Intel Wireless Communications Fund Invests In Tropos Networks

http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=35449. Tropos builds (equipment vendor) systems for deploying Metropolitan Area 802.11b/Wi-Fi networks. Efforts like Tropos (http://www.troposnetworks.com/), Vivato (http://www.vivato.com/) and many other companies are making 802.11b/g the defacto “First Mile” Broadband Wireless Internet Access technology. It’s not “going to” happen… it is happening! Present tense! Now! Proprietary “first mile” solutions simply cannot compete in the long term with commodity wireless capability that’s built in and good enough when the “back end” is specifically engineered to compensate for the deficiencies of Wi-Fi as “first mile” client access devices.

Think this is fantasy? Not really… we have an excellent example in the buildout of PCS networks – operating at a similar frequency (1.9 GHz) and similar power levels and antenna limitations (seen the average Nokia phone used by younger folks lately? They’re tiny, with low transmit power and no antenna to speak of.) The big difference between the buildout of PCS networks is that 1) PCS devices are proprietary and mostly non-interoperable; a Sprint PCS user cannot roam onto a T-Mobile PCS network when there’s no Sprint PCS coverage. In contrast, 802.11b/g/Wi-Fi devices are completely commoditized and fully interoperable. 2) It won’t take years to build out the Wi-Fi infrastructure because nearly everyone can help build it and try to make some money from it – one of the most-admired characteristic of license-exempt spectrum.

Steve Stroh

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my second Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on www.strohpub.com/weblog.