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This paper compares and contrasts two technologies for delivering broadband wireless Internet access services: "3G" vs. "WiFi".

3G refers to the collection of third generation cellular technologies that are designed to allow mobile cellular operators to offer integrated data and voice services over cellular networks.

WIFI refers to the 802.11b wireless Ethernet standard that was designed to support wireless LANs.

Although the two technologies reflect fundamentally different service, industry, and architectural design goals, origins, and philosophies, each has recently attracted a lot of attention as candidates for the dominant platform for providing broadband wireless access to the Internet. It remains an open question as to the extent to which these two technologies are in competition or, perhaps, may be complementary. If they are viewed as in competition, then the triumph of one at the expense of the other would be likely to have profound implications for the evolution of the wireless Internet and service provider industry structure.

The two most important phenomena impacting telecommunications over the past decade have been the explosive parallel growth of the Internet and mobile telephone services. The Internet brought the benefits of data communications to the masses with email, the Web, and eCommerce; while mobile service has enabled ‘‘follow-me-anywhere/always on’’ telephony. The Internet helped accelerate the trend from voice- to data-centric networking. Now, these two worlds are converging. This convergence offers the benefits of new interactive multimedia services coupled to the flexibility and mobility of wireless.

The goal of the qualitative discussion of these two technologies is to provide a more concrete understanding of the differing worldviews encompassed by these technologies and their relative strengths and weaknesses in light of the forces shaping the evolution of wireless Internet services.

3G and WiFi, we are ignoringmany other technologies that are likely to be important in the wireless Internet such as satellite services, LMDS, MMDS, or other fixed wireless alternatives. We also ignore technologies such as Bluetooth or HomeRF, which have at times been touted as potential rivals to WiFi, at least in home networking environments

3G offers a vertically integrated, top–down, service-provider approach to delivering wireless Internet access; while WiFi offers (at least potentially) an end-user-centric, decentralized approach to service provisioning. Although there is nothing intrinsic to the technology that dictates that one may be associated with one type of industry structure or another, we use these two technologies to focus our speculations on the potential tensions between these two alternative world views.

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