WiFi Net News

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/muni_icon.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /a href="http://www.chaskaherald.com/news/business-news/time-re-boot-chaska-net-102"strongThere was a time five years ago when you were legally obliged to mention Chaska, Minn., when writing about city-wide Wi-Fi:/strong/a The small town was an early entrant into the idea of dealing with local broadband market failure to let residents jump from dial-up to a semblance of high-speed Internet. In some cities, like Lompoc, Calif., which launched efforts around the same time, cable and telco firms stepped up and made the Wi-Fi networks nearly unnecessary for indoor use./p pChaska.net still operates, however, although the operation is servicing debt and not accruing capital, which is the goal; current expenses aren't mentioned, but the setup costs were $3.3m, including $1m in fiber expense, the article in the Chaska Herald reports./p pThe network doesn't deliver just Wi-Fi in the city, but is part of a backbone that brings point-to-multipoint wireless broadband to smaller towns nearby, and to 36 business customers in town./p pChaska has a fairly stable base of about 2,100 subscribers, the article notes, expecting just a net add of 60 per year in the future. That's a huge uptake for a town that in 2000 has 24,000, which likely means 5,000 to 8,000 households. Subscriptions would likely be higher except the ability to get a signal isn't uniform across the town, which is true of all wireless systems, but Wi-Fi's low power limits makes it particularly susceptible./p pChaska was used by Tropos as its poster child when that firm was out trying to persuade firms and cities that high-quality "mesh" networks could be built for indoor and outdoor service using 20 to 25 nodes per square mile. Chaska never lived up to its marketing in those early days, and, Tropos at one point (apparently at its own cost) swapped out all the initial nodes installed in the city. I a href="http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2006/06/chaska_was_a_mess_we_find_out.html"strongwrote rather heatedly/strong/a about what I viewed as misleading information provided back on 12 June 2006. /p pIt's nice to see that things worked out in Chaska. I should also note that this story, written by a local reporter, is the best example of local journalism looking at these sorts of networks that I've read in six years of covering municipal and metro-scale Wi-Fi./p pCopyright copy;2010 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/EHHz9HOiPcLmLCsIn8-PjupakVc/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EHHz9HOiPcLmLCsIn8-PjupakVc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EHHz9HOiPcLmLCsIn8-PjupakVc/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EHHz9HOiPcLmLCsIn8-PjupakVc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/B1dehc8BSOQ" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/lock.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /a href="http://www.nowiressecurity.com/service.htm"strongVeteran wireless writer Eric Geier's AuthenticateMyWiFi has added a free option for WPA/WPA2 Enterprise authentication:/strong/a I'm a long-time advocate of using 802.1X in the form of WPA/WPA2 Enterprise to secure every size of business's Wi-Fi network. 802.1X allows an administrator to set passwords for users, just as with a network share or other network login, while the Wi-Fi side of the equation creates unique master key material. No two users share this material, making snooping impossible; with a shared WPA/WPA2 Personal key, any user with the key can intercept all other traffic./p pGeier's service is designed for all sizes of business that want to outsource the authentication system, but he's added a single access point option at no cost. Small businesses should leap (that's 802.1X humor) to try it out./p pThere used to be several companies and products that make it easy to outsource or install 802.1X. No more. Geier's appears to be the last that's focused on outsourced 802.1X management. You can use an 802.1X server on your network if you have Mac OS X Server 10.5 or 10.6; it's also part of some versions of Windows Server. /p pCopyright copy;2010 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/tCGNla84RP3B8JACTk6BPK1nQvk/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tCGNla84RP3B8JACTk6BPK1nQvk/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tCGNla84RP3B8JACTk6BPK1nQvk/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tCGNla84RP3B8JACTk6BPK1nQvk/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/MvMDe8s0uRc" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://actualcafe.blogspot.com/2010/01/laptop-free-weekends-experiment.html"strongCafes are still struggling to sort out their identities with everyone toting a laptop and wanting Internet access:/strong/a My friend Cyrus Farivar tipped me to a cafe near him in Oakland, Calif., that's trying not just turning off Wi-Fi, but asking folks to not use laptops at all. (That solves the 3G card problem, too.)/p pThe Actual Cafe's owner, a href="http://www.actualcafe.com/staff.html"strongSal Bednarz/strong/a, posted a href="http://actualcafe.blogspot.com/2010/01/laptop-free-weekends-experiment.html"stronga long entry/strong/a on the experiment on a blog about the decision. He noted, /p pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/2010/laptop_free_days.jpg" alt="laptop_free_days.jpg" border="0" width="180" height="240" align="left" style="padding-right: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px;" /emWhen I walked out into our dining room last week, and saw a sea of laptops, with tangles of power cords everywhere, and so many people wearing headphones, it really upset me. And so I set out to figure out what was so upsetting, and why./em/p pHe goes on to talk about community - "we must each support it as individuals" - and then notes,/p pemIf we lose money because all or most of our seats are taken by people who spend little money and much time, our business is at risk. Cafes fail all the time. When that happens, we all lose./em/p pThis story, which keeps getting written - although I a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/technology/13wifi.html"strongclaim dibs as first/strong/a! - resonates with people because it's about the erosion of conversation, communication, public space. It's about silencing voices. A room full of laptops has the odor of a library, and people shut up. (strongUpdate:/strong The San Francisco Examiner a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/02/06/MNB61BTE83.DTL"strongtakes a good look/strong/a at this cafe and the context around its decision.)/p pWhen a coffeeshop opened a few years ago near my home (not naming names), I went in the first week, and welcomed the manager. I told her how happy the neighborhood would be to have a cafe right there. Her reaction was pretty cold. Over a short time, I discovered that the cafe and its hiring practices favored frosty hip. The baristas have no charm. The place is dark wood, low lighting, semi-uncomfortable. It exudes, quiet, quiet, quiet. I've only been in there a half-dozen times since. (I'm not an annoying customer. In another shop near an old office, I learned every baristas' name, and won a free drink as a result, still am in touch with one manager, and helped get a friend hired. They would typically have my favorite drink in process before I got to the register.)/p pCafes like Actual Cafe want to create a third place for people, in which commerce is a component, but conversation is part of what you get. You know the coffeeshops like this. You want in and there's a hum and a buzz, and a warm feeling, and the sound of the sssssshhhhhh from the espresso machine. The coffee may be good or great, but you go because the vibe makes you feel more human./p p[a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cfarivar/4323277870/"strongPhoto/strong/a by Cyrus Farivar.]/p pCopyright copy;2010 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/iDxDiwQDgGfokwXMOUvY-lvhK7o/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/iDxDiwQDgGfokwXMOUvY-lvhK7o/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/iDxDiwQDgGfokwXMOUvY-lvhK7o/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/iDxDiwQDgGfokwXMOUvY-lvhK7o/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/1Ra9wVrykoU" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/plane.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /a href="http://www.blogsouthwest.com/blog/it-is-official-wi-fi-is-on-the-way"strongSouthwest announced on its blog that it's signed a contract and the next steps have begun for Wi-Fi:/strong/a This is good news for Row 44 and its investors, as Row 44 has two airlines (Alaska and Southwest) that want its satellite-based Internet service, but until today there was no word of how that was going to proceed for either airline./p pOn the blog, Southwest's Dave Ridley wrote that the airline will start installations in the second quarter of 2010, and install about 15 aircraft a month from a fleet of 540 with a goal to ramp up to 25 planes a month. That puts them at 2012 on this scheduled for full-fleet rollout. /p pCost still hasn't been set. Of course, people would prefer to pay nothing, but Southwest hasn't been consistently low-operating-cost and low-fare by guessing wrong on what people will pay./p pCopyright copy;2010 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/BIpe6bR_93TKNXw3sozLXeQxdNg/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BIpe6bR_93TKNXw3sozLXeQxdNg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BIpe6bR_93TKNXw3sozLXeQxdNg/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BIpe6bR_93TKNXw3sozLXeQxdNg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/WdR_UskiWo8" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/plane.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /strongMy recent trip to San Francisco for Apple's iPad launch gave me some hands-on time with Gogo Inflight Internet:/strong Despite writing about in-flight Internet for nearly nine years, I have rarely had the chance to experience it. My heavy flying days--tens of thousands of air miles a year--ended back with the dotcom boom in 2001. I flew a a href="http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2004/09/up_in_the_air.html"strongConnexion by Boeing test flight in 2004/strong/a with other reporters out of Seattle's Boeing Field that didn't even use the production flavor of that service; and I was on board a href="http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2008/11/live_from_virgin_americas_inaugural_wi-fi_flight.html"strongVirgin America's launch of Wi-Fi in 2008/strong/a. Other than that, nada!/p pa href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffcarlson/4313567798/in/set-72157623305966174"img src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/2010/glenn_va_jlc.jpg" alt="glenn_va_jlc.jpg" border="0" width="159" height="240" style="padding-left: 5px" align="right" //aSo it was rather exciting to be able to have a real-world experience with Aircell's Gogo on the way down and back to San Francisco--even better, I was able to snag seats in an empty exit row on the way down and had an empty middle on the way back. The flights are 100 minutes in the air, with perhaps 80 to 85 of those above 10,000 feet. I had previously a href="http://www.gogoinflight.com/gogo/splash.do;jsessionid=2A2317A1AE31DE3D169759BF4597EC18.node2?execution=e1s1"strongset up an account with Gogo/strong/a, something Aircell advises because it removes the friction in the air from starting up a session. You can store a credit card for billing as part of account setup. /p pConnecting to the network was no trouble for me, but my colleague Jeff Carlson couldn't initially pull up the redirection hotspot page. We checked his settings, and found he had hard-coded his DNS servers to OpenDNS. This is a good idea in general--faster DNS, phishing protection, and search result redirection--but it causes trouble when there's a hotspot redirection page. He removed his DNS server settings and then got the splash page./p pSetting up a session is straightforward: you choose a plan, such as a day or month pass, and then pay for it. We had complimentary codes, and entered those in the checkout stage./p pa href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/glennf/4309342916/in/photostream"img src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/2010/apple_reflection_va.jpg" alt="apple_reflection_va.jpg" border="0" width="240" height="180" align="left" style="padding-right: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px" //aService was reliable and consistent for nearly the whole way down and back. I used the Web, Dropbox, an RSS reader, email, screen sharing (VNC), Twitter, iChat, and other services and protocols without any problems. A test at one point during one flight of bandwidth showed precisely 256 Kbps of downstream (Internet to me) and about 300 Kbps upstream (me to the Internet). The service is clearly throttled and provisioned, and the exact 256 Kbps (two to the eighth power) figure shows perhaps how precisely so. Gogo has about 3 Mbps of raw bandwidth to divvy up./p pIt was definitely both useful and a pleasure to have Internet access nearly continuously during this particular trip. Jeff and I were trying to stay up to speed and get prepped on the way down, and then were writing and posting material at the Apple event venue, at a Starbucks afterwards, at SFO, and then from the plane itself. I rarely have to keep a constant stream of activity like that, but I work for myself./p pJeff and I conferred about the price. If were paying for it, we likely would not have paid the $9.95 for the SEA-SFO leg, because we could have read a book or slept. It was useful, but not critical. The ten bucks for the SFO-SEA would have been a no brainer, as we had plenty of work to do on that flight./p pNow if only the people in the seats in front of Jeff and I hadn't leaned back so far we could barely open our laptop covers. Perhaps the iPad will solve that problem./p p(Disclosure: Aircell gave me free codes to use to test the service on these flights, but this post is not sponsored, nor did Aircell see this post or have any input into it. I paid the listed fare for the flight. As you can tell from other articles on this site about Aircell and Gogo, I don't pull my punches.)/p pCopyright copy;2010 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/b3ZOhNG55nP1mc9FGSWMDAZBxo0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/b3ZOhNG55nP1mc9FGSWMDAZBxo0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/b3ZOhNG55nP1mc9FGSWMDAZBxo0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/b3ZOhNG55nP1mc9FGSWMDAZBxo0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/5PEAF53qE8c" height="1" width="1"/

pstronga href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/"Apple's 3G iPad models will come with two unique aspects: only unlocked, no-contract services:/a/strong It's not surprising that Apple will have Wi-Fi only and Wi-Fi plus 3G variants of its new iPad mobile device. Rather, it's that Apple finally got its demands met about how consumers will control the relationship with cellular carriers./p pThe iPad will come with a stronga href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358489,00.asp"micro SIM/a/strong, a new tiny form factor for SIM in mobile devices that's not yet in real use, as far as I can tell. (I had never heard of it before today, even though it's a settled 3GPP format.) Steve Jobs said it will be simple to swap out SIMs from other carriers, so that the US version of the 3G iPad will "just work" in most cases outside the US. It won't be until June or July that Apple has carrier relationships for direct sales and data plans other than in America./p pThe unlocked iPad will be coupled with two data plan options from ATT, neither of which requires a contract or (as far as I know so far) any cancellation penalty. ATT has some services now that you can turn on or off on demand, such as navigation./p pThe 250 MB/mo. plan is $15/mo; the unlimited plan is $30/month. While you might scoff at 250 MB, the iPad will have the same limitations as the iPhone in terms of downloading and storing stuff over the Internet, so outside of purchasing movies, the biggest 3G drain will be streaming video. Because the iPhone OS doesn't support Flash, streaming video must all be embedded H.264 format or accessed via the YouTube app or other applications./p pI'm calling the 250 MB/mo plan "your mother's plan," because it's most likely to appeal to people who won't be heavy 3G users, and will mostly use the device over Wi-Fi at home or at hotspots. However, they will want the flexibility of having 3G available wherever when they carry the device with them./p pThe iPad still is slated to have the disappointing pairing of UMTS for upload (384 Kbps) with HSDPA for download (ostensibly HSPA 7.2 as with the iPhone 3GS); this detail is noted on the stronga href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/"Tech Specs page/a/strong for the iPad. The iPad will likely be a heavier producing device, especially given that there's a camera connection kit (USB or SD card reader) that will let you suck photos directly into the iPad. These will sync with iPhoto when you return to a Mac (or through other means specified in iTunes on a Mac or under Windows), but uploading photos during a trip will certainly be desirable, and limited over 3G networks to the paltry 384 Kbps rate./p pI should note, of course, that the iPad will have 802.11n support, but it's unknown to me yet whether this will be a single-stream radio, which would use less juice and thus be more sensible in a device intended to have a long battery life, or a two-stream 802.11n adapter, which will drain it faster. Apple uses USB for syncing large amounts of content, and doesn't provide over-the-air sync for anything directly. (You can use its MobileMe service to sync calendars and contacts.)/p pThat means that the gating factor on most networks will be the Internet connection, not the wireless LAN. Having a 50 Mbps or so top rate with 802.11n single stream won't really be a clog on the iPad's abilities./p pCopyright copy;2010 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/HBsfQf3sU0dnpKzFjOC--C9yEkw/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HBsfQf3sU0dnpKzFjOC--C9yEkw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HBsfQf3sU0dnpKzFjOC--C9yEkw/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HBsfQf3sU0dnpKzFjOC--C9yEkw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/SAPDIpv8LPQ" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800cdvn=newsnewsarticleid=30433mapcode="strongATT released its fourth quarter 2009 Wi-Fi connection numbers:/strong/a ATT says that its customers made 85.5m connections via its 20,000-strong hotspot network in 2009, with more than a third--35.3m--made in 2009 Q4 alone. The 2009 usage is four times that of usage in 2008, although a far smaller number of ATT fixed and mobile broadband subscribers had free Wi-Fi access in 2008 than in 2009./p pIf customers on average downloaded 1 MB of data for each 2009 connection, that's 85 terabytes of information shifted over the network--but that could be quite low. I'm sure I download 10s of megabytes when I fire up a laptop, but I might only retrieve hundreds of kilobytes with my iPhone. ATT says that 72 percent of Q4 connections were via smartphone./p pThese numbers will completely explode in 2010 Q1, I predict, with 11,500 McDonald's in the US switching from for-fee to free service. While ATT customers already paid nothing to use Wi-Fi at McDonald's, this move opens up the network to a vastly larger audience that might otherwise have balked at paying even the $2.95 for two hours access that was the previous rate.br / /p pCopyright copy;2010 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/BSZaDnYbagl-B8VHmkOYK2AdSfc/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BSZaDnYbagl-B8VHmkOYK2AdSfc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BSZaDnYbagl-B8VHmkOYK2AdSfc/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BSZaDnYbagl-B8VHmkOYK2AdSfc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/Sps8ZzSOYMM" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/plane.jpg" align="right" hspace="5" height="80" width="80" border="0" /stronga href="http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/localnews/ci_14256670?source=rss"SFO appears ready to add to the free airport Wi-Fi trend:/a/strong This is yet another surprise to this veteran watcher of airport Wi-Fi. The San Mateo County Times appears to have broken the news that the SFO airport authority wants to switch off the money flow when the current T-Mobile contract ends in February. The authority would try to keep T-Mobile as a managed services vendor for up to two years, but would tender a new request for bids for the airport's long-term wireless provider./p pSFO would join stronga href="http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2010/01/bostons_logan_airport_retains_free_wi-fi.html?utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed%3A+wifinetnews_atom+%28Wi-Fi+Networking+News%29"Boston/a/strong, which is finalizing its free decision; stronga href="http://www.portseattle.org/seatac/services/index.shtml#internet"Seattle-Tacoma/a/strong, which switched over this month; and potentially, stronga href="http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2009/07/atlanta_airport_considers_free_wi-fi_but_cant_yet_afford_it.html"Atlanta/a/strong. stronga href="http://flydenver.com/guide/index.asp"Denver/a/strong started offering free Internet access at the end of 2007./p pSFO has competition in its area with two smaller airports: Oakland in the east bay and San Jose in the south bay; both of those airports switched to free Internet service in 2008./p pDon't cry for the service providers who operate networks in these airports; that's primarily Boingo Wireless, which under the Concourse brand has the lion's share of airport operations; ATT and T-Mobile operate most of the rest. Airports aren't inclined to run their own Wi-Fi networks, and thus providers may shift from the hassle and cost of collecting fees and splitting revenue to providing a fee for service, which is much more reliable income over the long haul./p pCopyright copy;2010 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/QoD44DMT-3RYyaO4BE2wNNt1Y6w/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QoD44DMT-3RYyaO4BE2wNNt1Y6w/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QoD44DMT-3RYyaO4BE2wNNt1Y6w/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QoD44DMT-3RYyaO4BE2wNNt1Y6w/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/AtpT69IkKwc" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/plane.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /strongThe leading worldwide purveyor of in-flight Internet service gets a cash injection:/strong Aircell has raised $176m in private placement equity financing. The company doesn't release many details, so we have no idea how this dilutes present private shareholders, how the company is valued, or on what terms the financing was arranged./p pWhile Aircell has its Gogo Inflight Internet service on over 700 planes in the US, and planes to bring at least several hundred more into service in 2010, the market state of mile-high Wi-Fi is still largely unknown. Scanty figures released by Aircell and some airlines would put paid usage quite low, even though growth is trumpeted./p pThe cost of installation is about $100,000 per aircraft, fees that Aircell admits to having borne for at least some airlines in contracts from 2009 and before. The company said it won't make such deals in the future, but it's likely that current deals extend into 2010 and beyond./p pWith in-flight sessions costing $5 to $13, depending on device, time of day, and duration of flight, a relatively high percentage of passengers on each plane--likely at least 10 percent, and more reasonably 15 percent--need to pay for the service on each flight to produce the kind of return on the massive investment in building a national network of air-to-ground stations, installing aircraft gear, and running the service./p pRaising more cash is a good sign in this still terrible economy, but without knowing more about the terms, it's hard to rate whether Aircell gave away the store, or brought in more eager equity participants./p pCopyright copy;2010 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/8ud4LSTXQQVvQ6xbJs6WRwyOCzw/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/8ud4LSTXQQVvQ6xbJs6WRwyOCzw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/8ud4LSTXQQVvQ6xbJs6WRwyOCzw/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/8ud4LSTXQQVvQ6xbJs6WRwyOCzw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/VAsk8RveKjI" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/technology/personaltech/21pogue.html"strongThe new Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus can be turned into a 3G phone hotspot:/strong/a While you can purchase third-party software on a limited number of phones to make them into 3G-to-Wi-Fi gateways, it's not a standard option on any major smartphone platform in the US. Palm and Verizon are offering this new feature--via a free downloadable program--for $40/mo (5 GB limit with metered overage fees) above the rest of your voice, texting, and data plan./p pCopyright copy;2010 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/i4LRqZIvVGosGcCRQOkGBi6EQ9k/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/i4LRqZIvVGosGcCRQOkGBi6EQ9k/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/i4LRqZIvVGosGcCRQOkGBi6EQ9k/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/i4LRqZIvVGosGcCRQOkGBi6EQ9k/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/BoxWStGQtSM" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/lock.jpg" align="right" hspace="5" height="80" width="80" border="0" /stronga href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/technology/21password.html"The New York Times examines the most common passwords:/a/strong Imperva analyzed a stolen cache of 32m passwords, and found 1 percent of accounts were secured with tt123456/tt; the second most used, tt12345/tt. The No. 4 password? ttpassword/tt. The majority of passwords are eight or fewer characters, and 20 percent are from a pool of 5,000 passwords. /p pThis reaffirms what I've been writing here for many years when I publish the advice of security experts. Except in cases in which a weak algorithm is involved that allows passwords of any type to be extracted, strong password algorithms must be coupled with longer passwords that contain a mix of letters, numbers, and, where possible, punctuation./p pWith Wi-Fi, a 12-character mixed password is probably uncrackable even by government's, while a 20-character passphrase would survive the heat death of the universe./p pCopyright copy;2010 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/uP_xRpgnIozrytfOJH7aEpC_AOo/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/uP_xRpgnIozrytfOJH7aEpC_AOo/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/uP_xRpgnIozrytfOJH7aEpC_AOo/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/uP_xRpgnIozrytfOJH7aEpC_AOo/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/AG24QS4ty44" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9146638/Airnergy_s_Wi_Fi_power_harvester_Is_it_real_or_not_?taxonomyId=79"strongMatt Hamblen at Computerworld does a nice job looking at the RCA/Audiovox Wi-Fi power harvester:/strong/a This device will supposedly absorb Wi-Fi signal power from the air and convert it to stored battery power. This isn't an unreasonable notion, but it seems impossible. /p pThe a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law"stronginverse-square law/strong/a roughly says in this case that the signal would decrease in intensity inversely proportional to the square of the distance. Double the distance and signal strength drops by a fourth; triple it, and it drops ninefold; and so on. (It's got something in common with a soap bubble: a drop of liquid, when blown into an ever larger bubble, has less and less soap and water to maintain cohesion as it grows, becoming ever thinner.)/p pThus at the distance at which most people find themselves in relation to access points, the amount of energy falling is incredibly minute. This is one of the miracles of Wi-Fi, that between using spread-spectrum and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing and a host of other tricks that a signal that is barely above the thermal noise floor can carry hundreds of megabits per second of data./p pI like that Hamblen didn't dismiss the notion, but found reasonably skeptical people who explained the various reasons why it should be against the laws of physics to gather as much energy as the Airnergy device appears to be alleged to suck down. /p pThe company made a splash by providing incomplete information and a seemingly specious number at CES--charging a BlackBerry in 90 minutes, although it may be that it took far longer to gather the energy into the battery by which the BlackBerry was trickle-charged./p pCopyright copy;2010 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/78b3jgRws3yZNDblM8YvzE7f4Fk/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/78b3jgRws3yZNDblM8YvzE7f4Fk/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/78b3jgRws3yZNDblM8YvzE7f4Fk/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/78b3jgRws3yZNDblM8YvzE7f4Fk/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/hn4A5l6giqU" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/muni_icon.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /a href=""strongPortland, Ore., was the big win for MetroFi, back in the day, the flagship network that never was:/strong/a MetroFi was unable to make its gear and business model work in a way that let them move forward, and I won't rehash the process that led them to exit the working world. However, the company left behind hundreds of SkyPilot distribution and backhaul nodes, and a $30,000 bond to remove them. The city estimates the cost will be double, and the equipment has nearly no resale value./p pMike Rogoway of the Oregonian reports that the first batch of removed gear will be handed off to Personal Telco, one of the longest-running community wireless efforts in the world, which operates a variety of free service around town. The group hopes to be able to repurpose the nodes, but I'm dubious. SkyPilot's end-point nodes had two radios, one designed for 2.4 GHz 802.11g access, and the other at 5 GHz to work with its unique point-to-point system. /p p(SkyPilot's approach had 8 antennas in a sectorized in its backhaul units that used GPS time synchronization to make precise, very high power point-to-point connections at scheduled intervals. One backhaul node could deliver narrow extremely high-signal power zaps of wireless communication in 8 directions seemingly "at once.")/p pThis means that the Wi-Fi nodes have to be served by SkyPilot backhaul devices, which in turn require precise orientation and placement along with back-end management software, which was typically licensed separately. /p pPersonal Telco suggested to Rogoway that it might disassemble them for parts, but four-year-old gear that's designed for this particular a purpose probably has little of interest, even for free./p pCopyright copy;2010 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/LfKa8uXOu6ruDheeNLQ9j8Gzo0Y/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/LfKa8uXOu6ruDheeNLQ9j8Gzo0Y/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/LfKa8uXOu6ruDheeNLQ9j8Gzo0Y/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/LfKa8uXOu6ruDheeNLQ9j8Gzo0Y/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/4nW8mMQOqDY" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/plane.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /a href="http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2010/01/free_wifi_will.html"strongThe Massport authority voted to keep Wi-Fi free at Boston's Logan Airport:/strong/a Following several weeks of Google-sponsored free Wi-Fi, the transportation authority is going to eat the cost of funding its provider to keep no-cost Internet access at a href="http://www.massport.com/logan/default.aspx"strongLogan International Airport/strong/a./p pLogan joins a small number of the country's busiest airports that offer free Wi-Fi, with Denver in the lead. Seattle-Tacoma (Seatac) decided to go free this year following Google's winter promotion, and Atlanta is looking into the costs of dropping fees. Slightly smaller airports are much more likely to have no-cost Wi-Fi, including Portland (Oregon), Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Sacramento. /p pLogan's Wi-Fi sessions sextupled during the Google-underwritten period, no surprise to those of us who have followed the fee/free debate for years. The Logan vote will cover two years of free service./p pMany dozens of airports still charge for service, the vast majority with service from Boingo Wireless, and a smaller number run by ATT and T-Mobile. I would never have suspect the race to free up service in big airports, because reports are clear that it's a revenue-positive business, and there's a captive audience./p pHowever, just like hotels saw a total erosion of long-distance revenue when people started carrying cell phones with good roaming and included-minutes plans, so, too, may airports be watching the 3G writing on the wall. If you've got an iPhone, a BlackBerry, a Nexus One, or a laptop with a 3G card, you're not paying the airport for usage. Providing free service may allow an airport to appear to be an amenity provider, sweep in good will from those who have no 3G service, and be a distraction during long waits./p pI confess to being surprised to see this trend continue. A captive audience is usually held as somewhat price insensitive, but 3G seems to have tilted that balance quite a bit./p pA large increase in use needs to be accompanied by a large increase in Internet backhaul, and I'm curious if any regular Boston travelers have noticed a difference./p pThose with moderately good recall will remember Massport as the originator of a multi-year FCC action against Continental, which had the temerity to allow free Internet service within its paid member lounges. Massport made piles of specious arguments, which boiled down to, "it's our property, darn it!" The FCC smacked down Massport way back in November 2006 (see "a href="http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2006/11/fcc_smacks_down_boston-logans_dubious_wi-fi_claims.html"strongFCC Smacks Down Boston-Logan's Dubious Wi-Fi Claims/strong/a"), dismissing all the arguments. The FCC is the sole entity that gets to decide proper use of spectrum in the US./p pCopyright copy;2010 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/Oj9zRw-Rk5Qm4sBKt0HsJK_zPGI/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Oj9zRw-Rk5Qm4sBKt0HsJK_zPGI/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Oj9zRw-Rk5Qm4sBKt0HsJK_zPGI/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Oj9zRw-Rk5Qm4sBKt0HsJK_zPGI/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/g25ihhpw44M" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/muni_icon.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /a href="http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2010/01/why_is_miami_beach_spending_5.php"strongThe Miami Times finds that a network that cost $5m to build still has spotty coverage:/strong/a The contract was signed with IBM in 2006, and the network only recently came online. While it has municipal purposes, it's been pushed as a way for the public to get free Wi-Fi. The reporter wasn't impressed in his attempts to gain access./p pThe price tag is pretty high unless there were commensurate municipal purposes in which costs were conserved and service improved, and that doesn't appear to be the story the city is telling. The city's project manager says "16,500 people have signed up to use" the network, but as we've seen with other large-scale networks, it's never quite clear whether that's unique devices, sessions, etc. "Users" is often used broadly./p pFinally, I missed the mayor of Miami Beach's badly researched comment back in October, reproduced here: "We are the first in the country to have a free citywide hotspot." Except neighbor St. Cloud, Florida, and Mountain View. /p pCopyright copy;2010 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/-IsoyAvL45DFJ1Rk_AqEvUfT_sg/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/-IsoyAvL45DFJ1Rk_AqEvUfT_sg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/-IsoyAvL45DFJ1Rk_AqEvUfT_sg/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/-IsoyAvL45DFJ1Rk_AqEvUfT_sg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/K65LCrsbo8Q" height="1" width="1"/

pstronga href="http://www.mcdonalds.com/wireless/find_hotspot/unitedstates/faq.html"McDonald's previously announced plan to stop charging for Wi-Fi access in its restaurants goes into effect today:/a/strong The quick-service chain formerly charged $2.95 for two hours of service, although ATT customers got access at no cost, and there were other promotions. Now, it's all free at the 11,500 out of 14,000 US locations with Wi-Fi. Add to that the stronga href="http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2009/11/starbucks_makes_it_easier_different_to_get_free_wi-fi.html""sort of free" option at Starbucks/a/strong--a deal that changed for the worse in late December--and you've got nearly 20,000 where you shouldn't have to pay for Internet access./p pThat tips the balance in the US well in favor of free or free--or at least free plus "inclusively free," where an existing subscription brings with it Wi-Fi hotspot service./p pOver at TidBITS, a Mac journal where I'm an editor, I wrote up stronga href="http://db.tidbits.com/article/10872"Find Free and Inexpensive Wi-Fi/a/strong a few weeks ago to summarize how you can either avoid paying anything, or at least anything much for service. /p pMyself, I maintain a Boingo Wireless subscription because that's a small price to pay for not having to consider whether or not I can get service without paying an additional fee. McDonald's are oddly scarce in Seattle, with several having been shut down in recent years./p pCopyright copy;2010 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/wqDmS9C1q_UhVU10SSqazvxjFs8/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/wqDmS9C1q_UhVU10SSqazvxjFs8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/wqDmS9C1q_UhVU10SSqazvxjFs8/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/wqDmS9C1q_UhVU10SSqazvxjFs8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/Ty3xBGtnqOk" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122450098ft=1f=1006"strongTalk of the Nation looks at whether the distractions of in-car Internet will add to driving's dangers:/strong/a They aren't even looking at whether or not you are manipulating devices while driving; rather, whether the increased distraction even with voice recognition software for handling tasks is a danger on the order of talking on the mobile or texting./p pIt's an ugly truth proved repeatedly and extensively in the lab that hands-free devices don't reduce the dangers of talking on a cell phone. The act of talking with a remote person is what causes your brain to work differently; it's not motor functions, but higher functions, that add to the risk. /p pa href="http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/Drive-Now/scientific-evidence.html"strongimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/2009/17FBCF52-BDE3-4E29-B314-8E2237560C93.jpg" alt="17FBCF52-BDE3-4E29-B314-8E2237560C93.jpg" border="0" width="400" height="137" style="padding-left: 5px" align="right" //strong/aA researcher in this field, Nicholas Ashford at MIT, said on the program, "...interactive communication technology, which is the kind that's being put in the automobiles now, is even more demanding of higher-level visual and audio functioning, and so it doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize the brain is compromised." He also said, "There's two freedoms to be balanced: the freedom to do anything in your automobile, which I would argue should be less clear than doing whatever you want in your home. But there's also a freedom from harm for your passengers, for the pedestrians, and these freedoms have to be balanced."/p pAshford also noted on the issue of talking on the phone at all, "The evidence shows very clearly that whether it's hands-free or it isn't hands-free, there is a significant, a four-fold increase in accident potential."/p pA caller notes that he's a much safer driver using Ford's system because it lets him focus on the road, but Ashford differentiates between anecdote and statistics./p pMulti-tasking is a myth that our brain does a great job to foster./p p(Graphic above from the NPR show Car Talk, the hosts of which have been far out in front of the issue of talking while driving. I've seen the less polite bumpersticker, too: "Shut Up and Drive.")/p pCopyright copy;2010 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/zjDGj6xJbgxXZVeQoKftFwPY8zQ/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zjDGj6xJbgxXZVeQoKftFwPY8zQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zjDGj6xJbgxXZVeQoKftFwPY8zQ/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zjDGj6xJbgxXZVeQoKftFwPY8zQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/tlkCKj1JmaY" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/muni_icon.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /a href="http://www.novarum.com/publications.php"strongThe folks at Novarum, who include two of the pioneers of Wi-Fi, offer a free report on outdoor Wi-Fi network building:/strong/a The recommendations aren't surprising to anyone who has followed this site. Novarum recommends a whopping 60 access points per square mile to exceed 90 percent coverage for 802.11n laptops at rates higher than expected 4G cellular network speeds. /p pThat's a high bar, but Novarum has tested existing networks, and it's not far off from what's been documented in the field. There's a joke in the report in the form of a headline on page 5 that reads, "60 is the new 20." Way back in 2004/2005, metro-scale Wi-Fi companies were saying good coverage could be achieved with as few as 20 nodes, which proved laughably low./p pOlder 802.11g network hardware can't deliver, the company says, with 80 percent coverage provided for laptops and 50 percent for smartphones. However, Novarum also says smartphones might see just 50 to 75 percent coverage for smartphones from high-quality 802.11n network./p pThe company recommends that 802.11n be used in both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, and that 802.11b be avoided on clients./p pThis report is based on 175 network analyses in 36 cities over a 3 1/2 year period./p pCopyright copy;2010 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/Dlt-R1APJbHlvX9F4tbJ72uizCI/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Dlt-R1APJbHlvX9F4tbJ72uizCI/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Dlt-R1APJbHlvX9F4tbJ72uizCI/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Dlt-R1APJbHlvX9F4tbJ72uizCI/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/tzR75k5dAp4" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9144019/MagicJack_home_cellular_service_could_spark_legal_battle"strongMagicJack says it can provide GSM femtocells in the home without agreements with ATT and T-Mobile:/strong/a This is one of the most audacious and fascinating attempts to work around spectrum rules that I've seen since Vivato a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Vivato+Wi-Fi+Switch+Approved+to+Operate+under+FCC+Part+15+Rules%3b...-a095441876"strongconvinced the FCC to tweak/strong/a the point-to-point power limit rules for phased-array devices./p pMagicJack currently offers a VoIP service using a tiny plug-in device that costs $40, including a year's unlimited calls, and $20 for subsequent years. MagicJack pulls off this trick by being affiliated with a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier), which allows it to benefit from call completion fees (paid by other carriers whose customers call MagicJack customers) and integration./p pThe femtocell MagicJack is altogether different. Using very low power, the femtocell will act as a GSM base station, and phones will connect to it to complete calls over a broadband Internet connection in the same way that the wireline adapter works./p pThe snag is that MagicJack doesn't have agreements with any US GSM providers, such as ATT and T-Mobile, the two largest. Instead, it's asserting a couple of different doctrines of non-interference and, Kevin Werbach suggests, the constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures./p pMagicJack believes that by only using the femtocell in a home, and not interfering with carriers' outdoor networks, that there's no conflict with the FCC licenses that carriers have paid for. I first thought this was ridiculous, but now think there's a case to be made that could disrupt calling plans in the same way as T-Mobile's UMA handset service for unlimited domestic calls over Wi-Fi./p pIt's one thing for MagicJack to assert these rights, another to get FCC approval. IDG News Service reports that the FCC has no application yet and MagicJack confirms it hasn't submitted one. The FCC tests for certain kinds of rules compliance, and thus is unlikely to block device certification. However, carriers may file FCC complaints once the product is officially out to prevent its use and tie up the product for years under a restraining order or a similar mechanism./p pIt's a crazy idea, but also clever./p pCopyright copy;2010 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/6dT0Fsupel14ClK1U3JjFhNs8O4/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6dT0Fsupel14ClK1U3JjFhNs8O4/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6dT0Fsupel14ClK1U3JjFhNs8O4/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6dT0Fsupel14ClK1U3JjFhNs8O4/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/tIsVsKFmL5c" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/weefi.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /stronga href="http://www.ohgizmo.com/2010/01/09/ces2010-rca-airnergy-charger-harvests-electricity-from-wifi/"Company claims Wi-Fi charging system:/a/strong RCA Airnergy will suck Wi-Fi signals out of the air and charge an internal battery that then discharges into a handheld. The limits on power for Wi-Fi, coupled with the laws of physics, would seem to argue against this producing enough to be useful. Read the comments on this post where someone works out the charging math. I like the idea, but I can't imagine it becoming a widespread technology, even at about $100 for the battery and charger./p pstronga href="http://www.foxprovidence.com/dpps/news/acela-trains-getting-wi-fi-internet-service-_3185285"Acela trains gain Internet service in March:/a/strong Amtrak went full speed ahead on this one. The service will be free at first. Acela is just about the only high-speed rail in the US, operating between Boston and DC, although laughably slow compared to European and Asian offerings./p pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/muni_icon.jpg" align="right" hspace="5" height="80" width="80" border="0" /stronga href="http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/wireless-washtenaw-what-happened/"Private county wireless network in Michigan has government's ear despite lack of funding, uptake:/a/strong Wireless Washtenaw, a three-plus-year-old network that serves the county in which Ann Arbor is found, has a few hundred paying users, and will likely be out of luck if the county and firm don't get federal stimulus money, AnnArbor.com reports. The county keeps pinning its hopes on this municipally anointed projects, and seemingly brushed off the successful Wireless Ypsi service in Ypsilanti, which offers both free and paid service, and sees over 2,000 users in a week compared to 550 regular Wireless Washtenaw users. Public access county Wi-Fi died out entirely with this exception even before city-wide Wi-Fi mostly went under. (A bonus in this article: my wife's uncle, J. Downs Herold, has an on-the-point quotation.)/p pCopyright copy;2010 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/6hkZV6wxKEMvI3qqvp53oEfJRoo/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6hkZV6wxKEMvI3qqvp53oEfJRoo/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6hkZV6wxKEMvI3qqvp53oEfJRoo/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6hkZV6wxKEMvI3qqvp53oEfJRoo/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/IWzNzX8O77M" height="1" width="1"/