As networks grow up, they lose their borders. Can anyone remember back to 1994, as Microsoft announced its upcoming Microsoft Network which would only work with its Blackbird authoring system? Microsoft said that when they launched MSN in 1995 it wouldn't conform to HTML standards nor would there be more than an email gateway to the Internet. How quickly they recanted.

Even the sleeping giant, when aroused, recognized that networks profit when connected, not when sundered. All of Microsoft's subsequent efforts, rebuffs, recantings, and courtings have centered around the sheer might of a larger world that they can't keep their users from wanting.

A more recent example is cited by Simson Garfinkel in the January 2002 issue of Technology Review. The article is not yet linked online, but in it he discusses how a lack of standards among cell messaging systems has prevented growth of this useful and fun service in the States. In Europe, billions of messages are sent each month at 1 to 10 cents each.

I've spent a lot of time writing about Boingo Wireless in the last week or so because their emergence signals the next step in the maturity of public space wireless. Up until Boingo announced their deals and their software, each network stood mostly alone. There are hundreds of thousands of Wi-Fi networks in the U.S., and only a fraction are public. Of those, only a tiny fraction were interoperable or linked.

Boingo forged individual deals with each network they wanted to partner with to create consistent pricing and access, but otherwise appear to have left technical details and operational details alone. (Forthcoming best practices reports from the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance for wireless ISPs should pick up the slack on what standards are needed; other groups will certainly help wISPs conform or test to those standards.)

I believe my reports have been mistaken for extolling Boingo qua Boingo: rather, I am excited about the message that Boingo sends. Wi-Fi is open for business. Wireless ISPs are willing to cut the kinds of deals necessary to create more traffic on their networks to reach, ultimately, a repayment of their investment and actual profit.

I don't deny the profit motive was in effect prior to Boingo's appearance, but it's a new world in which all players that can agree on reasonable terms can use the same commons.

Doc Searls, one of my favorite Web and print writers, has engaged me and others on the issue of Boingo. He's concerned about the Windows-only focus and the potential proprietary nature of a single client that locks out other platforms and other uses.

My reaction is that the deals that Boingo forged will allow other players to enter the market with a lower bar. In fact, not every traveler or businessperson or home user or hobbyist wants everything that Boingo provides. This opens the potential for other companies to build their own virtual networks using what will become for-hire infrastructure run by Wayport, Surf and Sip, and others, and aggregated by hereUare and others.

The next logical step in evolution will be an independent group that helps aggregate without offering ISP service. That is, they will sign the contracts to link networks and provide a uniform API or software interface for developers who come in Boingo's wake.

Another development on this front is 802.1x, a uniform and secure authentication protocol in progress from the IEEE. 802.1x will allow the same method of user login from many different systems and platforms, and may allow those who come after Boingo to avoid Boingo's huge cost in building a Swiss army knife of authentication. Their software can talk to anybody's login procedure, but 802.1x may sweep all of that away. It just takes time and updates: all APs, operatings systems, back-end systems, and Wi-Fi cards would need to be upgraded to support 802.1x in large or small ways. (XP supports an early version of 802.1x, but not the ratified version because it hasn't been ratified yet.)

This is all grist for the mill: we'll see if other players emerge and turn Boingo's great idea into a teeming marketplace in which Boingo was first and possibly becomes premiere, instead of flying solo.