| This was on the Shanghai Daily Newspaper today. (www.shanghaidaily.com) I'm very surprised that the newspaper says there are only 35,000 users of WIFI in China right now... Firms form WAPI body to perk shelved project Zhu Shenshen 2006-03-09 A TOTAL of 22 Chinese companies established a WAPI alliance on Tuesday, a move to revive a project, shelved two years ago, to make the homegrown wireless local area network, or WLAN, standard compulsory nationwide. The alliance's setup is a blow to the US-developed WiFi, which currently dominates the Chinese WLAN market and it may influence several millions of laptop computer users in China, industry insiders said. The alliance's members include four major telecom operators, China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Netcom, computer makers Lenovo and Founder, chip designers China IWNCOMM Co and Beijing LHWT Microelectronics Inc. "It is a clear signal China will revive the project as telecom giants have joined the industry," said Li Ke, an analyst at Beijing-based CCID Consulting Co, a research firm under the Ministry of Information Industry. Compared with WiFi, WAPI - WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure - provides a higher security level with an encryption chip. Concerned over national security, China originally planned to ban WiFi products from June 1, 2004. But it then agreed to delay the ban during a trade summit in the United States in April 2004. WLAN service is becoming more popular in China as many people log onto the Internet in public sites including airports, hotels and restaurants. Intel, a major promoter of WiFi in China, dominates the domestic market. There are currently 35,000 personal WiFi users in China and the number will hit 80,000 in 2008, according to Analysys International, a Beijing-based information technology consulting firm. Internet and information security remains a concern in China and it must improve, said Zhang Xiaoqiang, a senior official at the National Development Research Commission. Intel said it will support an international WLAN standard and WiFi is the most popular in the world. If China plans to adopt WAPI, a solution also needs to be found on how to deal with people who have purchased WiFi products. Customers have to pay to upgrade from WiFi to WAPI and many are not willing to fork out money, said Li. |
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