MuniWireless

Swebus, a long-distance bus operator in Sweden, is now offering Wi-Fi access to its passengers. Swebus has over 80 buses and transports two million passengers every year. According to the press release, this Wi-Fi deployment is the largest in Scandinavia since it will be available in buses that go to Norway and Denmark. Swebus is [...]

T-Mobile Netherlands has finally announced the prices it will charge for the 3G iPhone (and subscriptions) in the Netherlands. Be warned: you have to sign up for a 2-year contract. I dislike these long contracts that mobile operators force people to sign. No wonder MVNOs such as Blyk are attracting a lot of young people who [...]

Aurora, Illinois has issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking responses from companies that may be interested in deploying a free or low-cost citywide Wi-Fi network. Last month, MetroFi told the city that it would shut down the city’s Wi-Fi network because the costs were too high and the return on investment too uncertain. Only [...]

No one is surprised by news of yet another municipal wireless project delayed. In this case it’s Wireless Washtenaw county in Michigan, whose provider, 20/20 Communications, needs $10 million to finish the network. They have already spent between $2 million and $3 million. They say they are not pulling out of the project (like MetroFi [...]

The city council of Málaga, Spain wants to provide Wi-Fi everywhere in the city. They are working on a map of Wi-Fi hotspots in the city, which will include information about whether they are free of charge or paid. Although several companies such as JiWire and WeFi provide maps with Wi-Fi locations, they are not [...]

The EU has conducted a survey of 27,000 households in 27 countries and the results are astounding: 24 percent of EU households have given up fixed telephone lines in favor of mobile phones. In the new Member states, that number is even higher: 39 percent. The landline infrastructure in many eastern European countries is poor [...]

Residents of Beijing will have citywide Wi-Fi service by 2010, if everything goes as planned. CECT-Chinacomm Communications has finished the first phase which covers 100 square kilometers. They will free Wi-Fi service during the Olympics. I do not know how good the service is because I have not gone to Beijing to test it and [...]

A study carried out for the European Commission reveals that Europeans are shocked by the extremely high charges they incur when they use their mobile phones and laptops for data access outside their home countries. They are also unhappy about the the lack of transparency related to the pricing by volume of data (megabytes) used. Indeed, [...]

I’ve written a lot about Blyk, a mobile virtual network operator based in the UK, that has a novel business model: giving away free mobile phone service in exchange for users’ viewing MMS and SMS ads. While this “free service in exchange for ads” model has not worked well in the citywide Wi-Fi space and [...]

Wireless Oakland has suspended operations after failing to attract new investors. The network is stuck in phase one and has been unable to expand because of a lack of funds. The total cost of building out the network is estimated at $70 million. MichTel Communications, the service provider, cannot go on with the project. While projects [...]

Recently, I had the honor of speaking to city managers across the state of Ohio presenting:  “Economic Development and Broadband – A Marriage Made in Heaven.”  The response to this presentation was overwhelming.  Here is a summary. Wireless is, of course, about improving productivity through technical applications and human resource management.  But, how clear is the [...]

Two ISPs, Veraloft and I-Net Solutions, are bidding to operate the Milpitas, California municipal Wi-Fi network that EarthLink abandoned several months ago. The city acquired the network for $800,000 and was planning to use it for municipal purposes only. However, this month, the city put out a bid seeking a provider to operate the network [...]

Girona, Spain is deploying a citywide Wi-Fi network for municipal applications. At present, the network is running in the Can Gibert del Pla and Santa Eugenia neighborhoods, but it is being expanded to cover the entire city (13 square kilometers).  The network [...]

Statesboro, Georgia has issued a Request for Proposals, seeking an ISP to build and operate a citywide wireless network for educational, residential, commercial, municipal and public safety use. Initially the network will be used primarily for public safety, remote work order management, Digital Inclusion, residential and student Internet access. According to the RFP, the city “prefers [...]

Chrysler will begin selling cars with built-in Wi-Fi (as an option) in 2009. You can work on a laptop in your car (not a good idea if you are driving) or let passengers use the network while on the move. The vehicles will use a cellular connection as backhaul. Buses and trains have already been [...]

Wireless Silicon Valley is still on, despite all the bad news about MetroFi’s decision to pull out of Portland, Oregon and other cities. The city of San Carlos will be the first municipality to get unwired after the city council gave its approval. Covad, the city’s Internet provider, just happens to be Wireless Silicon Valley’s [...]

Back in February, we reported how frustrated FCC commish Jonathan Adelstein was at the pace of broadband deployment in the U.S. While we liked his idea of national broadband summits, at the time it seemed like a good idea without much behind it. Tuesday, Google and a few of its friends got behind the idea in [...]

Maybe I should have added a “fourth problem” to my previous post on GigaOM about the challenges facing Google’s Android open-source mobile OS: The inherent slowness of anything that touches the mobile carrier marketplace, a theory Om spells out in no uncertain terms with his post today about new delays for the launch of Android-based [...]

The city of Bangkok wants people to stop driving around and start using the Internet more often to communicate and get work done. So they are offering free Wi-Fi access at 15,000 hotspots in the city. There’s a caveat: the speed is basically dial-up (64 Kbps) so one could send and receive email, and do [...]

MetroFi will be shutting down Portland’s network this month. With only 30 percent of the city covered, MetroFi announced several months ago that it could no longer expand or operate the network. MetroFi wanted $9 million from the city to continue network expansion and operations, but the city does not want to pay. It has [...]