ITU 03 - Microsoft wants to make Wi-Fi hotspots more secure

Microsoft has announced Wireless Provisioning Services (WPS), support for Wi-Fi that aims to place the company and its flagship Windows XP operating system at the heart of most users' experiences with the increasingly popular wireless networking standard.

The idea is that besides adding security, WPS makes it easier for hotspot operators' customers to sign on. T-Mobile and Swisscom, both of which have Wi-Fi offerings across several countries, have been unveiled as customer wins, and Microsoft rounded up supporting testimony from mainly North American companies running thousands of Wi-Fi network access points such as Boingo Wireless, Cometa Networks, iPass and Wayport.

Shai Guday, group programme manager, Microsoft Wireless and Mobility, told silicon.com: "Security is a big impediment to wireless adoption. There has been big shift to secure access for private networks and the public space is next."

The big difference with this push from Microsoft, he added, is that normally making something easy-to-use means making it less secure. While WPS does allows a simple GUI for hotspot customers to follow, the software improves on existing wireless security technologies used in Windows XP - including Protected Extensible Authentication (PEAP) and Wi-Fi Protected Access - and there is a back end component for Windows Server 2003.

Analyst house Gartner reckons that by 2008 there will be 167,000 Wi-Fi hotspots worldwide serving 75 million users.

While it would appear the plus points of Microsoft WPS for network operators include providing authentication and encryption as standard as well as the chance to brand services better, even using Unicode character sets for non-Roman script languages, end users won't avail of these offerings so simply if they don't use Windows XP.

And the problem isn't just for the one in 10 that may surf in public using Linux, Mac OS or something else but for users of other Windows client OSes as well