Under the heading of things to consider/DD/mull over/whine about/congitate on/etc..........
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Subject: IP: The Great Wi-Fi Hope
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 14:47:11 -0500
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reminder, I am an Advisor to Sky's company djf
>http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/0318/056.html
>
>Forbes
>
>The Great Wi-Fi Hope
>Quentin Hardy, 03.18.02
>
>Bold hackers with "junk" spectrum may revive high tech, reaping the next
>round of big bucks.
>
>
>Sky Dayton is always looking for what's next in tech. In 1994, when he was
>all of 22, he started reselling Internet access leased from a big backbone
>operator named Uunet. The company he founded, EarthLink, still thrives today
>as the number three Internet service provider. His 3.2% stake is worth $42
>million.
>
>Now Dayton is eyeing the next revolution, a wireless gold rush so bold and
>sweeping that it inspires rapture in even hardened Silicon Valley veterans.
>Best known for its engineering spec--802.11 ("eight-oh-two-dot-eleven")--and
>the nickname Wi-fi (for wireless fidelity), it offers lightning-fast data
>links around the home, in the office and across a neighborhood and beyond.
>
>The Wi-fi wave has already linked up an estimated 10 million laptops, Palm
>handhelds and other gadgets in hundreds of small, extremely local wireless
>networks. Some of these are commercial--one firm put them in several hundred
>Starbucks coffee shops. Many others are "freenets," access points provided
>gratis by 802.11 devotees who are, in essence, seeding the business. Mesh
>enough of these networks together and you have a mini-Net free of the phone
>and cable monopolies that control the "last mile" of wiring into your house.
>That's why 802 threatens them the most.
>
>This revolution promises to offer new things we didn't even know we wanted,
>from instant video on your laptop in an airport lounge (10% of the 30
>million laptops sold worldwide in 2001 are 802-ready) to a peek through
>every TV camera at a football game. Schools and hospitals can build their
>own networks, shipping sound and video across the room at up to 11 million
>bits per second, 196 times as fast as a PC modem.
>
>"This is the next frontier," says Dayton, who in late 2000 founded a new
>firm, Boingo, to offer 802 access. It is, in short, just what the depressed
>denizens of Silicon Valley need most. The Nasdaq has begun its third year of
>declines. Some $1 trillion in value has vanished in telecom alone, a number
>so big that few investors are unscathed. It has been hard to find
>hope--until now. The Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance, an industry
>group with members like Intel and Cisco, says that worldwide sales of Wi-fi
>equipment will reach $5 billion by 2005. Sales were $1.5 billion last year.
>
>The Wi-fi wave arose in stealth in the past few years, with none of the
>usual proclamations by industry analysts or promises from big companies. It
>was nurtured by thousands of programmers working in the netherworld of
>"junk" spectrum, a narrow stitch of free bandwidth set aside by the Federal
>Communications Commission for things like microwave ovens and streetlamps.
>
>Cellular service typically uses a central swath of spectrum that is heavily
>regulated and highly priced; telecom titans had to pay billions for federal
>licenses and invest billions more to erect their networks. The 802 spectrum,
>by contrast, comes free of charge and is largely unregulated by the FCC, and
>the gear costs thousands of dollars, not millions.
>
>That's why Wi-fi is catching on like a prairie fire. Dozens of startups are
>working on the building blocks that will let this new wave proliferate.
>Venture capitalists see a spate of new investment prospects. Even telecom
>incumbents--the fat and unhappy titans vulnerable to an 802 uprising--are
>placing bets on the Wi-fi threat. Intel has committed several hundred
>million dollars to Wi-fi, Sony has plans to put it in every TV set and PC it
>sells in Japan and Microsoft plans a fall debut for Mira, a wireless
>computer pad with an 802 linkup to the Web. "This is huge," says Stephen
>Saltzman, a senior director at Intel. "It's one of the fundamental
>technologies, limited only by people's creativity." In 30 months Intel has
>slashed Wi-fi chip prices by 82% and boosted throughput by 5,400%--better
>gains than it scored in PC chips.
>
>At Boingo, Sky Dayton's new outfit, engineers are helping to roll out dozens
>of "hot spots," uplink points in neighborhoods, airports, hotels and coffee
>shops, tying together chaotic freenets and traditional office networks to
>form giant wireless systems. In Boingo's first two weeks of operation,
>Dayton brought on 500 low-power sites spread throughout the U.S. at sites
>like New York's Four Seasons Hotel. He plans to encompass 5,000 in his
>network by year-end. Boingo's $25-to-$75 monthly package includes a software
>"sniffer" that checks the air for nearby hot spots. If it finds one, the
>software identifies whether it is a freenet or an office network and decides
>whether the user is allowed access. If the access-point owner has affiliated
>with Boingo, the user is instantly connected, and the owner is paid a fee.
>Corporations can use encryption and firewalls to keep strangers out.
>
>Dayton started Boingo at the end of 2000, after he put an access point up in
>his house and got instant broadband, anywhere at home. "The moment it was
>on, I realized it would take in every house, every business," he recalls. At
>a tech conference in Aspen, Colo. early last year Dayton was about to dial
>in to EarthLink, but turned his sniffer on for a lark. To his amazement it
>offered four different networks he could access from his hotel room. Turning
>his back on his own ISP, Dayton went wireless. Then he started working on
>his new business.
>
>[...snip...]
>
>http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/0318/056.html
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