Oct/Nov 2006

Transport and logistics users may have been pioneers in the use of 802.11b Wi-Fi wireless local-area networking, but apparently the rest of the market has now picked up the idea in earnest.

According to research by Populus on behalf of AOL, over a third of people with Internet connections (35 per cent) now also have a wireless network. Nearly half of these describe themselves as business users.

Perhaps of more interest to existing business users is the fact that nearly one person in six admits to having "stolen" someone else's wireless bandwidth. Men (22 per cent) are said to be far more likely to do this than women (6 per cent). This perhaps suggests a greater need for wireless networks to be security-protected.

Apparently people's favourite location for surfing without wires is their own garden; that choice came top among half of those surveyed. But this begs the question of how they would do this using current domestic laptop computers, whose screens are often virtually invisible in even in the weakest sunshine.

The good news for business users is that if the desire for outdoor surfing is genuine, it could stimulate a "consumerisation" of field service-style semi-rugged laptops with high-brightness screens - which would presumably bring prices down for everyone.