Future of wireless broadband is in the air

A battery of standards are vying for the wireless broadband - the wired providers are curiously silent. With UK broadband take-up passing ten percent of households and BT celebrating by announcing new and ever more widespread DSL availability, the dominance of wired broadband would seem to be assured. Wireless systems have come and gone, and everyone who ran a test -- or even a production -- network has given up and gone home.

But radio will win. The only question is when and what -- in the end, not even that. Wireless is better than wired: it's quicker to deploy, costs less to maintain, has less to go wrong and is far more flexible. Wherever there's a choice between the two technologies, wireless wins. In the early days of telephones they were used to deliver music and news to subscribers, but as soon as broadcast radio came along the economics of one-to-many proved overwhelming. Open air is always cheaper than buried copper.

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