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NewsGlobe: Commentary
Commentary
Wi-Fi: The forgotten wireless
WiMAX, LTE and even 3G seem to get all the attention
by Jim Barthold
Sometimes it’s easy to miss what’s there for what’s coming.
Tech news invariably revolves around the future — partially
because the present is a little bleak — and that means mobile
broadband technologies, starting with 3G (which is old before it even arrives),
4G (where you can pick your poison between WiMAX and LTE),
and femtocells (which are expected to make any one of those
three better) all get plenty of time in the spotlight.
With all that excitement on tap, it’s easy to forget about Wi-Fi,
the workhorse that’s long been asked to do more than its
designers had in mind.
Despite Intel’s best efforts to make WiMAX the de rigueur
chip in your laptop, Wi-Fi is ubiquitous. Imagine going
somewhere and not accessing the Internet via Wi-Fi. For the
more adventurous, imagine making a VoIP call without a Wi-
Fi connection in an airport or a hotel or, as everyone says, a
Starbucks. Imagine running cat 5 cable to connect your PCs
rather than using a Wi-Fi router.
Oh sure, sometime in the future you’ll be able to do all those
things with WiMAX or LTE, and femtocells will boost the signals
deeply into and throughout your residence. I can do those
things now with 3G, but I’m trying to stick to broadband here
and despite Verizon’s best assurances, my BlackBerry tether
is not broadband.
Meanwhile, as those methods develop, Wi-Fi keeps moving
along like ol’ man river. The specifications are up to 802.11n,
promising bandwidth and range to cover those dead spots
802.11g keeps missing and the ability to add bandwidth-hog
content like video to the traffic mix. And there’s both 802.11g
and 802.11n MIMO to make the signal even stronger where
it’s best suited: indoors.
Wi-Fi admittedly has its limitations. It’s not the best method
to blanket a whole city and it still is not available everywhere —
at least not free. But it’s been four years since I was told by a
hotel’s front desk, “Yes, we have Wi-Fi, just walk around your
room with your laptop until you pick up the signal,” so things
are getting better.
Then there’s voice. Long associated with 3G/4G/mobile
WiMAX, voice is a Wi-Fi natural because it’s just IP packets —
and not that many of them — and Wi-Fi is an IP-based
broadband transport. It makes sense to hook up your IP
phone to Wi-Fi — in fact, the secretive folks at T-Mobile
apparently think it makes sense to hook up your mobile
phone with Wi-Fi when possible, but whether this is true or not
is subject to what one reads on the Internet since T-Mobile
speaks to the trade media about as often as Greta Garbot.
The Wi-Fi Alliance, which keeps track of such things,
estimates that between 250 and 350 million Wi-Fi/mobile
converged phones will be in the market by 2011.
“The Wi-Fi link that originally may not be deployed to support
voice-over-Wi-Fi is being used just for that application,” said
Edgar Figueroa, executive director of the Wi-Fi Alliance.
Typical. Build a link and they will use it; damn the rationale.
“The voice application is so sensitive and there are so many
variables both within the product in terms of the protocol, the
operating system, the hardware and with the end-to-end
traffic that could get in the way of having a good voice
experience,” he continued.
Despite precedence (see mobile coverage), the Wi-Fi Alliance
doesn’t believe that wireless voice coverage has to be spotty
or the experience only so-so. It’s backing that up with
a “holistic approach” to testing and certifying Wi-Fi Voice-
Personal devices so consumers can look for the Alliance good
voicekeeping stamp of approval before buying a Wi-Fi voice
device.
“We did research on this recently and found that about 75
percent of U.S. consumers are looking for that Wi-Fi-certified
logo and would even pay more if they see that on their
product,” Figueroa said. “The more we do what we need to do,
the more what’s happening technologically is transparent to
the end user and they’re just having a good experience using
Wi-Fi.”
The good experience is today, for those of us who tend to
miss such obvious things.
Send your comments to Jim Barthold.
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