WLAN CEOs look to the future

A panel of CEOs and chief technology officers from wireless technology vendors said that by 2006, 50% of businesses will have wireless LANs (WLANs), and because of that dramatic growth, Wi-Fi will soon be everywhere. Peter Vicars, CEO of Waltham, Mass.-based Chantry Networks Inc., and one of the panelists last week at Networld+Interop 2004 agreed that ubiquitous Wi-Fi coverage was likely to happen in the near future. Children today are growing up with wireless access in their schools. Now that they are coming to expect that kind of constant connectivity, he said, the market is likely to deliver it.

One way wireless will be more prevalent is through city-sized networks, said Ron Sege, president and CEO of San Mateo, Calif.-based Tropos Networks Inc. Sege, whose company builds metro-area Wi-Fi networks, is already seeing some interest in his products.

Ultimately, metro-area networks make more sense than uncoordinated public hot spots, Sege said, because they can be accessed anywhere. He compared the hot spot business model to building phone booths in a world where people already have cell phones.

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