OXFORD, United Kingdom-Despite the growing hype surrounding wireless local area networks (WLANs), the Austrian capital, Vienna, has claimed the number-one position for the city with the highest density of wireless hot spots. The local wireless Internet service provider (WISP), Metronet, maintained that its 136 public wireless access points puts it ahead of New York, in second position, which boasts only 115 WLAN locations.
However, analysts expect Vienna’s lead to be rapidly overhauled as U.S.-based WISPs deploy public access WLAN in an attempt to catch the anticipated wave of user demand for high-speed mobile access. European telecom companies, including British Telecommunications, Telecom Italia, Deutsche Telekom and others, also have ambitious plans to deploy WLAN services based on the IEEE 802.11b standard, even though the technology has suffered badly from reports of poorly designed and implemented security techniques.
While operators rush to provide public hot pots, the WLAN equipment providers look set for hard times. According to a new study by Frost & Sullivan, while WLAN shipment growth will be stimulated by standardization, interoperability and growing adoption rates, fierce competition will cause declining equipment prices and depress revenue growth in the process. Also with so many different hardware vendors, the market research firm expects that a harsh period of consolidation will occur in the WLAN development community during 2003.
“Without much differentiation between products, competitors will have great difficulty in maintaining their market positions,” said the firm.
