Wireless Internet

Seattle To Make A Big Advance In Wireless Internet

Three companies are teaming up to beam high-powered wireless Internet signals across Seattle.

Some people are calling it "Wi-Fi on steroids." Eventually this will be huge for people who use laptops, giving you access to the Internet almost anywhere, without having to be near one of those hot spots at, say, a coffee house or on a ferry boat.

But that's probably a year away. Right now, this new technology will be available to businesses.

Bruce Chatterley, president and CEO of Speakeasy, bravely walked out onto the halo of the Space Needle Wednesday morning to announce the largest deployment of WiMax of its kind in North America.

This story is encouraging; a private company is leading the charge in pushing wireless internet. Even more interesting, they're using Wi-Max.

The Philadelphia plan, which I discussed here, is for Wi-Fi.

This article, in IEEE Spectrum (the Institue of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the organization that literally sets the standards), points out that Wi-Max is more suitable for delivering broadband internet to multiple customers, while Wi-Fi is more suitable for small, very local (more like household-wide) networks.

In 3 years, it'll be interesting to compare the quality and availability of wireless internet in Seattle to that available in Philadelphia, where the government owns and operates a wireless network.