Where WiFi succeeds
One of the great disappointments of the last few years has been the failure of municipal WiFi efforts like those in San Francisco and Philadelphia.
The failures lead some to think the technology does not work, and others to believe there is no practical alternative to the current Internet access duopoly.
In fact it seems the problem is one of business models and business cases, not technology. When the business case is sound, the results are often astounding.
While cities have been retreating from the WiFi promise, hospitals and med school campuses have been embracing it, with impressive results.
What I saw this February at HIMSS is no mirage. Wireless technology is transforming health care. It enables the true integration of voice and data, staff accessing both anywhere, and staff being accessible in turn.
The growing number of positive case studies hold some lessons, however:
- The roll-out must be carefully planned.
- It's as much an Internet telephony solution as it is wireless
- The key benefit is location independence, numbers which relate to people rather than locations.
- Integration with the rest of the IT infrastructure brings other benefits. Voice becomes data, and data can live anywhere, on anyone.
Over the next few years I expect these medical solutions to be slowly expanded, first into adjacent medical buildings, then between institutions.
WiFi was never designed as a municipal data solution. The power is too low, the waves are too short, you need too many APs to effectively cover a city.
But it can work on any campus -- medical, educational, corporate. WiFi vendors are going to survive, even thrive. And their customers will gain freedom from the duopoly, running voice and data on their own infrastructure.