Resort town becomes wireless `hotspot'Web now in the air, everywhere, in Grand Haven, Mich.
source: Toronto Star
Lightning-fast wireless Internet access, anywhere, anytime has been the elusive goal of Internet junkies and e-mail-a-holics.
It's finally arrived — in Grand Haven, Mich., of all places.
The picturesque town on the shore of Lake Michigan this summer became one giant "hot spot;" the entire town is an access point where anyone with a Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity-enabled laptop or device can connect to the Internet without wires.
A hot spot is where a high-speed cable or digital subscriber line (DSL) is hooked up to equipment that beams a signal to an antenna along a radio frequency. Anyone with a computer or device that can receive those signals can then access the Internet — sometimes for a fee and other times for free, depending on who's offering it.
In Grand Haven, a company called Ottawa Wireless Inc. has taken the concept a few steps further.
It struck a deal with the city to put up hundreds of antennas in public spaces, and market the signal to the public starting at $19.99 a month. Using one big high-speed fibre cable connected to the Internet, it now beams out a signal on the same unlicensed frequency range wireless phones and garage door openers use, providing high-speed Internet access for Grand Haven's 12,000 residents.
What the successful experiment appears to represent is the inevitable: That high-speed Internet access beyond just pockets of hot spots is finally here.
What it also represents is a sea-change in the way the public will likely get its Internet fix in the near future — something not lost on city officials here in Toronto and elsewhere, such as Philadelphia, Boston, New York and other places in the United States, Canada and beyond.
Philadelphia, for instance, is considering a plan that would involve placing hundreds of small transmitters around the city — probably atop lampposts — setting up a network that would deliver broadband Internet anywhere radio waves can travel, including poor neighbourhoods where high-speed Internet access is now rare.
The city would likely offer the service free or at costs far lower than the $35 to $60 a month charged by commercial providers, according to officials there.
In Toronto, officials are keen on making certain areas hot spots — the downtown financial district, which they say would keep companies from departing for "905," and the waterfront.
In Toronto right now, no one is planning a wireless broadband network that anyone, anywhere could access, for a fee or otherwise. "It's not imminent, but it's certainly on the city's radar screen," said Peter Milczyn, city counsellor for Etobicoke and chair of the city's E-Committee. "We're not going to be the first to do something significant, but certainly we'd want to be one of the first."
That's the same tack being taken by executives at Rogers Communications Inc., BCE Inc.-owned Bell Canada and other ISPs, who some day soon also want to be able to beam out high-speed wireless Internet everywhere, but aren't necessarily looking to offer it at a subsidized cost or for free.
Both companies and 20 others received the nod from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission back in February to offer wireless Internet access across urban and rural areas throughout different parts of Canada — only at a frequency the public doesn't get free access to.
There is another reason many aren't jumping at the chance to roll out city-wide wireless Web.
Like most new technologies, the hardware, software and equipment companies like Ottawa Wireless in Grand Haven and others are using to roll out city-wide Wi-Fi is ad-hoc, complex and arguably already outdated. It took Ottawa Wireless the better part of two years to install all its antennas, get them positioned right, work out all the kinks and get the system up and running.
What everyone is apparently waiting for is a new type of technology standard called WiMAX, which is expected to be available starting in 2006.
The difference between WiMAX and Wi-Fi Ottawa Wireless and a few other communities have in place is that WiMAX will allow users to get access without needing to be near a base station, or hot spot.
It is also expected to be able to handle more data at faster speeds than what's currently available.
"The problem with these current networks is they're forcing Wi-Fi to do something it really wasn't designed to do," says Dr. Sayed-Amr El-Hamamsy, CEO of Calgary's Wi-LAN, which makes equipment that strings together wireless broadband networks. "It stretches existing technology into something it really wasn't intended for."
Sort of like using a battery-powered portable radio to broadcast a symphony concert, and connecting speakers all over the place to get the sound out as far as possible.
Wireless Internet everywhere has its obvious merits: It makes it easier for people to communicate and be connected on the go. And it introduces a whole new realm of possible applications — high-speed Internet access for police and fire officials on the road, for real estate agents showing homes, for entire communities and so on.
It also has less-obvious merits: It allows newer technologies such as Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, to be available to hundreds or even thousands of people who currently can't afford a telephone. VoIP allows people to make phone calls over the Internet.
There are some issues, among them security, due to the fact that wireless signals may be more easily intercepted.
The prospect of entire cities with broadband wireless access raises other issues too, particularly for the likes of Rogers and Bell who will be facing new competition from groups, municipalities and other companies — even with their lock on specific spectrum.
Vantaa Energy, a utility company based in Vantaa, Finland, last year purchased some of Wi-LAN's fixed wireless access products — part of its own plan to offer city-wide broadband wireless networks in Vantaa, Espoo and Helsinki.
And back in Grand Haven, Ottawa Wireless can't wait to get its hands on the new WiMAX technology as soon as it becomes available — to make its network even better.
"I know the existing Internet service providers don't like us, but we have every intention of continuing to offer the service and make it better," says Tyler van Houwelingen, Ottawa Wireless's CEO.
"It's definitely something the providers are more than likely worrying about because they are going to have a lot more competition."
The lock companies have had on how the Internet snakes its way into homes and offices — through fibre-optic cable or telephone lines — appears close to coming to an end.
And new forms of technology appear perhaps a step or two closer to the beginning of more fair, open and reasonably priced Internet access for all — something that will profoundly change the way we live and work in the very near future.
Just be sure to wear a lead helmet to deflect all those invisible signals beaming around.
