Wireless networking has been, by far, one of the most successful technologies of the 21st Century. Giving the average person at home the ability to sit anywhere in their home and still be connected to the Internet is a lot to shout about, and lately, the focus has moved slightly away from the home users, but more towards the community sense that wireless networking provides.
While wireless networking wins awards for innovation, it almost certainly doesn't win enough awards for convenience. There's a lot about WiFi that the average person at home simply doesn't know about. For instance, two or more wireless-enabled computers can connect to each other in a peer-to-peer "ad-hoc" fashion without a wireless hub. And what's more, is that they can do it effortlessly and almost instantly. People sat around a table in a meeting certainly don't want to have to mess about with network cables, so an ad-hoc network is ideal, especially since the network topology is managed automatically and everyone automatically is connected to everyone else. That's pretty awesome.
Larger companies and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are starting to realise that there's a lot of money in the wireless market. After all, why provide slow Internet access through a phone line or expensive cabling when you can simply just provide a wireless signal and let clients connect to it? Not only is it cheaper for the ISP, but it's also more convenient both for the ISP and the average home user. To add to this, using wireless as a backbone for a new network means that cabling doesn't have to be installed to support it. Hell, you could stick wireless routers to lamp posts, use the electricity from the lamp post and just let the routers configure themselves and connect to each other to form a bigger network.
While there's a lot of money to be had in the internet-through-WiFi world, but it's not all about commercial value. An increasingly popular trend worldwide is something called "municipal WiFi", or "community wireless". That is, a wireless network that is installed to cover a whole community or area with wireless signals that everyone can connect to and use. Install a route to the Internet at some point in the community network and everyone can get online. And usually, it's a lot less expensive, if not free.
I'm sure you already think this is a pretty good idea. But it doesn't stop there.
In a world where more mobile phones, PDAs, portable music players and other devices are becoming WiFi-equipped, community wireless networks are invaluable. Skype has already proven to be a very popular product; imagine if you could still use it while walking around the area that you live in. Push email is also becoming pretty popular over mobile phone networks, but often hefty subscriber fees make it unsuitable for the typical home user. A community wireless network can ensure that anywhere around home or the immediate area benefits from the same push technology, in all likeliness, without those subscription charges.
Because wireless networks are generally high-speed by nature, this helps to provide more opportunities for providing multimedia content, such as streaming video (either standard or high-definition), audio or even Voice-over-IP as already mentioned before. Quality of Service (QoS) deployment also means the network can prioritise certain types of information so that a wireless voice call will not be interrupted by someone downloading a large file at high speed.
Generally speaking, if a community network is set up properly, it should also be pretty secure, easy to maintain and cost-effective. There are already many projects across the world aiming to set up city-wide wireless networks, which are proving to become very popular, but they do rival commercial networks and ISPs. Community networks are usually covering smaller areas, but city-wide networks are very possible and, with the development of WiMAX and similar 4G technologies, new wireless networks would certainly move us into the future of communications. Community/municipal wireless networks are advantageous in many ways, but with ISPs pressuring to compete and city councils and local governments hesitant to invest in a solid network, will we ever experience a truly wireless city?
