Toshiba Spreads the Wi-Fi Wealth

The public-access Wi-Fi hot-spot market just got a little hotter. Toshiba Computer Systems Group (TCSG) formally launched a project to deploy 10,000 hot spots in the United States by the end of the year, and Intel signed an agreement with the government of Singapore to support Wi-Fi roaming throughout Asia.

Oscar Koendersm, vice president of TCSG, a division of Toshiba in Tokyo, said in a statement yesterday that the company intends to become the "dominant supplier of 802.11b hot spot infrastructure and expects a considerable portion of the established public Wi-Fi market to be driven by hot spot operators and location owners capitalizing on the hot spot trend." Toshiba Canada last month announced a similar public access Wi-Fi service for Canada.

Hot Spot in a Box

Toshiba plans to sell what it calls a "hot spot in a box"--including a Wi-Fi access card, a controller, and associated electronics--to resellers, which will in turn sell it (at a modest markup) to partners such as convenience stores.

Toshiba has an agreement with WorkingWild, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based public-access Wi-Fi company that plans to install Wi-Fi service in 15,000 Circle K convenience stores owned by Houston-based ConocoPhillips.

Alan Reiter, an analyst at Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing, in Chevy Chase, Maryland, said that Toshiba's low price of entry for hot-spot hardware reflects the increasing commoditization of the Wi-Fi market; client PC cards are now priced at $50 or less.

Chipping In

Adding to the growth of Wi-Fi, Intel plans to formally introduce its Centrino mobile chip family next Wednesday. Centrino chips have Wi-Fi built-in. Gartner Group estimates that by 2005 more than 80 percent of professional notebook PCs will have Wi-Fi built-in, with a total worldwide base of 88.3 million Wi-Fi-equipped computers.

Reiter said that Intel's desire to develop as wide a market as possible for Centrino-powered computers motivated it to sign a deal with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) to boost Wi-Fi roaming in Asia.

The IDA-Intel Wireless Hotspots and Network Interworking Initiative will carry out an internetworking study to explore ways to connect fixed-line and wireless networks and conduct interoperability tests on networking equipment.

"As Wi-Fi-deployed data services become increasingly important to the mobile industry, it is critical that end users be able to easily move between different Wi-Fi networks," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel's chief technology officer. Total investment in the IDA-Intel project is pegged at $2.25 million, mostly for manpower and equipment costs.

Intel has also backed Wi-Fi networks in the United States. Last December, it, along with AT&T and IBM, formed Cometa Networks, which plans to roll out public-access Wi-Fi service in the top 50 U.S. markets.

Reiter said that the "jury is still out" on Cometa, and Toshiba could well have the lead in a public-access Wi-Fi market that still lacks a dominant player.

Sumner Lemon of the IDG News Service contributed to this report.