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June 7, 1999

The Wireless Pipe Gets Wider

ogan Harbaugh's review of wireless networking is a snapshot of a set of technology that's in a state of rapid change. Wireless LANs are here today and will be faster tomorrow. But the real change on the horizon is in the realm of wireless internetworking--and that's where wireless technology will have a real impact on business.

The satellite technologies that have been the basis for military communications for the last 20 years are becoming part of the business communications arsenal at an amazing rate. While VSAT has been around for ages, it has never matched the bandwidth of wired networks. New satellite services change the equation--and may change how geography impacts the way companies do business.

Satellite networks have already become the back-channel for the Internet. Services such as SkyCache provide a direct, high-bandwidth downlink for pushing Web content out to Internet service providers and business sites looking for ways to speed access to data from poorly connected locales (or just to beat Internet gridlock). Specialty services such as Iridium have made global telephony a reality--albeit at a pretty high per-user price. The next step is to combine high-bandwidth wireless data and voice

That's what Teledesic is banking on. The company's planned services will let an organization set up a 45-centimeter antenna anywhere in the world and provide the equivalent of a local telephone service or a high-bandwidth WAN connection. When that's combined with local wireless networking and technologies such as Local Multipoint Distribution Service or cellular communications, a whole telecom infrastructure capable of supporting a small town--or a midsize company--can be deployed in a few hours.

For global organizations, that means no longer being tethered to land lines for operations. It lets underdeveloped areas leapfrog plain old telephone service infrastructure issues by deploying a wireless-satellite service instead. And it also may play havoc with the already stressed and increasingly competitive high-bandwidth data services market in developed countries--such as the United States.

There's another side to Teledesic's service--it's portable. That means that if you build a wireless or satellite telecom infrastructure, you can take it with you if your company moves. Telecom becomes facility-independent as well as geography-independent.

It also means, in essence, that just about anyone with an antenna can essentially get into the local phone business. If that isn't enough to shake up the already rapidly converging telecom, cable, and data businesses, I don't know what is. I bet the Federal Communications Commission doesn't, either.