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Tuesday, January 3, 2006

WiFi guru's predictions for 2006

Blogger, journalist and WiFi guru Glenn Fleishman just posted his predictions for the new year. Here are a few eye-catching ones:

- Wi-Fi hotspots will cross 200,000 worldwide. They’re already at roughly 100,000 worldwide today. The trend isn’t lessening at either the informal level (adding a Wi-Fi gateway in a coffeeshop) or the top-end (installing a multi-million dollar airport system).

- All consumer electronic categories will have many Wi-Fi-equipped models. It may take until Christmas 2006, but every single category of consumer product will have not just a proof of concept, but many items with Wi-Fi built in. Digital cameras with Wi-Fi might finally reach the consumer level with reasonable features, such as Secure FTP (SFTP) support. The remaining wild card is whether devices will be able to stream wirelessly among any equipment or whether the MPAA will fight back those attempts and require encrypted streams among licensed devices.

- Municipal Wi-Fi will continue to gain momentum. Hundreds of new RFPs will appear next year and hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent. Battles among incumbents, competitive operators, cities, and non-profits will be waged. But networks will be built. And we’ll finally see whether muni-scale networks can deliver on promises, probably within the first quarter of 2006.

A promising year indeed for Foneros...

 

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