The Spot that's HOT

New devices connecting to the network have historically signaled a profound market disruption.

Every time you turn around there's another cool hand-held device coming to market that supports lots more than phone calls and SMS messaging (read video). Innovation in this segment is happening faster than the network. And that's a problem for consumers and operators. 

These devices typically have Wi-Fi built in and users assume that wherever they use them there will be a reliable connection.  Ooops.  Bad assumption.

Meanwhile with mobility (which assumes the use of some sort of wireless technology) there is no longer any demarcation between the home, the office and anywhere else.  Consequently triple play services (digital voice, video and data bundled by operators) will begin creeping into areas outside the home.

The first spot will be the hot spot.  We're talking about public areas, hotels, airports, and areas outside the home where users expect to be able to connect (side note: that's pretty much everywhere nowadays). 

PCCW, who operates some 3,000 hot spots throughout Hong Kong, told us that one of the most used devices within their hot spots was the Sony PSP.  PCCW wanted to upgrade all their hot spots so they could support users that were gaming there or making VoIP calls.  They are even plan to pipe in their IPTV service in these hot spots. 

But they ran into problems. Needing to upgrade all their hot spots, they only had two options - low-end consumer-grade Wi-Fi that couldn't support streaming video or a high density of VoIP calls and high-end enterprise systems that were pricey and overkill for the task.  And neither supported streaming multimedia. So they went with Smart Wi-Fi.

OK.  This sounds like a commercial.  But it's not. Over the next couple years network infrastructure will need to be upgraded to deal with mobility, multimedia content and signal reliability issues driven by the new types of devices coming to market.  Given its momentum and pervasiveness, Wi-Fi technology is the obvious choice at the edge.  But it doesn't work too well for all this (even WITH 802.11n). 

You put the dots together.