MuniWireless

I’ve said this in various forms over the last five years or so, but the point seems to slam home every week now - I’ve come to believe that Wi-Fi has become, and will continue to be the dominant connection method for the last fifty feet (minimum) of nearly any form of Broadband Internet Access to an individual user.I’ve said this in various forms over the last five years or so, but the point seems to slam home every week now - I’ve come to believe that Wi-Fi has become, and will continue to be the dominant connection method for the last fifty feet (minimum) of nearly any form of Broadband Internet Access to an individual user.

Sometimes the Wi-Fi connection will be even longer than fifty feet, like with next generation Metropolitan Wi-Fi systems that incorporate beamforming technology.

My latest inspiration on this topic comes from a press release about a mobile Wi-Fi HotSpot system in the UK using wireless telephony broadband for the backhaul and Wi-Fi on the bus for user access. There’s certainly no breakthrough in what these companies did - I first heard about this concept from Seattle-based Junxion, Inc. who makes a box incorporating a Wi-Fi access point and router that uses wireless telephony broadband for its backhaul, designed for installations like public transit buses. I was told that the first use of the Junxion box on a bus was for Google’s private transit buses in the San Francisco Bay area in 2004.

Worldwide, the wireless telephony broadband service providers don’t want to acknowledge the possibility that mobile / portable / nomadic Broadband Internet Access will default to Wi-Fi. But every new portable / mobile / nomadic communications or communications device sold that incorporates Wi-Fi increases the likelihood that Wi-Fi will become… or most chillingly to them… perhaps already is the dominant “final delivery” technology of Broadband Wireless Internet Access.

Similarly, the nascent Mobile WiMAX industry is predicated on the idea that users will be willing to pay, and dearly, for full-time, always-on, personal Broadband Internet Access that enables new services such as watching video content, listing to audio content.

Yes… there certainly is some demonstrated demand for “one person” accounts for wireless telephony broadband and Mobile WiMAX, but in my opinion, that demand is relatively limited, at least at the current price points. (At $20-30/month there would be enormous demand.)

But the ugly truth for the wireless telephony broadband and Mobile WiMAX industries is that “good enough” Wi-Fi availability and cheap, large storage embedded into personal communications / computing devices have combined to gut the anticipated “obscene profitability” from the business of offering individual wireless telephony broadband and Mobile WiMAX accounts.

To illustrate, think of the press release example cited above. Many who ride public transit buses are regular commuters who might reasonably be expected to carry laptop computers which they use to extend their work time or to pass time pleasantly during the commute. The wireless telephony broadband / Mobile WiMAX industries posit that such bus commuters are their potential customers for Broadband Internet Access or streamed video entertainment on a portable device. But if the bus offers Broadband Internet Access via Wi-Fi… especially if it’s free Wi-Fi… why would those bus commuters be the least bit interested in individually buying wireless telephony broadband / Mobile WiMAX accounts? Why would they want to watch a limited selection of “live” video using Mobile WiMAX when they can easily download and cache more hours of video content than they have battery life with which to watch that video content? (Not to mention the irritation from downloading too many movies from an Internet site so you exceed the only-now-just-put-into-writing 5 GB transfer limit on your what-was-formerly-termed-”unlimited” Verizon BroadbandAccess account for which you’re paying $60-80/month).

Now, expand this vision from an individual transit bus to:

* Enterprises (Microsoft comes to mind),
* Campuses ( Dartmouth College comes to mind),
* Small towns or regions of a metropolitan area (Mountain View, CA comes to mind),
* Entire metropolitan areas (Philadelphia comes to mind),
* Or even when individuals decide to do Broadband Internet Access themselves ( Meraki comes to mind)…

… where inexpensive or free Wi-Fi service is available. It seems to me that the existence of Wi-Fi Broadband Internet Access, being available in enough (most, but not all, places) and good enough (usable, especially if free) could obviate much of the potential demand for cellular telephony broadband or Mobile WiMAX… or even worse… considerably reduce the projected enormous profits of those services.

Even in developing markets where Mobile WiMAX will be the first widely deployed individual Internet access option, I can still foresee a large potential market for Wi-Fi services. Compared to wireless telephony networks, Wi-Fi is cheap to deploy, even as infrastructure because the commodity nature and huge volume of Wi-Fi devices and that it makes use of portions of spectrum that are don’t require a license (license-exempt).

So… we’ll see. At least the wireless telephony industry is tacitly acknowledging the the rising precedence of Wi-Fi in the emergence of wireless telephony handheld devices that incorporate a Wi-Fi mode. But the Mobile WiMAX industry appears to still be in denial that Wi-Fi is any threat whatsoever.

- - - - About the author - - - -

Steve Stroh is a technology writer specializing in broadband wireless Internet access, WiMAX, Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies. He runs Stroh Publications LLC and is based in Redmond, Washington. His website is at www.bwianews.com/.