When I first heard of wireless computer networking in 1998, I scratched my head and wondered, “Why would anyone want to do that?” At the time, radio-attached terminals were restricted to special niches such as warehousing, inventory control, or medical applications that required mobility. One vendor’s equipment wouldn’t work with another’s, and by today’s standards, it was terribly slow. I had no idea in those days that the industry would expand into what it has become. Since then, wireless Ethernet networking has evolved from a niche into a necessity. Affordable Internet access has become widely available to homes and businesses thanks to DSL and cable modems. Laptops have increasingly become a standard tool for doing business. Today’s users are more accustomed to having a computer at hand wherever they may be, perhaps literally in hand, with the recent development of PDAs and the steady proliferation of cell phones. Wi-Fi is a logical extension of that. It has brought users ever closer to the data they crave, as our economy and society become more and more information oriented. Wi-Fi has changed the way we do business. It will change the way we live.

In 1998, I could never have guessed at my role in this process. I feel lucky to be part of a large industry of talented people building a technology that is improving the lives of so many around the world. The Wi-Fi Alliance is privileged to make an important contribution to this process.We help our member manufacturers to cooperate as well as to compete effectively with each other. As a result of this “co-optition,” wireless computing products are continually becoming less expensive, more secure, and easier to install and use. They are rapidly approaching the ideal point in the user experience, the point at which networking becomes powerful and universal, but also unnoticeable and taken for granted. The future is even more exciting. Wi-Fi is finding its way into familiar consumer products such as PDAs and cell phones. The same process will occur in your home as wireless speed increases and its potential becomes realized in uses and products we can’t imagine today. Wi-Fi is an ideal medium for streaming audio and video out to mobile, handheld view screens, or from your set-top box to the various TVs in your house, for example. All without wires.