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Reports on broadband wireless data communications, Internet telephony, and the open source movement. Discussion of Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity, the brand name for standardized (802.11b) wireless data signal; Mention of Cometa Networks in the United States; Details of the business model of Spotnick Mobile, which was cofounded by Murray McCaig and Mark Wolinsky in Ontario; Competition in the public-access market over Wi-Fi; Functions of Linux, a free computer operating system, which was implemented at Canadian National Railway by senior systems programmer, Don Lafontaine; Issues of the lack of applications and technical support for Linux; Discussion of the pros and cons of IP telephony, or voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP; Outlook for the IP telephony enterprise equipment industry; Popular uses of VoIP, including call-center routing.

This article presents an interview with Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Ontario's Research in Motion. Balsillie has run the 20-year old Ontario company for 12 years, and recently announced better-than-expected earnings, thanks to sales that surged 158% last quarter. Back in 2000, says Balsillie, it wasn't that people didn't want to buy BlackBerries, it was that when they bought them, they didn't work very well. By early 2003, they started to say, "This is working well now." Research in Motion and Palm, once bitter rivals, are working together now, due to a shift in strategy. Palm moved out of the application space and Research in Motion had a strategy of wanting to work with all the handset vendors. In the next five years, Balsillie predicts that companies will be doing a broad array of phone strategies. He sees an almost infinite portfolio of device-packaging possibilities and contends that Research in Motion is going to make sure that the middleware connects to all the different networks, e-mail environments, and countries.

This article reports that West Edmonton Mall, a massive shopping and entertainment complex in Alberta, Canada, has set a new precedent for the use of wireless technologies in retail. The mall offers customers a Wi-Fi network the size of 48 city blocks and is planning new ways to use the network to run operations, such as mall security and customer check-in to the hotel on its premises. The entire property is served by a network using Siemens Communications Inc. products, including 55 hot-spot access points, that the mall calls Wemisphere. Shoppers can use their Wi-Fi-enabled handheld devices as a shopping aid: As they walk through the mall, specific retail promotions appear on their screens when they pass by those retailers.

This article presents an interview with Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Ontario's Research in Motion. Balsillie has run the 20-year old Ontario company for 12 years, and recently announced better-than-expected earnings, thanks to sales that surged 158% last quarter. Back in 2000, says Balsillie, it wasn't that people didn't want to buy BlackBerries, it was that when they bought them, they didn't work very well. By early 2003, they started to say, "This is working well now." Research in Motion and Palm, once bitter rivals, are working together now, due to a shift in strategy. Palm moved out of the application space and Research in Motion had a strategy of wanting to work with all the handset vendors. In the next five years, Balsillie predicts that companies will be doing a broad array of phone strategies. He sees an almost infinite portfolio of device-packaging possibilities and contends that Research in Motion is going to make sure that the middleware connects to all the different networks, e-mail environments, and countries.

Reports on the partnership between Sheraton Centre Toronto and Bell Canada Inc. to provide wireless high speed Internet connectivity to hotel guests in Canada. Demand seen by the hotel personnel on the use of the technology; Advantages in the installation of the system for the guests and the hotel management; Terms of the agreement between the companies; Features of the installed technological system.

Discusses the adaptive campus local area network initiative of Nortel based in Brampton, Ontario. Enhancement of wireless access and distributed applications systems; Utilization of instant messaging. video and Internet protocol telephony with unified messaging; Addition of intelligence and security features.