Wi-Fi has become the preferred means for connecting to the internet - at home, in the office, in hotels and at airports. Increasingly, Wi-Fi also provides internet access for remote communities where it is deployed by volunteers in community-based networks, by operators in 'hotspots' and by municipalities in 'hotzones'. This book traces the global success of Wi-Fi to the landmark change in radio spectrum policy by the US FCC in 1985, the initiative by NCR Corporation to start development of Wireless-LANs and the drive for an open standard IEEE 802.11, released in 1997. It also singles out and explains the significance of the initiative by Steve Jobs at Apple to include Wireless-LAN in the iBook, which moved the product from the early adopters to the mass market. The book explains these developments through first-hand accounts by industry practitioners and concludes with reflections and implications for government policy and firm strategy.

Wi-Fi has become the preferred means for connecting to the internet - at home, in the office, in hotels and at airports. Increasingly, Wi-Fi also provides internet access for remote communities where it is deployed by volunteers in community-based networks, by operators in 'hotspots' and by municipalities in 'hotzones'. This book traces the global success of Wi-Fi to the landmark change in radio spectrum policy by the US FCC in 1985, the initiative by NCR Corporation to start development of Wireless-LANs and the drive for an open standard IEEE 802.11, released in 1997. It also singles out and explains the significance of the initiative by Steve Jobs at Apple to include Wireless-LAN in the iBook, which moved the product from the early adopters to the mass market. The book explains these developments through first-hand accounts by industry practitioners and concludes with reflections and implications for government policy and firm strategy.

The European Commission's Digital Agenda for Europe sets the targets for broadband development by 2020, yet current broadband market outcomes vary widely amongst the EU Member States and the objectives seem challenging for many. In this book, a group of in-country experts follows a framework of qualitative and quantitative analysis to capture patterns, commonalities and differences between twelve different European countries, in terms of infrastructure endowments, institutional arrangements, time of joining the EU, behavior of market actors, personal interventions of regulators, the role of municipalities, and the role perception of governments. By exploring how the past explains present broadband market outcomes, these longitudinal country case studies look to how improvements can be made for the future. As the first in-depth study of broadband developments in Europe, this book will be invaluable to policy-makers, regulators, academic researchers, advisors, and consultants working in the fields of telecommunications, broadband development, technology and innovation.