June 30th, 2000

[11:00 AM] AirPort Not Just In Airports: Wireless Access In Hotels, Conference Centers, And Other Locations Nation Wide by Kyle D'Addario A couple of weeks ago, we ran a story about our own Dave Hamilton having AirPort access while sitting in the Austin, TX airport. We have received a barrage of e-mails regarding that story, some offering potential explanations, others confirming the airport based AirPort access. It seems that the Austin airport is one of dozens across the country to have been outfitted by Wayport, a wireless networking company. Wayport is providing wireless solutions for hotels, conference centers, and of course, airports throughout the country. There is currently Wayport access at a number of Best Western, Wyndham, and Four Seasons hotels, along with dozens of others. Rather than wire each room for access, hotels and conference centers seem to by using the IEEE 802.11 wireless standard. That is the same standard that Apple's AirPort system runs on, as well as a host of other wireless solutions, including implementations by Farallon and Lucent. Setting up wireless access minimizes the amount of labor related expenses for hotels, who would not need to run ethernet wires to every room, as well as providing a "neato" marketing position. To help combat downtime inherent in air travel, Nokia has also entered the market of wireless support in airports with the introduction of their Laptop Lane. According to Nokia, "To wirelessly access the network, it takes Laptop Lane about five minutes to install software drivers on the customer's laptop and the customer is then equipped with a Nokia PC LAN card." You can find a full list Wayport supported locations at the Wayport web site. Wayport - Nokia