Wi-Fi persists with steady evolution

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

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