IP Wireless to launch portable hot spots
IP Wireless, a manufacturer of wireless wide area network modems, announced this week a partnership with Possio, a Swedish maker of access points, to incorporate IP Wireless PCMCIA WAN cards inside the access point (AP). Where wired connections such as DSL and cable are not available, the IP wireless cards become the backhaul for the Wi-Fi network.
"Construction sites, movie sets, or accountants auditing at a corporate client can go to the site, set up the Possio AP, and have an instant network," said John Hambidge, senior director of marketing at IP Wireless in San Bruno, Calif.
For the majority of business users Wi-Fi is part of the high-tech toolset they travel with, while wide area network cards are not. Putting the wide area card in the AP will give many more mobile users access to their networks without having to seek out standard public Wi-Fi hot spots, said Hambidge.
The IP Wireless card can also be removed from the AP and used in individual notebooks.
The Possio access points are also Bluetooth enabled. Albeit slower than IEEE 802.11b, Bluetooth can still give users wireless access to their networks.
