Rajit Gadh, Director of WINMEC and member, LA Broadband Executive Panel

Rajit Gadh is the Director of the Wireless Internet for Mobile Enterprise Consortium (WINMEC) at the University of California at Los Angeles.

He was recently appointed by Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn to the newly-formed Los Angeles Broadband Executive Panel (LA BEP), charged with examining "what role broadband technologies can play in accelerating economic development in the city and how Wi-Fi and 'next generation' wireless technologies can be used to retain and attract businesses to Los Angeles"

Establishing the LA BEP, Mayor Hahn said:

"I want Los Angeles to remain at the leading edge of innovation and creativity. We need wireless access to the Internet everywhere in the city—not just in select locations. I believe that Wi-Fi and 'next generation' technologies will help us bridge the digital divide."

Figuring out exactly how to do that will be the volunteer job undertaken by Professor Gadh and a distinguished group of academics and business people from various segments of the Los Angeles wireless community.

In the third of a series of interviews to be conducted with these busy, hyper-competent, and practical visionaries, Unwired LA spoke today for forty minutes with Rajit Gadh about the Mayor's Broadband Executive Panel and the task it now must address: unwiring LA.

In that interview, Professor Gadh talks about radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags (with and without batteries); about the unwired UCLA campus; about privacy concerns involved with enabling the wireless tracking of cars and other objects; the recent improvement in wireless security; the need to investigate and compile reliable "facts and figures" concerning the health risks of covering Los Angeles with a "wireless cloud" of Internet connectivity; the unlikelihood that massive new wireless and fiber optic deployments will lead to another "bubble"; and the simultaneous competition and co-operation between and among world cities for broadband wireless access. leadership.

You can hear that conversation by clicking here.