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Massachusetts expands trial of train-Fi: The state’s train authority will spend $1.4m to expand a trial program for Wi-Fi on certain state commuter lines to all 258 coaches. The program’s formal launch is Wednesday. The annual cost is estimated at $300,000, but the authority didn’t try to estimate savings or other expenses involved in shifting people from cars to trains as a result of the service.
Skyhook says 300 iPhone apps access location: Location guru Brady Forrest breaks down the data about how many iPhone applications are aware of their surroundings. No numbers here about the number of queries per day Skyhook is handling from iPhones, which we would all love to know, but is certainly proprietary to their deal with Apple. Forrest doesn’t mention another interesting sidenote: Skyhook corrects their database of Wi-Fi locations with every query sent by an iPhone, which as a highly mobile device, must have a dramatic effect on extending and enhancing their routine truck-based scanning.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:34 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
ElcomSoft accelerates cracking WPA/WPA2 keys: The Russian firm offers what it delicately terms password recovery software. They’ve now paired their WPA/WPA2 key crackin with the power of graphic processing units (GPUs), the brains that drive video cards, and which can carry out certain kinds of calculations vastly faster than CPUs, a computer’s main processor. (Apple plans to tap GPUs for Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6, due out next year.)
ElcomSoft claims a 100fold increase in the ability to brute force extract a WPA or WPA2 key. Further, their software can be used in a distributed fashion. A network of computers with fast graphics cards could provide the equivalent of multiple supercomputers’ worth of focused cracking power.
Short WPA/WPA2 passphrases (which are hashed into keys) have long been known to be at risk to cracking and dictionary attacks. Five years ago, Robert Moskowitz let me publish his paper on weak passphrase choice, which showed how words in dictionaries used for passphrases could be broken if the phrase was overall less than 20 characters. Passphrases are hashed using a formula that includes the SSID (network name). Crackers have precompiled large dictionaries that use common SSIDs.
ElcomSoft uses brute force, which require untold billions of attempts. Shorter keys, even with high degrees of entropy, could fall very fast.
But longer keys increase the difficulty of cracking inordinately. An 8-character WPA/WPA2 passphrase might fall in hours or even minutes, but a 9-character key would take some factor longer; a 16-character key might still need thousands of years to crack even with government-grade effort.
WPA/WPA2 Enterprise shouldn’t suffer from this weakness, because these systems generate long keys that aren’t derived from passphrases.
ElcomSoft’s Distributed Password Recovery starts at $599 for up to 20 clients, and scales to 10,000 clients.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 5:53 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Security | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Mozilla releases early version of geolocator technology: Geode, an add-on for Firefox 3.0 from Mozilla Labs, uses Skyhook Wireless’s Wi-Fi positioning system to provide approximate coordinates for your current location. A more full-blown geolocation service will be built into Firefox 3.1, allowing choice among providers, use of GPS, and other extensions. Firefox 3.0 with this add-on supports a Web site querying a user’s location; the browser prompts the surfer for whether they want to reveal this and at what granularity (exact, neighborhood, or city). Mozilla is supporting the W3C Geolocation spec in both this add-on and the full 3.1 implementation.
Starbucks page gone missing from Apple, Engadget discovers: Apple’s had a page up about its partnership with Starbucks, one that’s stalled in expansion the last year, where the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store is available via iPhones, iPod touch players, and laptops. I speculated back in February that the move from T-Mobile to AT&T for Starbucks signaled a closer partnership with Apple, but that hasn’t materialized yet. (The full iTunes Store requires a laptop with a “real” Wi-Fi connection via AT&T or T-Mobile, depending on which firm operates the store, instead of the limited free Wi-Fi used for the music-only iTunes subset.)
American Airlines joins the in-flight filtering club: Passengers aren’t viewing inappropriate content, apparently, but the possibility of it—and perhaps flight attendants being able to use that to their advantage in negotiations—appear to be leading to filtering. Delta also said recently that they would provide minimal filtering when they launched trials. Knowing Virgin, they’ll add 18-plus seating sections where pornography is encouraged.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:49 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
A few days ago, I wrote that CSIRO had come out on top in an appeal by Buffalo of a district court decision: CSIRO, the Australian technology agent, has a broad patent that appears to cover aspects of OFDM, a technique for improving throughput in multi-path (reflective) signal environments. OFDM is used in 802.11a, g, and n, as well as in WiMax, and other wireless technologies. CSIRO has Cisco signed as a licensee, as Cisco bought an Australian firm a few years ago (this covers Linksys as well), but other makers are fighting. Buffalo lost a district court decision and has an injunction preventing the import of Wi-Fi gear, which has likely cost them tens of millions of dollars. They’re a leading seller in their founding country of Japan.
A few weeks ago, I picked up an item from ZDnet’s Australian branch stating that CSIRO had won an appeal.
It appears that’s inaccurate. While extremely technical in only a way that a court decision about patents can be, Buffalo won the appeal on a very narrow argument about the obviousness of the combination of two IEEE papers related to the CSIRO patent. Another issue, about how the original patent application covered 10 GHz and higher but was amended to covers the entire range of radio frequencies, appears to be set aside. Buffalo issued a press release.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:21 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Legal | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Delta has mid-air reversal on filtering Web content: Delta said it wouldn’t filter its in-flight Internet system (not yet launched), but now says it will have a short list of inappropriate sites that no one would disagree were inappropriate. That might work. While filtering is impossible to enforce on a broad scale, choosing a small list of sites the airline feels are off limits, that might balance some basic interests.
Wi-Fi attraction for students: Nearly half of students surveyed would prefer Wi-Fi over beer at school. Three-quarters think Wi-Fi makes helps them get better grades. Take that, Lakehead University!
MetroFi antennas won’t fall like autumn leaves: Portland, Ore., must wait until April 2009 to declare MetroFi’s Wi-Fi nodes abandoned and take them down. While MetroFi gave the city a deposit, it will cost the Oregon metropolis $36,000 of its own cash to remove them, although the city’s wireless go-to guy says they’ll try to recover cash from MetroFi. To my knowledge, MetroFi has not filed for bankruptcy, even though the company no longer has working phone lines and hasn’t returned comments.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:37 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The credit-card industry has finally revised rules to make WEP persona non grata: The PCI Security Standards Council was founded by Amex, Discover, JCB, Visa, and MasterCard, and each organization agreed to adopt the standards that the group decides on. The latest update of the Data Security Standard (DSS), drafted early this year, was adopted and released yesterday, and profoundly alters Wi-Fi security practices for any company that accepts any of major credit card. A summary can be downloaded under PCI DSS Summary of Changes.
The new rules prohibit the use of the highly broken WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) standard as part of any credit-card processing—such as from a store terminal to a server—after 30-June-2010, and prohibit any new system from being installed that uses WEP after 31-March-2009. In practice, WEP has remained in relatively wide use among retailers as of last year because many individual and chain stores continue to use ancient point-of-sale gear. The supplier side changed slowly, too, with WEP still included as a standard feature long after WPA was widely available starting in 2004 in business and consumer Wi-Fi gear and computers. The use of WEP is what led to the TJ Maxx parent company network invasion.
The DSS sets both security and audit standards: Merchants must conform to the document’s guidelines, and if examined by their merchant card issuer, must be found to conform. If not, they could have the ability to process cards turned off, which makes it hard to be a retailer of any kind.
An analysis of the changes in SearchSecurity states that 802.1X as being required, but I believe that may have been a typo. The SearchSecurity article notes that “802.1x” and “802.11x” are cited as examples of industry best practices in the summary document. However, in both the summary and full version of the DSS, I see “802.11i” listed, which is a generic way to refer to WPA2 with TKIP and AES keys.
This would seem to indicate that the DSS would allow the use of WPA and WPA2 Personal, as is noted in Section 2.1.1. That same section, however, recommends the use of AES, which is only available in WPA2 compliant hardware. There doesn’t seem to be any mention of 802.1X or WPA/WPA2 Enterprise elsewhere in the document or its summary.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:27 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Security | Comments (0)
Philadelphia network has 100,000 monthly sessions: NAC, which took over Phila.’s network from EarthLink, has assumed full control at the end of a 3-month transition period, Wi-Fi Planet reports. The company said that sessions average 4 hours. The new owners are looking to entice Phila. to have them build a wireless public-safety network and offer business services as well. While NAC’s head Derek Pew say that EarthLink didn’t focus on “municipal and commercial usage,” I’d argue that the statement is half right: EarthLink’s plan was to offer such service, and their networks were built with that in mind; they just didn’t get enough traction, such as a complete and well-functioning network, that would have allowed them to take the next step. NAC estimates a full best-effort Wi-Fi network will be finished in 12 to 18 months.
Cablevision announces Wi-Fi executives: I normally don’t cover routine press releases that note that so-and-so has joined or left a certain company. But with Craig Plunkett, that’s different. Craig has been doggedly building and running Wi-Fi networks in Long Island, Fire Island, and elsewhere in New York for several years, and co-developed the Wi-Fi on wheels system Wi-RAN. He’s joining Cablevision, the folks with a $300m budget to build outdoor network for their cable data customers, as the VP of Wireless Market Development. Cablevision also snagged Tim Farrell (VP, Wireless Product Development), who had a similar role at Boingo Wireless. Craig and I have corresponded an enormous amount over the years, and he’s the best person who could hired for this position, given his experience, especially specific to Long Island.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:07 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (0)
Devicescape has gone legit on the iPhone, iPod touch: I was tired of entering hotspot passwords 15 months ago, a few days after I bought the first-generation (2.5G) iPhone. I’ve been waiting ever since for Devicescape to bring their Wi-Fi connection software to the iPhone, even at one point jailbreaking my iPhone—rendering it able to install any software, not just that approved by Apple—in order to use an early package they’d developed.
Devicescape has finally wended its way through Apple’s tortuous application release process for the App Store, and its Easy Wi-Fi program can be yours for $1.99. (The application release date is 13-Aug-2008, but the press release about its availability showed up in my mailbox last night.)
I purchased Easy Wi-Fi, entered my Boingo account, cleaned up some personal passwords, and tried it out. Works like a charm. I’m about to head out on a trip (posting will be light, for those paying attention), and not having to enter passwords in airports will be a great pleasure.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:36 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Hot Spot | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Southwest Airlines will try out Row 44’s satellite-backed Internet service on one plane this year: The discount carrier plans to equip one 737-700 with Row 44’s Ku-band satellite Internet service by the end of the year for a 2-to-3 month trial. In first quarter 2009, FlightGlobal reports, other 737-700s will be added, and a variety of flight durations will be tested.
Row 44 continues to claim what seems to me to be an impossibly high speed: here, Southwest is saying 31 Mbps downstream. I will believe this when I see it. Ku-band transponders are capable of very high speed data transmissions, but I’m not convinced that this rate is sustainable to each plane and represents actual net throughput. We’ll see. (The only other speed I’ve heard for Ku-band was 12 Mbps from Panasonic Avionics, when they were considering firing back up a network similar to Connexion by Boeing.)
Southwest plans to filter. Yeah, let me know how that works out for you guys.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:27 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Air Travel | Comments (0)
Atheros has released an open-source version of the driver software that talks directly to its chips: The company has long maintained that it required a closed HAL (hardware abstraction layer) to prevent rogue developers from changing settings in its Wi-Fi chips that would cause the chips to perform activities that were against its interest. For instance, it’s a/b/g chips can use the 4.9 GHz band, which is illegal in the U.S. and many other countries, but allowed in Japan.
Those objections must have been overcome, as the firm is providing a full, ISC-licensed free software code base for their HAL for 802.11a/b/g chipsets. This should allow the ath5k project to create a fully Linux kernel integrated driver for Atheros chips with no reverse engineering or licensing issues.
This opening up of the HAL allows laptops and handhelds running versions of Linux to have more effective use of the Wi-Fi adapters built in or that can be added on. Note that Atheros hasn’t opened up its 802.11n chips yet.
This HAL isn’t the same as the one used by the Madwifi project, headed for several years by Sam Leffler. Leffler was able to start Madwifi up by signing an agreement with Atheros that let him write a binary HAL that could be released alongside open-source or free drivers. Leffler reiterated a few days ago on a mailing list that his HAL still wasn’t available for release. And, at this point, the Madwifi project appears to be deferring to the ath5k folks. (Confusingly, information about ath5k is all noted at and accessed via links on the Madwifi site, but it’s a separate project.) [news via Thomas Gee, Canard WiFi]
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:16 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Chips, Hardware | Comments (0)
Broadcom adds Skyhook positioning to portfolio: Broadcom already has a variety of tools for allowing its chips to determine position quickly, including a ground-based system that tracks GPS satellite positions and uses this to feed out data over cell and other networks to provide assisted GPS, where a GPS receiver doesn’t have to find satellites, just lock onto signals where it’s told the satellites are located. Adding Skyhook means that Wi-Fi can be used as another variable in quickly providing a fix on coordinates, especially in locales where GPS signals penetrate weakly, such as urban canyons.
The Minneapolis Wi-Fi provider uses point-to-point wireless for high-rise: Steve Alexander of the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune reports that residents of one 34-story building in his paper’s city will have the option for 20 Mbps service from USI—but not precisely wireless. The company is running an 800 Mbps point-to-point connection to the building, and then distributing through short-run DSL, a typical technique for apartment and other spread-out or high-rise buildings. Because they can leverage their existing buildout while not paying Qwest or others for rental of wires or cables, 20 Mbps will run residents $50/mo, versus Qwest’s fiber-backed $105/mo charge. Comcast charges $53 for 8 Mbps with 16 Mbps bursts or $153 for 50 Mbps in that city. USI is experimenting. With 300 residents, they’d likely need need 30 at that speed to pay their costs. Providing Wi-Fi service to buildings above a few stories has long been a challenge for city-wide Wi-Fi efforts, and possibly one reason why some early efforts fell short.
GSM Association creates laptop brand for mobile broadband: The GSMA will offer a Mobile Broadband sticker for laptops that includes cell chips and software that allow an immediate network connection. Sixteen firms have signed on, including Dell, Lenovo, Qualcomm, and Microsoft. I’ve been of the mind for some time that buying a laptop with a cellular modem built in is a waste of money, as you are typically committed to that vendor and technology for the life of the laptop, even if speeds improve or you don’t like the service. Buying a USB dongle, ExpressCard, or PC Card allows greater portability of the service among computers, and more flexibility for upgrade. Further, with a given cell carrier, you can get a subsidized adapter; despite how they try to hide it in pricing, a laptop with a cell modem essentially costs the same as the laptop without plus the full multi-hundred-dollar true cost of the modem.
GigaOm on bandwidth caps: A must-read on how carriers and service providers are making a poor choice and risking alienating their customers in mass numbers by imposing short-sighted caps on bandwidth use that affect far from the heaviest users of these networks. “Today, it targets heavy users, while tomorrow it will affect all users,” concludes the paper, written by Muayyad Al-Chalabi, an analyst and former Bell Labs researcher.
Rice University, HP work on dead zone prediction: Researchers have determined that they can make a small number of measurements and predict real-world performance of outdoor Wi-Fi to a decent degree. I’ve read the paper, and while it’s awfully technical, there are valuable techniques likely to be incorporated into future planning and simulation products.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 12:04 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (0)
Go? No: Go Networks, a metro-scale Wi-Fi equipment maker acquired in Jan. 2007 by NextWave, is being shut down. Go announced their technology on 3-April-2006 at the height of interest in the municipal Wi-Fi market, at which point they thought their beamforming, MIMO gear would take hold. They believed they could provide superior coverage at far lower cost, especially when factoring in the need for fewer utility poles. As far as I can tell, they never had a huge win, and then the easy market evaporated.
It’s amazing to me that the four independent metro-scale firms have survived this long; all are privately held, and so we know only what’s publicly announced about their well being. BelAir has scored the Minneapolis and Cablevision networks, and thus perhaps has its future assured. Tropos appears to have developed alternative markets. For Strix and SkyPilot, the future must be uncertain, although I must stress that I have no particular knowledge of either companies’ financial or sales situation. SkyPilot’s only big win was with MetroFi, which is now gone missing; Strix has some international deployments that are perhaps what drives the firm, but domestically they were paired with now-dead Kite.
Along those lines, Riverside’s network deployment has stalled, but is resuming buildout: AT&T had partnered with MetroFi to build Riverside, Calif.’s metro-scale network, and it’s taken a while to build. The article doesn’t mention MetroFi, but says “the original contractor has gone outt of business,” and AT&T has hired a new firm. The network should be largely complete by the end of 2008. AT&T said that they had 17,600 unique sessions (not users) in August.
Illinois bus system adds Wi-Fi on express buses: The Madison Country Transit system put Internet service on 40 express buses. Service is free, but filtered.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 11:12 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Metro-Scale Networks, Municipal | Comments (0)
This is a study I’ve been waiting for since the University of Essex research was released last year: New research using MRIs from the University of Regensburg, Germany, indicates that electrosensitives are suffering both cognitive and neurobiological reactions—but not to the presence or absence of electromagnetic signals that these sufferers believe are causing their symptoms. (The link is to an Economist summary; the abstract is all I can find online so far of the actual study.)
Back on 25-July-2007, I wrote about the cross-disciplinary, tightly controlled study of electrosensitivity carried out by an Essex (UK) team with government and industry funding. The study was yet another in dozens that showed that self-identified electrosensitive sufferers performed no better at chance in determining whether a signal was present or absent. The control group did no better than chance, either.
But the revelation that, with appropriate biological monitoring, the electrosensitive group experienced severe and measurable symptoms whether or not a signal was present indicated to me that there was a correlation problem in how electrosensitives view themselves.
Currently, these sufferers are either coddled by those who pander to them (typically to sell them stuff) or by those that are interested in faux science who need an audience for their crackpottery; a worldview in which controlled repeatable peer-evaluated tests aren’t part of the picture. Conversely, they’re also ridiculed by people who dismiss their symptoms as fake or overblown.
The Regensburg study would say to me that electrosensitives need to be renamed: they’re sensitive to something; it may even be psychosomatic; but the effects are profound, real, measurable, and (again shown in this study) not tied to whether a signal believed to cause harm is present. The abstract concludes: “These results demonstrate significant cognitive and neurobiological alterations pointing to a higher genuine individual vulnerability of electromagnetic hypersensitive patients.” But not vulnerable to EMF, the study found. (60% of suffers but only 40% of the control group had a reaction when “sham” EMF was used.)
I have long argued that the massive amount of “electrosmog” (to use the panderers’ term) means that those who claims electrosensitivity would be incapable of living in an urban area. Not just Wi-Fi, cellular, and cordless phones, but vastly many more kinds of focused EMF transmissions are constantly bombarding them. They’d be in constant agony if not in the remote wilderness. These studies seem to reinforce the fact that there is a disease, perhaps self-caused and perhaps not, that needs to be studied and treated separately from EMF—much like tinnitus.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 11:11 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Health | Comments (0)
Trapeze Networks usually announces enterprise products and deployments, but not so with today’s Chinese network rollout: Partnered with Commnet in China, the two firms will deploy 3,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in Hangzhou, a city of 6.5m. But rather than focus on a ubiuqitous network, it’s clear from what’s not stated in the press release that this is an efficient deployment of service where it’s needed.
The city has six urban districts that total 260 sq mi and nearly 2m people’ 3,000 nodes couldn’t possibly offer total coverage even if just those areas (rather than “eight metropolitan districts”) were what was to be covered. But that’s not really what’s needed.
The network will be built over the next 15 months.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:47 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Metro-Scale Networks, Municipal | Comments (0)
In-flight call providers form lobbying group to dissuade formal ban on in-flight calling: FlightGlobal reports that OnAir and Aeromobile have formed the Passenger Communications Coalition—Peacekeeper missiles, anyone?—to prevent the Hang-Up Act that would provide a formal, instead of regulatory and procedural ban on placing phone calls in flight. OnAir’s CEO makes the specious remark that this would be “putting the US behind the rest of the world.”
Hardly. Americans aren’t used to paying $2.50 per minute in the air that used to be a typical ground roaming rate until EU regulators pushed hard. US flyers would (surveys show) prefer the broadband that American, Delta, and Virgin are in various stages of commitment to.
In any case, how would having a total ban on in-flight talking that affected all over-US flights make us less competitive? Oh, yeah, we’d miss that one call that doomed our business while our European competitor was chatting away.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:21 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Air Travel | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Google plays bridge with wireless contracts in patent: Bidding on contracts isn’t just for companies answering proposals or contract bridge players. Google has filed for a patent in which a wireless device could put its need for a connection out for automated and instant bid among operators with service operating in proximity. The cell phone owner or even laptop Wi-Fi user could review bids and accept whaich they prefer. It’s an interesting idea, as even without ubiquity, there’s plenty of overlap. In parts of Seattle by 2010, there could be several wireless services for voice and high-speed data—there are already four (the 3G carriers plus Clearwire).
BT OpenZone to sever The Cloud roaming: OpenZone customers will lose access on 2-Oct-2008 to the thousands of locations in The Cloud’s network. This reduces OpenZone to 3,000 hotspots in the UK. The Cloud partners with many other hotspot operators.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:17 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (0)
The Spykee is a $300 Wi-Fi Skype robot: Lots of strange coolness here. I don’t know how I missed hearing about this before, but apparently an actual customer got his hands on the thing and recorded a video. It’s cute. You can access its video through control software or a remote Skype video connection. It’s got a speaker and microphone, and can be used for VoIP calls. The control software allows it to move around, play sound effects, and produce music. Like the computer in Superman III (or a Roomba), it craves power, and knows to return to its charger.
The name reveals some of its creepy appeal: Spykee = Spy Camera. I suppose the nanny you’re trying to make sure isn’t shaking your baby might be freaked out when it suddenly starts emitting Star Wars music, or such like. Made by Meccano under the Erector brand, its control software is Mac and Windows compatible.
I, for one, welcome our new Spykee overlords—on 15-Oct-2008 when it starts to ship generally.
Silicon Valley project finally gets underway: It’s a still a pilot, small, with no promised outcome. And after all this time, a switch of partners, and new parameters, they’ve still mounted just 20 of 28 access points.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:13 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Trade mag Flightglobal gets the full story on Qantas’ in-flight calling, texting, and Internet plans: A few days ago, it seemed to come out that Qantas had dropped Aeromobile (its test partner last year) for OnAir, and was moving to Internet service on A380s instead of in-flight cell calling and texting. Flightglobal clears the air, and reveals that Qantas will offer all of the above. (I wrote about this in “Sorry, Qantas, No Unfettered Broadband.”)
OnAir was chosen for A380 service, with the initial rollout—especially for international flights—using the 64 Kbps Inmarsat satellite offering, which is too paltry for anything but limited text communication. When the recently launched Pacific satellite is active—which may take up to a year—OnAir and Qantas can upgrade to the luxurious nearly 500 Kbps per channel service.
The head of OnAir is pushing some mighty serious horsehockey, however, when he says as quoted by Flightglobal that he “is confident that once the full service is up and running, passengers will be able to access the Internet ‘in exactly the same way as they can on the ground.’” That may be the case in terms of access, but not in terms of cost. The cost will be enormously high unless OnAir has a magic deal with Inmarsat that’s previously undisclosed. I suspect a per MB charge will be in effect that will discourage much use. Calls and texting could be carried over the same system, of course.
Qantas plans to continue to work with Aeromobile for domestic service, with calls and texting available, on their Boeing 767-300s and Airbus A330-200s, Flightglobal reports. Aeromobile has plans to launch a full Internet service later this year using cached and live content. [link via Fabio Zambelli]
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 4:01 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Air Travel | Comments (0)
Those dang poles add $1m to Wi-Fi network expense: US Internet Wireless couldn’t install service in a large remaining area of Minneapolis because the decorative utility poles in the upscale neighborhoods—paid through homeowner assessments—lack the strength to hold the Wi-Fi nodes. Minneapolis has opted to pick up the tab for replacing the 145 poles and putting in temporary wood poles to complete the network—a cool $1m. While unfortunate for the overall city cost savings, it doesn’t seem out of line for which entity has the responsibility.
Without replacing these poles, the city would be unable to use the municipal services from which it still plans to save $3.5m over the 10-year contract life, and thus it would be pennywise and pound foolish to leave the status quo.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:32 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Metro-Scale Networks, Municipal | Comments (0)
London mayor proposes Wi-Fi city, no fees: No details, naturally, just an optimistic statement. Boris, can I introduce you to Gavin?
First Android phone revealed by T-Mobile, Google: The first smartphone based on the Google-sponsored, Open Handset Alliance-backed Android platform was announced by T-Mobile today. The G1 will cost $180 in the U.S., has a slide-out keyboard, and has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS built in. The phone should start shipping 22-Oct-2008 in the U.S. and November in the UK. The monthly American fee will be $25 to $35 for data on top of a two-year voice plan commitment.
Soldiers at Joint Base Balad get Wi-Fi network: 20,000 American soldiers at this base in Iraq can now use a secure mesh Wi-Fi network for personal access. The description of how the network can self-heal is perhaps particularly apt in a country torn by insurgency.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 11:52 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (0)