Challenges for Wi-Fi, business models and spectrum issues

Amongst the various versions ofWLAN, Wi-Fi is widely used and raises two interesting issues from an economic, strategic and regulatory perspective. One deals with the perspectives of the two business models appeared so far: a cooperative, non-commercial one, for local use and a commercial one involving WirelessISPS and broadband access aggregators for roaming. Both show robust growth today but present weaknesses. The other issue deals with spectrum allocation as Wi-Fi uses an unlicensed frequency band. Its development challenges traditional spectrum management, putting forward “open spectrum” management models. But while in theUS Wi-Fi has been able to develop without any significant regulation hurdles, the situation is more complicated in Europe and especially in France where regulation authorities have more recently addressed the issue.