This years Wireless LAN Event demonstrated just what a difference a day makes!

At Last year we had every wannaby in technology at the event pitching ideas for Hotspots. Over the last two days we have had people talking about the services available from Wireless Broadband. Andrew Greenhaigh from Intel kicked off the conference with a Keynot that had Guy Kewney concerned about there plans to control the WISP market by launching RoamPoint.

The new CEO of BTOpenzone, Chris Clark sees the appointment of a Sales and Marketing Guy who is looking to cut deals and build revenues rather than the land grab that was BTOpenzone since launch. The Press Briefing was interesting in that BT are looking more at Mobile Office for Enterprise customers, could the old dog have learnt a new trick?

The First Day wrapped up with an interesting demo of VoWLAN with Raju Gulabani Founder of TeleSym showing just how advanced the software is advancing in waking up a former work mate on the West Coast of the US using a SIP client on his laptop and also dialing his landline number. Then the Man from Motorola whoes team is building BTOpenzone also showed converged handsets that have GSM and WiFi for Corporate users talking about Seamless Wireless. Finally before The Cloud sponsored Drinks Party we had a panel debate with Niklas Zennström of Skype the star talking about the Enterprise benefits of VoWLAN and how it can now be done on a PocketPC.

Wednesday saw the Wireless Innovations Seminar which had excellent presentations from IPWireless follow Flarion present on what they see the future as in terms of Mobile Data. Both these presenter were realistic in that they are half way along a lvery long road and even with $160M war chests they may not make it! These guys know what data is all about, something that the Network Operators don't seam to understand BUT do they know the difference between Wireless and Mobile!

My impression is that WiFi has come out of the hype curve and the intelligent guys are talking about the services it enables rather than the market potential of HotSpots! Lets see what the next 12 months brings to the Wireless LAN community, connectivty on the Train (could be the way to make EuroTunnel profitable)?


Finally LastMile Communications is looking to launch a low power transceiver technology that is fitted inside lap posts and street furniture that allows roadside telemetrics which would deliver location based infomation into the car dependent on speed etc. The network will also be used by the emergency services to improve traffic flow and manage accidents.