Wireless notes (briefly)

If you have a wireless card (Lucent, Proxim, Cisco, etc) using the IEEE 802.11b standard in your laptop you can use public networks. The base stations cost $300 and up, and the cards are $100 and up. Starbucks is installing these in some of their stores, and when I was in Sweden they were in the hotels, conference center, and part of Stockholm airport. Some are free and open; others are fee-based, and some are free but limited to certain guests. Here in the S.F. area there are about 30 people offering this service between S.F. and San Jose. Speeds vary between equipment types, but it's usually about 1 mb/sec or more.

While this uses the same frequencies as point-to-point wireless networks (La Plaza's services around Taos, for example) they are meant to serve a limited area and most points in that area: inside a library, hall, park, office space. These unlicensed frequences are used by other devices including wireless phones, the as-yet-to-be-sold small wireless devices called Bluetooth, and there may be some interference problems.