2Wire targets Wi-Fi cold spots with power boost

DSL gateway vendor 2Wire believes it has the solution to eliminating Wi-Fi "cold spots," those pesky areas in home networks where wireless coverage just won’t reach.

In two new residential gateways, the HomePortal 1000HW and 1800HW, the company has boosted the transmit power to 400 milliwatts, about seven times the level in most current Wi-Fi products. Additionally, the San Jose-based company has added a third antenna, which improves reception sensitivity.

"It gives us about 15-20% range on the existing client cards," said Jaime Fink, director of product marketing at 2Wire.

By increasing the transmission power, 2Wire believes it can reach into areas of the home that for whatever reason are inaccessible.

"A lot of the new products focusing on Wi-Fi are totally focused on bandwidth," said Fink. "What we get more calls on though is that people are having issues reaching all over their house."

The gateways, which are only available for now using 802.11b, also include ADSL technology to improve performance at the ends of longer loop. The 1000HW bundles in an integrated ADSL modem.

Both products will be distributed through the company’s existing telco sales channels. 2Wire’s current roster of telco distributors includes SBC Communications, BellSouth and BT. The company is following developments of the 802.11g standard, but doesn’t believe carriers are willing to ship those products just yet.

"The reason we’ve stayed with b in the short term is because we ship so much through the service providers," Fink said. "They don’t ship things on speculation. We’re working toward g in the near future, but we thought this was necessary now."