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CONSIDER THIS: PRETTY SOON, YOU won't be out of touch with the office ever again. It won't matter whether you're searching for enlightenment in the Himalayas, a suntan in Polynesia or a sale in Kabul. Internet access points are planned for all those places--as well as coffee shops, hotels and other heavily trafficked points in between. There will still be places to hide out, but not in the airplanes flying overhead. Internet access is coming to air travelers with 802.11-enabled (Wi-Fi) notebooks, too. Never having to miss a single e-mail or afternoon-long video-conference has its good and bad points, of course. Connectivity increases your opportunity to work anywhere, at any time, but it also interrupts you while on vacation. Think of it as a continuation of your pager and cellphone experiences--times 10.

It won't happen tomorrow or next week, and wirelessness won't replace the wired network, an indispensable backhaul for high-speed communications. But it may accomplish something that the FCC has failed miserably at--loosening the Baby Bells' stranglehold on the "last mile" of communications. Unregulated wireless bands offer would-be ISPs the opportunity to end-run entrenched telecom interests -- not just with Wi-Fi, but also with fixed wireless and other radio types.

Whatever the solution, Wi-Fi seems to have a role to play. Sean Maloney, executive vice president of Intel's Communications Group, calls it "the most revolutionary technology ... since the Internet browser," and he predicts it will "do for computing what cellphones did for voice communication." Sure, the term "revolutionary" gets overworked. But if Wi-Fi, or wirelessness overall, has anything like the impact of cellphones and the Internet, then that would be revolutionary, wouldn't it? We can't draw a clear picture of the wireless future yet, but some tantalizing glimpses are emerging.

# posted by Medical Information : 5:35 AM