While much has been discussed about the CAPEX (Capital Expenditures), i.e the actual cost of equipment for wireless pervasive connectivity, there has been less discussions on the the OPEX (Operational Expeditures), when in summation, it should be expanded to the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). In looking at WLANS (Wireless LANS), there have been a large diversity of engineering implementations which is based upon experience and sheer knowlege base. Like countless VARS selling wireless gear, it is important to look at their depth of experience and experience with deployments. Gartner estimates that 39% of the the cost of owning a traditional wireless network is constrained in operational costs and defined in a "Hourly cost for technical services, planning, process maangement, and service desks". - Wireless LANS have a higher TCO, but can raise productivity, June 2004. The soft costs, but not realized are the expectations set for data and voice communications, but then perhaps this is not the realized productivity because of lost connections and and/or poor voice communications quality. All of this leads up to that the fact that we have look at the indoor wireless wireless space as a planned and designed enginneering model. If we look at all the services (WLAN, cellular, PCS, Public Safety, Paging, WMTS), again from a holistic model, conducting at the start the right planning and predictive model will impact the OPEX and TCO. It is realized from an in building model that combining all of these services onto a distributed antenna systems model does make sense, however this does require a bit of RF and design expertise not always resident in the typical healthcare IT department So I agree with InnerWireless that is it is essential for the proper design up front for all the services and applications to be designed with the mission critical/life critical and guaranteed coverage maps and signal levels. This will allow for the correct design methodology and optimize all applications that will overall lower the OPEX. For example, it does not make a lot of sense to design a broadband or WLAN network only when you pass a lead lined wall in radiolgoy for the propogation of the broadband or WLAN signal to fall off the cliff and hence the connection is lost. So going back to Gartner, if you could reduce the 39% of costs for technical services by proper plannig and engineering a holistic wireless environment up front, why not? Another cost, but not not realized is the physical placement and running of ethernet cable to each every access point (AP). In the old days, you had to worry about running power, but not with POE. Another soft cost is is the is estimated of around $500 to co-locate each AP, but this again if you have a soft ceiling. What if you have a hard ceiling, or old buildings that require abestos abatement, or really soft costs of disrupting the day to day clincal operations? Co-locating the AP(s), in the IDF could reduce this cost signficantly and decrease the disruption in the clinical space (i.e breaking into the ceiling space) Plus when migrating to evolving wireless standadrs such as 802.11n, the migration of AP(s), is in the IDF not the ceiling space. Again OPEX to the TCO. As the LEED building initiative continues (The GREEN environment), the actual physical building will act as a barrier to the penetration of the macro environment. Innerwireless states they use 60% less power (attribute this to a passive design (di-plexer/triplexer) in the IDF), this again adds to bottom line savings to OPEX and contributes to LEED initiatives, i.e. lower HVAC costs. While providing a unique design to each RF enviromnent, this will perhaps allow an overall CAPEX savings. This all adds up to a requirment perhaps to spend the CAPEX up front to engineer and design the proper overharching wireless ecosystem. To provide pervasive wireless coverage on a distributed antenna system for these services demands that you engineer and design to the correct signal level and link budget. While these CAPEX dollars up front for the engineering design may not be fully understood; they will in the short and long term be realized in lower OPEX because of lower technnical support calls and then life critical enterprise wireless network will be realized with all optimized wireless applications thus impacting the TCO.