Hotspots hit the zone

The growth of wi-fi-based wireless hotspots is now moving the wi-fi medium into telco territory.

By Jacob Stoller

On March 7, 2006, Toronto Hydro Telecom, the telecommunications arm of Toronto’s publicly owned electrical utility, announced plans to deploy a 6 square kilometre wi-fi hotspot zone in downtown Toronto. The service will allow subscribers to access the internet anywhere in the zone through the wireless ports in their computers. This significantly ups the ante when it comes to the proliferation of wi-fi, and represents a serious encroachment on the territory dominated by telecommunications giants such as Bell, Rogers, and Telus.

There’s been talk in a number of cities, including San Francisco, London, and Philadelphia, about setting up public wi-fi zones, but according to David Dobbin, Toronto Hydro Telecom’s president and CEO, there’s been little action. “A lot of people are under the false impression that they’ve deployed, but they haven’t. We believe that the Toronto wi-fi zone is actually going to be the first major city to have an operational wi-fi zone.”

Downtown core

Wi-fi is an acronym for wireless fidelity, the nickname for a wireless communications standard formally known as IEEE 802.11. Wi-fi has been widely used in two key areas: in wireless LANs (Local Area Networks) powered by the wireless routers commonly used in offices and homes, and in wireless hotspots deployed in coffee shops, hotels, airports, corporate campuses, and other public facilities.

It’s easy to confuse wi-fi with the kind of wireless transmission that is used with PDA devices such as the Blackberry. The latter is a completely different medium in that the data is carried on licensed cellular bands through services offered by carriers such as Bell and Rogers. Your laptop wireless port can’t access these services. (Many PDAs, however, are wi-fi enabled.)

Wi-fi transmits over a 2.4 GHZ radio frequency band. The band is unlicensed, meaning that you don’t need a broadcast license to deploy wi-fi. Hotspots can therefore be easily set up by anybody. One of the weaknesses of wi-fi as a medium is that it can’t be broadcast for long distances. Therefore, wi-fi zones are only viable in downtown cores where multiple transmission points can be easily deployed.

Toronto Hydro Telecom will be leveraging one of Toronto Hydro’s key assets, light poles, to create the necessary level of coverage. According to Dobbin, the service will work within 10 metres of the outside perimeter of any building, up to the 40th storey. Speed will vary according to distance from the transmission point, but according to Dobbin, performance will be more than adequate for many businesses.

Dobbin sees the offering as much more than a convenience. For example, downtown businesses would use the service to greatly simplify the setup and management of their office networks. Users could access their core servers through a VPN (Virtual Private Network) service, and this could become their primary access method. Therefore, their connection to the corporate services would be the same whether they were in the office, in a local coffee shop, or in their home wi-fi zone. Toronto Hydro Telecom is partnering with a number of IT service providers to deliver complete solutions of this sort.

Keeping costs down

Of course, the rapid growth of wi-fi isn’t limited to downtown Toronto. As wi-fi coverage continues to expand in airports, hotels, government buildings, and corporate campuses, individuals are spending more and more of their time in wi-fi zones. This growth is key to wi-fi evolving from being a mere convenience to becoming a primary method of mobile communications.

A key advantage of wi-fi over telco-based services is cost. Because wi-fi uses the internet, wi-fi service providers don’t have to build and maintain a telecommunications infrastructure between communication points, and their costs are lower. As a result, wi-fi is likely to be a less expensive medium for mobile email than, say, the services that support the Blackberry. As long as you are in a wi-fi zone, you can use your laptop with a wireless port, and work just as you would in an office. You don’t need to buy and support a separate device.

Another cost saver enabled by wi-fi is VoIP (Voice over IP). Because VoIP uses the internet to carry voice data, the medium has traditionally been used to reduce the cost of long distance telephone calls between fixed points. A new generation of VoIP phones that work over wi-fi allows users to avoid cellular charges as well. Many of these phones are now dual-mode, meaning they can also be used as cellular phones when the user is in a car, or otherwise outside of a wi-fi zone.

While dual mode phones avoid the inconvenience of carrying two separate phones, the connection between cellular and wi-fi is not seamless. If you were on a call in VoIP mode in a hotel, for example, and got into a cab to go to the airport, you would have to interrupt the call to change modes. Furthermore, you would need two phone numbers — one for your cellular mode, and one for your wi-fi mode.

Bridging technologies

Toronto-based Harmony Mobile has developed technology to make the wi-fi/cellular combination more viable. “As wi-fi becomes more prevalent in the marketplace,” explains president Michael Stephens, “we are working actively to build a service that allows customers to use dual mode handsets, so that when they’re within their corporate or home wi-fi environment, they get the advantage of a VoIP pricing structure.”

By bridging the two technologies, Stephens explains, the user doesn’t have to worry about whether the phone is operating in wi-fi or cellular mode — the transfer between the two services is seamless and automatic. Also, there would be a single phone number — calls would be routed to the most suitable mode.

The VoIP capability of wi-fi is particularly appealing to individuals or businesses that use VoIP providers such as Vonage for their primary telephone service. In this scenario, employees can carry a portable phone that incorporates exactly the same features as a corporate office phone, including phone number, extension number, voicemail, conferencing capabilities, and access to the main switchboard.

Organizations contemplating a broader use of wi-fi will have to weigh the benefits against new data service offerings coming from the telcos, and the choice may not be an easy one. Bell, Rogers and others are currently upgrading their core networks to support a medium called wireless broadband. Based on an emerging standard called Wi-Max, wireless broadband works over the existing cellular network, but provides data bandwidth similar to domestic high-speed internet services. Like wi-fi, users of high speed broadband will be able to work with their laptops instead of a PDA device, although they will need a special adaptor.

Wireless broadband is available in major downtown cores, and is expected to soon cover the same footprint as the traditional cellular network. The service is also being deployed in remote communities that aren’t served by cable-based services. In a project called Inukshuk, Bell and Rogers have joined forces to build the network infrastructure, but will compete to provide services in the covered communities. According to Bell spokesperson Paulo Pasquini, the project will cover 100 remote communities by 2008.

Jacob Stoller (jacob@stollerstrategies.com) is an independent writer and researcher based in Toronto.

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