Wi-Fi re-emerges as important
Thursday, June 10th, 2010 Barbara Nelson, CTOI spent the last few days at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, getting an updated perspective on Apple’s technologies. While there are certainly some very cool technologies, and we look forward to enhancing the iPass products to leverage these new capabilities, there were also some more subtle messages at WWDC. One of these subtle messages is with regard to Wi-Fi.
Buried in the hoopla on the iPhone 4, there is an interesting re-emergence of the importance of Wi-Fi. For many years, people had been predicting the demise of Wi-Fi. Who needs Wi-Fi when you have 3G?
At Apple WWDC, we saw that once again, when 3G isn’t up to the task, we rely on Wi-Fi. During the keynote, Steve Jobs didn’t even attempt to demonstrate his new phone on the cellular network. He ran into some networking difficulties on Wi-Fi, which were caused, ironically, by too many Wi-Fi base stations broadcasting competing radio signals. He said there were over 500 Wi-Fi access points in the main room alone, and didn’t count all the access points in the overflow rooms. When all the bloggers turned off their MiFi devices, the demo went smoothly.
Later on, Steve demonstrated a very cool capability, video chat using FaceTime. Oh, by the way, it only works on Wi-Fi.
Yet again, Wi-Fi comes to the rescue when the cellular networks cannot or will not support the increased data demands of these new applications. Isn’t it good that the Wi-Fi providers didn’t listen to the pundits predicting their early demise? So, when you are on the road, and want to video-chat to your family from your hotel room on your new iPhone, say thanks to all the Wi-Fi providers who are there to support you when the cellular networks let you down.
Tags: 3G network, Apple, enterprise mobility, iPhone, wi-fi access
