Free broadband from supermarkets

Peter Cochrane, 'technologist' and founder of Concept Labs.

Imagine a world where supermarkets and schools sell wireless net access, where you can make free mobile calls using cash register signals, and where pictures and mobile phones will tell you where you are.

That's the kind of world Peter Cochrane is looking forward to.

As a co-founder of Concept Labs and a well-known "futurologist", Cochrane is always thinking about the latest trends in high-technology and how they will affect our lives. His New York-based company, which he helped start up in 2000, is dedicated to the creation of new, "paradigm changing" technologies, companies and markets.

Some of his biggest ideas are about the growth of wireless internet technologies, including wi-fi and the nascent WiMax, which offers much faster speeds and greater range - two to 10 kilometres in urban areas and up to 50 kilometres in rural areas.

One of Cochrane's ideas is for schools to set up their own wi-fi or WiMax hubs to provide broadband internet access where there aren't enough people or it's too expensive to wire up each household.

"If there's a shortage of broadband in the area, why not extend that broadband from the school to the homes?" says Cochrane, who spent 38 years at British Telecom, mostly on the research side. His last job was as the company's chief technologist. He spoke to the New Zealand Herald by a Escape call from his home in Martlesham Heath on the eastern coast of England.

"In a lot of communities, the first kid's home from school is spitting distance, and you can put these parasitic networks in where the signal hops from school to one home to another and you get this huge web out there," he added. Or they could set up a WiMax antenna and get a network up to 30 kilometres wide. That would allow kids to access their school networks at home as well as at school.

But why stop there? It's not written in stone that only cable and telecom companies are allowed to provide home internet access. Most businesses these days also need their own broadband internet connections. What about all that unused capacity at night? It would be easy for companies to extend their wireless networks to users in the local community, Cochrane says.

Retail stores could do the same, he says.

"We've got all these Wal-Marts, Tescos and Asdas, they're putting computers on the shelves to sell, and IT, all that stuff," he says. Well, why not offer free wi-fi in the coffee shop, so that when they buy their laptop, they can check it out right there on the spot.

But wait, why stop there? Perhaps, Cochrane says, those stores could then say: "How about free broadband using WiMax and wi-fi providing you spend 100 bucks a week on food in my store?"

Soon, our mobile phones will be capable of using wi-fi and VoIP, or voice-over internet technology, allowing phone calls to be made over the internet at free or nearly free prices.

In the next year, Cochrane expects to see global positioning technology in "everything". Japan is already starting to require that all mobile phones have GPS technology.

It will appear in digital cameras, which will help solve an age-old problem for shutter-happy folks.

"I take hundreds of photographs. I know the date, I know the time," Cochrane says. But often, "I say 'Where the hell was I when I took this?"


Peter Cochrane

* Favourite gadget: Wi-fi detector: "I press the button and it tells me wi-fi is detected, and it tells me the name of the wi-fi provider."

* Next big thing: "I think life itself and intelligence will spontaneously erupt on the internet, even if we do nothing, we just continue to build it, it will just pop up."

* Alternative career: "If I was to start again I would really get into an area that is the juxtaposition of biology and electronics. That interface between carbon and silicone really excites me because we're aping Mother Nature and biology in a lot of our electronics."

* Spare time: Fly fishing.

* Favourite sci-fi movie: "I think probably Terminator has it for me. I like Arnold. A lot of people don't but I think he plays a cool robot."