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Feeling a little Blue in the Tooth

Stephanie Neil AnchorDesk

Published: 19 Jun 2000 10:48 BST

The latest trend to overwhelm our greedy business senses is wireless. To be sure, the technology is hot. Between wirelessly enabling a Web site, wireless broadband Internet access, wireless LANs and wireless PANs (personal area networks), companies will soon be able to escape that constricting feeling of being physically tied to the corporate network.

Wireless is sure to help the poor souls who sit in the same cubicle for 11 hours a day and bring brown-bag lunches because they can't afford to leave their desks for one minute, lest they miss an important call or email.

Even workers who travel frequently or telecommute have parameters. The phrase "mobile worker" is an oxymoron: There is no "mobility" when "working" out of the office. You still have to sit down, plug in, dial up and remain in that spot for as long as you need to access e-mail or surf the Net.

The bottom line is that wireless technology is going to help a lot of people within the enterprise. If the business folks don't ruin it first.

Like all the dot-coms jumping into e-Everything waters, the wireless LAN market is undergoing its own growth spurt. To compound matters, there are three wireless standards floating around the enterprise-IEEE 802.11b, for wireless LANs that connect to Ethernet; HomeRF, which is targeted at home and small business use; and Bluetooth, a short-range frequency hopping technique that allows PCs and consumer devices, like cell phones, pagers and digital cameras, to communicate.

Only one problem: All three standards use the same 2.4Ghz frequency band -- an uEnlicensed spectrum -- which means lots and lots of vendors will be vying for the band coming from all different directions. If you're using devices based on any of these standards while working from home, the potential conflict is even greater, because your microwave oven, your cordless phone and any wireless stereo speakers you have hanging around are using the same 2.4Ghz band.

If the manufacturers and the standard-setting committees are not careful, we will be on a radio-wave collision course where nothing gets communicated.

Some groups have taken note of this potential discord. The IEEE standards body and Bluetooth consortium are discussing how to cooperate in the same band.

I hope they can work it out, because I would really love to someday be filing my stories while catching a few rays on the lawn outside my building, or on my own patio. Now that would be too much of a good thing that's not bad!

How will wireless change your work habits?

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