WIRELESS GUERILLAS

Community wireless networking has potentially serious consequences for service providers — positive ones if carriers take advantage of the opportunity to get out in front of the trend, and negative if they ignore certain critical factors.

This “guerilla” wireless networking movement is simple: A bunch of individuals or companies put up their own 802.11 (Wi-Fi) wireless LAN nodes, and voilà — a densely populated environment suddenly has very high-bandwidth wireless services.

In San Diego, AirShare and the San Diego Wireless Users Group are working publicly in this area. Behind the scenes, the San Diego Telecom Council is considering creating a wireless test bed called Radio Free San Diego.

The most intriguing aspect of these efforts is that they are noncommercial in nature. The networks are free to anyone within earshot of the access points whose computer contains a $70 wireless card. The Seattle Wireless Web site has links to more than 30 cities in North America with similar noncommercial efforts under way.

Why has the hobbyist crowd adopted this technology? It's faster than a T-1 in the office and faster than a cable modem at home, and the fact that a laptop is now truly portable has a lot to do with WLAN's appeal.

Why should the carriers care? For one, if the mall put up WLAN access points tied to DSL lines or cable modems, there may be a wireless community network in place, but using it probably would be illegal. Service level agreements contain a provision not to carry traffic beyond employees or family. Most of the guerilla networks in use today are operating outside this boundary.

It's not possible to police these clauses. In fact, there already are ways to cloak this sort of usage. If a broadband user decides to put up an access point in his business and offer usage to the community within range of the radio signal, his service provider can become the enemy if standard policies do not support such a decision.

Carriers should look at incremental growth opportunities inherent in the community wireless trend. When an area gets covered with WLAN, there will be poor coverage areas. Over time, the community or businesses engaged will cover these holes with additional access points, which will require additional broadband access service agreements. In addition, these networks eventually will require higher bandwidth access to the backbone.

These networks will become an important source of income for service providers over the next three years. And carriers must be prepared.

DOSSIER MARCO THOMPSON

Occupation: President of the San Diego Telecom Council; chief technology officer of Wind River Services

Place of residence: San Diego

Current reading: “The Innovators Dilemma” by Clayton M. Christensen; “Fermat's Enigma” by Simon Singh and John Lynch; “Blind Man's Bluff” by Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew and Annette Lawrence Drew

Favorite Web sites: www.battlebots.com; www.thetsector.com

Next project: Building an organization dedicated to mentoring San Diego technology CEOs; finding the next five Qualcomms in San Diego and accelerating their success