JiWire is now listing 202,894 WiFi hotspots in 135 countries. Where is Wifi headed? I don’t claim to have a crystal ball but I believe the evolution continues to look very much like what we have seen before with the Internet and the World Wide Web. There was a long list of reasons fifteen years ago for why the Web would never turn into something serious — certainly not into something that could be used for secure business transactions. The same list of shortcomings is at times attributed to WiFi even today – security, scalability, reliability, business model, etc. Just like the Web, WiFi is grass roots, standards based, and very decentralized. Just like with the Web, WiFi has become mainstream. The benefits are compelling. There are active debates about whether WiMax will replace WiFi — it may or may not. (See WiFi Update No. 8 for more about WiMax). Odds look good to me at this point but not a sure thing. What is a sure thing is the continued evolution and adoption of wireless broadband.
WiFi and other wireless technologies are making the Internet “always on” and extending it to more people and more devices at more locations. This will result in more people doing more transactions which in turn will fuel the continued growth of information technology spending which in turn will provide more productivity to the economy. The constant question over the past fifteen years has been about where the money is in WiFi. The ultimate beneficiaries are consumers but the information technology industry will continue to benefit also as hardware, software and services will be needed to support the growth.
WiFi will have a major impact on the telecommunications industry. The iPhone is the tip of the iceberg. The telecommunications companies have made a quiet embrace on WiFi but don’t really want it to catch on too fast so that people can use Skype for a call to Europe for a few cents per minute instead of a cellular call for $1.49 per minute. In the long run the increase in Internet usage made possible by WiFi will mean more “bits on the wire”; i.e. more traffic and utilization of the backbones of the Internet which are provided by the telecom industry. In spite of the slow embrace, the telcos will find that Internet telephony will emerge as a major application on the Net even though it will help reduce “long distance” revenue dramatically. More devices with WiFi will mean more choices for consumers — something that the telcos don’t like. They would much rather see us locked into a two year contract with a phone of their choice. They won’t be able to do that much longer as consumers wake up to what is possible.
The telecommunications industry needs to start thinking differently about the Internet. Especially in the U.S. they still think that the Internet is one of the many services that you can get via a telecom service. Unfortunately, they have it backwards. Internet telephony (a voice conversation) is one of the many things you can do with the Internet! “Voice” is just another Internet application. The handwriting is on the wall.

WiFi hardware for home and business has become very affordable and reliable. Doesn’t seem that long ago that a WiFi access point was more than $1,000, required a lot of electricity, and had limited speed, poor security, and utilized a very early version of the 802.11 standard. Last month I installed a Linksys "Wireless-N Gigabit Security Router with VPN". The standard has evolved from "b" to "g" to "n" with increasingly better security, speed, and range. What I like most about this new device is the VPN feature. A Virtual Private Network is not a new idea but the implementation of the VPN in the new Linksys device is impressive. A second unit is installed at the "getaway" house in Pennsylvania. A simple procedure lets you create a "tunnel" between the two houses directly from one router to the other. You can be in either place and have access to everything on a computer int he other place just as though it was plugged into the local area network. It basically allows a LAN (local) at each end to be connected by the WAN (wide area network aka the Internet). All the trafic through the "tunnel" is encrypted. There are many uses but most important to me are security and HVAC control. From either house it is very simple to check the temperature at the other, turn the heat up or down, set or reset security, or "see" what is going on through a web camera. You can also install a VPN client on your laptop and have "local" access to both homes while you are on the road.

Meanwhile, computer engineers at the University of Massachusetts have built a wireless communications network called TurtleNet which includes waterproof computers attached to the shells of snapping turtles. Without disturbing any of the daily activities, the turtles can swap information whenever they within 500 feet of each other. The biologists believe that the data gained will help the species in the long run.