About Wireless Technology
Until now, wireless Internet access has had two major problems: excessive cost and lack of speed. Mainstream technologies such as WAP/GSM are slow and expensive. 2.5G technologies such as GPRS-enabled mobile phones combined with infrared or Bluetooth, provide users with the ability to download email remotely to a laptop/PDA, however, this is extremely expensive and relatively slow for anything more than small pieces of information such as text messages. 3G networks are not yet pervasive in Australia and early trials have demonstrated still a lack of speed and cost-effectiveness for use with email and other data intensive applications.
Using public radio spectrum supported by the international standard IEEE 802.11, Azure Wireless has the ability to deliver speeds of up to 11 Mbps to end users – 200 times faster than a dial-up modem! Azure’s initial network uses technology called “802.11b” or “WiFi” enabling the delivery of speeds up to 11Mbps.
To access the wireless Internet service, users only require a wireless-enabled laptop, PDA or phone. Most new laptops and PDA's are now manufactured with internal WiFi cards/chips such as Intel® Centrino™ mobile technology. If your device is not already wireless enabled, you can simply insert an external wireless network card into this device – these external wireless networking cards can be purchased for under $100 from all major computer outlets.
Please note that the steps to access the service are slightly different for
each hardware manufacturer. Detailed
instructions are available for download.