(Column) - With Google offering free Wi-Fi to San Francisco, the beginning of the end of wired networks has probably begun. The reasons are many, and newer technologies are in place to support them.

Post Centrino, more and more notebooks are becoming Wi-Fi enabled. In fact, built-in Wi-Fi has become standard on newer notebooks, and the feature is common enough for the trickle effect to commence and make cell phones Wi-Fi compatible as well.

Phones such as the O2 XDA Mini come with built-in Wi-Fi capability to let you forget your worries about Bluetooth configuration (not that setting up Wi-Fi is any easier), and get much higher bandwidth in return.

Pretty soon, we’ll see phones connecting effortlessly to a series of Wi-Fi hotspots, which will work similar to the way phone stations do today (in terms of switching calls and changing base stations on the fly). We could even have voice telephony and live streaming content which could be Pay-Per-View television or whatever content studios choose to stream with unlimited bandwidth in their arsenal.

Of course, with all this streaming, radio can’t be left behind, and this might make a whole new market segment for portable Internet radio streamers. It’s possible that Yahoo, MSN or Google will pitch in (Google already has) to form a new market.

You then get the option of streaming video and/or audio content straight from the Internet using your Wi-Fi connection.

But hey, hang on; are we saying that Wi-Fi would be able to meet all our future needs with limitless bandwidth? No, not in the least! This is where the next iteration of this technology comes in - WiMax. It may not be here in a big way, but the inklings of a beginning are there and the future of mobility never looked better.

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