm annoyed when my signal drops and I'm forced to re-sign into wireless hot spots.
Broadband wireless service through a carrier definitely offers wider coverage. And it's more convenient. But it's expensive. In the U.S., Verizon Wireless charges $60 a month for 5GB of downloads per month and $40 a month for a service that allows 50MB of downloads per month. By contrast, many Wi-Fi hot spots are free. And if they aren't free, people can pay by the hour or by the day to use the services, a great option for casual users who need wireless broadband only occasionally.
There are other issues associated with wireless broadband offered through carriers. Because carriers use different technology standards to build networks, access cards from one provider can't be used on another's network. This is one reason why embedding 3G wireless service into laptops hasn't taken off. Consumers don't want to be locked into a single wireless broadband provider the way they are with a cell phone provider.
This could be changing. Qualcomm has introduced a chipset called Gobi that operates on CDMA2000 EV-DO and UMTS HSPA networks worldwide. This could allow laptop makers to sell notebooks with embedded radios that could be used over different networks, theoretically allowing people to roam between networks. Gobi chipsets are expected to start appearing in laptops in the second quarter of 2008.
Another significant reason Wi-Fi isn't going to die anytime soon is because it's already in wide use in millions of end-user devices. And because the technology is standardized and manufactured in bulk, it's relatively cheap. This has helped it become almost a standard feature in any laptop computer sold today. And it's already getting installed on other small handheld devices like music players, such as the iPod Touch from Apple. Handset makers are also including Wi-Fi in their phones. And other consumer electronics makers are embedding Wi-Fi into home entertainment products to eliminate wires.
I agree with Bergendahl that wireless broadband will grow phenomenally in the next few years. But I am not convinced that the rise of 3G or even 4G wireless broadband services means the end of Wi-Fi. In fact, I see the two technologies co-existing.
Even though wireless broadband signals travel over longer distances than Wi-Fi, coverage inside buildings is often poor. Because of this fact, wireless broadband may be used outdoors, while Wi-Fi is used indoors. T-Mobile's Wi-Fi at Home already offers this type of service for its voice customers. Subscribers to the service use Wi-Fi when at home, and the T-Mobile cellular network when outside the home. This hybrid approach could also work well for broadband services. And it would also help carriers better control bandwidth usage on their networks.
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie. 
Other aspects are cellular internet is costly and usually slower then hard wired alternatives (dls, cable, fios) and usually designed to operate a single laptop computer. This is great for people who travel a lot and need to use laptops on the road, but for someone who only occasionally brings a laptop outside a home or work setting, hard wired internet with a WiFi access point makes the most sense, and depend on WiFi hotspots while traveling.
for either EVDO (Sprint, Verizon, Alltel) or HSDPA (AT&T) and
turn it into a Wifi Hotspot. A company called Cradlepoint makes
a couple, the MBR1000 and CTR350 are amazing. This lets you
share a connection with multiple computers in a home, office or
anywhere.
This is the perfect example of cellular data and wifi co-existing.
Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T get it to your home using EVDO or
HSDPA (you can even get antennas to help) and a router
broadcasts wifi throughout your home to all your computers,
game systems, and anything else with wifi.
Certainly 3g technologies like EVDO and HSDPA are going to be
replaced with 4g tech. But until Sprint, Verizon, etc cover every
corner of every house with this signal wifi will still be needed.
This is especially true in that "last mile" without any cable or DSL
coverage.
companies can compete with the bandwidth offered with Wi-Fi
hubs connected to wired internet connections, then there is a
chance for Wi-Fi to die. At my university, I can get sustained
download speeds of 2.5 megabytes per second through their
wireless network. Yes, bytes, not bits. (Granted, most sites can't
meet that, but its amazing for the ones who can).
To the best of my knowledge, wireless providers can't sustain
real world numbers like that. If they could, there would be a
chance that they could kill Wi-Fi. Until then, consumers will
probably still demand speed for home and business settings,
especially with the increase in internet based media.
Maybe he meant for mobile Internet access? but this has limitations, as a lot of devices aren't mobile phones. As others have commented, restrictive and expensive contracts from carriers will not facilitate Wi-Fi's replacement. Carriers are tied to these technologies and that's why they won't be ubiquitous as Wi-Fi, which is going to keep evolving ahead of anything from a cellco.
Because Wi-Fi is not leaving the home, and it's not leaving all the gadgets that rely on it to communicate with systems that aren't even connected to the Internet, Wi-Fi isn't going to die out. Not to mention the fact that anyone can setup a Wi-Fi AP, try that with those other carrier only techs.
- Free the internet
- by Jammer97 March 11, 2008 9:47 AM PDT
- WiFi should be FREE. Their doing it in San Francisco by creating a
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(10 Comments)"Mesh Network" of WiFi repeaters. If everyone were to give up a
little bandwidth to their neighbors. Then we could show the
companies that want to charge us for WiFi that we're not going to
put up with it.