Wireless Local Area Networks are growing in number - significantly - across North America.

Indicators of market interest, like press coverage, chat room buzz, and point-of-sale displays in office supply stores, all suggest a significant movement towards implementation of wireless LANs.

Canada isn’t being left out of this movement to wireless - despite some recent analyst remarks suggesting the contrary. One leading manufacturer, LinkSys Group Inc., of Irvine, California, shipped over 20,000 wireless basestations to Canada last quarter – and expects its quarterly numbers to grow significantly over the coming year. Another example: A pioneer in the business of wireless LANs, Apple Computer Inc., of Cupertino, California, continues to make wireless capability a major feature of its personal computers. The results of its efforts can be seen (Exhibit 9, below) in the number of deployed Apple-branded wireless basestations registering in SeaBoard Group’s ‘sniff’ of deployed infrastructure in three Canadian cities. Apple’s 12% share of the WiFi market far exceeds Apple’s 2% share of the overall PC market.

Wireless LAN basestations, and PCMCIA card client hardware appear to be tumbling off of shelves – but where are these networks? Are they in the enterprise? Or are they in the small/home office (SOHO) space? What are the obstacles that need to be overcome so that WLANs become even more ubiquitous? This report will present some recent SeaBoard research that addresses these questions. This report will also examine the implications of what we feel is an important recent (December 2002) announcement by Canada’s largest communications company, Bell Canada, concerning its entry into the WLAN provisioning business, and, importantly, the implications of the support Bell intends to give its enterprise customers as they roam beyond their campus environments.