Wireless's New Hot Spot

from the push-from-where? dept

A very interesting article from Forbes by Andrew Seybold talking about how the biggest push for 802.11a WiFi service may come from the entertainment industry. He discusses how Intel is building in both 802.11a and 802.11b support into their chips, which they expect to start appearing in consumer electronics devices in the relatively near future. Companies like SonicBlue and TiVo can then use these chips to make sure that any device they sell is automatically connected to the internet (assuming you have a wireless access point nearby), making it much more useful. I think he may be confusing the consumer electronics industry with the entertainment industry, but the end result could be very interesting. If everything comes with high speed wireless included - especially if it's hidden away and doesn't require any special configuration - you suddenly get an awful lot of home automation automatically built into every consumer electronics device you buy. All that without having to worry about how to connect your VCR to your washing machine or whatnot.