|
|
 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
| |
FEBRUARY 18, 2004
Before Wi-Fi Can Go Mainstream [Page 2 of 2] SEAMS EVERWHERE. So far, several complications have Wi-Fi providers struggling to solve the roaming issue. While only a handful of cell-phone companies divvy up the U.S. market, dozens of wireless Internet service providers now compete, ranging from big companies such as T-Mobile (wholly owned by Deutsche Telecom) to well-funded startups such as iPass (IPAS ) to small regional players. Many hotels have struck deals with Wi-Fi specialists such as Wayport, while others use local companies. Convention centers, likewise, deliver a hodge-podge of Wi-Fi coverage. This severely fractured market has made seamless roaming all but impossible. The proliferation of players combined with the complexity of tracking and servicing customers from one provider to the next have led to both quality-control issues and too many problems with logons and billing. Even if everything worked perfectly, the U.S. has only 20,000 to 25,000 commercial hotspots right now. Considering that each hotspot has a range of about 200 feet, tops, that number of connecting points doesn't come close to covering all the locations where consumers may want to use Wi-Fi. Worse still, the largest Wi-Fi hotspot operator, T-Mobile, has yet to allow its competitors' customers to roam its networks. That will change later this year, when T-Mobile kicks off a deal for reciprocal roaming privileges with AT&T Wireless' (AWE ) hotspot network. "HYPE LEADS EXECUTION." However, none of this will fill the biggest block of downtime for most business travelers -- the hours spent in the air. Boeing (BA ) will launch its Connexion in-flight broadband service this year with flagship customer Lufthansa. But U.S. airlines have thus far passed on Connexion, leaving U.S. fliers unplugged. "The domestics got hit hardest by September 11, and the international carriers have been in a stronger position to pay for this," says Connexion spokesman Terrance Scott. The upshot? At present, the Wi-Fi experience is hardly seamless and not terribly easy to master compared with, say, e-mail. "In the public hotspot space today, hype leads execution," says Wesley Dittmer, senior director for Wi-Fi at Sprint PCS (PCS ), who oversees an ongoing buildout of 1,300 hotspots and roaming agreements with several wireless ISPs, including Airpath Wireless, Wayport, and Cometa Networks. "There's just not enough footprint in the U.S. for business travelers to start their day in New York and make their way to San Francisco, staying connected via Wi-Fi. And you can't just sign on through a browser like you do with Yahoo!" Meantime, only 10% or so of big companies have installed Wi-Fi networks so far, according to tech consultancy MetaGroup in Stamford, Conn. Corporate Wi-Fi outlays lag behind consumer purchases because of security concerns but also because the relatively stagnant economy and slow growth in tech spending have made Wi-Fi a lower priority for most companies than replacing PCs or upgrading their internal communications equipment, for example. STILL WARY. This could change soon, however. Better security is built into a new Wi-Fi standard called 802.1x, which offers enhanced encryption and authentication. And more and more chief information officers are making Wi-Fi a goal. A recent Goldman Sachs survey of CIOs put Wi-Fi among the top three priorities for tech purchases. "WiFi is now a budgeted item for the first time, and we think [corporate] growth rates will mirror those on the consumer side," says Alan Cohen, a vice-president at wireless switch company Airespace in San Jose, Calif. Still, the corporate Wi-Fi market needs to overcome at least one other obstacle -- ease of management. While Wi-Fi equipment makers have made their products easier to use, CIOs are still wary of taxing already overworked IT staffs. Often, Wi-Fi means adding lots of new security responsibilities, since the lack of physical barriers to intruders requires extra scrutiny of network traffic. At the same time, predictions that 2004 will be the year the wireless home finally gains traction seem to be overstated. The verdict of experts after the Consumer Electronics Show was that most of the Wi-Fi-enabled products displayed there aren't quite ready for prime time, in part because no single device exists for managing a household that includes Wi-Fi-enabled TVs, stereos, and DVD players. "The consumer-electronics industry historically hasn't been real good at standards and interoperability," says Kevin C. Kahn, director of Intel's communications laboratory. "Look at the piles of remote controls people have lying around." NEW YEAR'S EVE PLAYLIST. Companies such as Cisco (CSCO ) subsidiary Linksys are starting to pressure long-time consumer-electronics leaders such as Sony (SNE ) in this area. Linksys has introduced several audio products that are designed to link up with standard PCs attached to Wi-Fi routers. Yet the consensus seems to be that these devices need to be further refined -- and cost less. A 15-inch flat-panel display that can receive Wi-Fi signals costs more than $1,000, at least double the price of a standard LCD of the same size. "They're still costly and not easy to use," says Tim Bajarin, founder of Campbell (Calif) tech strategy firm Creative Strategies. "They're aimed at early adopters, not ready for mainstream consumers." Device makers say their products are getting much better: "We've already seen quite a bit of improvement," says Tushar Kothari, Linksys vice-president and general manager. Last New Year's Eve, Kothari used a Wi-Fi stereo product from Linksys to connect a playlist of songs stored on his computer to speakers placed all over his house -- and didn't have to touch a stereo or CD the entire evening. "The quality-of-life improvement we all will experience is exciting," says Kothari. No doubt that's true. But for the average consumer, all this remains a year or two -- or maybe five -- in the future. Between now and then, makers of Wi-Fi must help their technology through the transition from big idea to big-time product.
 By Alex Salkever, Technology editor for BusinessWeek Online
BW MALL
SPONSORED LINKS
Buy a link now!Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
 Copyright 2004, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.Terms of Use | Privacy Notice |
Printer-Friendly Version