April/May 2002

BT has announced the UK's first public-access wireless LAN (local area network) ­ a system allowing people to gain wireless Internet access from their own portable computers at pre-defined public places. Potentially it could play a significant role in data transfers to and from vehicles and mobile staff.

How will it work? Well, BT, along with partners Motorola and Cisco, plans to install 400 wireless LAN network access points (or hotspots, as BT calls them) at key public sites such as hotels, railway stations, airports, bars and coffee shops such as Costa Coffee by June 2003.

Users will need to be within 100 metres of a LAN hotspot and have the correct software on their laptop or handheld device. They can then get Internet access or secure access to their corporate networks. Crucially, BT says wireless LAN broadband speeds of up to 500 kbps are least three times faster than, and less than half the price of, the forthcoming 3G mobile phone technology.

 

Similar developments are already under way in the US, where for instance the picturesquely-named Boingo Wireless launched a public-access LAN system based on Wi-Fi technology in January.

Clearly, establishing a large network is vital to success, and BT predicts there could be up to 4,000 hotspots by June 2005. If all this sound ambitious (some readers might remember the short-lived Rabbitt scheme, when mobile phones first came out), BT counters that one of the advantages of Wireless LAN is that it is simple to set up, requiring no additional cabling and no digging.

The combination of a flexible mobile device and fast broadband communications is predicted to prove a winner with both corporate and private users. BT is hoping the initiative will generate £180 million in new revenue by the end of 2004/05, and be worth an extra £500 million per annum within five years.

Provided BT get the network development side right, the wireless LAN could provide a useful communications alternative for logistics companies, who could regularly download data from vehicles at hotspots in filling stations or truck stops, for example.

If you want fast data transfer, of course, there's always GPRS, and it's hard to see at the moment what route logistics companies will go down. If, as BT claims, Wireless LAN is simple technology, easy to install, does that mean it is cheap enough to steer corporate customers towards having their own hotspots at, say, each RDC or depot?

BT is, in any case, developing a suite of Mobility Services products for corporate customers, which among other things offers will offer unified billing. Services include real-time email access via Blackberry, corporate intranet services, and Internet service provision.