Wi-Fi persists with steady evolution

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
for users as laptops are Wi-Fi ready,” Kellett says.

This concept is maintained by Janet Bradburn, market development manager of commercial notebooks at HP Australia, who says the implementation of wireless has almost reached 100 percent within the vendor’s laptop range.

“Wi-Fi has been a key business need for a lot of our customers and access is available in the vast majority of cities. There are also a lot of home users. In general, the availability of wireless is very broad,” she says.

Bradburn says there is widespread Wi-Fi access in Australia, even in some of the outer suburbs, with the main cities well covered.

“A lot of the initial security concerns have been cleared up but the level of security is often in line with the amount of user knowledge. In general there have been additional levels of security integrated into Wi-Fi,” she says.

Bradburn says most companies now heavily rely on wireless access and this has resulted in a strong level of the basic supply from resellers.

“The concepts around Wi-Fi have seen a smooth adoption; the only difficulty for resellers would be choosing a telco partner as there are quite a few providers in the market,” adds Bradburn.

Another vendor upbeat about the current Wi-Fi market is processor giant Intel. Sean Casey, business development manager of Intel Customer Solutions Group, says the Australian market is mature in terms of mobility adoption, particularly in the consumer space.

“Wi-Fi is everywhere and when you travel around you can get connected and this will become an expectation. People are looking at Wi-Fi access as a decisive factor when doing things like booking hotels,” says Casey. “There has been huge growth in Wi-Fi on the back of the escalation of broadband. There has been healthy adoption in enterprises. At Intel we have made some product announcements and we’re looking towards next generation offerings.”

Casey says Wi-Fi’s popularity has been assisted by the number of providers that have formed a standard that works together and the fact Wi-Fi is also being built into handheld devices as well as laptops.

The uptake of WiMAX, which works over a wider area, will also be pivotal to the success of Wi-Fi, as WiMAX can be complementary to Wi-Fi and is also starting to be integrated into laptops, added Casey.

Jason Ashton, chief executive officer of wireless broadband service provider BigAir, says Wi-Fi has become universally expected in the business market as a good short range piece of network technology.

“Wi-Fi has definitely seen a resurgence, with Centrino, laptops and community Wi-Fi projects driving this. Wi-Fi handsets will be one of the biggest drivers of the lot to reduce mobility phone bills, which are still quite high,” he says.

Ashton says businesses are looking for more sophisticated Wi-Fi access in their offices, with better security capabilities. He expects faster and better implementations to be performed as the technology progresses.

“There is a big opportunity in both the vendor and integrator market to spread Wi-Fi adoption,” he adds.

Humble beginnings
Despite its current widespread popularity, Wi-Fi technology was not built for its current use, according to Bjorn Landfeldt, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney and a member of Smart Internet research.

“The big difference between networks built with Wi-Fi and traditional public infrastructure, such as cellular, is that traditional networks are very predictable, well organised and you can make guarantees to customers,” says Landfeldt. “This is more difficult with Wi-Fi. However, over time the traditional network has become much more expensive and that is the starting point as to why public infrastructure has gone wireless.”

Landfeldt says there are two types of wireless: community networks and wireless mesh, which use the same technology, but in different ways. “A mesh network involves two computing devices that can detect each other and have a link. More computing devices can be added to grow the network. Local community networks arrived later than mesh networks,” says Landfelt.

“They use the same 802.11 infrastructure, but with community networks people obtain an access point and modem themselves and use these in their homes, so they don’t have to pull cables around their homes. This method leaks wireless access onto the streets.”

Landfeldt says there has been an emergence of underground movements, particularity in the US, with people advertising wireless access areas – a move exceedingly unpopular with ISPs, who are losing revenue. “Wi-Fi is something that is certainly happening in Australia, but has not really taken off fully yet. It is more built out across England and America, where you have a number of cities which are already covered with Wi-Fi as a public service,” he says. “There are not many Wi-Fi providers in Australia, except the telcos like Telstra, but there are no small Wi-Fi hotspot providers who have a footprint in Australia.”

Landfeldt says the services that are packaged for wireless are very different from those for traditional networks.

“Wireless networks are aimed more at pure data services like email and Internet browsing, and you can’t provide uninterrupted mobility. There is still a lot to be done on this, but data services are a lot cheaper on wireless,” Landfeldt says.

Budde believes Wi-Fi has established its market niche in public places as a low cost method of access. “I think 2 to 3 percent of the population have access to Wi-Fi on an occasional basis. These are people travelling around with laptops and these people are happy to pay for access in places like hotels.”

He says one of the holdbacks for the technology is that Wi-Fi has not broken through to a larger market and it remains mainly a niche technology. “Wi-Fi is still two to three years away from more widespread commercial employment. People thought WiMAX could link Wi-Fi together but there has been no WiMAX product which can be deployed on a really large scale,” Budde says.

“There is a mix of Wi-Fi suppliers in the market. Quite a few hotels use wholesale providers: BigAir does a lot in apartments and larger housing blocks, and of course Telstra, Optus, Internode and some of the other ISPs and telcos.”

Potential reseller gains
If the customer demand is there, then resellers should not delay in considering how they can wet their beaks from the market.

“For resellers, wireless is where the market is going and resellers have to go and play in this area to service consumer and enterprise demand,” says Intel’s Casey. With the high degrees of wireless devices in the market, he says, resellers should be getting out to end users and educating them about Wi-Fi and pacifying any budding security concerns.

“There were concerns around security at first, but a lot of these issues have been overcome.

“Resellers should think about how they can benefit from city-wide Wi-Fi access and these include offering software solutions as Wi-Fi is basically a building block. This could include cab rank software to identify the nearest cab rank in the city,” says Casey.

“Australia has a large SME market and when these firms don’t have IT departments it is difficult for them to get to grips with Wi-Fi, but resellers can come in and add value on a consulting basis.

“That is a significant boost for resellers,” Casey adds.

“The channel is on top of matters in terms of offering Wi-Fi and the next level they can provide is wireless broadband,” Bradburn says. “There are a lot of opportunities for resellers to make extra revenue with Wi-Fi, including offering additional hardware.” One potential hurdle for the channel may be convincing customers that even though wireless broadband is not the cheapest, it is the most convenient, Bradburn warns.
Budde says as Wi-Fi is being adopted at a corporate level, resellers can approach businesses to provide their basic Wi-Fi connection too.

“However, apart from the implementation there is very little resellers can add on as people are just using Wi-Fi for its primary purpose,” says Budde.
Ross Chiswell, who currently works as a consultant at AirSpace Technology, started a firm 10 years ago called Integrity Data Systems, which was a distribution company focused purely on wireless technology.

“The company was sold in 2005 and it continued to grow right up to that point. We rode the initial boom from Lucent Technologies and our greatest period of success was between 2000 and 2002, but around 2004 was tough,” Chiswell recalls.

Looking forward Chiswell says the Wi-Fi market will witness another kick in popularity and it is growing steadily at a rate of between 10 and 15 percent year-on-year.

“There is lot of growth, particularity in the residential space, and there is a boom in the government and corporate level too, led by the main brand players wanting to push their technology,” Chiswell says.

The future of Wi-Fi
What does the future hold for Wi-Fi? It would be fair to say Wi-Fi is not in such a dominant position that it can safely be assured a profitable place in the industry. Most emerging technologies are surpassed by more robust, quicker, and more effective versions as time progresses.

However, the industry seems upbeat about Wi-Fi’s future road map and technologies that have come from Wi-Fi.

Kellett says Wi-Fi will always be around and it will be a strong
product in the home networking market, and in the mid-term WiMAX will emerge.

“The other major technology, which is the next stage, is wireless LAN – a big potential area for the channel,” Bradburn says. “In the future, wireless broadband will continue to increase, and the other significant technology will be 802.11.”

In the future we will also see standards evolve with broader enterprise adoption, according to Casey. Laptops will also be used in business more than desktops across Australia, he says.

“If you travel around the US and open up your laptop, you expect
to get Wi-Fi access, but this is not the case Australia at the moment,” says Casey.

Ashton says Wi-Fi is still a short range technology and we will not
get blanket coverage, but major business regions will be Wi-Fi enabled in the future.

“Wi-Fi could lead to a high reduction in community costs, so I am fairly optimistic about Wi-Fi adoption in the future,” says Ashton.

Landfeldt optimistically claims: “Wi-Fi is definitely going to be one of the fundamental components in building infrastructure in the future. A lot of major players are interested in ensuring the technology is of a high standard.

However, the technology in itself will have to change as it has not been built for such wide-scale adoption. It needs to be made more robust.”

Budde adds Wi-Fi will remain in its niche for the time being but there will always be regions that cannot be serviced by cables – and Wi-Fi and WiMAX will find a role there.

It is always difficult to cast a crystal ball prediction over the future of a technology such as Wi-Fi.

Despite continued talk of Wi-Fi still being at an early adopter stage, it has been in use for some time.

The ideas and concepts behind Wi-Fi are more likely to live beyond the actual make-up of the technology.

Wi-Fi will continue to serve its purpose in the short term and this is a clear opportunity for resellers to cash in on end-user demand. The need for a wireless connection will continue to mushroom in the corporate space. However, Wi-Fi is far more likely to be resurrected in a more robust, safer, widespread and durable format.

The message for resellers is to utilise Wi-Fi adoption and the accompanying value-added service and add-on sales – now. This ensures as the wireless landscape develops it will be the Wi-Fi savvy providers who will be best placed to take users into the next generation of wireless technology.