Wireless News

The NTIA and RUS have released the guidelines they will be using to evaluate grant applications. I have not read the entire 121-page document, but I will do so and post my analysis here. I am also writing a How…

pa href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/geolocation/"strongFirefox 3.5 has shipped with location finding turned on:/strong/a The latest release of Firefox includes by default the option to use a computer's IP address and, if available, a scan of nearby wireless networks to provide a location to Web sites that use appropriate JavaScript to request a position. Users can opt out when asked, disable location requests for a site, or disable location requests entirely. However, "ask for permission" is on by default./p pFirefox is using Google Location Services, which is a combination of cellular tower data that the company has assembled along with some unknown method of collecting and locating Wi-Fi hotspots, much as Skyhook Wireless has been doing for years. Likely, Google gathers this information as it drives the streets for Google Maps./p div style="float:left; margin-right: 5px; width: 235px"div style="float:left"img src="/images/2009/location_monster.jpg" height="300" width="230" border="1" align="left"/div div style="float:left; font-size: 10px; margin-top: 5px;"Mozilla's location mascot/div/div pWith several tens of millions of smartphones (iPhone and Android-based models mostly) and handhelds (almost entirely the iPod touch) providing location data through various combinations of Wi-Fi, cellular trilateration, and built-in GPS, getting a location instantly may not seem that interesting any more on the desktop or laptop./p pBut it still seems to have a place. Location has two purposes. One is to find oneself, an existential proposition if I ever heard of one, because you don't know where you are. But the other is to identify your location to someone else because you want them to know where you are for some purpose: personal, commercial, or otherwise./p pIn the latter category, having location built into a browser lets Web sites offer rich location data even when you're at home. Aren't you frustrated about having to type in repeatedly your street address for work or home to find something in proximity, such as with a store locator? Wouldn't you like to have Web applications that automatically took advantage of your location by providing relevant data you didn't need to look up separately? (There are already plenty of utilities for Mac OS X and Windows that can use location to system-wide settings, such as backlighting, r to launch or quit programs, or change your instant messaging status.)/p pSmartphones work best at giving you instant proximity data when you're out and about, because there's zero startup time. You take the phone out, hit the wake button, and run a program. I've become addicted nearly instantly to a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284708449mt=8"strongUrbanspoon/strong/a after installing it on my iPhone because it tells me with incredibly little fuss what's near me. I needed to find a place to take my older son for lunch, and his appetite doesn't mesh well with restaurants. He agreed to eat a hot dog. I punched in hot dog into Urbanspoon and within a few seconds found a suitable place. (He did eat the hot dog, and about a million fries. We went to a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/shultzys-sausage-seattle"strongSchultzy's/strong/a.)/p pA laptop is a much more tedious operation for a spur-of-the-moment check. You have to dig it out, find a surface on which to balance it or hold it in your hand, wake it or power it up, find a network connection (unless you have a cell data card), find the Web site you want, and so forth./p pThe flip side is that when your desktop or laptop is already running, and you need a location-based piece of information, it's far more convenient to get a full, fast browser experience, with a real keyboard you can use to type in what you're looking for./p pWe'll see how it pans out. Sites have to enable location services, which should work identically in Firefox 3.5 and Chrome, and which will likely spread to other browsers over time if there's interest. (I suspect indexing software can identify if the JavaScript used on sites contains location calls, and smart people will use that to quantify geolocation-aware sites.) /p pThere has to be a pull from sites to make people interested in and expecting to use location services. If all that sites do is enable store locators via this option, I can't see much interest developing over time. But if sites can find unique ways to let the browser plus location combination provide the social networking or sheer utility of many smartphone apps, then the uptake could be large./p pPart of this could happen through making laptops act more like smartphones, too, trickling technology back up. While Sprint includes GPS technology in all its 3G networking cards and dongles--and an API for developers--that's about the extent of GPS in most mainstream products./p pNetbooks already have many of the attributes of smartphones (small, fast turn-on time), and are starting to gain ubiquitous networking via built-in 3G cell cards. This makes Dell's a href="http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/06/30/gps-and-wi-fi-positioning-coming-to-the-mini-10.aspx"strongdecision/strong/a to put a GPS chip in its a href="http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/notebooks/laptop-inspiron-10/pd.aspx?refid=laptop-inspiron-10cs=19s=dhs"strongMini 10/strong/a quite fascinating. The company has also paired with Skyhook Wireless, which will integrate Wi-Fi and GPS data for a location result. The GPS-equipped model ships next week. Pricing is still unknown, but a reputable gadget site puts the cost at $70 above the current $300 to $350 price tag./p pThis turns a cheap netbook into a potentially fabulous turn-by-turn navigation system--although you certainly want to have a passenger holding it or figure out a mounting system. The Dell Wireless 700 option, as the company labels it, comes with CoPilot software as part of the cost. But it also means that people with netbooks and without smartphones will have fast and accurate location data./p pIs this part of a revolution? Location-based services (LBS) have been discussed as the next big thing for targeting advertising, coupons, and, well, information of use for several years. The stars (and satellites) may finally be aligning./p div style="font-size:14px"Mozilla Configuration/div pLocation preferences are a bit obscure. By default, permission-based location access is enabled in Firefox 3.5. If you click a link where a site is attempting to use the Geolocation API's JavaScript, you're presented with a prompt along the top bar of the browser, much as with pop-up windows and certain security alerts. On the left you see a message, with the site requesting location data:/p pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/2009/wants_location.jpg" alt="wants_location.jpg" border="0" width="385" height="28" //p pOn the right, a set of options, which let you set a once-only share (Share Location by itself) or a site-based share (check Remember for This Site and then Share Location). You can also click Don't Share or click the X to close the bar./p pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/2009/location_permission.jpg" alt="location_permission.jpg" border="0" width="353" height="28" //p pIf you set site-wide location permissions, then you have to be on a page at the site in order to disable this permission. Select Page Info from the Tools menu, click the Permissions tab, and then you can modify the options for Share Location. You can use a combination of options, such as unchecking Always Ask and setting the radio button to Block or Allow. Or check Always Ask to re-enable that behavior./p pTo disable geolocation for the browser, type ttabout:config/tt in the Location bar, then type ttgeo.enabled/tt, and finally double click the ttgeo.enabled/tt preference. Repeat these steps (or double click the preference again while displayed) to turn location back on. /p pCopyright copy;2009 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please a href="mailto:news@wifinetnews.com"notify us/a if you find this content anywhere but at a href="http://wifinetnews.com/"wifinetnews.com/a or a href="http://wimaxnetnews.com/"wimaxnetnews.com/a. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KsNtvc7bxvZL0FUH-JepvaG42IM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KsNtvc7bxvZL0FUH-JepvaG42IM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KsNtvc7bxvZL0FUH-JepvaG42IM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KsNtvc7bxvZL0FUH-JepvaG42IM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/_Vx0uj8-XQY" height="1" width="1"/

Europeans going on holiday this summer will get a very pleasant surprise: lower roaming charges. Viviane Reding, EU telecoms commissioner, is happy to announce that that roaming rip-off is now coming to an end. Beginning 1 July 2009, the new roaming…

Novarum tested major 3G services in 13 American cities, including New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, for PC World. The test results reveal that “Verizon’s service showed a combination of speed and reliability, Sprint’s results lent credence to its ‘most…

pa href="http://www.metageek.net/products/wi-spy-900x"strongMetageek drops down a few gigahertz with the Wi-Spy 900x:/strong/a The new spectrum analyzer from Metageek, in a USB dongle form factor as with previous offerings, extracts data from the 900 MHz band, an unlicensed band used for cordless phones, baby monitors, RFID tags, ZigBee, and other mishegas. The price is $199. While WLAN use 2.4 and 5 GHz, there are still plenty of purposes for 900 MHz devices, which take advantage of the better propagation available at this frequency range./p pCopyright copy;2009 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please a href="mailto:news@wifinetnews.com"notify us/a if you find this content anywhere but at a href="http://wifinetnews.com/"wifinetnews.com/a or a href="http://wimaxnetnews.com/"wimaxnetnews.com/a. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/UT9ztzl6wiQ7neChki9aLbe3-bY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/UT9ztzl6wiQ7neChki9aLbe3-bY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/UT9ztzl6wiQ7neChki9aLbe3-bY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/UT9ztzl6wiQ7neChki9aLbe3-bY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/T5Q9Gg4b9nI" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.comcast.com/About/PressRelease/PressReleaseDetail.ashx?PRID=887"strongAs expected, Comcast will resell Clearwire's WiMax service:/strong/a The Comcast High-Speed 2Go brand will be powered by Clearwire, starting in Portland. Comcast is focused on the mobile part, of course, since the company has its own extensive residential and business fixed broadband portfolio. Comcast has invested in Clearwire, and has previously resold Sprint Nextel service, as well./p pThe company will offer a Metro plan and card that works only in the WiMax footprint area, and a Nationwide plan and card that offers 3G everywhere Sprint has it, and 4G within WiMax footprints./p pComcast is using the power of the bundle, where the reduced cost in presenting and collecting multiple bills results in savings for the company and the consumer, with a 12-month introductory rate. A $50/mo bundle pairs 12 Mbps home cable broadband with WiMax service; consumers can add national 3G service for another $20/mo. The rate after 12 months is $73/mo for WiMax and $93/mo for 3G+WiMax, or $30 to $50 above the current 12 Mbps broadband rate. You pay separately for a broadband dongle, likely under $100, but that information wasn't provided yet./p pClearwire charges $50/mo for unlimited consumer roaming, and has a variety of business plans for shared bandwidth among multiple accounts. Sprint has a combined 3G/4G plan that's $80/mo (with a 2-year contract) that includes 5 GB per month of 3G bandwidth and unlimited 4G bandwidth. Comcast appears to be following both firms' leads on that topic./p pWith either plan, it looks like a fairly enormous discount, especially during the introductory year, but also thereafter./p pCopyright copy;2009 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please a href="mailto:news@wifinetnews.com"notify us/a if you find this content anywhere but at a href="http://wifinetnews.com/"wifinetnews.com/a or a href="http://wimaxnetnews.com/"wimaxnetnews.com/a. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jkIBQ14dYkcMmhPaSY3HhArf3W0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jkIBQ14dYkcMmhPaSY3HhArf3W0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jkIBQ14dYkcMmhPaSY3HhArf3W0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jkIBQ14dYkcMmhPaSY3HhArf3W0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/r_PfDdRf5NI" height="1" width="1"/

In news announcements today cable giant Comcast announced that it would start reselling Clearwire’s WiMax services, a business move they promised earlier this year. From the press release, the main pricing plan for the service (which they are calling Comcast High-Speed…

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for Consulting Services for Initial Engagement with Private Sector Participants (No.2009- MBI-01) on behalf of the Massachusetts Broadband Institute. They are seeking consulting firms that can provide services “on the…

Not very patriotic, is it, especially during the week of the Fourth of July? The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the agency charged with administering the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), known to most people as the broadband stimulus…

I am staying in an apartment building in San Francisco, which is served by an ISP called Webpass. I became a customer at the beginning of June and have been measuring their upload and download speeds (on my wireless network…

Last week, Jean-Ludovic Silicani, the new president of ARCEP, held a press conference and announced several propositions to stimulate commercial investment in FTTH deployment in France. These propositions were put together after year of tense negotiations between ARCEP, the operators…

pa href="http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2009/06/eyefi_pro_raw.html"strongI complained the other day that camera manufacturers weren't integrating support for Eye-Fi's Wi-Fi SD cards:/strong/a But that's not quite right: a few camera makers have the religion. Eye-Fi is the only generic solution to moving images (and now video) from a camera to a computer or photo-sharing service via Wi-Fi. The market seems to me huge, and Eye-Fi continues to expand models, features, and distribution channels, as well as upload partners. This makes me think the market is robust, too./p pHowever, no competing product has entered the field. Eye-Fi is a startup, and you might expect another firm--a memory-card maker, certainly--would add up the potential and try to compete. It has not happened after nearly 2 years of product in the market./p pCamera makers should thus wake up: if they can't properly integrate Wi-Fi into the firmware and hardware of their cameras--and I'd argue no Wi-Fi equipped camera below the expensive professional level has yet done so--then the only reasonable partner is Eye-Fi./p pEye-Fi has two limitations in operating as a separately functioning computer-on-a-card independent of the camera's gear. First, a camera's standard power-down operation will remove the power to the card before all uploads have completed in many cases. I upgraded my Wi-Fi network by moving to 802.11n, and that reduced congestion and seems to make the Eye-Fi cards I use--which have 802.11g built in--more efficient at uploading./p pSecond, the camera can't alert the user that the uploads have completed. Eye-Fi gets around this with notification services via email or SMS that you can set up for each card. But a ding or dialog would go a lot further./p pEye-Fi a href="http://www.eye.fi/overview/featured-cameras/"stronghas a page at its site/strong/a that I was unaware of that lists all the camera models that have Eye-Fi integration. This includes 5 recent Casio models that signal whether an Eye-Fi is inserted, allow Wi-Fi to be turned on or off, that stay powered up until uploads are completed, and which indicate transfers in process./p pI expect it's a multi-year process for Eye-Fi to convince cameramakers that the company will be around in the long term, that it is sui generis for Wi-Fi digital cards, and that firmware integration enhances the value of a new camera (i.e., more sales from people who thus need the new cameras) instead of pushing money over to Eye-Fi that the makers would rather keep themselves./p pCopyright copy;2009 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please a href="mailto:news@wifinetnews.com"notify us/a if you find this content anywhere but at a href="http://wifinetnews.com/"wifinetnews.com/a or a href="http://wimaxnetnews.com/"wimaxnetnews.com/a. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QTzrVc5ZXMxcR96DeUv3ELqunqs/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QTzrVc5ZXMxcR96DeUv3ELqunqs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QTzrVc5ZXMxcR96DeUv3ELqunqs/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QTzrVc5ZXMxcR96DeUv3ELqunqs/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/eBPHezQaE9I" height="1" width="1"/

Wireless Ypsilanti in Michigan has reached a milestone this week as it logged over 25,000 users since the launch of the network in January 2008. Last week, the network had 1399 users who downloaded 310.4 GB (statistics from the interactive node…

pHere's a fun event that I'll be speaking at on the 25th. Should be a lively discussion of what's possible (yet not happening) in terms of 21st Century spectrum licensure./p ul h2The End of Spectrum Scarcity:/h2 h3Opportunistic Access to the Airwaves/h3 pAs the FCC begins its year-long process to recommend a National Broadband Plan, one starting point is to unlock publicly-owned assets that can facilitate ubiquitous, affordable broadband access. Wireless spectrum remains the most cost-effective and rapid means to deliver broadband access to rural and unserved urban residents. But as mobile broadband use continues to increase exponentially, demand for spectrum will rapidly outpace availability under current spectrum management policies./p pPublic policy seems stymied by the myth that spectrum is scarce. In reality, only government permission to access the airwaves (licenses) is scarce – spectrum capacity itself is barely used in most locations and at most times. This underutilized spectrum represents enormous, untapped, public capacity for high-speed and pervasive broadband connectivity. It is vital to a national broadband plan to consider policies that will encourage more intensive and efficient use of the nation’s spectrum resources./p pWhat combination of technologies and policy reforms can open the airwaves and enable an era of pervasive connectivity? Our panel includes technology and policy experts who believe dynamic, opportunistic access to underutilized spectrum – especially federal government bands – is feasible if we can only muster the political will. One promising mechanism for making substantial new allocations of spectrum available for wireless broadband deployments and other innovation is to leverage the TV Bands Database that will be certified by the FCC for unlicensed access to vacant TV channels. Several papers describing this and other ideas to achieve more shared, dynamic spectrum access will be released at this event./p pStart: 06/25/2009 - 12:15pmbr / End: 06/25/2009 - 1:45pm/p pNew America Foundationbr / 1899 L Street NW, 4th Floorbr / Washington, DC 20036br / United Statesbr / See map: a href=http://maps.google.com?q=1899+L+Street+NW%2C+4th+Floor%2C+Washington%2C+%2C+20036%2C+usGoogle Maps/a/p h3Participants/h3 ul p strongKevin Werbach/strongbr / Assistant Professor of Law, the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvaniabr / Co-lead on the Obama Administration's FCC Transition review /p p strongPreston Marshall/strongbr / Director, Information Sciences Institute,br / Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern Californiabr / Former Program Manager, DARPAbr / Next Generation Communications /p p strongMichael Marcus/strongbr / Principal, Marcus Consulting /p p strongTom Stroup/strongbr / CEO, Shared Spectrum Company /p p strongSascha Meinrath/strongbr / Director, Open Technology Initiative, New America Foundation /p p strongMichael Calabrese/strongbr / Vice President and Director, Wireless Future Program, New America Foundation span class='read-more'a href=http://www.saschameinrath.com/2009/jun/25/end_spectrum_scarcity_opportunistic_access_airwaves html=1 target=_blankstrongh3Continue reading raquo;/h3/strong/a/span/p /ul /ul

I receive emails from time to time asking if I know of studies that show the economic benefits of broadband. I know I’ve read some of them but I can never remember any one in particular. Today I came across…

Although the dream of accessing Wi-Fi everywhere in San Francisco is almost dead, San Franciscans can at least get free Wi-Fi access in city hall while they’re waiting outside the Legislative Chamber and the Supervisors’ offices. The Board of Supervisors and…

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District will replace energy meters in 600,000 homes and businesses in Sacramento County over the next 2 years with wireless “smart” meters to enable it to monitor in real time the amount of energy use in the…

NYCwireless, a non-profit organization founded in 2001 that enables free, public Wi-Fi access, has posted its response to the NY Parks RFI. Here is an excerpt from their response concerning the city’s unwise insistence on funding the network through advertising: NYCwireless…

Boingo Wireless has been awarded a patent covering the method and apparatus for accessing networks through a mobile device (patent No. 7,483,984). According to Boingo, the methods covered by the patent include “accessing wireless carrier networks by mobile computing devices, where…

A Texas charter bus operator will be offering Wi-Fi access to passengers starting this summer. Executive Coach, the largest privately owned charter company in Texas, has signed a deal with Icomera, a vendor of Wi-Fi access points and gateways that…