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HOUSTON BUSINESS REVIEW
COST-EFFECTIVE IT: 100 MEGABIT WIRELESS
By Richard Sonnier
Houston Business Show Commentator Richard Sonnier, of the Information Technology Services firm Nimble Services, provides weekly information on our show about information technology issues. Mr. Sonnier can be reached at 281.445.4800 x 250 or via email.
This week I will discuss new networking technology being developed at Rice University.
Market Opportunity
Professor Edward Knightly is working on a new vision for a national network. It called the 100x100 project and is funded by the National Science Foundation. The goal is to provide every home in the United States (approximately 100 million) with a 100 megabit per second connection to the Internet. This is called universal broadband access, and the Brookings Institute concluded in 2001 that it would be worth $500 billion annually to the US economy. See 100x100network.org for details.
Rice TAPs
There are several proposals for getting to the 100x100 network. Many involve running fiber optical cables to every home. However, Professor Knightly points at that fiber to every US home would cost an estimated $100 billion. He believes we can leapfrog wires and cables with 100+ megabit per second wireless. His research team at Rice has developed Transit Access Points (TAPs). The general idea is to setup multiple fixed wireless access points that can link together to bring high speed Internet to a large area at a fraction of the cost of wired connections. Rice is planning a prototype network to be deployed on the Rice campus and nearby neighborhoods. The first prototype TAPs are being deployed and tested today. These devices deliver 440 megabits per second or 400 times your DSL Internet connection.
This is research-level technology and there are still many technical issues to be worked out. However, given the success of other wireless technologies like the cell phones and wireless LANs, I think TAPs has a very good chance. The economics look very good.
Next week I will discuss more new IT being developed by Houston ventures. 
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Richard Sonnier Archive
- Hot Information Technology Summer 2005 (August 2005, Issue No. 4, Thursday Edition)
- Testing and Reaping Your Reward (August 2005, Issue No. 3, Thursday Edition)
- Training the New Business Process (August 2005, Issue No. 2, Thursday Edition)
- Integration with the Business Process (July 2005, Issue No. 1, Thursday Edition)
- Putting It All Together (June 2005, Issue No. 3, Thursday Edition)
- Getting the Right Hardware and Software (June 2005, Issue No. 2, Thursday Edition)
- Designing the System (May 2005, Issue No. 3, Thursday Edition)
- Identifying Opportunities (May 2005, Issue No. 2, Thursday Edition)
- Money Saving Technology (May 2005, Issue No. 1, Thursday Edition)
- Wireless Inventory (April 2005, Issue No. 2, Thursday Edition)
- Cell Phone Applications (March 2005, Issue No. 5, Thursday Edition)
- Cell Phone 2005 (March 2005, Issue No. 4, Thursday Edition)
- Open Source Compiere (March 2005, Issue No. 3, Thursday Edition)
- The Compiere Difference (March 2005, Issue No. 1, Thursday Edition)
- Compiere (February 2005, Issue No. 4, Monday Edition)
- Web Forms (February 2005, Issue No. 3, Monday Edition)
- Dreamweaver Product Review (February 2005, Issue No. 1, Monday Edition)
- Web Development (January 2005, Issue No. 4, Monday Edition)
- Linux And Open Source 2005 (January 2005, Issue No. 3, Monday Edition)
- Planning The New Year (January 2005, Issue No. 1, Monday Edition)
- Service-Oriented IT (December 2004, Issue No. 4, Monday Edition)
- Photo No-No! (December 2004, Issue No. 2, Monday Edition)
- 100 Megabit Wireless (December 2004, Issue No. 1, Thursday Edition)
- Wireless Technologies (November 2004, Issue No. 2, Monday Edition)
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