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Welcome to the Wi-Fi revolution
By Nick Easen
(CNN) -- The Wi-Fi revolution is coming, and if you are away on business it could be a useful tool for you. Now if you hang out at the airport waiting for a long-haul flight you will see a new rush: A pre-boarding frenzy to download email. "Wireless fidelity" is allowing an ever-increasing number of laptops and personal digital assistants (PDA) to log on to the Internet with broadband speeds -- cable-free -- in airports, VIP lounges, planes and hotels worldwide. Do you have a Wi-Fi -- 802.11b -- network card or Intel Corp.'s Centrino mobile tech for your machine? Then you have access to the Web -- that is if you happen to be in the right place, known as a hot spot. And if you're lucky, it could even be free. High-speed and short-range, this type of radio technology is making the worldwide Web the world's wireless Web for out-of-office execs. The momentum for Wi-Fi is beginning to reach a critical mass in the travel industry with corporate travelers leading the way. More than 20 million people are expected to be using wireless Internet access worldwide by 2007, U.S. officials said at a recent United Nation's International Telecommunication Union conference. It helps that tech developers are focusing on high-traffic hubs such as hotels and airports, which is good news for those looking for unfettered Internet access on the road.
At the conference, negotiators tentatively agreed to allocate more of the world's airwaves to the Wi-Fi standard, as well as more frequencies to airlines that want to offer in-flight email and other Internet services. A handful of European and U.S. airlines namely Lufthansa, SAS, United and Delta have already signed up to turn their fleets of planes into large Wi-Fi hotspots. British Airways and Japan Airlines are also considering it. The two-way email service uses an on-board server, a satellite link-up and a routing system that relays signals to and from wireless networking cards in passengers' laptops. Some airlines will charge a fee, others may not. In a CNN online poll the majority of respondents said they would only use in-flight email if it was free. Major airports and hotels across Europe have already installed or are considering turning their businesses in to Wi-Fi hotspots and the growth is still phenomenal. According to the research firm Gartner, there are about 71,000 such hotspots worldwide, with up to a third in Asia, mostly in Korea. Yet the majority are still in the United States. Sniffing it out
Already companies offer free software that allows you to "sniff out" the airwaves for available commercial, private, and free wireless networks for when you are traveling. Try free Wi-Fi sniffer programs like Boingo or NetStumbler, while Freenetworks or Boingo have listings on their Web site on where the global hotspots are. Wi-Fi ZONE also allows users to search a database of about 1,600 hotels, airports, restaurants and other wireless access points in 23 countries. It helps that manufacturers such as Dell, HP, Intel, Sony, Toshiba and others are now equipping laptops, PDAs and other electronic devices for wireless network connections. And in the U.S, computer company Dell recently teamed up with wireless phone and data provider T-Mobile to try and speed up the proliferation of high-speed wireless Internet access with incentives for customers. T-mobile is the U.S.' largest commercial Wi-Fi network operator with 2,600 public hotspots. The excitement over Wi-Fi is due to the fact that it is one of the few bright spots in an otherwise lagging technology market.
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Unwiring the PC will change the way people use computers, allowing them to communicate, be productive or be entertained wherever and whenever they want.
