"Steerable" WiFi At $9,000 Generates Skepticism
It’s been a while since we first spoke about Vivato, and their wireless array that would “follow users around” with WiFi access. The idea was that a single array could cover a fairly large area, meaning “hotspots” wouldn’t be covering such a small region any more. However, this article suggests that there are plenty of skeptics as to how well such a system will work. A lot of people want to see it before they believe it, and some suggest it’s solving the wrong problem. And, as someone points out, at $9,000 “you would have to install an awful lot of $200 access points to spend as much money.” Of course, most of the skeptics are looking at it from the point of view of office use, where it might not make sense. I always saw the Vivato solution as being more of a municipal solution for covering an entire downtown area with ubiquitous WiFi.
