This week, Strix jumped into the market with an outdoor product that
supports six radios and provides significant flexibility, especially
when used with directional antennas. While pricing has not yet been
announced, we were told that it would be well less than competitors.
Also this week, Tropos announced a partnership with Boingo Wireless,
which currently offers Wi-Fi hotspot services at over 12,000 locations
worldwide. This move opens the door for more metro hotzone deployments,
which have received a fair amount of hype recently.
We're still not convinced that public-access metro Wi-Fi has legs. There
are immense technical and political obstacles. In fact, over a dozen
states have already enacted legislation, some of it under pressure from
incumbent cellular carriers, to restrict these citywide deployments.
However, even if public metro Wi-Fi never takes off, there are still
plenty of other interesting applications, including public safety, where
law-enforcement agencies are looking to enhance communications without
having to contract for services with traditional cellular data
providers. And there's plenty of grant money available for these
deployments.
If mesh takes off in this market, it will provide a live laboratory in
which technology problems can be addressed while also providing R&D
capital to the vendors plying their wares in this market. And with
industry heavyweights like Motorola and Nortel also getting into the
game, you can bet you'll be hearing more out of the wireless mesh market
in 2005.
Dave Molta is Network Computing's senior technology editor. Write to him at [email protected]
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