Wi-Fi persists with steady evolution

Wireless networking is at a critical stage of the technology’s rise to popularity.

Wireless access has established itself as a standard on laptops, and with laptop sales rocketing during the rise of the mobile workforce, Wi-Fi is well placed to benefit from this shift in user mentality.

However, if Wi-Fi is to continue being adopted, the technology needs to be widely accessible and all major security concerns need to be appeased.

Wi-Fi stands for ‘wireless fidelity’ and is a generic term used for wireless technology that allows computers to network together. Wi-Fi can connect PCs, notebooks and PDAs to enable them to share Internet connections, printers and documents. It can function at a distance of about 100 metres from the point of transmission.

Public Wi-Fi access is undoubtedly rising in major cities across the globe and Wi-Fi has become a useful tick-box requirement in hotels, cafes, airports and university campuses.

Last year the NSW Government announced a plan to make NSW the first Australian state to offer free, universal broadband access in major central business district areas – in Sydney and North Sydney, plus the business districts in Liverpool, Parramatta, Wollongong, Newcastle and Gosford.

The plan would see the government work with the private sector as Sydney “deserves state-of-the-art broadband coverage accessible by everyone”, according to a government press release.

The announcement was baiting the hook of opportunity for providers that consider themselves suitable for the project implementation. The NSW Government said at the time that it would “look to the world’s leading wireless broadband providers to make this goal a reality in the next three years”.

The government said the successful provider would build, own and maintain their own wireless broadband network in the area.

Landing this tender could prove hugely profitable for the successful party, but more importantly it underlines the notion that integrators able to provide a complete Wi-Fi offering are also well placed to profit from similar deals in the future.

However, Paul Budde of communication consultancy BuddeComm, is somewhat sceptical of the government’s intentions.

“Sydney City is now looking for responses to its Wi-Fi scheme, but I’m a little puzzled by the plans as it is across a hopscotch of sites, rather than full coverage. It seems more of a publicity stunt with the elections coming up,” Budde says.

Jim Kellett, product manager at Internode, says the ISP has assessed the NSW Government proposal, but felt there is “not a lot which is very compelling for us” within the plans.

The current Wi-Fi landscape
However, Kellett was far more upbeat about the broader future of Wi-Fi and says most users who get a broadband connection also get a Wi-Fi connection.

“For us, Wi-Fi is part of a whole range of wireless broadband offerings. Wi-Fi covers home networking and over half of the routers we sell have Wi-Fi access,” he says. “We run Wi-Fi hotspots across Australia; this is called CityLAN, which covers a lot of Adelaide, and spreads out to cover airports and cafes.”

Kellett did advise that Wi-Fi hotspots alone are not huge cash cows, but the Wi-Fi distributors are doing well. “Wi-Fi is easily adopted as there are no barriers to entry