Clash of Wi-Fi networks

Companies prefer to go the wired way.

In a commercial area of Ahmedabad, Gautam Patel, CMD of A International installed a wireless network to connect the 20 PCs in his new office. Within 15 days he switched over to a wired network.

"The speed of data transfer was too slow and we used to lose connectivity many a times. Later, we discovered there was a collision in the network due to other wireless networks operating in the same area," he said.

His, however, is not the first case in this city. A Wireless Planning Coordination (WPC) official, who did not wish to be named, said: "As many as 800 unlicensed wireless networks are reportedly misusing the Industry Science and Medicine (ISM) band free of cost in Ahmedabad alone causing high congestion in the wireless network space. The number could be higher in other metros and major cities."

In commercial areas, all use the same band or spectrum which causes the collision.

"If all networks run on the same frequency, they are bound to collide and the resulting speed of data transfer will come down to 64 MB," explained Chirag Mehta, CEO of Icenet, an ISP in Gujarat. He added the solution to the problem is to hire a licensed fequency.

"However, while the licensed frequency is very expensive it provides better performance," said Mehta.

Surendra Arora, Director, South Asia (Customer Solutions Group), Intel, said, "I 'm not surprised that people are facing connectivity problems with Wi-Fi. As there is rampant usage of the ISM band between 2.417 and 2.457 GHz, it will surely affect Wi-Fi technology in commercial areas."

He added that many organisations across the country are using unlicensed spectrum causing collision. "Companies should adopt Wi-MAX to avoid collision. Wi-Fi operated within an office may result in collision in the network or slow connectivity," he reasons.

D K Agrawal, CGM, BSNL Gujarat Circle, said there could be a collision in Wi-Fi in commercial areas.

"But we are not offering the service in commercial areas. We have created our hotspots at the IIM-A campus where users are easily accessing the Internet."