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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
Outside of airports and Starbucks, the wireless Net is still hanging fire. You can build your own node, but who'll hook you up with the rest of the world?
Mar 5, 2002 | You'd think there'd be enough laptop-toting yuppies around to fill a Starbucks in San Francisco. It's been months since the chain equipped 50 of its stores in the area with high-speed wireless Internet access. But a tour of both Starbucks and independent coffeehouses served by the separate Surf and Sip Network uncovers a disheartening trend: Even at the spacious Brickhouse Cafi, newly renovated in the heart of Multimedia Gulch, I'm the only one logged on to a high-speed connection that costs hundreds of dollars a month to operate.
Maybe coffeehouse computing is just uncool, but a key problem is that at this point a Starbucks is one of the few places you can get wirelessly online outside of the office. Never mind that by the end of this year, more than 10 million computers will have 802.11b hardware (better known as "Wi-Fi," for wireless fidelity) installed. The hardware may be there, but easily accessible networks connected to the Internet are not.
Opening my iBook in any of the urban parks where the locals get their afternoon sun quickly becomes an exercise in frustration. Sure, there are networks -- several of them always show up on my Mac's menu. But they're either private nodes for nearby offices ("Rosai Group") or inscrutable private links ("zoom0332"). Every one I try either prompts for a password I don't have, or rejects me outright.
Techie folklore says that "war drivers" -- wireless hackers who cruise the streets in cars tricked out with giant antennae and military-strength amplifiers -- can surf any local Wi-Fi network at will. Maybe they can, but I can't.
Despite the buzz over unplugged coffeehouses, free community networks and war driving, jacking in to the wireless Net is still next to impossible. Even in cities like New York, Seattle and San Francisco where public wireless projects are prevalent, working access points are rare. Technology writer Mark Durham, currently in the process of mapping all available Wi-Fi nodes in San Francisco, says you're better off looking for a pay phone. "I've got about 105 listed," he says. "But that includes Starbucks."
If there's one technology that doesn't need evangelizing, it's wireless Net access. But while there are some start-ups out there, such as EarthLink founder Sky Dayton's Boingo, that may succeed in leading us to the promised wireless land, there are also plenty of prominent failures. Metricom's late, lamented Ricochet network comes immediately to mind.
Wi-Fi Nation is on indefinite hold, at least until computer-carrying consumers can roam beyond the invisible tether of the base station at the office, or the AirPort in the family den. With tens of millions of customers ready to be wireless by next year, and the price of a Wi-Fi laptop dropping below $1,000, why isn't AT&T setting up antennae for us, instead of shutting down its Digital Broadband service?
The answer is less about technology than the shifting flows of capital in the 21st century. The wireless Internet won't be rolled out telecom-style, like DSL or cable modems. In the wake of embarrassing failures to create top-down networks, it will be built from the ground up, by a patchwork quilt of players. Imagine the gradual knitting together of cellular roaming service in the '90s, but with 10,000 antenna owners rather than 10 giant carriers. Rather than risking billions of investors' dollars on a ubiquitous rollout, entrepreneurs will play for smaller stakes in more proven local or niche markets: When we come, they will build it.
