Ten: The Wi-Fi Explosion

The worldly Web

There are two reasons why wireless Internet, or Wi-Fi, has become so damn popular. For one, long distance phone calls, even with 1-800-Collect or a calling card, or any one of a thousand different plans, are still too expensive. Secondly, wires stink. They're ugly, they can be tripped over, and no one likes anything with "strings attached". Thus, the door was opened to Wi-Fi, and in the year 2006 its use and infrastructure growth became a global phenomenon.

The term "Wi-Fi" was originally coined by the Wi-Fi Alliance, a company that still technically owns rights to the term. However, maintaining control of the name or the technology has become impossible for the Wi-Fi Alliance, as you might expect when discussing a commodity that floats through the air.

In the past year, major international cities embraced Wi-Fi infrastructure, establishing free networks for those residents with the hardware necessary to connect. From Eagles fans in Philadelphia to lovers in Paris to…people in Tempe, Arizona, it is slowly becoming City Hall's responsibility to establish and distribute access to Wi-Fi.

The entire process is becoming something similar to the building of water or electricity networks. In Tempe, for example, the city took on the entire cost of physically constructing the system via private telecommunications company MobilePro. While subscription to the network for home users was about $30 a month, the widespread availability is impressive.

Wi-Fi didn't stop there, however. It also dug its way into many of the most popular tech toys from the past year. After Microsoft released a Wi-Fi add on for its Xbox 360 console, Nintendo and Sony decided to include wireless capabilities under the hood of their recently released systems. In addition, Microsoft began a campaign to change the way music listeners approach file sharing, by launching the Zune player with Wi-Fi capabilities.

All in all, 2006 was a big year for the Internet, and, in this case specifically, the way we all access the web. From city-wide networks to rumors of satellite-enabled wireless systems, computer users collectively worked to further shrink the globe in 2006.