Surfing the net through the wired networks is all set to change with wireless fidelity or Wi-Fi services dominating the world in a big way. Wi-Fi enables a person with wireless gadgets like laptops and Personal Digital Assistants ‘PDAs’ to connect to the Internet when in proximity of an access point.
The Wi-Fi craze is catching on. Laptops and PDAs are flying off the shelves, the standard 2.4 ghz band has been de-licensed by the government and almost all the major service providers are jumping on to the bandwagon.
Basically, the Wi-Fi feature offers immense freedom when you are in transit, it allows you to check your mails while sipping your favourite ice tea at a famous cafe outlet that is Wi-Fi enabled.
Wi-Fi is helping the service industries like hospitality, airlines and airports to give additional value added services to its customers. Special care is being taken to give a laptop-friendly environment for the wireless customers including comfortable seats, tables to accommodate the laptops and other services at ‘hotspots’ across the country.
Although the traditional wired networks continue to dominate, major equipment and service providers say that minor problems of presenting a single interface between wireless and wired networks is being achieved.
With the notebook PC segment showing a massive growth -60% sequentially and around 130% year-on-year and crossing the one million barriers already this year, according to the latest market figures; this augurs well for the Wi-Fi segment.
We clearly believe that for the next few years, both wire line and wireless will coexist and compliment each other,” says Parag Arora, business development manager Cisco Systems India.
There are fears that access points could be used to steal personal information transmitted from Wi-Fi users, but wireless equipment producers and service providers are confident of overcoming the problems.
Despite certain additional vulnerabilities introduced by wireless, service providers and regulators have been able to deal with such threats, and this has not come in the way of rapid adoption of the technology worldwide says Deepak Talwar, director of Microsense, a leading provider of Wi-Fi infrastructure and services in India.
More and more people are realizing the advantages of Wi-Fi. Some companies that have their own jets are fully Wi-Fiied. With the costs of equipment coming down and almost all major telecom service providers jumping on to the bandwagon, the Wi-Fi is set to go places.
The government is moving with the times but, there area few bottle necks that the industry feels are coming in the way of further development of the sector. Hotspots in public areas still need licenses from the Wireless Planning and Coordination wing WPC and any violation is punishable. Spill over of signals to a public area like roads or streets are liable to punishment and the government needs to address these, says Arora.
Wi-Fi technology has made rapid strides and is no longer limited to a restricted environment. Wi-Fi as a technology offers many possibilities of providing high quality connectivity to rural areas, hilly terrain etc, which are otherwise difficult or expensive to link up.
When Intel CEO Craig Barret visited India last November, he had predicted that Wi-Fi would change the Indian communication landscape, and if indications are anything to go by, he was absolutely spot-on.