Shore-to-ship link is WiFi's new frontier
By Yuki Noguchi
Washington Post
The typical domains of wireless networks until now have been college campuses, major airports, high-end hotels, trendy coffee shops and tech-heavy neighborhoods. But Forrest "Woody" Wheat sees a new horizon for this increasingly popular technology: the near-shore waters of the American coast.
Gannett News Service
Wheat, whose Reston, Va.-based firm has been selling high-speed wireless service for three months after a year of building a network, said he hopes to expand it for boaters using "every little estuary" along the perimeter of the United States. Wheat sees maritime service as his way to carve a niche in the market for the technology known as WiFi, a system that makes high-speed Internet connections from a laptop as portable as a call from a cell phone. He is among an expanding fleet of competitors looking to capitalize on the technology.
The Royal Caribbean cruise line already has cyber cafes. Wheat Wireless says its hookup would let casino cruise lines check gamblers' credit quickly and improve services to passengers.
Those who sell WiFi service face technical and financial challenges, and few companies manage to profit from such sales. But analysts and market watchers expect people to embrace the technology in greater numbers, even as the rest of the telecom industry struggles to stay afloat.
A handful of firms like Wheat's offer commercial WiFi service in the Washington region, and major telecoms, such as T-Mobile and Sprint PCS Group, have made investments in companies that are beginning to market similar services. AT&T Corp., IBM Corp. and Intel Corp. formed Cometa Networks Inc. just over a month ago with the intent of selling WiFi service on a national scale.
Cometa plans to build networks in the 50 largest U.S. cities this year and to blanket metropolitan areas with wireless nodes so they will be easy to find. It hopes to sign up hotel and restaurant chains so customers will be able to find service when they book a room or order a burger.
Wheat Wireless Services, through its TeleSea division, is offering a $500-a-month plan targeted at cruise ships and yachts so crew and passengers will be able to surf the Web, make appointments, or get up-to-the minute information on weather, wind current and water depth, said Wheat, president and chief executive of the private firm that he owns with his wife, Linda.
Wheat says its signals, unlike most similar ones, which are limited to a radius of several hundred feet, can transmit up to 30 miles from the coast because of its radio towers' special design. So far, Wheat has invested less than $5 million to cover the coast from Baltimore to the Florida Keys, as well as that along Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay, Long Island Sound, Southern California and Hawai'i.
His goal is "to connect the entire coastal U.S." piece by piece.
Until now, the people embracing WiFi have been a relatively small number of technophiles. Most people are unfamiliar with how to use the technology, and coverage is still spotty. WiFi has even spawned an illicit subculture of geeks who "war-drive," or hack into unsecured networks and ride the fast connections like modern stowaways.
The number of WiFi cards or access points manufactured in the United States grew from about 3 million units in 2000 to about 10 million in 2002, according to the Yankee Group. In the next five years, the market could grow 30 percent each year, said Sarah Kim, an analyst with the market research firm.
WiFi, known technically as 802.11b, has populist appeal because it is simple and cheap. It requires only that a user plug an $80 card into a laptop and stay within range of a device sending out a signal. Because the wireless signal travels on a licensed airwave spectrum — the same segment of airwaves that cordless phones and garage-door openers use — it doesn't require regulatory approval.
The technology is not without skeptics.
The Defense Department, nervous that expanded use of WiFi could interfere with military radar systems, has proposed limiting its use in certain ranges of airwaves.
With the increasing popularity of wireless devices, some companies are proposing to use additional radio frequencies, but that could hurt homeland security interests, said Steven Price, deputy assistant secretary of defense. Last month, the Defense Department requested that an international body restrict WiFi's use in the 5-gigahertz range; the proposal will be considered by the World Radiocommunication Conference in June, he said.
"We have no doubt that wireless Internet and wireless broadband has a military as well as commercial benefit," Price said. "We met with Microsoft and Intel and many other companies ... and the question is whether we can find a solution that doesn't degrade military capabilities."
Most of the WiFi market is controlled by upstarts like Wheat's and Oneder LLC, a Baltimore company that plans to start offering service in Silver Spring, Md., early this year. The larger players include T-Mobile, which bought MobileStar Network Corp. out of bankruptcy in 2001; Wayport Inc.; and Boingo Wireless Inc., owned in part by Sprint PCS.
Since it launched service in September, Wheat Wireless has signed on two casino cruise lines that intend to verify gamblers' credit, receive safety alerts and provide online services to guests.
