SXSW: Wireless Heresy!

Wireless is being touted as the solution for everything from linking your laptop and phone to flushing your toilet from work. Everybody, particularly those with no engineering background, have decreed that unlicensed wireless is the communications model of the future and all other modes will perish like the dinosaurs.

Throughout SXSW that's the party line you heard—unless you attended this panel. The stark reality is simple: 8Mbps for a high-def video stream, a couple streams per home, multiplied over a couple dozen homes in a neighborhood, and now you are talking about massive bandwidth needs. It's clear that wireless won't have the capacity for our typical household needs. And that's not even considering latency issues.

I believe that while wireless will dominate local and personal networks, metropolitan networks will be a mix. Heresy! That's in opposition to nearly everything we heard this weekend.

I believe that in dense, affluent communities, the network will be built with optical fiber. Wireless will serve in sparse communities, where it makes sense to deploy antennas rather than trench fiber, possibly delivering reduced services. I also think that less affluent communities may end up being served by wireless. That's because the communication utilities won't see the revenue to justify the infrastructure investment.

I'm not happy with this conclusion. It says that the communication providers of tomorrow will be the incumbent utilities of today. Right now, our choice is either the phone company or cable company. This view says that's not likely to change. Wireless held out the hope of a rich, competitive environment. Now, I'm not so sure that will happen.