Some of us have long envisioned WiFi being everywhere and the rollout is well underway. Hotel, coffee shop, and airport WiFi is now taken for granted in most parts of the world, but the reach of WiFi is now extending beyond those venues. On the SAS flight home from Copenhagen (connection from Oslo) this past weekend, it was very nice to have WiFi aboard the Airbus A330. The Connexion by Boeing service is provided by Airbus’s competitor. At $26.96 (including all fees and taxes) it was a bit pricey but for an eight hour+ flight it was nice to be able to send and receive email, update the web site, and IM with friends and family from 40,000 feet!
The next big thing with WiFi is to have it on our mobile phones. The Sprint PPC-6700 was the first Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphone in the U.S. but now Verizon has its own version of the same phone, called the XV6700. Both models have bluetooth and EV-DO, the wireless mode that cellular operators say is broadband. It is actually pretty fast but even faster is WiFi and both of these new phones have it. In Japan there is more choice of WiFi phones and more WiFi access points too. As more major American municipalities blanket their cities with free or low-cost WiFi our "long distance" experience will be different. Instead of paying $1.49 per minute to call Europe with Verizon, you will be able to call for a nickel or so per minute with Voice Over the Internet using WiFi. I expect to see many more phones be introduced that sport the WiFi capability as the price and power requirements continue to drop.
Eventually, anything electronic will have a WiFi chip in it and be connected to the Internet. An early adopter of the idea is Toshiba with their TDP-SW20U WiFi-equipped business projector. The benefit is that you can place the projector and laptop anywhere in the room without having to worry about cables. This would have come in handy for me over the years. I remember flying to Seoul, Korea for a speech and being given a small table on the floor in front of the stage with a four foot cable to the PC. I had to give the speech from the floor standing in front of the screen. The other nice thing is that multiple users, with multiple laptops, can share a WiFi projector without having to switch cables and playing musical chairs in the boardroom.
We can expect many more WiFi-enabled devices to come. You can follow WiFi developments at JiWire.com.