A weekly series by UPI examining emerging wireless technologies and markets.
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CHICAGO, May 14 (UPI) -- How about this for a monthly wireless telephone bill: nothing.
Futurists and technologists think wireless fidelity technology -- the emerging standard for wireless e-mail and Internet access -- someday might supplant cellular phones as the primary form of mobile, voice communications.
"It's going to happen -- it's just a question of time and speed with which it enters into the market," Fairborz Ghadar, director of the Center for Global Business Studies at Penn State University's business school, told United Press International.
Last year, the administration at Dartmouth University started providing students there with WiFi phones -- cellular phones that worked over the WiFi network at the school. Since then, they have been making free calls over the Internet to anywhere in the world, as long as they are on campus.
"You can imagine a business wanting to do the same thing on a corporate campus," Phil Marchesiello, a telecommunications lawyer in Washington, D.C., with Akin Gump, told UPI.
This already is happening at the San Antonio Community Hospital in Upland, Calif., which this spring went live with a WiFi network, enabling doctors and other personnel to make calls, in and around the medical establishment, without running up costly monthly cellular bills.
For consumers, it may take a bit longer for the free phone call fantasy to become a reality, though.
"There is a lot of fragmentation in the mix, when it comes to consumer access to WiFi," said Todd Myers, chief executive officer of Airpath Wireless Inc. in Waltham, Mass. "A Hyatt Hotel may charge for WiFi, but a coffee shop in your neighborhood that brings someone in and is willing to take no revenue share, will offer it for free," he told UPI.
That likely will make roaming with a WiFi phone quite a frustrating task for the average consumer, experts said. There will be too many dead spots -- spots without WiFi access -- to make it convenient for consumers to communicate in this way, at least in the short term.
"It will be like trying to use a cell phone in a building in New York City when you're in the elevator above the 38th floor," said Bill O'Donnell, founder of W. O'Donnell Consulting, a WiFi consultancy in New York. "You will want to throw the phone against the wall -- what with all the interruptions."
As leading businesses and colleges roll out free wireless telephone services to employees and students during the next five years, they will create demand for consumer WiFi market, said Anish Srivastava, director of wireless communications at France Telecom R&D.
"But some key issues need to be addressed before it can compete." Srivastava told UPI.
Roaming agreements need to be worked out between commercial WiFi providers -- similar to the roaming agreements seen in the wireless industry for years now.
"There are only 30,000 WiFi hotspots in the United States today," Srivastava said. "That's only a fraction of the coverage that is offered by wireless phones."
The hitch for consumers is that they will likely be charged for these new WiFi voice roaming services.
Still, the overall costs will be dramatically lower than for conventional wireless phone services.
"You still need the infrastructure to be put in place. It's not going to completely free," Ghadar said. "But it will force competitive price erosion from the wireless companies, as people use the phones to bypass Verizon and SBC. That could be an erosion of as much as 30 percent of the price."
Some experts predict competitive pressures will force the wireless industry to collaborate with the WiFi upstarts.
"Going forward, we will probably see more interaction between the two technologies, rather than one replacing the other," Jim Grams, chief technology officer at a division of AT&T Wireless, told UPI. "Over the next decade, they will be exploited in conjunction with each other."
A number of wireless telephone handset providers are moving forward with plans for dual WiFi-wireless phones, Srivastava said.
In addition to roaming, other technical problems still need to be worked out. The quality of WiFi voice communications needs to be improved -- it remains not very clear because the calls are routed over the Internet. Moreover, there is a latency in the calls that sometimes, depending upon the speed of the wireless link, delays the conversation for a number of seconds.
Still, scientists and engineers expect to work out these technical issues soon.
"It's going to enhance the cellular more than anything," Myers added.
Some enterprising individuals also are going to have to negotiate "roof rights" -- rights of way in neighborhoods where wireless antennas will be placed on home and garage roofs to bring the WiFi revolution to all suburban and rural areas, experts said.
Washington is getting involved, too -- and at an early stage for such a cutting-edge technology.
The Federal Communications Commission -- federal government agency charged with regulating the communications industry -- is mulling future rules for WiFi phones.
"The FCC has just opened a proceeding, and created a wireless broadband advisory task force," Marchesiello said. "They are requesting comment from the public. They want to know how to allocate spectrum. They want to know what needs to be done with regulations to encourage additional investment. It will be interesting to see what comments are filed."
Ghadar said that over the coming years, WiFi phones would prove to be a "tectonic shift" in the communications market.
"The emergence of these technologies is one of the things that will keep CEOs awake at night," Ghadar said.
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Gene Koprowski covers telecommunications for UPI Science News. E-mail [email protected]
