The Risks of Overexposure

Some of the most promising aspects of wireless have been irrevocably tainted by excessive, premature hype. It's becoming increasingly evident that Wi-Fi could be the next wireless phenom to be added to that list.

Remember CDPD, the mobile data format that was going to make the jump from niche markets to mass consumer applications? Remember when the wireless division of AT&T was going to pave the last mile wirelessly using a technology it had stealthily invented under its Project Angel cloak? And how could you forget 3G, the oft-cited but barely materialized mobile network migration path that the industry started talking about before 2G networks were even completely built out?

To be fair, some of those technologies had hype showered upon them before they were even ready to be discussed outside an R&D environment. That's not necessarily the case for Wi-Fi, a technology format that has proved its usefulness in hundreds of free public access networks and corporate or campus LANs.

The problem with Wi-Fi is the business case for the commercial wireless industry. To date, no major wireless service provider has used Wi-Fi as anything more than a complement to existing networks or as a niche service offering. No carrier has proved how it can make a viable business out of Wi-Fi, and all the attention heaped upon the technology turns up the pressure that much more.

One obvious contributor to the hype problem is the media. This publication certainly is responsible for devoting a lot of pages to Wi-Fi. But Wireless Review is a business-to-business magazine with a mission of covering technology innovation in its earliest stages, and we believe our wireless industry readership is educated and astute enough to consider the Wi-Fi portion of our coverage in context. I don't think that's the case for mainstream business publications like Wired and BusinessWeek, which have both, in the past month, devoted covers and even whole supplements to the “runaway success” of the Wi-Fi “revolution” that will “change the way we work and live.”

It's that kind of language, absorbed by the broad consumer and business sector community, that could make Wi-Fi wither on the vine. I worry that by the time Wi-Fi goes through all the necessary trials and tribulations to become mature enough to play in the carrier big leagues, the general public will be convinced Wi-Fi didn't deliver on its hype. At that point, Wi-Fi could be considered — prematurely and unfairly — the wireless LAN technology that couldn't.

For our part, Wireless Review is committed to covering Wi-Fi in the service provider context, paying attention to the very aspects that must be addressed to make it viable for carriers, such as security, standards and network interoperability. And I hope I'm wrong in saying that too much exposure will fry Wi-Fi before it gets a chance to prove itself. I've just seen it happen too many times before.