Wi-Fi To Show Off Its Business Savvy

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — As a wireless standard, 802.11 (also known as Wi-Fi ) is an increasingly popular technology that provides high-speed wireless Internet access in airports, cafes, corporate offices, universities, factories and homes.

But while tapping into your local hotspot like those offered by Starbucks is all well and good, making sense (and money) of the alphabet soup that make up the enterprise versions of the mobile platform can be difficult. Cutting through the hype will be the focus of the 802.11 Planet Fall 2002 Conference & Expo (December 3-5). The Wi-Fi Alliance certified event brings together some of the biggest names in mobile computing to discuss cutting edge strategies in 802.11.

The three-day event is hosted by 802.11-Planet.com, 802.11-HotSpots.com, Jupiter Research, EarthWeb.com and internet.com, and is produced by Jupitermedia , the parent company of this site.

Keynoting the event is Dennis Eaton, Chairman of the Wi-Fi Alliance and Strategic Marketing Manager for Intersil; Sky Dayton, Founder and CEO of Boingo Wireless; and Kevin Duffy, General Manager of the Broadband Services Division at Proxim.

“From its humble beginnings in 1990, Wi-Fi has been successful beyond our wildest imagination with over 500 certified products to date” said Eaton. “We are in the early phases of much broader adoption of Wi-Fi technology as it starts to find its way into all sorts of products and applications that were never originally envisioned.”

Already companies like Intersil, Proxim, Yamacraw and Intel are looking forward to the next few years. That’s when analysts are predicting “intelligent” wireless roaming will be an established technology, the number of Wi-Fi hotspots should triple and a 90 percent of laptops will have 802.11wireless LAN capabilities.

“We’re just now seeing the possibilities of wireless networking, and over the next year we should see a whole new class of applications hitting the market that can take advantage of wireless computing,” said Executive Editor Kevin Reichard.