Industry Related-Answers
Revision as of 15:42, 22 March 2005 by 81.207.45.52 (talk)
- Is Wi-fi complimentary or direct competition to the 3-G services offered by the cellular comapnies?
- There was much hype abput the 3G services offered by cellular companies in order to allow users to access data at a speed of around 384 kbps.In fact many cellular service providers paid billion of dollars to obtain the licence for 3G. After the advent of Wi-Fi there are doubts whether the 3G industry will be washed out or can Wi-Fi and 3G co-exist. Like we know to operate in the Wi-Fi frequency range which is 2.5 Ghz and 5 Ghz there is no licence fees which need to be paid. The data transmission rates for Wi-Fi are much higher than 3G , typically 11 mbps and 54 mbps. The cost of Wi-fi equipments is approaching almost zero. It is very cheap to set up a Wi-Fi hot spot as compared to the 3G network. Keeping all this in mind Wi-Fi is a challenge for 3G. bur 3G has some advantages of providing a seamless roaming facility within cities and countries which might be a problem with Wi-Fi. So do Wi-Fi and cellular companies have tie ups to provide seamless roaming to the customers and thus benefit from each others. In fact a lot of companies have already started to do this Kyocera has made a tie up with Boingo and is develoing a Wi-Fi and 3g enabled mobile handset. Lucent has also made similar arrangements. This means that it is more like to see mobile handsets with Wi-Fi in future rather than Laptops with 3G capabilities. All said and done 3G cellular companies will either have to tie up with Wi-Fi companies or set up there own network in order to take advantage of the Wi-Fi 802.11 standard or else they have a difficult future ahead.
Refer the following links for usefull information:
- http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/1577551
- http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/columns/article.php/1500581
- http://itc.mit.edu/itel/docs/2002/LehrMcKnight_WiFi_vs_3G.pdf
- http://www.boingo.com/pr/pr98.html
- Will the use of Voice over Wi-Fi effect the landline business of Telcos? Can WiFi provide last mile connectivity?
- Can Wi-Fi offer the value add which will benefit the service industries like Hotels, Hospitals etc to attract more customers?
- Will the traditinal cable and LAN equipment industry be benifitted or will they lose market share with the success of Wi-Fi?
- Will Wi-Fi further strengthen the market position and product portfolio of giants like Microsoft and Intel?