This year draws to a close in another 3 days. It would not change anything except for the dates. I call this as perverted optimism because I keep on looking forward for some miracles. It’s truly a make believe fantasy world.COAI finally mustered up guts and filed a lawsuit against Department of Telecom. As usual, […]

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A pair of AP stories addresses Boeing’s Connexion failure and in-flight etiquette for Internet access: The AP’s Anick Jesdanun, who has written a series of detailed articles about the bloom in upcoming in-flight broadband and mobile services, files these two articles on specific aspects of the issue.

He writes about Connexion by Boeing, a service that more or less worked as advertised technologically–I heard many rumors about problems, but also knew many, many happy users–but that didn’t have the right combination of weight and cost structure to “fly.” As the article points out, and I’ve learned in the last year from extensive interviews, Boeing’s system was out of date by the time it went up, and they had committed early on to extensive, expensive satellite contracts. Rivals and upstarts alike think they have the right combination.

Pricing is starting to be disclosed more and more. AirCell is clearly intending to charge about $10 for a domestic flight, which is pretty much what they estimated the cost would be all along. I expect there will be subsidies and deals for frequent fliers, potentially a monthly unlimited subscription (as AirCell has fixed bandwidth costs once the system is built), and partnerships with aggregators to lower costs for corporations.

In a related article, Jesdanun discusses whether and how airlines will deal with inappropriate behavior during conversations and in content viewing up in the sky. The various service providers will offer filtering of different kinds: Panasonic Avionics will filter for porn and violence, while AirCell will disable Internet telephony and voice chat. (Those who think you can get around that with a VPN or other purposes just need to remember that service providers can add jitter and such that will make calls indecipherable without affecting other sorts of data transmission.)

Copyright ©2007 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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Broward County, Flor., consider county-wide Wi-Fi: The Ft. Lauderdale-containing county, with a population of 1.8m, is considering building a network. This cautionary article in the Miami Herald talks to a variety of local and national folks about the failure to anticipate complexities and costs in building such network. There is no county-wide network I know of that has proceeded very far due to service provider and utility pole problems. Miami-Dade County, for instance, had issues with gaining mounting rights and had to install new poles of their own–without disturbing sea turtle nesting sites.

Note the appearance of Verizon-dominated USIAA’s David McClure who states, inaccurately, “Cities ran out literally by the hundreds to spend millions on engineering studies.” Cities typically spent tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands for proposals; in the vast majority of cases, the service provider paid for engineering studies before building. McClure often has interesting insights, but should be disclosing his group’s entanglement, which is used to mask bias towards large telecom interests.

Rural New Hampshire and Vermont (isn’t it all?) looks into large-scale wireless: Wireless LINC of NH and VT is a plan to bring Internet access to  the beautiful hinterland. The first stage of the network is planned at 400 sq mi in 2008. Rural areas have challenges (where to mount, where to get electricity, trees), but also the benefit of a lack of density, and often high points that are already wired with aircraft warning lights, cell towers, or other communications gear. They’ll be testing different technologies  and approaches.

The ultimate network size would be 6,000 sq mi and be run on a wholesale basis. The focus is on dial-up only users, rather than on competing with existing broadband service available in larger towns and cities. The project is estimated at $12m. That seems laughably small for such a large network, but given the particular focus and density, that might not be off base. It’s also unclear how much equipment end users might require. A point-to-multipoint system would make much more sense in this environment.

Palm Beach Jewish temple has Wi-Fi: Temple Emanu-El has free Wi-Fi and encourages people to come, eat lunch, and work as part of a tool to foster community. No word as to whether the network has a timer that shuts it off from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

Copyright ©2007 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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Fortunately, technology makes all of this possible- but without a solid, uninterrupted broadband connection, trying all these tech- savvy things end up in a very frustrating experience.

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Spokane decides against expansion: The Eastern Washington city had an early large-scale hotzone courtesy of gear from Vivato. The network’s size has remained at about 100 city blocks–ostensibly, no testing has been conducted I know of–and the city apparently has no real idea of the level of usage, to judge by remarks in the article. (Vivato’s assets, by the way, seem to have be resold yet again, the article reports. I’m assuming there are patents that are of interest, as a $50 access point has many of the features only found in a multi-thousand-dollar Vivato unit a few years ago.)

Another silly Wi-Fi product from ThinkGeek: I love the retailer, but this item is just plain ridiculous. The Wi-Fi Detecting Watch has a display reminiscent of 20 years ago, coupled with a Wi-Fi detector. Not that it tells you the network name, cycles through what’s available, or provides more details. Nope. Press a button and you get a number from 0 to 8 indicating signal strength. Signal strength of what? Hard to say.

The last of the first-generation analog cell networks are finally being powered down starting in Feb. 2008: Only about 1 percent of current cell phones (about 2.5m) are analog only. Automotive cell systems, however, were largely analog with model years 2003 and earlier; and home alarm systems with cell links apparently (says this AP story) didn’t get digital radios until 2006!

Shuttle Express to launch Seattle-Portland van run with Wi-Fi onboard: Given the rural stretches along I-5, a route I know well, I’ll be surprised if there’s more than GPRS/1xRTT along a good hunk of the route. Still, at $180 round-trip for the 360 miles involved, it’s barely more than gas and wear and tear on your car. Train service runs that route several times a day, but without an Internet hookup, and taking typically 5 to 6 hours instead of 3.

Copyright ©2007 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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In light of new guidelines due to be brought into force early in 2008, broadband providers could face legal action if they do not give accurate information to customers when they sign up. This welcome ruling was put into motion by Ofcom, the technology watchdog.

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Years ago, a wireless was a radio. Now, having a wireless doesn’t mean you sit around listening to a box and trying to imagine pictures. It means wireless internet.

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Our story begins with the dawn of the Golden Age of Free Broadband. Providers offer free, unlimited, always-on fast internet access with your phone line. But there is more to this than meets the eye…

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When broadband first appeared, it seemed that it would be available to everyone in the country. Sadly, as the years have gone by it’s proved that this is not the case.

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It’s not a term most of us are familiar with, but the contention ratio is something that is quite important when looking for a broadband service. Taken into account with the stated top speed, it’s a good indicator of how fast you can expect your connection to be.

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