Preface

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has failed to bring competition to the local loop of the North American telecommunications market. Despite its provisions ordering the opening of telecommunications facilities (switching and access) to competitors, less than 10 percent of Americans have any choice in their local telephone service provider. Despite its widespread popularity in the residential market, Internet access remains for most Americans mired in dialup access only. Fewer than 10 percent of American households have broadband Internet access. Many service providers consider their Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) or cable TV Internet access to be broadband where the access speeds might top out at 256 Kbps. If a service provider does not deem it economically viable to deploy the necessary infrastructure for a given neighborhood, then those subscribers are barred from the economic benefits of broadband Internet access.

The emergence of 802.11 technologies holds the promise of both introducing competition to the local loop telephone service while delivering true broadband Internet access. Economists Robert Crandall and Charles Jackson estimate ubiquitous broadband Internet access could bring a $500 billion annual economic benefit to the American economy. The chief barrier to achieving that benefit is the "last-mile bottleneck" of the current telecommunications infrastructure, consisting of either copper pair telephone lines or coaxial cable from the cable TV companies. These technologies cannot come close to offering the 11 Mbps bandwidth prescribed in the 802.11 specification. Furthermore, because 802.11 is wireless Ethernet, its cost of deployment is considerably less than that of telephone wires or coaxial cable. The ease and relative economy of deploying 802.11 should dictate a relatively rapid acceptance by entrepreneurs in rolling out telecommunications services.

However, 802.11 has sparked a number of objections. This book was written to explain how these objections are not the brick walls to adoption they may appear to be. Those technical objections include security, quality of service (QoS), and range. Other objections revolve around the economic and regulatory issues associated with 802.11 technologies, one of which concerns unlicensed spectrum. People want to know how long the spectrum will be unlicensed or if it will succumb to a "tragedy of the commons," in that so many users occupy the spectrum that it becomes unusable. Recent announcements by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) point to an expansion of unlicensed spectrum. New legislation being introduced in Congress indicates support for 802.11 technologies and services in the legislature.

As objections to 802.11 technologies are worked through, a great wave of new innovation will come crashing into the telecommunications markets, creating many unforeseen economic opportunities. It is the hope of the authors that this book can be one small signpost on the path to prosperity for wireless entrepreneurs.