High-speed ‘wi-fi’ networking takes broadband to the street

Wi-fi may sound like something out of Flash Gordon, but a number of
Boston-area businesspeople are showing that the wireless networking technology
is giving flight to business opportunities today.

Martin Lamonica Special To The Business Journal

Without wires, and without
sacrificing data-transfer
speed, wi-fi networks
enable laptop or handheld
users to log onto the
Internet or local-area
networks without having to
plug into wall jacks.
Adoption of wi-fi — a name
that plays off the idea of
"wireless fidelity" and given
to the family of technologies
based on the 802.11b
networking standard — is
taking off in homes.
Through a relatively easy
setup, consumers can
share a broadband DSL or cable Internet connection with other household PCs
equipped with a wi-fi networking card.

Now area businesses are looking to spread wi-fi beyond the four walls of a single
home. Wi-fi networks are sprouting up in corporate offices while restaurants and
hotels are offering high-speed Internet access in public areas. And at least two
Boston-area companies — BlueSocket Inc. and Newbury Networks — are riding
the wi-fi growth wave with security products and location-based applications,
respectively.

And wi-fi is turning heads: Harvard Medical School built an application to give its
students access to course calendars and announcements on handheld systems,
including Palm Pilots, while they roam about hospitals; and the Wyndham hotel
is one of a handful of Boston hotels to offer their guests wireless Internet access
for $10 per day from the lobby and restaurants, and even the rooms.

This sort of corporate use, which tackles thorny issues like security, will
establish the infrastructure for wi-fi and help spread growth of local "hot spots," or
small pockets of wi-fi coverage. For now, wi-fi users must move to a locale,
perhaps a few hundred square feet in a city plaza, for example, where the
distance-limited radio waves that transport data from transmitters to wi-fi devices
are sufficiently strong.

"The enterprises that integrate the
technologies and infrastructure to build a
wireless network will drive the demand," says
Tim Wagner, managing director of the Boston
Mobile Forum. "If you can’t find a business
need, (more hot spots) won’t happen."

The Boston Mobile Forum, an association
created to educate businesses and promote
the use of mobile technologies, held an April
meeting on wi-fi that was standing-room only.
The event brought in a "healthy mix" of about
80 business people, technologists, chief
information officers and entrepreneurs,
Wagner says.

The critical piece is building a business case, or finding a return on investment,
for wi-fi. A wireless network for a remote office can be simpler and quicker to build
using wi-fi than stringing wires, and instant access to information anywhere in a
workplace, such as a hospital, can produce bottom-line benefits, proponents say.

But using wi-fi technology to displace established mobile providers — which the
technology was not designed to do — is garnering the most entrepreneurial and
creative energy.

Silicon Valley is seeing a flurry of startups, such as Boingo and Wi-fi Metro, that
are serving as wireless Internet access providers that connect dispersed coverage
areas called "hot spots" — radio-based wi-fi technology currently requires signal
repeaters and antennas to expand coverage beyond a few hundred feet.

Wi-fi Metro, for example, has built a six-block hot spot in San Jose, Calif. Wi-fi
Metro’s efforts, and those of other technology upstarts, have not gone unnoticed
by the incumbent cellular providers. Bellevue, Wash.-based VoiceStream
Wireless, for example, last year bought the assets of financially strapped
MobileStar Network Corp., which had already equipped several hundred
Starbucks cafés and other properties with wi-fi.

Other traditional mobile service providers are expected to offer wi-fi Internet
access later this year and potentially expand coverage beyond localized hot
spots, perhaps to include airports and hotels.

But analysts say that no startup has yet hit on a convincingly sustainable
business model around subscription-based wi-fi services for consumers or
business users, largely because the volumes are still low and the infrastructure
costs high. There are also murky regulatory questions around whether a
company, town or individual can legally share an Internet line with wi-fi.

Michael Oh, president and founder of an eight-person computer services
company and reseller, has a completely different idea: Rather than charge
consumers for wireless Internet access, businesses should sponsor wireless
Internet access. His company, Tech Superpowers, is doing exactly that in its
Newbury Street neighborhood.

In perhaps the only example of a corporate-sponsored wi-fi network in the
country, Oh and his employees built the Newbury Open Network (not to be
confused with Newbury Networks), which provides free, high-speed Internet
access to two restaurants on Newbury Street.

"We were having a brainstorming session and we established that, instead of
trying to create service revenue, we can create a great marketing opportunity by
essentially doing it for free," Oh says. Not including the time the staff needed to
jury-rig the system, the company only spent about $3,000 on equipment,
including antennas, wireless access points, a security firewall and a server. Café
‘Net surfers simply piggyback Tech Superpowers’ existing T1 Internet connection.

Oh is trying to enroll other merchants to the Newbury Open Network and inspire
other corporations to follow his lead. "The model for wireless is not access, but
the services you get with access," says Oh, who so far has been unsuccessful in
winning over other sponsors.

He had no trouble, however, signing on and connecting Trident Booksellers and
Café to the network, which involved installing some hardware in the Newbury
Street windowfront.

"Because there was no investment, it was easy for me to say yes," says Neila
Hingorani, the store’s general manager, who recently moved from San Francisco
and has a background in online communities and educational technology. "For
me, it’s customer service. I get so much more love and affection from customers,
and have at least seven more regulars because of it."

Although the industry is still working out business models and technology
issues, wi-fi promoters are hoping that this sort of consumer excitement, coupled
with solid business cases for enterprises, will get wide-scale wi-fi adoption off the
ground sooner rather than later.

Copyright 2002 American City Business Journals Inc.

http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2002/07/01/story3.html