Most of the attention — and deservedly so — on wireless in 2003 has been on 802.11 technologies, which provide high bandwidth to users within a fixed area. The 11Mbps 802.11b standard is by far the most popular, since it's been around for several years, but the 54Mbps 802.11g standard took off very quickly after its official adoption in June, leaving the same-speed 802.11a technology largely orphaned. 802.11a has a shorter signal range, and its chief advantage — using a different spectrum that has less device competition than the 2.4GHz band used by 802.11b/g and other devices — is also a disadvantage, since it requires two sets of radios and differing access point placement.

The public hype has been on public hot spots, which now seem to be everywhere, thanks to the very visible deployments at airports, hotels, and Starbucks coffee houses. But what remains unclear is the actual usage of these networks by travelers and whether there is a viable business model to support them. High initial access prices limited users to upper-level executives and gadget hounds, while also opening up the opportunity for free or near-free competition that could soon make pubic hot spots a cost center meant to attract customers — an uneasy proposition if hot spots become nearly ubiquitous as expected — rather than a revenue source. Experiments by McDonald's have already signaled that a race to the bottom, à la phone service, may be developing. But it's not at all clear there are sufficient margins for such cuts, since like the tough Internet service provider business, there are transport vendors such as the carriers, local implementation vendors, and user-aggregation vendors (who provide the roaming) who each have different profit/loss thresholds.

The cellular side has been even more mixed. Several years after they were first promised, relatively high-speed networks are now available in many cities, offering modem-like speeds (and sometimes more) for cell phones, as well as for PDAs and notebooks equipped with a cellular modem. But there are multiple standards — CDMA2000 1X-RTT, CDMA2000 1X-EVDO, GPRS, and UMTS-TDD — and almost no roaming as each cellular carrier tries to build an exclusive user base. Most carriers have focused on faddish applications such as sending photos to a friend or to Grandma, leaving the business benefits largely restricted to executives who can't live without email every minute and perhaps insurance adjusters and real estate agents who for some reason need to transmit images immediately. Early services from Nextel Communications provided applications for contractors, builders, and related fields, but these seem to remain niche offerings. The usage costs are high as well. All this means that cellular data services will remain a niche product for the foreseeable future, outside the teen and new-parent markets.

And Bluetooth remains a dud. Compatibility remains its Achilles heel, so Bluetooth is becoming simply a means for predictable wireless transmissions, such as to open a Toyota Prius keylessly or connect a headset to a cell phone. The concept of interoperability among many devices for users on the go remains unfulfilled. It appears that Bluetooth will simply be a mechanism by which vendors will implement short-range-transmission products, not become a broader enabling platform as 802.11 (Wi-Fi) has become. Don't be surprised if "Bluetooth" fades away as a brand and is supplanted by products that just happen to use it. After all, no one cares what radio technology is used to make current wireless keyboards and mice connect to their PCs — unless something drastic happens soon, Bluetooth will simply become one of the many technologies that only the engineers worry about to provide such connections.

The sleeper technology, of course, is radiofrequency identification (RFID), a system of passive or active tags that transmit location and other status information to access points in a fixed environment (such as a shipyard) or anywhere via Global Positioning System satellites or the cellular networks. This technology is not new, and in fact already has some broad deployments for toll booths and even payment at Mobil Oil gas pumps, but in 2003 it became a staple of discussion among retailers, transporters, and several others. In 2004, the buzz should turn to real action.

Looking to 2004, I expect to see the many 802.11 deployments within the enterprise expand. Already, vendors are jumping in to provide commercial-grade wireless LAN management tools, which means that wireless networks are being used for true commercial-grade applications. Management will become a key issue, both to ensure that wireless networks can follow enterprise network policies and to implement the many security mechanisms now available. As is typical, small vendors will first meet this need, giving early adopters tools to try but providing an excuse for most enterprises to wait and see — leading to another cycle of early adoption followed by digestion.

In 2004, I expect the first-adopter industries to make wireless deployments near-standard, since their business cases have already been proved and their specialty vendors have solved most of the current security and management needs. IT's issues here will be on exploiting the systems further for better, more innovative applications. Voice over IP is one of those applications, and I'm sure that others will emerge instead of the usual "video on demand" examples that vendors always trot out for each new technology platform. I further expect the second wave of adopting industries to have pioneers that prove the case for their industries. For example, in 2004, retailer Wal-Mart Stores will bring the legitimacy to RFID within the retail community that logistics firms Federal Express and UPS brought to 802.11 within the transportation and warehousing industries a couple years ago. That in turn will provide the example and catalyst for successive industries to find ways to take advantage of RFID.

Got deployment experience and lessons to share? Let us know at news@it-wireless.com.

From our editors

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