World - Going wireless without Wi-Fi

Eric Sylvers

So much Internet, so many wireless ways to get it: A battle is intensifying over which methods will dominate, and the outcome could determine how people surf the Web for years to come.
One method for cable-free navigation - connecting through a cellular phone network - got a boost two weeks ago when a group of companies and the GSM Association, an industry lobby, promised to spend $1 billion to market a new initiative to make laptop computers wireless-ready without using Wi-Fi technology.
A day earlier, a competing technology called WiMax - which uses its own tower-based infrastructure to offer broadband wireless Internet connections - received its own vote of confidence when, after billions of dollars in investment, Sprint Nextel began offering the service in Baltimore, the first large WiMax roll-out in the United States.
For now, the two methods are co-existing. But just as Sony's Blu-ray stamped out Toshiba's HD DVD format in digital video, and VHS defeated Beta in videocassettes, in a few years only one standard may be left standing.
"There will inevitably be competition and coexistence between cellular and WiMax operators for mobile broadband," said Berge Ayvazian, chief strategy officer at the Yankee Group, a technology consulting firm based in Boston.
The GSM Association's cellphone network initiative - which is also backed by Microsoft and the computer makers Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba - will market laptop PCs in 91 countries that will be ready to connect wirelessly straight out of the box, without the need to be in range of a Wi-Fi hotspot.
Integrating mobile broadband Internet access into computers is part of a wider strategy to add the same access to MP3 players, digital cameras, cars, refrigerators and other products.
The new laptops will have a spot for a SIM card, probably behind the battery - much as with a GSM telephone. The computers will either be sold bundled with the SIM card, perhaps directly from the cellphone operator, or the SIM card will be marketed separately. For more than five years it has been possible to connect a computer directly to the Internet with a PC card or USB-enabled device that has its own SIM card.
The GSMA's initiative is designed to make connecting easier and service faster and more reliable, according to Michael O'Hara, chief marketing officer for the GSM Association. If coverage and speed do not improve, WiMax will have a big void to fill, and the GSMA is aware of that. "WiMax is our direct competitor," O'Hara said.
Wi-Fi city networks with thousands of antennas were going to be the wave of the future, but construction has stalled, in part because of a shortfall of financing. In any case, Wi-Fi was never intended to cover rural areas. That is where WiMax, which can cover larger distances, is trying to step in.
WiMax has been implemented in areas of Pakistan, India, South Korea, Japan and Brazil, and trials have been done in Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and other countries. Sprint intends to keep adding cities in the United States as it moves toward nationwide coverage.
"A lot of countries will have some WiMax, but it will take a long time, and for a long time it will mostly be concentrated in the cities and the surroundings suburbs," said Philip Solis, an analyst at Abi Research in New York. ABI is forecasting there will be 58.8 million mobile WiMax users in 2013, compared with 2.2 million this year.
WiMax remains untested in most of the world as a commercial proposition, and billions of dollars of infrastructure must still be built.
If the GSMA initiative is a success, though, cellphone networks could start to have trouble guaranteeing service because of the extra traffic created by Internet surfers. That could mean dropped calls and in some cases cellphones and computers would not be able to connect to the network if technological improvements were not made.
"The problem is already there today, and by next year operators might be struggling to meet demand," said Ricky Watts, director of strategy at Aircom International, a consulting firm that works with operators to manage their mobile networks. "It's not a helpless case, but you have to see what's coming and act accordingly."