The e vent was programmed by spiked-IT and supported by supported by Clarke Mulder Purdie. It focused on the question ‘Why are we so keen on Wi-Fi, and where will it take us?’ and the particular questions of whether Wi-Fi is most helpfully thought of as a commodity, a utility, a human right, or something else altogether; and what the unrealised potential of Wi-Fi might be.

Contents

• Introductory remarks
• Discussion summary
• Further references

Introductory remarks

All text [in brackets] was drafted but not included in my remarks. I have added a few updates based on the discussion.

Significance of WiFi

The significance of WiFi is that it is the first telecoms equipment to be cheap and user-installable and configurable. By comparison, the history of telecoms has been about large investment by large-scale organisations, the likes of Ericsson, AT&T and our own Post Office.

And as it is a transport for Internet protocols WiFi doesn’t significantly restrict applications and services that can access and run over it. (See the debate about network neutrality, for instance in The Economist[i].)

Although there were early user-installed networks in US farming communities in the early years of telephony they were isolated examples. This modern development leads to initiatives such as Fon, which has been mentioned.

Complement or competition?

But WiFi is largely complementary to GSM, Bluetooth, WiMax and even 3G. (See recent article ‘Bluetooth’s quiet success’ in The Economist [ii].)

[GSM is best for widespread, mobile, low- to mid-bandwidth access with low power devices. Bluetooth is best for connecting devices that are proximate and regularly connect for low-bandwidth communications. WiMax is probably best for wireless infrastructure and private networks]

3G overlaps most with these uses, but is currently limited by data cost and lack of client support, and is not appropriate for connecting proximate devices. It may be best used for wide area coverage as a ‘backbone’ for IP connections via WiFi. In Spain, for instance, Iberbanda is planning to rollout WiMax to support Internet access in rural areas.

The clash of technologies or business models tends to be hyped as it is a cheap journalistic way of attracting attention.

Uses of WiFi

Hence there has been a flourishing of uses of WiFi, from VoIP roaming with The Cloud[iii] to enabling of remote access for Westminster City Council field workers, and live Weblogging of conferences to the creation of ad hoc meeting space in Starbucks, from home entertainment networks to handheld multi-player gaming in McDonald’s, where Wayport has allowed Nintendo DS devices to ‘just work’ in stores, using an SSID that is built into the device.

Unrealised potential

However, its potential is not being realised. See the City of London’s unimaginative rollout of WiFi[iv] vs Westminster City Council’s grand plans[v], including allow access to and filing of back office information by social services staff in the field and staff doing license and food hygiene inspections, and supports CCTV. Or the half-hearted hotspot strategies of BT OpenZone and T-Mobile vs other European telcos in France and Switzerland, which allow you to use SMS to locate nearby hotspots and get a code that bills your use to your telco account. [Update: Chris Bruce noted that BT OpenZone now allows you to to use SMS to locate nearby hotspots.] [Or hobbled and difficult to use WiFi products such as the Wanadoo LiveBox (now Orange Talk), which forces you to push a button on the device will to allow someone to connect, even if you have left your network open.]

What constitutes ‘half-hearted hotspot strategies’: Hotspots that are difficult to find when you are offline; not being able to use your own user name (mine is ‘nma1959194’); poorly designed user interfaces; limited access models (time- rather than data transfer-based access, making use of IM/presence impractical); poor customer support and account management systems. (See my article in The Register on using WiFi hotspots in London[vi].)

And application to wrong (type of) problems

And while WiFi has great potential it can’t solve problems its absence didn’t create, such as social inclusion, and greater access can’t make up for poor tools, working practices and management in business and government.

To the extent that WiFi is pushed as a panacea where it isn’t appropriate the overall potential of the technology will tend to be undermined for those disappointed with the inevitable failure.

Problems over-stated

[And there are many potential problems with WiFi, including around security, but these are really just pragmatic questions that can be dealt with by informed and rational users.

Any organisation that can be undermined by a few data leaks has bigger problems than security. (Though basic security shouldn’t be forgone, such as encrypting customer data.)]

The potential of of WiFi is the potential of the network

The potential of of WiFi is, to some extent, the potential of the network. We need to have pervasive, always on, easy to connect to, unrestricted, reliable, location aware, low cost and high-bandwidth networks (though not necessarily all at all times) and WiFi can provide much of this. This would lead to creating what has been called a ‘Webtone’.

WiFi is particularly significant as it addresses some of the next issues around digital technology:

• Personalisation: as WiFi-tools are portable they can be really personal, for instance remembering preferences or past actions. See the Kizoom-supported My Trains service in Orange World for mobile devices, which remembers recent train journeys for which you have looked up timetable information.
• Location: again, portability and ‘locatability’ mean that information can be received according to one’s location. For instance one could find ‘The nearest… (railway station, eatery, etc)’. Again, see the Orange World service which uses location information to tell you your nearest railway station.
• Always on ‘Webtone’: if the network is always available, Web-based applications and services become more viable, easing movement between devices and contexts, securing data, and facilitating collaboration. See Google’s Web-based Gmail and spreadsheet, or 37signals’s Basecamp collaboration tool.

The status of WiFi

However, this doesn’t mean there is a right to wireless Internet access, or that it should be free. People who believe that such resources should be free usually don’t appreciate the labour that goes into creating the infrastructure and delivering such a service. And they often don’t make best use of it.

Beyond municipal WiFi

What we really need is not municipal WiFi (though that is a start) but nationwide, government-subsidised WiFi in the street, in homes and in public places. We also need to promote more experimentation, which this would facilitate. Then we can really start to experiment with the possibilities of the network.[vii]

Discussion summary

In due course I will note the key points and responses from the discussion. Please email me if you would like to be notified when these have been published.

Further references

W2i Digital Cities Convention, May 2-4, 2005 in Philadelphia http://www.w2idigitalcitiesconvention.com/

'What future for the wireless Square Mile?' Silicon.com, Jo Best, 7 March 2006. Quotes Dean Bubley.

'The Cloud targets UK with city centre Wi-Fi hotspots' The Register, 3rd January 2006. Nine UK city centres are to get blanket wireless broadband coverage as part of a deal between Wi-Fi operator The Cloud and telecoms giant BT. ¶ About 500 BT payphones in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Oxford, Cambridge and Liverpool, as well as in the London Boroughs of Kensington & Chelsea, Camden and Islington, are to be fitted with discrete WiFi boxes to create a "cloud" of coverage.

Leader 'Free wireless net access for everyone' Silicon.com, 10 November 2005

'Chicago Looks At City-Wide Wi-Fi' FCW.com, Mar. 14, 2005

'Philadelphia Hopes to Lead the Charge to Wireless Future' NYT, February 17, 2005. If Mayor John F. Street has his way, by next year this 135-square-mile metropolis will become one gigantic wireless hot spot, offering every neighborhood high-speed access to the Web at below-market prices in what would be the largest experiment in municipal Internet service in the country... But Philadelphia's plan has prompted a debate over who should provide the service, and whether government should compete with private industry, particularly in hard-to-reach rural areas or low-income urban communities... "Just as highways were a critical infrastructure component of the last century, wireless Internet access must be a part of our infrastructure for the 21st century," Mr. Street said last month in a speech before the United States Conference of Mayors... Pushed by industry lobbyists, lawmakers in Kansas, Ohio, Texas, Indiana, Iowa, Oregon and other states have proposed legislation to restrict or prohibit local governments from offering telecommunications services. Nearly a dozen states have already enacted some restrictions... In Kansas, the town of St. Francis, population 1,495, began offering Internet service nearly three years ago and now has 200 subscribers.

'Amsterdam to Get City Wide Wi-Fi' Wi-Fi Net News, August 31, 2004

'Barbed Wireless: Why high-speed Net access won't be free' Slate, Paul Boutin, Sept. 14, 2004

'Setting Up Your Own Wi-Fi Hot Spot', WSJ, September 14, 2004. Philadelphia earlier this month announced it will cover the entire city with the technology by next year.

Notes

[i] Keep it simple The Economist, Mar 9th 2006. Argues that “[a] minimal set of rules to protect net neutrality would still leave room for operators to experiment with new premium services”.

[ii] Bluetooth’s quiet success, The Economist, Jun 8th 2006

[iii] See Vonage hooks up with The Cloud The Register, 26th April 2006, and press release from The Cloud, 4/26/2006: Vonage customers to be able to make wireless VoIP calls at any of The Cloud’s 7,000 UK hotspots

[iv] London’s financial district to get WiFi Total Telecom [paid sub required]

[v] See my report on the talk by Westminster City Council’s Cheryl Bennett at The Wi-Fi Business Development Summit ‘Convergence’ Milan, 26-27 October 2005 WirelessSummit2005Writeup.doc [268 KB Word document]

[vi] Wi-Fi in the real world Nico Macdonald, The Register, 10/02/2004. Reporting on the realities of using WiFi in London, based on my itinerant activity during BT OpenZone's Wireless Broadband week. Concludes that "it's time to go beyond our shock that this technology works at all, and get practical about how we can make it truly available and really facilitate its use". (Article documented on my site.)

[vii] I proposed such an approach at the end of an article for Silicon.com 'Analysis: Think tanks fill up on broadband' Nico Macdonald, Silicon.com, April 13 2004 (also documented on my site)