The technology topic du jour of the naughties, wireless technology is everywhere. For just about any application or service involving data transport, there’s a wireless solution. It’s possible that eventually, the only wires we’ll have in our home will be the power cables, connected to all the battery rechargers. We still have a long way to go yet, however. The fundamental problem with wireless is that it’s inconsistent and unreliable, especially for high-speed transport. It’s still a poor choice for streaming services, for instance, since it often tends to be “bursty”, and can also tend to have latency issues. Still, new technologies are on the way which, it’s hoped, will deliver on the promise of the completely wireless world, so that eventually the unfathomable tangle of wires at the back of your PC and home stereo systems can join your 8-track, Commodore 64 and paisley-patterned flares in that special spot in the garage reserved just for the things you realistically know you’ll never use again, but keep around ‘just in case’.

The Wireless WAN
Remember when 3G was at the peak of its hype cycle? There was much talk of video conferencing on your mobile phone, accessing the Internet and reading the Australian online while on the train in the morning and firing off emails while sitting on a beach somewhere. How did that pan out for everyone?

But new wireless broadband services are making the dream of Internet anywhere and everywhere a reality. Today, you can get ADSLlike speeds to your home or on the road without needing a copper or coaxial line.

With rough pricing parity to ADSL services, wireless broadband has taken off in Australia, albeit only for those living in high density areas (the low-hanging fruit of telecommunications). With the future introduction of WiMax, it’s expected that wireless will also be able to keep speeds competitive with those of ADSL (which is now available – in limited areas – at speeds of up to 12Mb/s).

WHAT WE HAVE NOW
It began with wireless hotspots – places where people with a Wi-Fi card and an account with a service provider could go and access the Internet at high speeds. Wi-Fi hotspots are still around – Telstra, for instance, has hotspots in Starbucks, McDonalds and Qantas lounges, where, for $5 for the first 15 minutes and 20c per minute after that, you can access the Internet through your Wi-Fi card.

Wireless broadband has largely moved on, however, to services that act like supercells – wireless networks that cover entire cities.

Right now in Australia, we have three major providers of such wireless broadband services: iBurst, Unwired and BigAir. Throw in wireless hotspots from the likes of Telstra and Optus, along with (allegedly) broadband mobile services, and you already have a panoply of wireless broadband options to choose from. Unfortunately, all these services use different technologies, so switching between service providers is something of a forklift change.

Unwired, iBurst and BigAir all offer their network services to resellers, who are often inclined to brand them portable, mobile and fixed wireless Internet respectively. This is an artefact of the technology each uses: Unwired you can take from place to place with you, but not use while in transit; iBurst you can use while moving; BigAir you can’t move at all – it works only on a fixed location.

Unwired, which is only available in Sydney at this time, uses technology from a company called Navini Networks to deliver services up to (at the moment) 1Mb/s downstream/ 256Kb/s upstream. The ‘rabbit’ – Unwired’s modem device – can be carried around with you. As long as you’re in range of an Unwired base station (which cover more than 90 percent of the population of Sydney), you have Internet access. The rabbit can’t handle sending or receiving data while on the move, however, so you must be stationary to get Internet access.

iBurst uses a rather different technology, from a company called ArrayComm. The technology, called IntelliCell, can also presently deliver up to 1Mb/s downstream/345Kb/s upstream to users. IntelliCell uses what ArrayComm calls adaptive antennas, allowing users to receive data while moving at up to 70km/h and more. The modem comes in both full-size external and PC Card format, meaning that you can use iBurst, for instance, in your notebook while on the train in the morning. iBurst currently has coverage in a number of Australia’s major cities, including Sydney, Wollongong, Newcastle, the Central Coast of NSW, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Canberra.

The third major provider, BigAir, uses a modified form of Wi-Fi to deliver wireless broadband services up to 10Mb/s symmetric (and even 100Mb/s in some cases). The customer gets a high-gain directional antenna, points it directly at the nearest BigAir base station and Internet access ensues. You can’t exactly carry a high-gain directional antenna around with you, however, and it’s not always easy to know the exact direction in which you’ll find a BigAir base station, so BigAir is a form of fixed wireless broadband. It’s only available in Sydney right now, and only in areas in which the user has a direct line-of-sight to a BigAir antenna.

These three aren’t the only wireless broadband options available, although they’re the most practical for those of us who don’t have a chequebook the size of Kerry Packer’s. If you do have unlimited money at your disposal, however, you can try looking into EDGE GPRS or 3G mobile broadband services, which can deliver high-speed Internet access to mobile phones.