New services spur growth of public access Wi-Fi

ORLANDO — Public access wireless LAN service shared the center ring here at the annual Cellular Telecommunications and Internet
Association (CTIA) trade show with third generation mobile data, and one major carrier promised to deliver combined Wi-Fi/cellular services
by early next year.

BY BOB BREWIN Computerworld

Voicestream Wireless Corp. plans to offer a PC Card by early next year that
will provide users access to both 40K bit/sec. mobile service over its
nationwide General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network as well as
speeds of up to 11M bit/sec. over the 802.11b public access Wi-Fi network it
acquired from bankrupt Mobilestar Network Corp. (Wi-Fi is another name for
802.11b and was coined by the industry trade group the Wireless Ethernet
Compatability Alliance, or WECA)

John Stanton, CEO of Bellevue, Wash.-based Voicestream, said in his CTIA
keynote speech that the combined service will give customers what they
want most from wireless data services: wide area coverage and high speed.

Mobilestar, in Richardson, Texas, and now called T-Mobile Wireless
Broadband since its acquisition by Voicestream, offers high speed Wi-Fi
access at 650 "hot spots" across the country. Stanton said those hot spots, or
areas covered by a wireless LAN access point, will serve a growing pool of
what he called "semi-mobile" users in places such as airports, Starbucks
Corp. coffee shops and hotels.

Citing figures from the Gartner Group in Stamford, Conn., Stanton
predicted that by 2006, more than 19 million mobile and remote workers
would regularly use public access Wi-Fi networks. While a sizable market, that figure is dwarfed by the 132.9 million cellular phone users in
the U.S. today.

"By combining 802.11 and our existing GPRS service, customers will have access to the right technology at the right time," Stanton said in his
keynote speech. "Whether they need to have constant e-mail access on the go or predictable access to large files on demand, Voicestream
will be able to meet customer needs with coverage where they want it and speed when they need it."

Other major cellular carriers have not made formal announcements about their Wi-Fi plans, but view it as a potentially important adjunct to
their 3G networks. Mark Feidler, chief operating officer of Atlanta-based Cingular Wireless, said at a press conference here that the company
"has looked at various opportunities to integrate [mobile networks] with 802.11b." Rod Nelson, chief technology officer at AT&T Wireless
Services Inc., said his company viewed Wi-Fi as complementary to 3G, but didn’t disclose any service plans.

Boingo Wireless Inc. in Santa Monica, Calif., an aggregator of Wi-Fi "hot spot" service offered by public access providers, announced a series
of deals that will make it easier for mobile users to access its service, which is available at about 500 locations nationwide.

Sky Dayton, CEO of Boingo, said the company has an agreement to jointly promote its service with Hewlett-Packard Co., making HP the first
notebook PC OEM to do so.

HP will provide notebook purchasers with Boingo’s software, which makes it easy to sniff out and access Wi-Fi public access hot spots, Dayton
said. He added that Boingo also has an agreement with Agere Systems in Allentown, Pa., to distribute the company’s Wi-Fi software with
Agere Systems’ ORiNOCO Gold and Silver Wi-Fi cards.

Boingo spokesman Christian Gunning said the company has plans to rapidly expand its geographic reach. "We have another 2,000 locations
under negotiation," Gunning said. "The opportunities for growth are great. There are 27 million laptop users today."

Gatespeed Broadband Inc. and WiFi Metro Inc., both in Palo Alto, have formed a partnership to expand the coverage area of a Wi-Fi hot
spot, which typically covers an area of several hundred feet. WiFi Metro, which provides public access Wi-Fi service in 50 locations in the San
Francisco Bay area, will use Gatespeed’s fixed wireless broadband service (which operates in the same 2.4-GHz unlicensed band as Wi-Fi) to
cover an area as large as six city blocks. The partnership turned on its first multiblock "HotZone" in downtown Palo Alto earlier this month.

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