THE DOMINANT FORCE 13/10/2005

Owning a laptop, a PDA or a smartphone is all about being able to work – whatever your work – whenever and wherever you are. Such a statement may seem obvious but actually making this happen has proved a great deal more difficult than first imagined. With analysts, IDC, claiming that 90 percent of laptops will be Wi-Fi enabled by 2006 it seems that the age of wireless has truly come into its own.

According to George Polk, The Cloud's founder and chief executive, traffic generated by commercial hotspots saw a steady annual growth of five to seven percent in 2003/4, but this year a weekly growth of just less than 15 percent has been seen. The main worry for Polk and other such suppliers is, as he puts it “we simply don’t know what’s happening. We know people are using the service but we don’t know what people are using it to look at.”

To make matters worse, no one is sure whether this is corporate or consumer growth – is it business travellers collecting and sending email between meetings or it web-surfing for the sake of it? “In the coming months we’ll be investing a great deal of time and marketing money to discover how Wi-Fi is being used.

True, it has made great inroads into the consumer and home market but it has not yet caught the imagination of cautious large corporates, who feel the technology lacks the stability and security of established wired connections. What’s more, in recent months there have been rumblings in the mobile community that it may not be enough. In the coming months, the traditional model for Wi-Fi may well change, as the introduction of more consumer-orientated devices, such as the PSP, will use Wi-Fi for linking users for wireless game coverage.

Wireless LAN may be fine for the office, home or public hotspot but its range is rather limited, and the speed of data carriage less than ideal for multimedia use. So what’s needed is a service that can carry broadband speed bandwidths, at greater distances, but still offer the flexibility of Wi-Fi.

Enter, WiMAX, which is now being field-tested, the most popular test site is Intel’s own installation at the Science Museum in Wroughton, which is part of the National Museum of Science and Industry. It houses the Science Museum's collections of large objects in store in 11 old aeroplane hangers across a 545-acre site. WiMAX is allowing the curators at the site to communicate with each other and keep updated records of the various artefacts within the remote buildings.

WiMAX should bring Wi-Fi to the masses, as it allows for a theoretical line-of-sight signal to travel up to 30 miles, which could well bring broadband access to those parts of the country too remote to receive cable. For this alone, many see WiMAX as the service that will outdo 3G. Add to this greater speed and a more flexible approach to usage and it’s a service worth keeping an eye on.

With no clear winner at the moment, most service providers and manufacturers agree all technology is complementary of each other. What we are likely to see is a usage pattern developing that will allow users to switch between the most cost-effective solutions. So, when you’re out and about, you may well find that GPRS or 3G is the most effective way of collecting your emails. Step into a hotspot area, and you’ll be handed over, so you’ll be able to collect messages at broadband speeds.

Colin Forsey, Head of Data Services Development ats 02, believes that Wi-Fi, 3G and WiMAX will be the backbone of a wireless infrastructure, which will allow your laptop to be as efficient out of the office as it is in. To this end, the connection has to be seamless and transparent, “if you create a simple user interface that doesn’t scream “techie” then people will use it.”

However, the big question that no one is willing to answer, is the one about billing – how will tariffs be set, who will collect the money and when and will it be possible to move from one network to another without being penalised. Curiously, while this is possibly the most important question for the consumer, the service providers see this as a minor detail, as actually rolling out a usable service is a higher priority. Forsey said “this year has been all about learning – where the best real estate is and isn’t. Once we fully understand the map of how and where wireless is needed, we’ll have a better understanding of how to deploy it”.

When it comes to the future of wireless networks in the UK, the final word has to go to George Polk: “as the provider of wireless solutions, we don’t mind if the market cannibalises itself in order to make the most efficient service, as it’ll all generate more usage and we’re all for that”.

CASE STUDY

London’s Canary Wharf sits in 36 hectares of real estate and is the largest singularly owned business district in the country. With some 75000 people working there daily a well as the influx of shoppers and tourists, there are a potential 100,000 daily visitors to its shops, cafes and bars. This made it an ideal candidate for a Wi-Fi connected zone. At the end of September all the public areas within Canary Wharf came one giant Wi-Fi zone, making it possible to walk from one side of the estate to the other and carry-on a Skype call using your PDA.

The operation has been set up by The Cloud – who already manages some 6000 hotspots in the UK – and is run in partnership with O2 and Canary Wharf Management. The service offers a “tech-free” solution, offering existing O2 customers the ability to log on using their current accounts, or for non-account holders a simple pay-as-you-go account is available. While the network currently doesn’t allow you the ability to start a Skype call at one end of the complex and walk to the other without losing a signal, it is expected this service will be commonplace by the summer of 2006.