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25 Years Ago, a Meeting Spawned Wi-Fi
alphadogg writes: It was retail remodeling that spurred NCR, a venerable cash-register company, to find out how it could use newly opened frequencies to link registers and mainframes without wires. Its customers wanted to stop drilling new holes in their marble floors for cabling every time they changed a store layout. In 1985, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to leave large blocks of spectrum unlicensed and let vendors build any kind of network they wanted as long as they didn't keep anyone else from using the frequencies. NCR jumped at the chance to develop a wireless LAN, something that didn't exist at the time, according to Vic Hayes, a former engineer at the company who's been called the Father of Wi-Fi.
Yes, CISRO has the patent . . . and charges outrageous fees to companies that use the technology. In turn, foreign software companies charge even more outrageous fees for software sold in Australia . . . because it needs to be "translated" from "English" into "Australian".
Who wins? Certainly not you normal Aussies . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!