Editor's Corner

During this week's news crawl on what's happening with wireless technologies in general, I came across some pretty interesting news: While there still may be some debate over how much VoIP efforts can save an enterprise, new research makes it pretty clear that it's going to take longer and require more work than most tech leaders estimate. A new study by Nemertes Research, based on interviews and discussions with nearly 200 IT leaders between 2004 and 2005 on VoIP deployments, indicates that deployment will take twice as long as most expect. On top of that, a great deal more upfront planning is required. In 2004 the average time devoted to upfront planning, installation, troubleshooting and training was 52 minutes per user, states the report. That figure jumped to 133 minutes last year. Why? According to Nemertes, VoIP is just getting more complex. Check out the Computerworld article to learn more.

Airports going wireless isn't earth shattering news at this point, but learning how the project went and the lessons learned is pretty valuable and interesting. In Atlanta, airport tech leaders have rolled out two wireless nets that cover all the concourses and gates. The system is an add-on to the airport-wide public access local area network that was switched on last fall. As the airport's CIO explains, the new networks help create a foundation that supports data, voice and video throughout the entire airport.

So given what Atlanta and many other municipal entities are doing these days, it's no surprise that metro WiFi will cover more than 120,000 miles in just four years. That's an extraordinary jump from the current 1,500 miles now blanketed with wireless networks. The Tekrati research report is a great trends piece on how fast and furious municipal wireless is happening around the country. - Judy