The Consumer Electronics Show 2012 opens this week in Las Vegas and pundits are bemoaning the lack of the next big thing but the telling news from the show are details about next generation WiFi that offers communities significantly expanded bandwidth and dramatically faster download speeds.
So for anyone that uses the municipal WiFi in Downtown Santa Ana which is slow and service spotty at best, things are about to change in a very positive way.
Announcements are anticipated about new Wi-Fi technology with data rates in gigabits per second.
Specifically, two different frequencies: 5GHz and 60GHz which will achieve data rates of 1.3 gigabits per second, the latter, up to 7Gbps. And it looks like this technology could be available by mid-year. Today’WiFi networks clock in at about 150 megabits per second.
So why is this important from a political perspective? Imagine the economic development Gigabit WiFi can offer for hundreds of small businesses in every city in Orange County. With so much attention focused on infrastructure investment for cities and towns, the digital infrastructure is critical for powering tomorrow’s high paying jobs.
It won’t make much difference if the government can shut down any website they don’t like (SOPA act) or if internet companies get to limit the data speed of sites which don’t pay them get “faster” access.
There is a significant effort at CES to oppose SOPA as well as a formidable pro-SOPA effort.