Who needs the killer app?

Just as streaming media starts to look like it will save 3G, along comes what many see as an alternative to the much maligned telecommunications technology: Wireless Local Area Networks, or WLANs. Will the fact that these localised high-speed networks can support high speed, high bandwidth loads mean the European operators, encouraged by Japan's parallel but license-fee-free project, gambled all their money for nothing?

For the operators, the 3G hope is to reverse the trend in customer value, which has been falling steadily for years, by introducing new value-added services. The UK's new licence winner, Hutchison 3G, announced in July that it had won the exclusive mobile rights to FA Premier League Football, and will deliver video clips of goals to phones within seconds of them being scored. For the user, there's the promise of mobile internet access delivered at up to seven times the speed (384 kilobits/second) that a conventional phone connection pumps the internet into a PC. Another service, recently demonstrated by BT's Manx Telecom on the Isle of Man, is mobile video telephony..

Yet WLANs already deliver data at rates of at least 1 megabit per second, to a market of largely corporate users. With the emergence of the 11 Mbit/second standard 802.11b, recently more popularly known as 'Wi-fi', PC manufacturers like IBM, Dell and Compaq are following Apple in making the relevant cards or adaptors to access the WLANs, and prices for the chips are dropping. With bandwidth good enough for television-quality video, what's to stop a potential mobile service provider not laden with 3G debts setting up WLANs?

In the US, WLANs are being installed in places like airports, university campuses, and Starbucks, and the British Airports Authority has confirmed that they wish to trial a WLAN at Heathrow. WLANs such as that are known as hotspots, and they already number over 5,000 in the US, 80% of the world total for 2001, according to consultants BWCS, who predict over 114,000 hotspots worldwide in 2006. Wi-fi has a range of just 50 metres, but that means you'd only need 20 transmitters or nodes to successfully cover the whole financial district of London.

Within the communications industry, the argument of 3G vs WLANs is a familiar one. In Europe, where mobile phones have a higher penetration than in the US, the technology is more advanced and text messaging mania grips the population. Mobile telephone networks seem an entirely appropriate medium to deliver mobile internet despite the hype and subsequent disappointment of the slow-and-tiny so-called internet access delivered by WAP over conventional (2G) GSM. Americans, on the other hand, are very used to getting data delivered to PC screens, and coupled with confusion over mobile network standards and bandwidth availability, they are slow to commit to 3G. High-flying executives with a nomadic lifestyle may indeed need high-bandwidth internet on the move, but for everyone else, there's no place like home. The European argument tends to be that 'mobile' and 'wireless' are two different things; WLANs are by definition local whereas mobile networks are ubiquitous; there are severe regulatory uncertainties in deploying public-access WLANs; and there are very difficult billing and roaming issues. Thus the line of European companies developing wireless technologies and infrastructure is that 3G and WLAN are complimentary. For example, Dr Valentin Chapero, VP Mobile Networks Division at Siemens, recently told me, 'the view that wireless LANs will make 3G obsolete is just not correct. You will have a co-existence of these solutions'.

Besides, the issue of connecting a laptop to the ether is addressed by cable-replacement technology Bluetooth, which may only have a range of 10 metres, but that's all the distance you need between your laptop and a mobile modem like a phone -- except that Wi-fi and Bluetooth might share the same spectrum and interfere.

Americans are addressing some of the problems of WLANs. A consortium called WECA (Wireless Ethernet Compatibilty Alliance) wants network standards for Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs). They have the billing problem (how is revenue split between the WLAN provider, the backbone provider connecting the WLAN and other parties such as content providers and ISPs?) on the agenda. WECA have a working party called WISPr that's tackling the issues of roaming between WLAN access points that may be owned by different providers.

In the long run, when 3G is widespread and WLAN hotspots are sprouting up wherever the money is, there will be much talk of fourth-generation or 4G mobile technology, delivering wireless broadband access. There's already a leading contender on which to base 4G -- a standard called HiperLAN2. It will deliver a bandwidth of 20-54 Mb/second in the 5 GHz band, is interoperable with 3G as well as Ethernet, the most widespread Local Area Network technology, and other delivery standards. Furthermore, it has fast-expanding industry support, and is backed in WLAN-lagging Europe. And if there's a battle with 802.11a, which by offering 5 times the bandwidth of 802.11b pitches data delivery equal to HiperLAN2, there's relief at the infrastructure level -- the two standards can share the same components. Ericsson demonstrated a prototype HiperLAN2 network last December.

Scandinavia has become the leading area for mobile technology, and it's not surprising that there Swedish giant Ericsson and Norwegian operator Telenor Mobil have already embarked on an evaluation project called H2U to integrate 3G and WLAN services, with a focus on HiperLAN2. The aim is that UMTS subscribers may benefit from a significant bandwidth expansion in certain hotspots. According to Jo Heldaas, Head of Information at Telenor Mobil, 'the moving between WLAN and UMTS when moving geographically between coverage areas of WLAN and UMTS is to be made as user friendly and seamless as possible'. Imagine the boost to your average revenue per user (ARPU) when you could deliver feature films or corporate databases.

As to whether the internet as we know it would still be there to deliver by the time H2U's results kick in, that's another question entirely. Herbert WrightInterested in this topic? Check out the Streaming Media Europe 2001 Wireless conference track!