Airplanes zip in and out, shuttling people to and from far-off destinations. The Region of Waterloo International Airport is a symbol of speed. But until this year, waiting for a download on the Internet was like moving on a snail's back for companies such as Kitchener Aero, which operates from one of the hangars at the airport. "We were on a dial-up connection, and the more people who were on the Internet, the slower the speed," explains Kevin Birch, a vice-president at Kitchener Aero. "So we were at a standstill." The avionics company sells, services and repairs electronics components for aircraft. It sends designs of instrument panels to customers by e-mail, gets approvals back, does online quoting and ordering of electronic components and deals with customers all over the world. It desperately needed high speed Internet. But the telephone system around the airport is an analog system. To get high-speed Internet, the switching station had to be changed to digital, Birch says. That just wasn't happening fast enough for the businesses there, and other high-speed options were simply too expensive. Now, all of that has changed. The Internet finally has wings at the airport, thanks to a Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) service set up by Atria Networks Inc. Inc. of Kitchener. "We have been extremely happy with the service," Birch says. There is now an antenna outside of the hangar where Kitchener Aero operates, which sends a wireless signal to a radio access point about 700 metres away. From there, the signal is wirelessly sent down Atria's fibre-optic cable system, which delivers the high-speed Internet service. As a bonus, travellers waiting in the airport lobby can also pull out their notebook computers and get wireless access to the Internet that wasn't there before. But none of this would have been possible if the rules had not been changed to make Wi-Fi possible, explains Steve McCartney, president of Atria. There are, of course, cellular telephone services. But telecommunications giants bid to get channels of the radio spectrum to provide those services. Those bids can reach billions of dollars. "It is big, big bucks, and you haven't built anything yet. All you have is the right to use that space," McCartney says. "That made it a big player market. It precluded the smaller guys." That began to change in 1985 when the Federal Communications Commission in the United States decided to allow portable and hand-held computers and phones to use the unlicensed "garbage bands" in the radio spectrum that were previously used by such devices as microwave ovens. The commission decided unlicensed channels could be used by mobile communications entrepreneurs, as long as the signal is spread out over a wide range of frequencies to minimize interference problems. When the unlicensed bands became available, that encouraged the development of an industry-wide standard, the 802.11 standard, so that a wide variety of vendors could make and sell equipment to use this unlicensed spectrum. That's how Wi-Fi came to be. Today, there are numerous devices equipped to get high speed Internet connections from Wi-Fi hot spots springing up all over the place. The BlackBerry device, for example, supports all the various cellular services but RIM has announced it will soon launch a BlackBerry that is also Wi-Fi enabled. These hot spots are located in many restaurants and cafes. But Atria has been setting them up in sections of the region, such as around the University of Waterloo, the Region of Waterloo International Airport and the Waterloo Inn. Atria is owned by the three public utility companies in Waterloo Region. It was created when legislation was changed to allow hydro utilities to spin off profit-making ventures. The utilities have one enormous resource: hydro corridors. With a network of fibre-optic cable along the corridors, Atria could provide high-speed Internet service to schools and businesses throughout the region. "We get to universities, schools, hospitals, very large corporations and some medium-sized companies," McCartney explains. "But, what about everyone else?" he says. Atria began thinking about how to bring other areas of the region into the high-speed communication era. Setting up the Wi-Fi hot spots was the logical way to do that. It is an affordable way to provide connectivity to small business, plazas, and areas where direct high-speed connection is not viable. "So with the wireless fidelity standard, and the fact of no licence fees, that allowed a whole bunch of players to come in who couldn't put in a huge capital investment just to be allowed the right to do wireless," McCartney says. Since it uses the unlicensed spectrum, it allows for cheaper access to the Internet. McCartney envisions how most devices in the future might flip between these various types of wireless services. "A device can look for Wi-Fi and when it can't find Wi-Fi, it will go to the cellular network or other alternative," McCartney says. Of course, there are issues to be worked out, he adds. The payment and billing system needs to come together in a way that is more completely seamless for the consumer, he says. It's discouraging for people to be charged for using Wi-Fi at a cafe, and then charged again for using it at a hotel, he explains. Cellphone companies currently have a system of "settling" bills so that whoever carries the signal automatically gets paid. That needs to expand to Wi-Fi as well, McCartney adds. "What we really need is co-operative billing." McCartney hopes he can get municipalities to come on on board and use Wi-Fi for such emergency services as police, fire and ambulance. Emergency service personnel already use radio, but Wi-Fi would give them network speed and bandwidth to do other things, such as see video feeds while on the road. As more and more people in the urban areas use the Wi-Fi service, making it profitable, McCartney hopes that could help to pay for the roll-out of Wi-Fi hot spots in rural areas. Right now, it is much too expensive to provide high-speed service to rural areas and small towns. "So, if you think about a small town, the fibre-optic goes through the town, but it may cost $5,000 or $10,000 for every building you connect to that fibre-optic," McCartney says. "But if, instead, you can put up a wireless facility that might only cost $200 for everybody that comes on, suddenly you can get high-speed connection at a fraction of the cost." |
