The Wireless City

Evolution Of Wireless Broadband Networks

Infrastructure, in general, is a public good, where governments have a stake in developing it. There is an extensive coverage of basic infrastructure such as the telephone and power lines (overhead or underground) across the country, having evolved over more than a century. Telephone lines (e.g. copper wires) represent the basic component of telecommunications infrastructure. With the exponential growth of Internet based services that require high bandwidth (i.e. broadband), the traditional communications infrastructure has proven to be insufficient. Traditional dial-up modems used with telephone lines, for example, can hardly handle the emerging data, audio, voice, and video demands. Coffman and Odlyzko (2002) observe that Moore’s law¹ is applicable for the internet growth, wherein the data traffic almost doubles annually. According to Pew Internet Research, the percentage of American adults online crossed the 50 percent mark by April 2000, and reached 71 percent by March 2007 (Horrigan, 2007). The Internet has become a crucial component for communications.