Comments on: Commentary: The Last Fifty Feet Are Wi-Fi

By: Tony Barra

Tony Barra — Wed, 16 May 2007 12:27:27 +0000

While the premise of WiFi appeal is sound, I don’t believe it is an either-or situation. Intel will build laptops with wimax and in total very few buses, vehicles, cities, etc. will have free wifi access. So will I sign-up to know I will have broadband (wimax) wherever I am? Absolutely! Will I still have a wifi network in my home? Absolutely!

By: John McCarthy

John McCarthy — Thu, 10 May 2007 16:24:56 +0000

I think this is a very reasonable position to take, especially if you live in a high population density area where there are quite a few hotspots available. However, I think the true threat from mobile wimax is to those companies that offer 3G connections and the wired broadband companies. I’ve got RR at my suburban home and no wireless access away from home. If a company comes along that will give me wimax for the price of RR ($45) I’d jump on it, because then I would have the wireless connection for no extra price other than an additional card for my old laptop. Good incentive to get a new machine. Wimax would also give me the ability to connect from my office on the 14th floor which gets no WiFi signals that I can tap into. I knew I should have taken the office on the other side of the building.

By: Jesse Kopelman

Jesse Kopelman — Wed, 09 May 2007 19:25:15 +0000

I generally agree, but work still needs to be done on optimizing power consumption in WiFi radios. In the bus example you use, isn’t it more likely that the passengers will have a smart phone or tablet device than a laptop? My experience with using a smart phone that has both WiFi and EVDO is that EVDO battery life is about 3X as good as WiFi and that the 20 minutes of heavy WiFi usage I can get is just inadequate.