NEW ORLEANS, United States-The second day of keynote speeches at this year’s Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association show in New Orleans had a similar theme to last year’s event with wireless local area network (WLAN) technology dominating much of the conversation as well as repeat appearances by a pair of industry executives.
Sky Dayton, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of public Wi-Fi aggregator Boingo, made a return appearance to the CTIA stage providing insight into what he thinks is necessary to increase consumer interest in public Wi-Fi services, as well as an update on the continued expansion of Boingo’s operations.
Dayton explained that similar to the cellular industry’s early days, public Wi-Fi adoption will begin to increase once there are roaming agreements in place that allow customers to access any Wi-Fi network regardless of which company is providing that access.
“It’s where we are going as an industry,” Dayton said of Wi-Fi roaming. Supporting Dayton’s view on the viability of public Wi-Fi networks, John Marshton, Toshiba vice president of business development, conveyed the technology company’s plans for its recent network announcement with consulting firm Accenture.
A main point of Toshiba’s plans involved rolling out its Wi-Fi network infrastructure using inexpensive components in an attempt to provide a quicker return on investment for hot spot installations. Those cost saving measures include competitively priced ready-to-install Wi-Fi access point equipment and the use of digital subscriber lines (DSL) instead of more expensive T-1 connections.
“If you spend a lot of money on a hot spots you don’t make any money,” Marshton said.
While wireless carriers continue to throw their hats into the Wi-Fi arena, evidenced by the announcements made during the conference, Qualcomm’s Irwin Jacobs said he is not convinced of the need nor financial viability of such public Wi-Fi networks.
To no one’s surprise Jacobs explained that Qualcomm’s cdma2000 1x EV-DO technology provides adequate speeds for most applications more cost effectively than Wi-Fi due to 1x EV-DO’s ability to serve a broader coverage area.
“Wide area coverage will be the way to go,” Jacobs said. “Economics is the name of the game.”
