Challenges and opportunities for Wi-Fi

Computerworld - Today, Wi-Fi reaches 2.5 million homes, a 400% rise from last year, according to figures from Park Associates that were quoted in Fortune magazine. It was only in 1999 that IEEE 802.11b, the first of the three Wi-Fi standards, was approved, and today most laptop vendors are shipping 802.11b-enabled machines.
The rapid entry of Wi-Fi-enabled consumer devices into the market is an indication of the interest and broad reach of wireless-enabled mobility. At the 2003 Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, vendors showed off a slew of wireless-enabled devices such as DVD players, televisions, set-top boxes/entertainment centers, audio players and printers, and some of them have started appearing in the marketplace. Consumers can send pictures, audio and video between these devices without the need for cables. Even the mobile phone is being Wi-Fi enabled, with the most recent announcement being from Nextel Communications.
The enthusiasm for Wi-Fi is backed by significant investment. Most major high-tech companies are playing in this arena. For example, Intel (a sponsor of the UCLA-WINMEC Consortium) has announced a $150 million investment fund exclusively for wireless LANs. Major venture capital firms are investing in this space, as are corporations.
In the current down economy, one may wonder why this sector is growing at such a furious pace. There are a number of reasons. For the enterprise, Wi-Fi offers a productivity tool for mobile professionals. Compared with running Category 5 cable in every conference room and office, sprinkling access points that offer a range of 100 to 300 feet is far more economical on a per-user basis. On the consumer side, this makes life easier and fun. A Starbucks customer can be connected through T-Mobile's wireless connection while sipping latte. In the home market, Wi-Fi allows devices such as televisions in the house to be moved without being tethered to cables.
The Wi-Fi hypergrowth presents tremendous opportunities. A Holy Grail of Wi-Fi is to have entire cities engulfed under a Wi-Fi cloud. It's not a question of if, but when, this will happen, and when it does, applications such as low-priced voice-over-IP phone calls under such a cloud become feasible. Also, bandwidth-intensive applications such as videoconferencing on a mobile Wi-Fi-enabled multimedia device (perhaps an advanced version of an Multimedia Messaging Service mobile phone) will become viable. With advances in connection handoff, a subscriber could make a call from one access point and end it in another. The cost of Internet connection in an apartment building could decline significantly per subscriber because of shared access points. Ultimately, the