Roaming WLAN / GPRS

Obnoxio The Clown writes "The Register has an article on breaking technology which will (theoretically) allow roaming between WLAN and GPRS (and presumably 3G when it gets here)." At long last, I'll be able to delete my spam from everywhere!

Comments

Re:3G?

[Max Romantschuk]

802.11 as next-generation cell? Unlikely. The contention arbitration mechanisms aren't there, and the protocol was never designed to be used over a distance of greater than about 500 metres.

Your comment is no doubt very convincing. On the other hand, IDE was never designed to run at 133 MHz. I realize the analogy is poor, but we've managed to scale technology beyond the wldest dreams of the original designers before... providing the demand existed, that is.

Market? What market?

[Rick the Red]

I worked on a similar project at a major cell phone company. It started over a year and a half ago, and quickly fizzled. Why? There's little market. We had a solution but no customers. Wow, you can be connected to your corporate LAN via 802.11 in the building, and seamlessly transition to GPRS when you leave the building, without losing your connection! Sounds great, but how many people do you know who access their corporate network via their cell phone, or who actively work on their laptop while they're walking out of the building? The only promising application for this technology was PDAs, and people don't run enterprise applications or work corporate spreadsheets on their PDAs. The "seamless handoff" tech is cool, but there's just no market.