Wider-Fi

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
Wider-Fi
     - Apr 14, 2003 12:00 AM (Forbes.com)

  
    A little-known standard called Wi-Fi turned into the
    hottest technology of the year and shook the wireless industry
    to its core. Now its successors hope to leave Wi-Fi in the
    dust.

    That sound you hear, that incessant tapping on laptops at
    the corner cafe, the local park and the airport lounge, is
    music to the ears of the beleaguered tech industry. Wi-Fi, the
    magical wireless link that lets all those tappers blast data
    short distances at 200 times the speed of a dial-up modem for
    no extra cost, has turned into the only bright note punctuating
    Silicon Valley's indigo mood. Only three years old, Wi-Fi, a
    once-obscure wireless standard with the ungainly real name of
    IEEE 802.11, went supernova last year, selling 18 million
    connections--one of the fastest adoption rates of any consumer
    technology in history. Tens of thousands of Wi-Fi "hotspots"
    have sprouted around the country. Some McDonald's now offer a
    free link with the purchase of a combo meal. In March Intel
    kicked off a $300 million-plus marketing blitz for a new brand,
    Centrino, that packages together a new laptop microprocessor
    with a Wi-Fi receiver.

    Now it looks like history may repeat itself. In January the
    industry group that spawned Wi-Fi released a new standard that
    may put the old one to shame. It extends the wireless range of
    Wi-Fi from roughly 300 feet to several miles and lets signals
    bounce around obstacles and penetrate walls; it also fixes
    security flaws and adds high-quality phone calls. This new
    standard is dubbed 802.16a by the Institute of Electrical
    &amp; Electronics Engineers , which disdains catchy names.
    Some are calling it Wi-Max, but a better tag might be Wider-Fi.
    Meanwhile, a rival group at IEEE is working on 802.20--a kind
    of Mobile-Fi that promises speedy links in cars and trains
    traveling at speeds that can exceed 120 miles an hour.

...

     - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=32622361


------ End of Forwarded Message

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/