Fergus Cassidy

Will o' the WISPS

MANY telecommunications carriers are very similar to their naval namesakes. Big lumbering giants that seemingly can't take evasive action to protect themselves from the big guns of technology. A carrier may be the mightiest vessel in the fleet, but it also makes for the biggest target.

Holed by the twin torpedoes of fraud and the information technology revolution, they are taking on water and losing direction. In the United States analysts are wondering when, not if, the first big one will sink. Mergers may be the only rescue available for these carriers.

The telcos are in a frightful state. Plagued by downward spiralling revenues, they also have the same chance of getting new investment as an asteroid has of hitting the earth. They were supposed to be at the heart of the information superhighway but they only road sign they're following is the one with cul de sac on it.

And an awful lot of their woe has to do with a mile of copper wire. The last mile is that amount of wire between a person's home and the telephone exchange. Everything under the sun can change what happens to one and zeros but it doesn't amount to much if it can't travel that last mile. The local loop belongs to the telcos and they won't give it up. It's a defensive shield.

Last week in Ireland, a small but purposeful salvo was fired from the telecom regulator's office that must have registered on the big telcos' radar screens. The regulator signed an order allowing a number of wireless short range devices - exempting from licensing - including some for the provision of fixed wireless access (FWA) in the 5.8GHz band.

It's a very welcome move as it injects some much-needed momentum into alternative internet access and getting around the problem of the last mile, which in Ireland of course is an Irish one.

Wireless access to the internet was always going to be high on the agenda of solving telco intransigence. The growing communities gathered under the IrishWan.org site, have been making steady progress over the last year. While mainly in test mode, there are signs that these groups are poised for growth.

The regulator's decision is particularly apt for a new breed of internet service provider (ISP) that has recently entered the Irish market. These wireless ISPs (WISP) have a lot of potential - as competitors to existing providers and as lifelines to rural dwellers who are struggling with ten-year old connection speeds and thoroughly modern phone bills. Wireless local area networks (WLAN) can help put a stop to that.

WLANs are doing good business around the world right now. According to Juniper Research, WLANs will bring in revenue of $5.5bn worldwide by 2007. Jupiter also said that "last mile/fixed WLAN applications are growing at breakneck speed".

Andrew Lippman, associate director of the MIT Media Laboratory said recently that "the development of interconnected wireless LANs is happening in much the same way the internet grew in its early days, when no one entity was in control. Today, telecommunications companies that set up broadband networks have too much control, because all the data flowing out of one user's PC goes to a central spot controlled by the carrier before it's delivered to the intended recipient".

And there's the dilemma for the telcos. By clinging on for dear life to the local loop of copper wire, they leave no option for progress via that route. All the while new technologies are being deployed to get around the problem.

Lights, cameras, action!!

So will these new wireless technologies help to torpedo the carriers below the water line? The big Goliaths taken down by technology slingshots. Does that sound like a yarn from some script out of Hollywood? Good, because Hollywood is not at all out of place in all this.

The story begins with the Nazis and the war on the seas. In a game of cat and mouse the German ships are getting off lightly due to their ability to intercept torpedoes. Along comes Fritz Mandl, an Austrian armament's dealer, who knows a Nazi or three.

Mandl marries a Viennese-born woman called Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. At 19 she began making a career for herself as an actress. After four years of marriage she said goodbye to her husband and his entourage of arms developers, builders and buyers.

She drugged the maid, crawled out through a window and escaped to London where she worked on the stage. In walks MGM's legendary Louis B Mayer and offers her a chance at Hollywood. She got a movie contract and a new name - Hedy Lamarr.

Starring in successful moves such as Comrade X and Samson and Delilah she became a pin-up and was talked about as 'the most beautiful girl in the world'. In 1941 she met George Antheil at a Hollywood party. Known as 'the bad boy of music', Antheil was an avant garde composer of symphonies and ballets. According to Dave Hughes, a researcher at the US National Science Foundation, Antheil "was not only a musician, but a formidable enough intellect that she [Lamarr] could hold an intelligent conversation with him".

Fuelled by patriotism for her adopted country, Lamarr wanted to help the war effort by working at the National Inventors Council in Washington. She was persuaded instead to use her fame to sell war bonds.

She also had an idea. Based on her knowledge of her former husband's armaments business, she devised a method of making sure radio controlled torpedoes couldn't be jammed by enemy radio transmissions. She explained her idea to Antheil, who had written compositions which featured 14 pianists playing in sync using piano rolls. They had come up with the idea of frequency hopping.

Their patent for a Secret Communications System was granted on 11 August, 1942. However, the Navy considered the invention too cumbersome to implement and it wasn't until 1962, three years after the patent ran out, that the invention was put to use in the blockade of Cuba.

Frequency-hopping technology continued to be developed by the military, particularly for satellite communications. It is increasingly being deployed for commercial use, and some of the new or next generation mobile phones avail of Lamarr's invention.

She died in 2000 without receiving any real recognition for her work. Her son Anthony has said that she's been forgotten but "she contributed so much to an older generation. A lot of men fell in love with her. And now the younger generation is benefiting from the unknown creative work that she did" .

Living as a recluse in Florida in 1996, she was told that she had been given a Pioneer Award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Her only comment on the matter was "it's about time".

How right she was.

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LINKS

The story of how Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr invented frequency hopping. link

Technical details on frequency-hopping and spread spectrum radio technology. link

This site provides a forum, co-ordination and bulletin board service for the WLAN community in Ireland. If you want to get involved this is the place to start. IrishWAN.org