The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread. Message Board

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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread.

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Nov 11 3:59 PM EST

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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (5418)	10/14/2002 10:48:16 AM
From: John Biddle	Read Replies (1) of 12231

Wi-Fi Goes To Washington forbes.com The McKinsey Quarterly, 10.14.02, 9:00 AM ET Remember when technology-based startups were going to put established companies out of business? The surviving incumbents are having a last laugh. But their schadenfreude may be short-lived in the telecommunications industry. Wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) technology is threatening the business models of mobile carriers such as Verizon Wireless (nyse: VZ - news - people ) and Sprint PCS (nyse: PCS - news - people ); phone gear makers such as Lucent Technologies (nyse: LU - news - people ) and Nortel Networks (nyse: NT - news - people ); and providers of high-speed digital subscriber line (DSL) and cable modem services, such as Qwest Communications (nyse: Q - news - people ), BellSouth (nyse: BLS - news - people ) and AOL Time Warner (nyse: AOL - news - people ). Wi-Fi--known among techies as 802.11, a reference to its underlying technology standard--is an alternative means of Internet access. Simply hook up an inexpensive Wi-Fi base station to a high-speed Internet connection. All users within a couple of hundred feet of the base station who have an inexpensive Wi-Fi device in their PCs or PDAs can then share low-cost, high-speed access to the Internet--without having to pay individually for more expensive dedicated DSL or cable modem service. Ad hoc Wi-Fi networks can stretch the fabric of Internet connectivity, cheaply and painlessly, over any community to points where traffic is aggregated onto high-speed fiber backbone networks. Wi-Fi exploits the spectrum used by such gadgets as cordless telephones and microwave ovens--airwaves that haven't been auctioned or allocated to an exclusive user. This is the proverbial free lunch of spectrum. Telephone companies could find that Wi-Fi will replace the additional phone lines that residential and business customers have had installed. That change alone would probably make every telephone company in the U.S. unprofitable. Mobile carriers, too, could lose a substantial portion of their revenue, particularly future wireless data revenue, to Wi-Fi networks. For the mobile and wireline phone companies, the market-based reaction would be to embrace the new technology and extend its applications. But the likely alternative--though one that would poorly serve the economy and consumers--is for those companies to use the power of governments to slow or thwart Wi-Fi's advance. Such spectrum battles are chronic at the FCC. Each of them gives the government a choice: to promote Wi-Fi or to restrain it. Change is the elixir of growth in any economy, especially in the innovation-driven economy of the U.S. Now is the time for the federal government to embrace Wi-Fi. Let inventiveness again lead the country to new plateaus of high growth and to new solutions for the problem of bringing everyone into the Internet age.

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