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« September 2004 | Main | November 2004 »
The Blog Business Summit will take place in January 2005, focusing on how to use Web logs in, for, and around business: I mention this Jan. 24-25 event partly because Wi-Fi Networking News is a business blog of sorts—we’re advertising supported through relationships with Jiwire and Google AdSense—and because I’ll be speaking at the event. I’ll talk on topics that include building a successful and profitable content blog.
Posted by Glennf at 4:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Carol Ellison tells a good story about the travails of trying to work at hotspots: Her story is familiar, but she tells it well. She’s trying for a little productivity—paying nothing for it in one case, and using a fee-based service in the other. She can read the tea leaves—or coffee grounds—by watching her fellow laptop users frustration levels rise, or when they pack up and leave.
Still, she does manage to eke a few productive hours out of a few more of trying—and that might be more than any of us pull off in an office. For irony, she buys the television show The Office on DVD.
Posted by Glennf at 2:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hawking will release a more directional Wi-Fi detector: It’s big, it’s $35, and it looks like a Star Trek communicator (old style), but it’s designed to offer more directionality and differentiate between Wi-Fi and other 2.4 GHz transmissions. However, it’s not really much of an advance (if at all) over the Chrysalis WiFi Seeker, which is small, slightly less expensive, differentiates Wi-Fi from other electromagnetic radiation, and is pretty directional.
What I’m waiting for (and Gizmodo is, too) is a detector with a small LCD that scrolls through the open and closed SSIDs found in the neighborhood. We want a WiFi Sniffer—a WiFi Wardriver on a keychain. [link via Gizmodo]
Update: Okay, Julio Ojeda-Zapata is spookily ahead of the curve, in this piece datelined tomorrow. It’s almost Hallowe’en, so a message from beyond (tomorrow at least) seems appropriate.
Ojeda-Zapata writes about Canary Wireless’s Digital Hotspotter, a device that does, in fact, have an LCD screen. It’s $50, but it provides wardriving details: open or closed, SSID, encryption type. And signal strength. And multiple signals. The lucky so-and-so has been walking around with one of these units, which goes on sale “later this month”—but there isn’t much later this month, so perhaps in November.
Both Klaus Ernst and Ojeda-Zapata point out, too, that PDAs are excellent Wi-Fi sensors with the right hardware and software, tho’ a little pricier than a handheld dedicated unit.
Posted by Glennf at 9:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Pentagon City mall gets Wi-Fi, free for now: The Fashion Centre at Pentagon City is just one stop from the Pentagon’s Metro station and only a handful from the central areas of D.C. The mall’s operators will run Wi-Fi in common areas for free initially, and plan to charge $3.95 per hour up to $49.95 per month for access.
Mall-based Wi-Fi access is becoming increasingly common as malls compete with other “third places” (there’s work, home, and somewhere else) to draw in customers. If people start flocking to street-based shopping areas because it’s easier to do business there, the malls can suffer.
I’ve found in my research that mall operators typically do a horrific job of explaining whether Wi-Fi is available, where to use it, and what it costs. You’d think they might want to promote it on the Web site as much as in person.
A restaurant in Seattle states it best on their front facade. A banner reads in big type, “Free Wi-Fi is Here!” In tiny letters they add, “while dining.”
Posted by Glennf at 12:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
IPass announced plans to acquire Mobile Automation, a company that helps IT departments manage and secure remote devices: IPass plans to integrate Mobile Automation’s technology with its own policy enforcement software plus technology acquired along with Safe3w. IPass hopes the result will let IT departments secure and protect remote devices.
Posted by nancyg at 11:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
At the cellular telecom conference, Craig McCaw said he’s targeting international locations for broadband wireless and plans to offer voice over broadband wireless: NextNet, McCaw’s equipment vendor, is already selling equipment in locations such as the Ivory Coast, Bangladesh, and remote areas of Canada. McCaw said that he’s looking closely at VoIP and said there’s “no question” that he plans to offer some sort of VoIP service to customers using services from Clearwire, his operator company. Clearwire currently has a network in Jacksonville, Fla., with plans to offer services in 20 cities in the U.S. and Mexico by the end of 2005.
Posted by nancyg at 11:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A partnership between the city of Rio Rancho, New Mexico and private companies will result in a citywide wireless network: The network will use access points from Meru, wireless backhaul from Proxim, and billing and operational support from LogiSense. A 25-year agreement allows Azulstar Networks, the service provider, to install network equipment on utility poles, buildings, and other city infrastructure. Intel, which has a lab in Rio Rancho, is also offering access point locations and support.
This arrangement may prove to be the ideal relationship between private companies and cities. The city is involved in the project as far as supporting it and offering access point locations. But it doesn’t appear to be using taxpayer money to fund it. Funding comes from private investors. Yet, residents will benefit from the network. Subscriptions start at $19.95 a month for 256 Kbps service, a comparable speed to DSL yet less expensive. The network will also offer unlimited voice over Wi-Fi service for $24.95 for calls anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. Look out local telco, real competition may be at your doorstep.
The network is expected to cover 103 square miles and be operational by March.
Posted by nancyg at 9:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cingular’s acquisition of AT&T Wireless approved: There’s ton of analysis about the voice side, but less so on the data part. Cingular was starting to roll out EDGE (100 Kbps or so real world) in 2002, but obviously slowed way down. AT&T Wireless now has a national profile of EDGE service, instantly available to Cingular, despite some mandated sell-offs of spectrum licenses for merger approval.
AT&T Wireless has offered awfully expensive Wi-Fi in a few select locales, such as the Denver and Philadelphia airports, and six Northeast Corridor Amtrak train stations (Baltimore onward north). Cingular has no Wi-Fi plan to date, but SBC—Cingular’s majority shareholder—has the best Wi-Fi hotspot plan. T-Mobile’s footprint is better, but SBC is pursuing DSL, cell, VoIP, and hotspot synergy.
SBC said recently they expect in 2006 to offer Cingular cell phones that can opportunistically use Wi-Fi networks to carry voice traffic as needed. With better national coverage, the largest cell customer base, and a solid plan, Cingular and SBC could become dominant in several markets all at once.
All by offering what people want like rollover minutes and unlimited Wi-Fi for $1.99 per month. What a concept.
Posted by Glennf at 5:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Boingo users can now access 45 airports, hotels, and convention centers in France: The locations include the two big airports in Paris and the airport in Nice. For many years the major annual cellular telecom trade show in Europe has been held in Cannes and attendees arriving by air land in Nice. Boingo users who visit the trade show will likely find Internet access at the airport useful, unless they prefer to use their cellular connections.
Boingo also recently signed agreements with KPN HotSpots so users can access 300 hotspots in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Boingo now has 5,600 locations in Europe and 11,000 total.
Posted by nancyg at 10:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
After a little testing, comments are back up: We’ve been testing whether we could allow comments once again at Wi-Fi Networking News without being overwhelmed by comment spam or other problems. It looks like the answer is yes. We’ve removed the limitation that you can only post with a TypeKey account. It’s easier to comment if you have a free TypeKey account, but you can post without one.
Posted by Glennf at 9:35 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Intel installed a Wi-Fi network covering a Panda reserve in China: No, researchers aren’t teaching Pandas to use computers. The network is used by researchers who can take laptops into the reserve and record data from there. Otherwise, researchers kept records on paper, which made looking up records difficult.
Posted by nancyg at 9:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Public and university libraries around the country increasingly offer free Wi-Fi as a way to serve or bring in patrons—but patrons only, please: Based on some research I conducted recently for a magazine article—link to follow in a few weeks—I’ve discovered that the widely cited availability of “free Wi-Fi” in public and university libraries should be called “patron Wi-Fi.” In the majority of libraries I checked around the U.S., using Wi-Fi required a library card (municipal/public) or a student ID (university/academic). In some cases, a Wi-Fi card had to be registered; this is mostly the case at universities.
See Bill Drew’s list of Wi-Fi libraries for the details on which libraries are restricted and which are not. And help him continue to improve his excellent list by sending new entries and corrections as policies change at your local library.
I don’t blame the libraries for trying to best serve only their target population, but it would seem like there should be a way to allow visitors to have access without compromising the service.
I have often thought that free and for-fee locations could offer a hybrid. For free you can retrieve email (but not send it possibly); use, say, up to 128 Kbps of the local connection, and have access for maybe 30 to 60 minutes with your particular MAC address. For a fee (or as part of a purchase), you can open a VPN tunnel, use SSH, have full access to the full bandwidth, and so forth.
Libraries could offer a similar service. Free for residents, and a small fee—possibly a confederacy of libraries with a roaming plan?—for visitors. Given that many libraries are already locked down with a login system, it doesn’t seem a big stretch to add scratch-off cards or other fee-collection systems to offset the costs.
But we’ll see. It’s possible that totally free and open Wi-Fi networks, like that at the downtown central branch of The Seattle Public Library and across several of the Los Angeles Public Library branches, might rule the day.
Update: Tor Godo of Sesame Networks writes that their company’s product is designed particularly for offering guests access in a secure and controlled manner. Although their focus is primarily on corporate guest access, Godo emailed that they are in active discussions with libraries trying to strike this balance. They recently sponsored free Wi-Fi at Access 2004, an information sciences conference held this year in Halifax.
Jessamyn West files this observation about library-Fi, too, in which she talks about the costs of authentication, and why libraries might consider bypassing those costs altogether.
Posted by Glennf at 1:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Airespace joined other wireless LAN platform providers in introducing a solution aimed at medium-sized offices: The Airespace 3500 is a wireless LAN switch that can support as many as six access points and offers the same features as Airespace’s larger switches. The new product allows Airespace to target two new sets of customers: the large enterprises that have smaller remote offices as well as medium-sized organizations, said Jeff Aaron, a spokesman for Airespace.
Airespace also offers an access point designed for remote offices that might require just one or two access points. The access point communicates over the wide area network with the remote wireless LAN switch to be centrally managed.
The Airespace 3500 can stand alone or can communicate over the wide area network with a centralized Airespace switch at headquarters. System administrators using the switch can assign bandwidth allocations per individual users. For example, an administrator might want to ensure that executives or voice handset users receive a certain level of bandwidth. Or, an administrator could ensure that employees can access 80 percent of the network, reserving 20 percent for visitors. Airespace is in the process of receiving certification for Wi-Fi Multimedia, the interim 802.11e quality of service standard as defined by the Wi-Fi Alliance.
Airespace has added RF attack signatures so the system monitors for common RF attacks. Airespace APs act as monitors, searching for such attacks or for rogue devices.
Airespace has also added reporting tools that allow users or partners to track bandwidth utilization, client count, AP utilization and other parameters. The capability enables service level agreement enforcement as well as return on investment analysis. “Customers have implemented networks for a couple of years now and they’re looking to have specifics in network utilization to create an ROI model to justify the capital expenditure,” said Aaron.
Airespace also announced that it supports Internet Protocol version 6. The support may be important for some government agencies and certain international markets, said Aaron. “It future-proofs our wireless LAN so as environments move toward that we’re ready to support it,” he said.
Posted by nancyg at 9:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Network World tested 23 different wireless products in an effort to find out if it was possible to deploy a secure wireless LAN: It appears that there’s no single vendor or solution that wins a prize for offering the most secure option. But this comprehensive piece spells out how the testers tested the products and which solutions were successful.
Posted by nancyg at 8:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Kevin Werbach discusses his expectations for municipal Wi-Fi: He envisions cities contributing their physical infrastructure such as light poles as well as funding to support coverage in areas where the private companies might not get a return on their investments. Private companies would do the rest. It sounds like Werbach is suggesting that the municipal network wouldn’t be free but would be cheaper than alternative access methods. The networks would also be used by city workers to do their jobs.
There are a couple problems about this discussion over municipal Wi-Fi that aren’t usually addressed. One is that while it’s a great idea for cities to sponsor coverage in low-income areas, the people who live there will need computers to get on the Internet. If those residents currently go to the library or the public school to use a computer, it doesn’t make much sense to cover the whole neighborhood with Wi-Fi. San Francisco’s mayor said that no resident should be without a computer, but his wording doesn’t necessarily suggest that he’s going to try to ensure that every resident has one.
Also, I suspect that if these municipal networks really happen in a significant way, the cellular operators will start raising a stink. Werbach describes competition between the high-cost and reliable 3G networks and the cheaper and less reliable municipal-sponsored Wi-Fi networks. Given the price that the cellular operators have spent to build their networks and to license spectrum from the government, I should think they’d raise hell over a city-sponsored competitor.
Posted by nancyg at 8:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Lo, but how the times are changed: instead of leaping headlong into a line of business that isn’t part of their existing competence, power utilities are hesitant to become broadband providers: What th’!? It’s a new age, that’s all I know. This article quotes a number of power utilities that are not very interested in becoming ISPs. NStar Electric, a Mass. utility, lost $200 million in an RCN investment, for instance.
Regulators want competition through this back-door method, however, which is why they approved it. It’s easier to open a new modality than to, for instance, require reasonable wholesale prices and enforce the rules to allow competitive DSL providers, no?
It’s clear that if BPL will happen in the short-run, ISPs like Earthlink will need to find utility partners who want to cope with infrastructure not users.
Posted by Glennf at 2:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
We check in with our sophisticated colleagues to the north at Mobitus, who have pursued voice over IP over wireless for average folks and businesspeople: Mobitus is tightly allied with FatPort, a veteran hotspot operator in Canada which builds hotspots and platforms. Mobitus focuses on mobile VoIP, which means that Wi-Fi has to be a component.
The service offering has a Vonage-like list of services without the unlimited use option. But what’s interesting is how they’ve pursued the Wi-Fi angle in a way that Boingo is just starting to look into with Vonage.
In the Boingo/Vonage deal, callers have to be subscribers to both services. With Mobitus/FatPort, Mobitus users can employ FatPort hotspots without a FatPort subscription. They’ll sell you a Zyxel VoWLAN phone preset to automatically log on to FatPort locations—as I’ve said before, authentication to for-fee hotspots is a key element in making VoWoHS (Voice over Wi-Fi over Hotspot?) work. The phone also works at open APs, including one’s home network; or APs protected with WEP but not WPA at this time.
Mobitus is charging a small premium at this point. There’s no setup or monthly charge, and you can pay from US$0.05 per minute on a pay-as-you-go option or as little as US$.03 with a 1,000 North American minute plan. This is in contrast to Vonage’s unlimited US$25 offering for North America, but Mobitus believes it has enough added value to charge for all used minutes.
This offering could be a platform, too, with Mobitus looking to create a method for other hot-spot operators to provide this service over their own networks. I imagine a roaming VoIP solution could be popular as well.
VoIP’s big selling point is cost, not ubiquity. VoIP replaces a wired phone line for now. To bridge the gap and make VoIP a roaming technology that competes with cell, service has to be available over a wide swath of where a user might travel. Could there be enough hotspots for someone to choose to roam with a Wi-Fi VoIP phone instead of a cell? Or could you supplement one with the other, carrying two phones (heaven forbid), allowing the VoIP phone to forward to the cell phone only when the VoIP phone isn’t active? It makes our head spin.
Posted by Glennf at 1:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sony Ericsson builds Wi-Fi and EDGE into a single card, the GC-89: This new card should be available for American EDGE networks, and offers the ability to switch (but notice no mention of seamless switching) between cell and Wi-Fi networks. The card will be available later this year, and cell carriers should have it by 2005, according to Macworld. The press release says there will be a Macintosh version of the card, but it’s probably the case that just a driver is needed.
Posted by Glennf at 1:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Clearwire, Craig McCaw’s broadband wireless company, got an investment from Intel Capital: The amount is undisclosed. Also, NextNet, the vendor that McCaw bought which supplies Clearwire’s network gear, said it would use Intel’s WiMax chips when they’re available.
Posted by nancyg at 10:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Researchers at Intel Research Berkeley are working on way for remote people in developing countries to use the Internet and email: End users in a village without an Internet connection would write an email and hit send but the requests to send would be bundled and saved. When the bus, equipped with an antenna, travels through town, its antenna picks up all of those requests and also drops off email or even requested Web sites. When the bus reaches a bigger town that has a connection to the Internet, it exchanges information there.
The application sounds exactly like one being used in Cambodia but with motorcycle mail delivery people. That solution has been commercialized by First Mile Solutions.
Posted by nancyg at 9:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Christian Sandvig, a University of Illinois professor, gets it right when he says that the push around the country for municipal Wi-Fi is going through a “messy period”: This Associated Press story is yet another piece looking at the municipal Wi-Fi issue but it does a good job of looking at it on a very high level. Because Wi-Fi isn’t the ideal technology to use for broad scale coverage and because commercial concerns may offer access in some areas, cities may ultimately build networks in areas visited by people who otherwise might not be able to afford to pay for Internet access. Philadelphia is building Wi-Fi in schools, targeting those that attract students that qualify for the school lunch program.
The story also includes a list of cities that have Wi-Fi covering at least 90 percent of the city.
In other municipal Wi-Fi news, the city of Newton, Mass., is considering building a Wi-Fi network throughout its 18 square miles. Residents would pay $10 a month for access.
Posted by nancyg at 9:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Airgo said today that its MIMO technology has been approved by governments for use around the globe: MIMO stands for multiple in multiple out and describes a technology that can boost the capacity and coverage area of wireless networks. The future 802.11n standard will be based on MIMO.
Airgo was able to receive global governmental approvals within six months, an unusually short amount of time, said Greg Raleigh, president and chief executive officer for Airgo. The approval process involves working with governmental regulatory bodies to explain how the technology works and then executing tests to ensure that the technology won’t interfere with other devices. Such approvals mean that products can be legally used in the countries that have approved them, but it is separate from any standardization or association certification process.
Belkin recently introduced commercial products using chips from Airgo. The vendor has become the center of some criticism for using the term “Pre-N” to describe the new products. Shortly after the introduction of the products, the Wi-Fi Alliance released a statement encouraging members not to use the term “IEEE 802.11n” in association with any certified product and threatened to repeal certification of products using the term if the product interferes with other certified products. The 802.11n standard isn’t expected to be ratified for another two years, according to the alliance.
However, the alliance certified Belkin’s new “Pre-N” product because it complies with 802.11b and 802.11g. The alliance won’t kick members out of the association for using the term and won’t withhold certification unless the product interferes with other certified products but it will try to use its influence to encourage members not to use such terms. “Our take on ‘pre-’ is it’s not good for the industry because it can confuse consumers,” said Brian Grimm, a spokesman for the Wi-Fi Alliance. “Confused consumers won’t buy.” He worries that customers will buy products that are labeled “pre-802.11n” from different vendors and expect them to interoperate. When they don’t, they’ll return the products.
Airgo doesn’t use the term “pre-802.11n” but doesn’t see any reason to be concerned with the use of the term. “We think it’s a fair marketing method,” said Raleigh. He notes that the use of MIMO is the only component of the 802.11n standard that is certain. “Belkin is very straightforward in how they market. They don’t say it’s 11n compatible,” he said. “I think it’s a real stretch to say it’s a misleading message.”
He suggests that the companies that haven’t yet released higher-speed products might be the ones saying that the 802.11n moniker is misleading. “It’s clear that consumers are willing to pay for higher reliability and the ability to connect to Wi-Fi throughout their house. That’s what this offers that other Wi-Fi doesn’t. That’s tough to compete with and has a lot of people stirred up,” he said.
But some experts are critical of vendors that use the “pre-” designation. “If you buy something that’s ‘pre-11n’ the assumption is that it’s 11n at some point. That at some point it can be upgraded. I think that’s misleading,” said Ken Dulaney, analyst at Gartner Research. Because the standard is several years from ratification, it’s unlikely that current products can easily be upgraded to comply with the final form of 802.11n.
Dulaney suggests that a company could use a wide variety of other marketing terms to describe a faster product, such as terms that include the number that describes the throughput speeds. “There are so many other marketing terms they could use, so why are they picking that? Clearly it’s because they want to use that term to mislead people,” he said.
Posted by nancyg at 9:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wireless ISP VeriLAN is offering free 56 Kbps Internet access throughout its coverage area in Portland: The idea is to attract dialup customers and once they get hooked, encourage them to upgrade to a paying service that offers higher speeds. VeriLAN’s prices are pretty close to landline fees but users will be able to get access anywhere in the network.
Posted by nancyg at 9:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wi-Lan introduced a platform designed to deliver wireless LAN access while users are traveling at high speeds: The platform, called Mobilis, could be used by transportation providers such as trains for applications such as hotspot access for passengers or video surveillance. The platform would use backhaul based on Wi-Lan radios that are based on 802.16e, the standard in development that will support mobile WiMax. Standard 802.11 would be used to distribute access to passengers or other users. Other such systems have been developed to deliver hotspot service on public transportation but they typically use cellular networks or satellite for backhaul. By comparison, Wi-Lan says its network could deliver 32 Mbps backhaul speeds.
Posted by nancyg at 2:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Chipmaker Fujitsu says that Qualcomm is working to delay the mobile WiMax standard: Fujitsu says that Qualcomm engineers that are working in the WiMax Forum are trying to shape the mobile WiMax standard so that it won’t threaten Qualcomm’s CDMA work. FierceWireless, a wireless daily newsletter, reports that Qualcomm was accused of a similar strategy with the development of Wi-Fi. The newsletter also reports that some industry insiders suggest that Intel is encouraging Fujitsu’s accusations in order to avoid a direct confrontation itself with Qualcomm.
Posted by nancyg at 11:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Add Redmond, Wash., Los Angeles, and San Francisco to the list of municipalities considering building citywide Wi-Fi networks: The Redmond City Council just approved a proposal to support wireless Internet. The mayor of L.A. created a panel that will create a report looking at the role that Wi-Fi can play in attracting business in L.A. and the role the city should play in making sure the access is available to residents. San Francisco’s mayor boldly pledged to make sure that every resident has access to free wireless Internet service. He also suggests that no resident should be without a computer.
Some of these pronouncements smack of politicians latching onto a buzzword in an attempt to show their support for the everyman. We’ve discussed here the potential issues with cities paying to build Wi-Fi networks in potential competition to commercial ventures. I’m curious to see if some of these studies end up reporting on the response that hotspot operator have to the prospect of competition from the city.
Posted by nancyg at 9:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Wi-Fi Alliance certified the first products that include both Wi-Fi and cellular: The products include the HP iPaq as well as products from Nokia and Motorola that will be released later this year. The group also set up the Wi-Fi/Cellular Convergence task group to make sure the alliance meets the cellular industry’s Wi-Fi certification needs.
Posted by nancyg at 9:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Some New York City residents are taking advantage of a project offered by NYCWireless that teaches them how to set up a hotspot to share with their neighbors: Neighbornode is a project offered by NYCWireless that includes a package of open-source software that helps interested folks get started. NYCWireless is also offering workshops. People who set up the hotspots are encouraged to set up electronic bulletin boards that allow users to communicate with each other. So far, some of the hotspots are getting people together, for social reasons as well as neighborhood watch concerns.
No mention here of whether NYCWireless offers advice on avoiding the wrath of broadband providers like Time Warner, which sent out letters to people in New York City a while back warning customers against sharing their Internet connections.
Posted by nancyg at 8:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
PhotoVu releases Wi-Fi-enabled high-resolution picture frame: I am a gadget junkie, and I confess that I thought these kinds of remote picture frames were super-cool when Amazon.com started taking orders for the first of them many years ago. This latest LCD wonder, the PV1940, is 1280 by 960 pixels and 19 inches (vertical) or 19 by 24 inches (actual frame size, not screen dimensions).
The PV1940 is an update of an earlier model that already supports Wi-Fi; this latest unit, for $100 more, has landscape and portrait hanging modes, an optional DC adapter ($1,399 total) to avoid running through batteries, and an optional on-board 40 Gb hard drive ($1,549 total, presumably including the DC adapter).
You can also control the frame via a PDA with Wi-Fi, which is perhaps the slickest feature: your picture frame can suddenly become a PowerPoint presenter. [link via MacCentral]
Posted by Glennf at 7:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
T-Mobile UK and BT OpenZone have inked a deal to for mutual roaming across both networks worldwide: This article is short on details, but the press release from BT is quite informative. T-Mobile gains access to 1,900 BT OpenZone locations in the UK. BT customers can use the 8,000 T-Mobile locations in the UK, Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, and, significantly, the US.
Neither the article nor the press release mention cost: is this a free roam or a “you don’t have to create a new account to be billed for additional service at the regular day rate” roam?
Interesting footnote in the press release: Through the Wireless Broadband Alliance, the Wi-Fi customers of BT and T-Mobile USA will have access on either companies’ networks in Europe and the USA. This is the first we’ve heard of the WBA for some time; T-Mobile had earlier agreed to join but without providing many details. In fact, their news page was last updated Dec. 2003.
Posted by Glennf at 7:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Roving Planet is offering a new module for its wireless LAN management software that aims to prevent infected devices from getting on the network: New devices that connect to the network are quarantined and only get restricted access until they are authorized for access. The module also ensures that connected devices have the latest security patches and anti-virus protections and tracks device behavior to identify potential infections.
Posted by nancyg at 1:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Symbol has come out with a new PDA aimed at clumsy business professionals: Symbol is well known for its rugged handheld devices designed for use in environments that might normally destroy typical PDAs. Now it is releasing a new family of PDAs designed for business users and while the first product isn’t quite as durable as the heavy-duty products, it can survive a three foot drop onto a carpeted floor. The first product has plenty of other bells and whistles, such as built in 802.11b Wi-Fi, support for voice over Wi-Fi, and a camera function.
Posted by nancyg at 1:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A thoughtful reader with no connection to cable companies thought my analysis of DSL versus cable service (in re: SBC’s Wi-Fi hotspot offering) was a little harsh: This reader has had great cable modem performance, meeting the promised speeds. But I thought I’d share with you my response. Update: Folks more knowledgeable than I in the workings of the cable world have taken me to task: apparently there’s more in common now with DSL and digital cable head ends than a few years ago—my knowledge on this subject is obviously out of date. I’ve revised this post.
When you buy into a pooled business service like Frame Relay, you can opt for a Committed Information Rate (CIR), or a rate below which the bandwidth will never be unavailable, but above that rate, you’re not promised and you may often get higher rates. At one point, I had a 1.5 Mbps frame connection with a 384 CIR. I usually saw peak performance. But I was paying for a pool of bandwidth shared (virtually) with other users from other companies.
I believed that cable still had this same difficulty. However, digital cable head ends, or the points at which entire systems are connected (usually by optical fiber) out to neighborhood cable nodes which lead to hundreds of homes by coax, has much higher capacity and much greater ability to expand than I realized.
With DSL, the effective limit is the size of the DSLAM or DSL aggregator/multiplexer in the C.O. or central office. From the C.O. in most areas that have DSL, there’s probably fiber back to the Internet, or something sufficiently high-speed to provide a large enough pool at that end.
So the pool that DSL users share could be higher because of the one-to-one DSL modem to DSL card in the DSLAM relationship. The pool that cable modem users share is at the neighborhood cable node, which limits the maximum amount of bandwidth that the cable companies can offer across the entire neighborhood shared network.
Where I erred in my analysis in this post was thinking that the cost and complexity of cable companies increasing bandwidth more than moderately as demand increased would radically outstrip capacity. But, as one reader, Mike Ritter noted, “It’s an open issue if their bandwidth is more expensive to provide than DSLAM bandwidth. My guess is not.”
Kerry Williamson brought up an excellent counterpoint to my one-to-one DSL argument, too: “Cable companies are able to provide exactly the same level of service everywhere within their plant [wire service area]. That LOCAL area plant can have a radius of 100 miles (I know, I have designed and built several of them), and have no effect on the service, either data or video. The telephone company and DSL cannot do that. The further from the CO, slower the service. Not so with cable.” The more I read about this issue, it’s certainly cable’s greatest single advantage over DSL’s current few mile limit for high-speed performance.
Williamson notes that current technology has the ability to offer in the U.S. 10 streams or pools of about 30 Mbps downstream and 10 streams of 3 Mbps upstream without any real difficulty using the widely adopted DOCSIS 2.0 cable data protocol. Each stream is a 6 megahertz wide (replacing the spectrum used for a broadcast television channel), offering a pool as large or larger than non-fiber-based DSLAMs in telco offices. DOCSIS 2.0 can run over 40 Mbps in the U.S., but at those speeds has much greater susceptibility to noise. (European broadcast channels are wider, providing more spectrum that can be replaced in the cable system by data, increasing bandwidth per stream.)
Williamson also notes that a new revision to the cable modem standard, DOCSIS 3.0, could bring 200 Mbps per stream downstream into the home. Here’s an article in a broadband publication that details DOCSIS 3.0. Upstream speeds would dramatically increase, with 100 Mbps available per pool in the best-case scenario.
Byoung Jo Kim responded to the issues of whether there’s more expansion left in DSL versus cable with this: “For DSL, the high rates achieved in South Korea and Japan are mainly due to their shorter lines and higher line qualities from denser and more recent deployments of twisted pair copper wires. In the US with the longer and older lines, it will be very difficult/expensive to achieve such rates just by putting in new line cards at central offices. Thus, even Bells are looking into wireless for reaching far-away houses that HFC [hybrid fiber coax] reaches easily, although the seriousness is questionable.”
Kim points me to this reference: “A view of fiber to the home economics” by Frigo, et al, in Communications Magazine, IEEE (Aug. 2004, pages S16-S23, Vol. 42, Issue 8). (Only an abstract is available at no cost to non-IEEE members.)
Similar feedback on the DSL side, about high-speed DSL flavors coming soon—ADSL2 and VDSL, to name two—would be welcome. I’ve opened up comments on this post.
Posted by Glennf at 1:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Foundry has added some new features to its wireless LAN switch platform: It now supports Layer 3 roaming, which means that users can remain on their subnet even when they move into the range of a different subnet so that users can move throughout a building or campus without losing their session. Foundry’s APs now support up to eight SSIDs so that network administrators can set up different profiles for different users, such as guests, contract workers, and employees. The APs can also now be set to act as dedicated probes that only monitor the air for rogue activity.
Posted by nancyg at 10:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
This is a small deployment but an interesting one from a portable standpoint: Dave Matthews Band uses between two and four Vivato base stations to cover concert venues where the band plays. The network is used for a variety of band-related business including ticketing services, audio/video information for crew, publishing of set lists for concert attendees, and band personal business including keeping in touch with family and friends. I’ve been hearing an increasing number of stories like this one about applications where Wi-Fi is being used because it’s easy to deploy for temporary situations.
Posted by nancyg at 9:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Wall Street Journal’s Lee Gomes misses the new paradigm by one day: I am a huge fan of Gomes, a regular columnist and reporter at the Journal, and his column today deals with how 3G cellular data and WiMax might replace the spotty nature of Wi-Fi hotspots. I don’t disagree with his overall analysis that ubiquity might trump speed. He’s also handicapping the players in this market, including Intel and Qualcomm.
Gomes concludes with this statement: As for people paying $50 or so a month to be able to access the Web wherever they are — that’s a different story. With a few exceptions like T-Mobile, the business of providing wireless connectivity has been a wasteland, akin to the online pet-food companies that sprang up during the Internet bubble. He notes that there may not be a demand for ubiquitous high-speed mobile connectivity.
This misses a key part of the hotspot value proposition, which SBC torpedoed today—that’s why I say his column is a day off, and $48.01 short: the cost and complexity of figuring out how, when, and where to use Wi-Fi hotspots has clearly prevented widespread subscriber adoption by the target audience. SBC’s new cost structure and pretty clear locations—UPS Stores and McDonald’s—should demonstrate much more clearly whether there’s a market for it when you eliminate price sensitivity. The lack of roaming at unmetered rates onto T-Mobile’s network is surely another restrictive market characteristic that SBC could wind up breaking up.
Also, Gomes overstates the wasteland argument. While a few hundred million—not several billion—has been raised to fund hotspot firms, only MobileStar went bankrupt and only Cometa Networks shut down. MobileStar managed to sell its assets out of bankruptcy to T-Mobile. Cometa wound down its obligations. The rest of the industry is still standing and expanding, including STSN, Wayport, Surf and Sip (internationally), FatPort, TeliaSonera and the entire European market, T-Mobile, and so on.
It’s hardly a wasteland when the number of hotspots is increasing by the thousands each month.
Revenue is still the question: it’s extremely hard to get an answer to the question, “Is anyone making money?” Again, SBC should answer it. With its very low fixed costs to offer Wi-Fi as an add-on, their ability to gain and retain DSL customers, and then sell Cingular cell service as an add-on plus high-speed cell data (Cingular EDGE and AT&T Wireless EDGE and UMTS)—well, that should give us a definitive set of results. [link via Om Malik on Broadband]
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Vonage and Boingo will trial a voice over Wi-Fi service: As part of the trial, Vonage softphone users will be able to make and take voice over wireless calls when in range of hotspots that are part of the Boingo network. A softphone is software that can be loaded onto a laptop or PDA that allows the device to handle voice calls. To use the service, customers will have to subscribe to Vonage and Boingo but they can use their existing Vonage phone number.
“We’re going to trial this and make sure the [quality of service] is where it needs to be,” said David Hagan, president and chief operating officer of Boingo. Boingo maintains service level agreements with all its hotspot operators and “this will be a test to see how it works with voice,” said Hagan. He suspects that most hotspots aren’t heavily-used enough to severely degrade a voice service, but he notes that testing that theory is the reason for the trial. A heavily-used hotspot might result in poor service for a voice user if the hotspot hasn’t implemented quality controls. The 802.11e quality of service standard, which will allow operators to give priority to voice users, hasn’t been ratified, although the Wi-Fi Alliance has recently begun certifying a subset of 802.11e, called Wi-Fi Multimedia.
Boingo is looking forward to the introduction of more combined cellular/Wi-Fi phones that will allow users to roam from cellular networks to Wi-Fi networks. Hagan describes a “natural synergy” between the two technologies that allow users of combined handsets to conduct voice calls over Wi-Fi networks when inside buildings in areas where cellular networks sometimes have trouble reaching. In order to enable such a combined service, the Boingo software client, which authenticates users, would need to be built into the handset. Boingo is working with operators, handset manufacturers, and chip manufacturers to make that happen, Hagan said.
Posted by nancyg at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AirMagnet has released an updated version of its wireless LAN security platform: Version 5.0 is now called AirMagnet Enterprise and is designed to support remote offices. Users can set the platform to automatically block rogue access points over the wired network. Once an AirMagnet sensor identifies a rogue access point, the central AirMagnet software sends a request to the switch to disable the port that the rogue AP is attached to. In version 5.0, AirMagnet also added triangulation so if users have at least three sensors the sensors can locate a rogue AP within around ten feet. Version 5.0 can block 120 different security threats.
Posted by nancyg at 10:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
RIM is demonstrating a new BlackBerry that includes support for 802.11b networks: The BlackBerry 7270 will be the first BlackBerry to support 802.11. It will also include a SIP client for voice over Wi-Fi support. The 7270 will be commercially available early next year.
Posted by nancyg at 10:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Net2Phone is now offering service providers a Wi-Fi handset for voice over Wi-Fi services: The handset will allow voice over IP users who have Wi-Fi networks, either in their homes or businesses, to use the wireless handset as a portable phone. Net2Phone also expects to release a softphone in the future that will enable voice over Wi-Fi calling on PDAs or computers.
Posted by nancyg at 9:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I asked Dr. Bill Koslovsky, the “Wireless-Doc,” about a Swedish study that concluded there was an elevated risk of a rare form of cancer in cell phone users: His response is that the study seems good — he needs to read it in more depth — but the method they chose leads to the least predictive accuracy. It’s a useful tool to look at a small group of people with a particular disease and tease out causes, but it’s no smoking gun. Better, a large sample over a large time with no particular outcome being looked for: take 1,000 people over 10 years and track many environmental variables, including cell phone use, and see if you can identify more disease in sub-groups.
Take a look, by comparison, at the phenomenal Nurses’ Health Study, which started in 1976 with over 121,000 female registered nurses. They’ve been followed in fits and starts with large participation for decades, and the results have revealed more specific information about human—and specifically the much ignored female side of human—health than anything else.
I’d like to see a study start now on cell phones involving such a large group. They could track individual cell phone models, among other factors. But I think the only folks with the resources to fund such a study is the cell telephone industry. And you’ve got to be kidding.
The science hasn’t appeared to change much since this mollifying Clinton-era (Nov.-Dec. 2000) article in an FDA publication even with this latest study.
Posted by Glennf at 9:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Flarion, the developer of FLASH-OFDM mobile broadband wireless technology, said NetGear will make combined 802.11/FLASH-OFDM products: Flarion first demonstrated a seamless handoff between its networks and 802.11 a couple of years ago. Now, Flarion says that the first products from NetGear will be available for testing this quarter.
This is an interesting development that only affects a small number of mobile users. Flarion’s networks are being used by Nextel around Raleigh-Durham and T-Mobile, Vodafone, the city of Washington, D.C., and others are trialing Flarion networks. Although Flarion’s reach may be small relative to the major cellular vendors, it proves itself forward-thinking by this development.
Posted by nancyg at 9:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SBC officially announces $1.99 per month unlimited hot spot services: If you subscribe to SBC’s DSL service at a rate as low as $26.95 per month for their cheapest service, you are entitled to unlimited Wi-Fi hot spot service for $1.99 a month with a one-year commitment — after receiving free service until April 2005.
This gives SBC a giant sledgehammer to wield against the cable vendors trying to encourage people to sign up for ever-slower cable service. I’ll confess that I’m biased against cable because of the pooled bandwidth/pooled network approach. Cable modem providers initially had no protection against entire neighborhoods seeing each other’s networks. Then they restricted upload speeds to 128 Kbps on most links to defeat “servers.” Because bandwidth is pooled, it means that each neighborhood on a cable head end has a finite amount of bandwidth—the more subscribers, the more frustration.
Meanwhile, DSL started out a little slow with odd problems, erratic service, and confusing installations. But with more experience, the telcos started to get it right, along with the last remaining competitive DSL provider, Covad. Now, most DSL installations are self-service. DSL offers a point-to-point link with a fixed amount of bandwidth; upstream of that, you might argue that bandwidth is pooled, but it’s pooled on an ATM port, not on a tiny pool of cable bandwidth far from the backbone.
Consumer DSL can now top out at 6 Mpbs down and 768 Kbps up for under $100 per month, while the most competitive offerings against cable offer equal or higher uploads and a T-1 for downloads (1.5 down, 128 to 384 up). Cable companies have responded, but still mostly lamely.
SBC’s full-court press includes its sale of Wi-Fi gateways to DSL customers—over 3,000 per day at last report—and building out its own Wi-Fi hotspot network. Given SBC’s cost structure in offering hotspot service, they aren’t selling it well below cost. This internetnews.com story reports that SBC has sold a million Wi-Fi gateways, and has 4.3 million existing DSL customers.
Now, Comcast, Time-Warner, et al., can enter the competitive marketplace rather easily in one sense: Wayport is willing to resell its McDonald’s access to all comers who will pay the fixed monthly rate per location. But they’ll have to play catch-up to get other outlets. Will SBC resell The UPS Store to cable companies? Time will tell.
The most interesting part of the SBC deal is airports: the more airports SBC has, the more likely that SBC-territory business travelers will switch at home from cable or sign up for DSL in order to use unlimited airport time. SFO is part of T-Mobile’s network and only available at their hourly and day rate, but Seattle, San Jose, Austin, Dallas, and a few others are in Wayport’s system.
(This story must have slipped out early on Bloomberg’s wire service, as the report first surfaced on Oct. 16 from that news organization.)
Posted by Glennf at 8:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Turn off your phone and pray: Israeli cell phone jammers costing about US$2,000 each are allowing people to worship without the countless ringing of phones. The use of these jammers is spreading worldwide; there’s no law against it in Mexico, where these churches are, but there is in many countries, including the U.S.
Posted by Glennf at 10:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Bloomberg News (and no one else) reports SBC to offer its customers six months free, then $1.99 per month Wi-Fi hotspot service: Strange that this story is only on Bloomberg’s wire service, but it says that SBC will offer existing customers—presumably its DSL customers—free Wi-Fi access through April 2005 if they sign up now. After April 2005, they will charge $1.99 per month.
It’s a great strategy. As noted many times in the last few months in this space, the combination of SBC building out its own hotspots with Wayport’s help and reselling access to Wayport’s networking and new McDonald’s locations gives SBC a pretty remarkable single fixed cost for offering Wi-Fi access. In this model, the more users, the more they make. Their cost per user for accounting is already paid if they only offer this to existing customers, too, so that takes that overhead back into the DSL side instead of being a new cost for authentication or billing.
This throws down the gauntlet. I noticed yesterday that, as I predicted, Boingo Wireless’s $21.95/month introductory rate for 12 months—after which the service would be $34.95 per month—is now the permanent rate.
The trend for venue owners and hotspot operators will now have to accelerate towards a fixed monthly fee per location instead of a per-usage fee. There’s no way around this. If you decide not to play that game as a hotspot, you could be left out of the largest market of users, and increasingly marginalized by nearby competitors. If I can use one large Wi-Fi network for $1.99, or another for $20 or $30 or $40 per month, which do I choose?
Airports still sit in the catbird seat: captive audiences may still have to pay more for usage.
Posted by Glennf at 5:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SoniqCast’s Aireo 2 beats its competitors to the punch: This digital music player seems to have it all, including Wi-Fi. An 802.11b radio lets users wirelessly download music to the player and acts as a hotspot locator. The Wi-Fi connection also means that users can subscribe to and receive content from Audible. It also includes an FM tuner—the no-brainer that the iPod continues to skip. An FM transmitter lets users play music from the Aireo 2 over their car stereos. And it comes with two jacks so two people can listen to MP3, WMA, and WAV files at once.
My husband has an iRiver which I think is one of the best digital music player out there. We bought a headphone splitter so we can both listen at once while on an airplane. We also bought a cassette adapter that lets us listen to music from the iRiver in our car. The Aireo includes those capabilities. We were particularly interested in the iRiver, however, because we can connect it with a wired jack to our stereo to play music or to record—we have a vinyl collection and it’s nice to be able to record some of it to take with us on the move. I’m not sure if the Aireo 2 has that capability.
The Aireo 2 isn’t yet for sale so price is another unknown. Also, it’s for PCs only at this point.
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EWeek pushes for “pre-n” products to help fight ultrawideband’s potential to steal market share from 802.11: Carol Ellison makes some valid points here (and cites a previous piece from Glenn) but I think she underestimates the confusion in the market and the potential problems that stem from calling products “pre-” anything. The Wi-Fi Alliance doesn’t expect 802.11n to be ratified for another two years. That means that the chances are good that a “pre-n” product that gets released now won’t be compatible with certified 802.11n products that hit the market in a few years. The danger is that people buy “pre-n” products thinking they’ll be compatible and then they aren’t. If vendors are crystal clear that their products may not interoperate, then I agree that it can be worth it for vendors to release proprietary products because sometimes proprietary technologies drive the market. But the only way that vendors can be crystal clear about that is if they don’t make any reference to 802.11n.
The Wi-Fi Alliance has been burned on this before, thus the recent policy announcement that strongly discourages using the term “IEEE 802.11n” along with any certified product. The policy seems to be twofold. The alliance may be looking to avoid a situation like the one where Broadcom said that a proprietary extension in Atheros chips caused service degradation in Broadcom-based products. As part of its policy announcement, the alliance said it would revoke certification of any certified product with extensions that interfere with other certified product. At the same time, the alliance’s director is quoted as pointing out that pre-standard products present risks for users so the alliance won’t certify 802.11n products until the standard is complete. An analyst in the press release notes that buyers of “pre-802.11g” products had problems when their products didn’t end up meeting the standard.
Posted by nancyg at 10:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
An IEEE working group is looking at adding Wi-Fi to cars: The effort actually has its own letter, 802.11p. The idea is to allow emergency vehicles to be able to change traffic lights when they’re nearby and for the radios in cars to offer feedback to a central system that detects traffic jams and also may change traffic signals to speed things up.
While the idea sounds good, it may be difficult to get automobile manufacturers to build the radios into cars and even harder to get municipalities or other groups to build the networks and backend systems that collect data.
Posted by nancyg at 9:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hotspot providers are increasingly adding applications in addition to plain old Internet connectivity to their wireless offerings: The industry has passed the “gee whiz” factor and providers are finding out that the key to encouraging usage of hotspots and the key to leveraging hotspots to boost business is by offering applications that customers can use. The Feature writes about GPS Industries, a company that caters to golf courses. The Wi-Fi offering has lead to some tangible revenue benefits. Golf cart rentals have increased because the carts come with Wi-Fi enabled PCs. Golfers order more expensive food because they can order it from their carts. The course can also offer golfers more information about the course.
Michael Oh at NewburyOpen.net was one of the first people I noticed focusing on the application. He’s experimented with offering a printing service for Wi-Fi users as well as a comparison shopping application in a bookstore.
It’s interesting to watch the evolution of Wi-Fi compared to the evolution of the cellular networks. When the cellular operators first started talking about introducing data services, from the very start they were talking about the services that must be offered at the same time. They were very aware of the need to offer customers something to do with their data services rather than just Internet access. No comment on whether they’ve succeeded in offering applications that result in widespread use.
Posted by nancyg at 8:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
It said, he said: St. Paul Pioneer Press argues editorially against municipally funded wireless broadband; Buffalo, Minnesota, mayor suggests they get their facts straight: The St. Paul Pioneer Press published an editorial in which they argued that governments competing with local businesses don’t give a fair shake to the ideas of market competition. The editors maintain that a publicly-run entity has little motivation or potential to keep such a service cutting edge. They point to Buffalo, Minn., where—they say—a $30 per month service that started up five years ago offers 1/10th the speed of competing cable companies. (Wait, doesn’t that undermine their argument? Isn’t that cable offering, just a few dollars more a month, much more compelling?)
Hold it, says the mayor of Buffalo, in a rebuttal published by the paper. The facts are all wrong he says. The broadband wireless service offered is from $10 to $40 per month for speeds from 192 Kbps up to 1.5 Mbps plus a $10 per month modem charge for 55 months. The cable service is $26 per month through Feb. 2005. The cable service is 3 Mbps. (Sidebar: We all know that broadband wireless has the potential to deliver a point-to-point “dedicated circuit” to an individual customer premises where cable service is pooled among neighbors that share a cable head-end, giving them a pool not a virtual circuit.)
The cable company charges non-cable subscribers $40 per month for 384 Kbps service; Buffalo, including the modem charge, sets the price at $34 per month.
Those are all details, of course. Most cuttingly, the mayor writes,
Finally, several years ago we asked the large, out-of-state telephone and cable companies serving our city to provide residential Internet access. They declined to do so. Our community needed the service. We provided it. Now there is competition. Everybody benefits.
As I note, doesn’t the mere presence of a competing cable offering show that municipal wireless—in this circumstance—works? Here at Wi-Fi Networking News, we have consistently been in favor of rural municipal broadband wireless, but dubious about the success and fairness of urban municipal. For urban wireless to work, cities need to build infrastructure that they sell to all comers, like city-run fiber networks or cable wiring. Build the infrastructure, make it easy for providers to come in, and then everyone benefits from the competition.
Posted by Glennf at 2:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
An FCC rulemaking allows widespread BPL deployment: The rule makes it possible for utilities to offer competitive services with DSL and cable. Amateur-radio operators have expressed detailed concern about the potential for interference, and the FCC commissioner cited in this article doesn’t think the rules go far enough in addressing those and other issues related to how traditional telecoms are regulated versus data services.
Posted by Glennf at 2:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A hotel customer survey shows that offering bad Wi-Fi is worse than no-Fi: A majority of the 486 hotel customers surveyed by Jupiter Research said that they wouldn’t return to a hotel if the Wi-Fi were slow or unreliable. Forty-four percent blamed the hotel for the problem, too, regardless of who is offering the Wi-Fi. Worse, 25 percent would spread the word. [link via InternetWeek]
Posted by Glennf at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
An excellent article at eTrucker.com updates us on the status of Wi-Fi at rest areas: Texas has signed a contract to install Wi-Fi at 105 locations by Oct. 2005, with service free for the first two hours. They’re hoping this encourages truckers and others to pull over a little more to catch up and reduce accidents, among other elements.
Michigan will roll out Wi-Fi at state parks, welcome centers, and rest areas charging $7.95 for 24 hours and $19.95 for unlimited access. (The article cites $7.95 for 24 sessions, which is taken from a typo in The State of Michigan’s press release.)
Iowa and Wisconsin are also trying free Wi-Fi as part of a trial.
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A slightly disjointed USA Today article discusses the FCC’s considering how to auction spectrum for in-flight voice and data for ground stations: Most interested parties are arguing for competitive auctions, even if that makes it harder to coordinate where ground stations would be based. Aircell already has a working system, and it’s apparent that they need more spectrum—although that’s not stated in this article. Aircell already sells telecom services—voice, data, fax, telemetry—to airlines and private planes.
Ground-to-air stations would allow a potentially cheaper deployment per plane: $80,000 versus $500,000 for Connexion by Boeing; it would also weigh less. The article doesn’t mention it, but Boeing is limited to 150 transponder pairs at the moment, so that there are 150 “cells” worldwide, each of which has a fixed maximum bandwidth pool. As usage increases, Boeing must increase their budget for transponder license ($1 million per transponder per year or $300M) or travelers might be contending for bandwidth as planes travel in the same large cells.
Tenzing’s system allows for much more discrete bandwidth per plane, although in lower quantities, using a focused system that doesn’t rely on cells. But you can’t beat ground-to-air stations in which the distance will make high rates per plane possible at this lower cost. (Tenzing estimates about $100,000 to $200,000 for their over-water satellite system for any of the several thousand planes that already use Inmarsat satellite gear for international flying.)
All this to say that William Raspberry’s worst nightmare is about to come true. Read his column, and consider: are you the talker or the middle-seat victim?
Posted by Glennf at 6:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
HP is adding Broadcom 802.11g chips to certain of its printers: This is part of a new trend, in which 802.11g-flavored Wi-Fi is just part of what comes with a peripheral or electronics device—it’s not an add-on, an upgrade, or a driver-based doohickey. Instead, it’s a fundamental part of the design of the product. For instance, the HP Photosmart 2700 All-in-One has a list price of $400, more than enough margin to afford to throw in a Wi-Fi option, and extremely appealing for the SOHO market that already has a Wi-Fi network and wants the flexibility of a printer, scanner, fax, and copier in one device. Once you have Wi-Fi, all resources become movable feasts, too.
Posted by Glennf at 6:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
In a confirmation of what many level-headed folks have been saying in the cellular industry for years, Wi-Fi will supplement scarce 3G spectrum to overload voice traffic: The technical head of SBC reveals what some had guessed part of his strategy might be. Among many prongs, SBC has aggressively pushed Wi-Fi gateways into homes, and gone from zero to 60 in the hotspot market by signing a massive client (The UPS Store), and becoming the first McDonald’s/Wi-Fi World partner with Wayport.
Now, CTO Chris Rice says that Cingular will offer phones by 2006 that switch voice from Wi-Fi to cellular automatically. This kind of handoff will effectively Cingular more spectrum, as Rice puts it in this Reuters interview. Rice seems to be saying—as Carlo Longino points out—that the Cingular phones would use whatever SBC Wi-Fi was available, whether in private homes or at hotspots. That’s a strange idea, but with 802.11e (quality of service) and Wi-Fi gateways that supported it, the Cingular phones could conceivably override a SBC’s DSL subscriber’s own data packets for priority! Very very odd idea, and we’ll see if a clarification is made on that front.
SBC will offer a Wi-Fi/cell phone to businesses first, and work with them to install the right VoIP equipment in house, starting in 2005. In 2006, they’ll offer consumer-based Wi-Fi/cell switching. [link via The Feature’s Carlo Longino]
(Correction to the Reuters article: The article misstates who is installing Wi-Fi at McDonald’s and the total number SBC plans to install: SBC has promised 20,000 access points but only 6,000 hot spots, and is handling the Internet back-haul and network but not the store infrastructure or the actual deal with McDonald’s. Wayport has the contract with McDonald’s. For The UPS Store, Wayport is acting as a managed services firm for SBC.)
Posted by Glennf at 9:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Acacia wants you? We wrote a about Acacia Technologies seeking royalties from a Web page redirection patent that they maintain covers many forms of Internet access use by unauthenticated users. We’ve received reports from many businesses who have received the packet describing the royalty situation from Acacia, but we’d like to know if you’ve heard from them: drop us a line (but no attachments, please) if Acacia has contacted you.
Posted by Glennf at 1:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Reports that Agere is exiting the Wi-Fi world are exaggerated: Agere clarified that it won’t continue to develop standalone Wi-Fi products but that it will focus on voice over Wi-Fi and the integration of Wi-Fi and cellular. Agere sees the potential for higher sales with less price pressure in the mobile phone market.
Posted by nancyg at 9:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Nomadix introduced a roaming service that connects hotspots that use the Nomadix Service Engine: Nomadix offers a clearinghouse service, settlement, and billing, supported by Convergys.
Nomadix follows a handful of other companies supporting roaming services and like the others, the Nomadix offering has some limitations. The Nomadix offering is only open to users of the Nomadix Service Engine. That means that if a hotspot operator or a hotel chain has Nomadix software only in some locations, it can’t include all of its locations in the roaming plan. But, that apparently hasn’t stopped companies including Sprint, PicoPoint, an Eleven Wireless from joining the program.
Posted by nancyg at 9:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wired News reports on WanderPort, a company developing a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot solution: The end product will be a small trailer with a diesel generator, an antenna, an AP, and satellite dish for backhaul. Users would be anyone who needs remote and probably temporary connectivity, such as disaster relief organizations.
Another temporary hotspot solution designed for less remote applications is available from Junxion. The Junxion box allows users to insert a PCMCIA card that enables backhaul over the cellular networks. Wi-Fi distributes that bandwidth to nearby users.
Posted by nancyg at 8:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A market research firm predicts that WiMax won’t pull in more than $1 billion before 2007: The market is likely to reach $2.5 billion by 2009, according to iSuppli, a research firm. While it’s likely that WiMax won’t reach the heights that some supporters envision, iSuppli may be missing a couple of key points. Researchers there say that landline players won’t see any reason to use WiMax because it doesn’t offer a quantum leap in capabilities over their existing technologies. That may be true, but a technology that offers a similar result but may cost quite a bit less, like WiMax, would certainly be of interest to operators.
To the contrary of many other analysts, iSuppli suspects that the best potential for WiMax will be as a next generation mobile network. This article, in fact, notes that the concept of using WiMax as a next generation mobile network is the concept least promoted by Intel. However, Intel is often cited discussing exactly that vision and its plans to build WiMax onto chips that will be used in laptops is based on that vision. Many analysts see the most significant potential for WiMax as a backhaul technology, for Wi-Fi hotspots or cellular or other networks.
Posted by nancyg at 1:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Time article on Vivato, wireless clouds, and community/metro wireless: This article is so uninformed to my eye that I refuse to comment on it—I mean, look at how he describes Austin’s network—instead allowing the community of readers to this site their opportunity to post remarks. Click Comments below to contribute.
Posted by Glennf at