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October 11, 1999

Clear Signals For Wireless LANs
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This high speed is being spurred by basic reengineering of chipset technology using faster, lower-powered, silicon-germanium combinations. This technology is the impetus for the second important growth driver: New manufacturing techniques for the chipsets are resulting in lower-priced wireless LAN products. Adapters, which used to sell in the $600 range, now cost half that. Likewise, access points have dropped to $1,000 to $2,000 each, and will drop further.

Price was one driving force behind Rollins Inc.'s decision to begin testing the wireless LAN waters. The parent of Orkin Pest Control has a unique situation when it comes to real estate, says IT manager William McGee. The Atlanta company's branch offices are set up on a temporary basis near customer sites; as pest-control jobs are completed, it moves operations to new locations. "Wireless LANs will allow us not to put restraints on real estate," McGee says. "We can set up an office in eight hours to follow the movements and growth of our customers."

Convincing Rollins' conservative management of the efficacy and cost savings the company would realize was key, McGee says. Though the networking equipment for wired LANs is usually less costly than for wireless LANs, prices quickly add up for wired configurations because users have to deal with setting up the office to support them. "I raised quite a few eyebrows with my cost analysis," he says. "It showed that if we move 30 offices in a year, we break even. After that, we make money."

Still, Rollins hasn't subscribed wholeheartedly to wireless LANs; McGee says he'll need to show consistent savings over time before that occurs. Use is limited to computer technicians, who rely on wireless LANs to help them repair equipment at branch offices. They set up their wireless-equipped notebooks at the recalcitrant desktop computer to get into the network and begin diagnostic tests.

William McGee Photo by Mark Escher McGee has faith that the company will expand the scope of these implementations. While he was skeptical that signals could penetrate a concrete structure when the company began testing Lucent Technologies Inc.'s WaveLAN at the home office in May, that's no longer the case. He says he found he could get a signal three-quarters of the way around the building using just three access points.

On another front, wireless LANs may turn out to be crucial to the future success of hotels, says Robert Thrailkill, general manager of the Hilton DFW Lakes at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. In August, Hilton signed an agreement with MobileStar Network Corp.--the only vendor selling a wireless subscription service to travelers--to install access points in hotel rooms, lobbies, meeting rooms, and other common areas; Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn Select, and Sheraton hotels have similar deals. The system, which uses Proxim Inc. technology, lets subscribers wirelessly connect to the Internet or to company intranets and networks.

About 200 rooms of the Hilton DFW Lakes 400-room hotel offer wireless access to customers. "The demand for high-speed Internet access is huge," Thrailkill says. Because users presubscribe to the service, he doesn't always know when it's being used. But he says he sees people in the restaurant, lobby, and meeting rooms connected to the Internet. "The ability to allow our customers to work for 20 minutes or a half-hour while they're killing time in the lobby is terrific."

The hotel's wireless capabilities are a substantial selling point. Because hotels rely heavily on conferences and meetings for revenue, Thrailkill and his sales team are extolling the virtues of wireless meeting rooms in which anyone with a notebook can be connected. With wired LANs, hotels risk cutting some users off from the jacks they would need to get online when staffers adjust meeting rooms' movable walls to fit the size of a crowd.

Subscribers to MobileStar pay $30 to $50 a month based on the amount of data they transmit.

Even with the future of wireless LANs looking good, some challenges remain. According to Greg Naderi, an analyst for connectivity and computer networking at Frost & Sullivan, wireless LANs exhibit somewhat lower performance levels than 10BaseT Ethernet products. And, even though prices are dropping, wireless components are still too costly for some users. Another issue is that interference from other radio sources and even nearby LANs can become a problem and may lead to lower data speeds or service disruption.

Still, most observers agree the biggest challenge for wireless LANs is overcoming the perception that they are not perfected yet, says Sullivan of the Wireless LAN Association. "But there are no major technology issues," he says. "It works."

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