Competition, innovation to take Wi-fi to new highs in 2004

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 02 January 2004, 20:30 IST
Printer Print Email Email
NEW DELHI: Attractive price points and new technology will increase the acceptability of Wi-Fi or public wireless LAN around the world and make it a commercial proposition, according to European research agency Ovum. "Wi-Fi is growing. 2003 has been a watershed year as public wireless local area network has moved towards becoming a commercial proposition for business and consumer users", it said. Blue chip vendors like Cisco and Intel are beginning to impose order on this fragmented, chaotic market with high-profile initiatives, it said while adding Intel's Centrino Mobile technology (Embedded Wi-Fi) campaign has propelled WLAN into the public consciousness. Cisco now looks set to dominate both enterprise and residential Wi-Fi equipment with its CCX compatibility programme and its March 2003 acquisition of leading home vendor Linksys, the report said. After three years of unopposed hype, 2003 saw the first dissenting voices surrounding the public Wi-Fi business case with questions being raised about the prospects of earning hard return on investment (ROI) from deploying hotspot networks, rounding particularly on the poor scalability of current Wi-Fi technology and high recurring costs for backhaul, Ovum said. "Either way, there has been little evidence so far to prove the evangelists or the doubters right or wrong", it said adding from a technology point of view, 2004 would not be a typical year of standards in-fighting. "2004 promises arrival of two key technology developments to the basic 802.11x standards", the agency said.

siliconindia