Forbes.com: Going Beyond the Call

Wireless
Going Beyond the Call
Erika Brown, 07.19.04, 3:10 PM ET

PALO ALTO, CALIF. - A debate over the future of Wi-Fi was one of the hottest panels of the two-day Always-On conference held at Stanford University the week of July 12. Top executives from Intel, Motorola and Qualcomm are dedicated to stretching the borders of Wi-Fi to handle broadband content. But first they have to agree how to do it.

Zapping bits from here to there over Internet and cellular networks has always been a complex, ethereal concept. But wireless technology is even more problematic. It is based on a literally ethereal network--radio airwaves--and each protocol has multiple subdivisions that operate at higher or lower frequencies and transfer data at different rates per second. With so many standards and protocols, betting on the wrong technology could be detrimental.

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Padmasree Warrior, chief technology officer of Motorola (nyse: MOT - news - people ), believes the next big thing will be some combination of WiMax, 3G and Wi-Fi. "No one technology can provide both coverage and incredible bandwidth. We need integration of these technologies. It should switch over seamlessly without the user having to think about it," says Warrior. "I should be able to move the content I've created or purchased across multiple devices. We need an open platform so that open source software could be built on the phones to enable that. [Sun Microsystems' (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people )] Java and Linux will be critical drivers of the future."


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