Photo-Illustration for TIME by VIKTOR KOEN

Wi-Fi Fever
	By providing wireless access to the internet in public places and at home, Wi-Fi is shaking up the slumbering tech sector. This time, the wireless web is finally connecting with consumers
	By WILLIAM BOSTON

Posted Sunday, April 6, 2003; 17:21 BST
At Rockabilly Barbers in East Northport, New York, you can get an Elvis-era haircut while listening to vintage rock. But it's not all throwback: Rockabilly also offers the hottest new networking technology on the planet. Proprietor Robert Wagner, an ex-Marine, noticed that many of his patrons would lug their laptops in to do a little work while waiting for a trim. Spotting an opportunity, he installed a wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) network in the barbershop to offer customers high-speed wireless Internet access. "I've got lots of musicians and business executives who come in and read e-mail," Wagner says. "Some even edit video online while they wait. We aren't your father's barbershop."

And Wi-Fi isn't your father's Internet connection either. Once dismissed as an obscure toy for geeks and technophiles, the technology is going mass market and now has the troubled tech industry rocking 'round the clock. Wi-Fi, the marketing moniker for a communications standard with the impossibly nerdish name IEEE 802.11b, makes it possible to log on to the Internet without cables.

Families use Wi-Fi networks to lounge with their laptops by the pool, or connect multiple PCs to a shared Internet connection without laying cable throughout the house. Thousands of public Wi-Fi networks — hot spots that provide wireless Internet access within a range of about 100 m — are popping up in airport lounges, coffee shops, hotels, pubs, ferryboats crossing the Baltic Sea and, of course, barbershops.

While users may love the easy access, Wi-Fi's impact on mobile-phone operators may be less welcome. Mobile-phone firms spent billions to upgrade networks for Internet-style services, but now Wi-Fi is doing it better, quicker and at lower cost, cutting into revenues from fast data networks like gprs and potentially undermining the big upgrade to third-generation (3G) mobile-phone technology before those networks are even completed. Whether hot spots can make money for cellular operators is still unproved — but then so is the business case for 3G. "Mobile operators shouldn't ignore this," says Maja Kecman, an analyst with the Cambridge-based consultancy Analysys. "The impact of Wi-Fi will be substantial, and it has been underestimated."

Mobile operators would do well to act fast. North America and Europe already have roughly 5,000 Wi-Fi hot spots in public places like airports and coffee shops, a figure that's expected to rise to nearly 90,000 by 2007. Total revenue from public Wi-Fi access in the U.S. was $22.5 million last year but could hit $2.8 billion by 2007, according to Analysys. In Western Europe, Wi-Fi revenue was $11 million last year and is expected to rise to $2.6 billion over the same period. In the U.S., the main revenue drivers are likely to be corporate users, but Analysys predicts small- and medium-sized businesses will drive growth in Western Europe. Of course, we've heard promises about the great wireless future before. Yet Wi-Fi could well be real. "There is no doubt about it: Wi-Fi is a big deal," says Maribel Dolinov of Forrester Research. "But the hype surrounding it is getting a little tough to swallow."

1 | 2 | 3 | Next

	Second Coming [March 17, 2003] Convergence is dead, long live convergence Let's Get Small [March 17, 2003] Nanotech: sounds tiny, but it's hitting the big time Bring The Noise [March 17, 2003] New digital players can write their own songs Fashion Calling [March 17, 2003] Ready-to-wear phones — a new accessory to dial for More Related Items | Search all issues of TIME Magazine