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Quick talk about what's next with Greg Williams, COO of Wayport

Longtime SBC Communications executive Greg Williams joined Wi-Fi hot spot provider Wayport earlier this month. The company wholesales Wi-Fi service that is resold by several wireline and wireless carriers, the most recent of which is SBC. Williams spoke with Telephony chief correspondent Dan O'Shea about his new job, Wayport's future and carriers' roles in the Wi-Fi business.

On the SBC deal: When I was at SBC I had no part in the negotiations with Wayport, and did not know the content of the agreement until I arrived at Wayport [on Sept. 3]. But I spent the last 10 years at SBC Labs doing research on wireless, including 802.11. I'm pleased with the SBC agreement, and everything I found out about Wayport in my due diligence before I took this job is holding up. Where there is some dislocation in technology, as in Internet access with Wi-Fi, it creates an opportunity in the market. Wayport is in a great position, being Switzerland, the neutral host provider to carriers like SBC.

On carriers and Wi-Fi: There are a lot of different carrier strategies that will work. What you have to do is sort through the different motivations of all of these players. Are they looking to protect their DSL customer base by giving them something new for free, like Verizon? Are they looking for presence in hotels and airports to differentiate themselves? Do they want to offer a new service and not focus on the back office issues?

On Wi-Fi's growth prospects: Wi-Fi growth will be similar to what happen with GSM, where you saw a very large group of people come together and create a worldwide standard. That's what we saw happen with [802.11], and that's what will allow faster growth for the new applications to be based on Wi-Fi. It's the difference to be gained from having a network that's not a niche, non-homogenous network.

On his role and Wayport's future: As COO, I have an internal operations responsibility, but I also have a responsibility to Dan [Lowden, vice president of marketing] and his team to be involved in our carrier relationships and support development of new partnerships. There is a lot of need for neutral host provisioning right now, and we can leverage what Wayport built. But we will see some evolution in who uses Wi-Fi and how. There are new productivity applications that will develop because of Wi-Fi's nature, and there will new kinds of devices designed to take advantage of the technology. The carriers are still positioning, and we have to be able to react quickly to that and figure how to best help our partners win.