Do you remember the TV commercial that featured a bank manager hiding in the bedroom cupboard? Is this him coming back in a different guise?

Apparently Exeter is the best place for it, you can get it with your burger, latte or lager, and the UN believes that it would be very beneficial to people in poorer countries. If the UK’s E-Commerce Minister Stephen Timms has his way, then soon, every local library in the country could have it in place. The wireless web is about to become a part of our everyday lives, whether, it seems, we want it there or not.

Frequently referred to as ‘wi-fi’, the term wireless web refers to the use of the World Wide Web through a wireless device, whether it’s a mobile phone or handheld computer or any other portable gadget; millions are now able to connect to the net at broadband speeds, without having to deal with annoying cables. Wireless web technology provides an anytime, anywhere connection to just about any service you can imagine, whether it’s e-mail, mobile banking, instant messaging, weather or travel information, as well as numerous other services.

Over the last decade some of the world’s largest telecommunications companies have invested billions of dollars to ensure wireless infiltrates the mainstream arena. Their motivation has come from the enormous rise in consumers in the global mobile phone market. In the United States, for example, some 95 million people - and rising - use mobile phones: about 34% of the population. Statistics show that in many Western European countries the mobile phone market is about 50% or more, and most notably in Finland, once dubbed the ‘most mobile phone crazed nation in the world’, it is 71%.

Europe first
Although wireless technology has been available since the early 1990’s, many countries have been very slow to catch on, and progress has been much more rapid in Europe and Japan than it has in the United States. In places like Finland and Sweden for example, mobile phone users can regularly be seen sending text and email messages to their friends, paying their bills, getting regular weather updates, and even buying a cup of coffee via their mobiles. American companies, on the other hand, have been much slower in offering such services.

In a recent online survey, 70% of online consumers stated that they were aware of the existence of wireless but only 6% admitted that they had ever used it. Why has wireless not taken off in the US, especially as the US has the largest number of ‘wireless hotspots’ in the world? In order to answer this question, experts look to the different technologies for transmitting signals employed by competing wireless networks in the US as being one of the main problems.

Wireless web enthusiasts are continually praising the advantages of being able to check movie times from a local bar, and even being able to read and send e-mail whilst waiting in airport departure lounges – a pastime favoured predominantly by businessmen, who are able to enjoy the benefits of accessing important business information even when they cannot be at their desks. So far, it is for the mobile businessman that the wireless service has proved most useful. On a broader level the United Nations recently stated that they believed that wireless would offer poorer, developing nations plenty of opportunities which do not exist there at present.

Bank manager in the bedroom
Wireless networks could help poorer regions catch up with the pace of technology change. Although many countries will need help to deploy wireless equipment to make the best use of it, the fact that wireless networks remove the need to lay costly wires could quickly bring fast and convenient net access to large populations currently denied access, or in places where no infrastructure exists, enabling countries to ‘leapfrog generations of technology and infrastructure and empower their people.’

The opportunities that wireless services offer are enormous, but what does this do for those people who do not want to be contacted anytime, anywhere. For many, the mobile phone was one step too far. It gave friends and clients alike the ability to intrude on your life after office hours, and more than that – they expected you to be available. Wireless goes further.

Almost like the bank manager hiding in your wardrobe, except wireless allows him to contact you not only in the bedroom but when you are out shopping, on holiday, or even when you are sleeping. Not only does it allow you to obtain all sorts of information, but it also enables you to be contacted with all sorts of information, even when you have not specifically asked for it. For many that idea does not appeal, and the slow take-up of wireless services may be an indication of consumer reluctance - a sign that many people do not want to blur the line between work and life, between technology that can be seen as useful and what is conceived purely as an intrusion into almost every second of your life.

Providing us with the ability to access so much information on the move could also highlight some of wireless technology’s shortcomings. The wireless landscape is often likened to the early days of the Web, and at the moment the ‘wireless landscape is still virgin territory with much up for grabs’. Although wireless is seen very much as an extension of the Web, merely translating existing models does not work. Advertising is one such case that is being explored.

Anytime anywhere
The problem wireless technologists are experiencing is the very real concern over consumer reaction to mobile advertising. As mobile phones become increasingly personal, the danger that advertisers face is that their advertisements may effectively be seen as spam. Consumers do not want that intrusion and advertisers have no choice but to respect this, as consumers could simply turn off their phones to ignore them. Marketers are ensuring that any communication made in this manner only delivers highly relevant information that is of value.

The possibility of being contacted endlessly by clients, colleagues, advertisers, sales representatives, or even your bank, anytime, anywhere through wireless is becoming more and more real. To have consumers readily accessible certainly appeals to the telecommunications industries, who see this as a money making opportunity. But it seems that there is a significant bridge to gap before wireless services become completely mainstream.

The main problem facing wireless at the moment, according to Lifestreams LLP, a British consulting group, ‘is the technology [which] right now doesn't reflect the rhetoric, there is a huge gap between what people have been promised and what you can actually do’.

There have been and still are many challenges ahead for wireless technology. Problems to date have involved data networks that have experienced problems with incompatible systems, major concerns over security, awkward interfaces, small and difficult to use input and output devices, all contributing to slow growth, as well as extremely high service charges that have also deterred many consumers. As one American analyst put it, ‘How will wireless web become popular if it costs $4 to send one e-mail?’

Hot hotspots
In 2003, analysts predicted that the wireless web would be the ‘next dot.com crash’, mainly because of what can only be described as ‘patchy hotspot coverage’ as well as a lack of enabled hardware and few business models with which to make money. Figures show that there is hope for the future of wireless, as currently there are more than 8,500 wireless hotspots in Europe, and that is expected to grow to 70,000 by 2008. Figures released by analysts IDC predicted that the number of global wireless hotspots would increase from 50,000 in 2003 to 85,000 by the end of 2004.

As mobile phone manufacturers currently experiment with several different designs for new handheld devices that will enable enhanced wireless services of the future, there is very little doubt that this sort of technology is going to be driven into our everyday lives in the coming years. There is also no doubt that wireless services could extend the reach of broadband Internet to many more people across the world, and could be the first step in what has been described as ‘ubiquitous connectivity to the web’.