SohoWireless has a vision. Wireless access for most people is now within reach. The 802.11 technology is advancing, WECA is having an impact in making standards be implementable and interoperable. WI-FI is a reality and provides a multi-megabit transfer rate. Technologists have brought the cost of the PCMCIA cards to about $100 and some portable computers are delivered with 802.11b already built in. Access Point radios and antennas are cost effective. Very localized Access Points can be added for just a few hundred dollars (US) and larger local area Access Points can be implemented for (US)$1500 to $2000. Continued cost reduction in this technology, should result in a truely pervasive network of 802.11 hot zones. What will it take to make it a reality that you can walk up the street with your PDA or laptop computer continuously connected at broadband speeds? This is our mission and our vision!

We see open access communications everywhere. We mean globally.  In the USA alone we'd like to see tens of thousands of 802.11 access points located in large cities and small, in residential areas and light commercial areas, everywhere. But that is not the current situation because in part the cost of implementing WI-Fi is still not down to the pocket change level.   And when I pay for access others are able to use it at no charge. Who should really pay for access? SOHOWireless believes it is too optimistic to believe that there will be pervasive access points without those that use the access, sharing in some way in the cost of provisioning these access points. Or put another way, the provisioning of access points by thousands of individuals and businesses will ocurr sooner, if the cost of maintaining is at least partially subsidized by the roamers who happen by and use them. To support this desired outcome, SOHOWireless has created the LANRoamer System. The LANRoamer concept attempts to balance the charges that would be reasonable for occasional access to another's access point with enough return to encourage prospective Access Point providers to move ahead on their objective.

As further evidence of our intent to facilitate open access as broadly as possible, SOHOWireless has made open-source all the code involved and released it under the GPL. This virtually assures that whatever any program initiated now will, or at least can, be continued by others. Because of the provisions of the GPL competing service organizations and independent programmers can contribute to its development. The GPL provides that the code may be freely taken and used, but that any modifications to the code must be contributed back to the community. This also means SOHOWireless must continuously expect to compete by providing the best mix reasonable charges to LANRoamers, and incentives to Affiliated Access Points.  It does not compete by writing proprietary function code, distributing only binary code, or maintaining any sort of exclusivity based on the uniqueness or "intellectual property rights" of the software programs.

LANRoamer gets 4 slices, SOHO Wireless gets 1 slice

What can an Affiliated Access Point expect to receive? First, since each Affiliate provides access to others, they are given access at any other Affiliated Access Point at no charge.  Any Affiliate may use any LANRoamer access point without any  LANRoamer charge.   In addition there will be other roamers that do not provide access services. These roamers pay a modest monthly fee, initially $20/month, which will be distributed between Affiliated Access Points based on the number of different users served, the number of new LANRoamers signing up through their access point, and their access points up and downstream bandwidth.  The remaining portion of the LANRoamer fees goes to SOHOWireless to operate and promote the program.

The motivation for creating a wireless access point may vary widely from one site to another. It's possible some will see this as a hobby and just want to make it available. Others may see providing wireless access as part of a program to sell a synergistic product or service.  Still others may wish to offer wireless Internet access to reduce client frustration while they wait for their transportation or service activity to complete.  Which ever of these or other motivations are the impetus, the LANRoamer program helps justifiy starting to implement sooner. The end result is more wireless public access sooner.