Glynn County, Georgia, long known for its beautiful beaches, golf courses, and historic sites, can now claim another distinction: incubator for innovation in educational technology. Using a “21st Century Learning Environments” grant from the Georgia and US Departments of Education, the Glynn County School System is undertaking a long-term project to bring mobile, pervasive Wi-Fi networks to all of its elementary and secondary schools.

A profound change has been taking place in the way ordinary citizens
interact with government: the “e-Government” movement. e-Government
promotes the use of electronic commerce technology in government
operations to deliver paperless services and information more rapidly
and conveniently to citizens. Internal government operations are also
expected to benefit from these technologies, in the form of increased
efficiencies, lower service delivery errors, and greater accountability.

Technology is often the lifeblood of daily business operations. If the network infrastructure doesn’t work, the organization doesn’t either, with reputation and profit the casualties. What happens, though, when the network becomes not just an operational enhancement, but rather a matter of survival – for the organization and the people it serves?

The number of ways companies can use a wireless local area network
(WLAN) to make their operations more efficient is limited only by the imagination. How about mobilizing the press at a golf tournament? That was precisely the driving force behind the installation of Wi-Fi at the Abberley Court Hotel and Apartments in Tallaght, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland.

Voice over IP (VoIP) is maturing and achieving increasing corporate acceptance as device
costs decrease and VoIP phones improve. Employing VoIP over wireless LAN (VoWLAN), freeing the telephone from the cord, is an obvious next step. It is expected that the enterprise VoWLAN market will initially be driven by specific corporate needs, such as warehouse and retail sales tracking and control, ubiquitous mobile telephony in medical campuses and hospitals, and mobile security applications.