WiFi Net News

Santa Cruz opts for micro-Fi: the City had hoped to get a full deployment, but has decided to start with a hotzone in their tourist areas, which is far easier to build and quantify the success of. Boingo releases Mac client for its aggregated service: The free GoBoingo for Mac client works with Leopard, at last. Boingo resells U.S. and worldwide service at $22 and $40 per month, respectively, for unlimited use. Copyright ©2008 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.

iPhone 3G availability, pricing clarified for U.S.: AT&T released details on the full cost of iPhone 3G hardware and service, providing more detail than previously available. The phone is $199 (8 GB) or $299 (16 GB) to AT&T's existing 2G iPhone customers who want to upgrade, to customers with no current contract, or new customers. Existing customers with another phone contract in place pay $399 (8 GB) or $499 (16 GB). Monthly data pricing is a flat $30 for unlimited use--no 5 GB cap--and text messaging is extra, at either an absurd 20 cents each, or bundles starting at $5 per month for 200 messages. Old 2G iPhones can be resold or given away by those who upgrade, and still qualify for the cheaper 2G plans, that start at $20 per month for unlimited data and 200 SMSs. Or a 2G iPhone can be used as a Wi-Fi-only device. TAP Portugal adds in-flight calling: OnAir's satellite-based call service is now in a trial on a single Airbus A319 in TAP's fleet. The six-month trial will determine how they move forward. TAP was originally slated to launch a trial nearly three years ago, but technical and regulatory issues have delayed in-flight mobile use in Europe. This isn't broadband, by the way: it's pricey per-minute calls, texts, and cell-based email. Boingo offers free day pass for downloading connection software: The hotspot aggregator will give you 24 hours of use at a location in their network for downloading their lightweight connection software by 6-July-2008. The software identifies Boingo-partnered networks, and lets you sign in without any fuss. AT&T launches downtown St. Louis network: The company found that it couldn't complete its city-wide proposal due to light pole issues. They've built out a square mile in the downtown, instead. The service is $8 per day and $16 per week, or free for up to 20 hours per month when ads are viewed. AT&T DSL, fiber, and remote business customers get free use of the network. Copyright ©2008 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.

Skyhook Wireless will combine information from Wi-Fi wardriving, GPS radios, and cell tower signals for better location: The pitch at Skyhook Wireless is that despite its accuracy, satellite-based GPS remains relatively expensive, that it's slow to get a fix when it powers up, and that it's not accurate enough in the middle of cities. Their XPS 2.0 system leverages GPS with the advantages of Skyhook's Wi-Fi signal database and algorithms along with cell-tower triangulation. Ted Morgan, the head of Skyhook, explained in an interview that while GPS is certainly the gold standard, and while it works well in stand-alone devices designed for continuous use and navigation, it's not the right choice by itself for mobile devices. It can take 5 or 10 minutes for a GPS-only device to get an accurate fix on the satellites it needs to give you accurate information. (Various shortcuts can provide less accurate information more quickly.) "This notion of 'tell a user or consumer to stand outside for 30 seconds before they can search for the nearest pharmacy' is pretty silly," Morgan said. He noted that with all the radios now found in newer mobile devices, using several of them produces a fast and much more accurate result. The iPhone 3G, for instance, sports quad-band 2G, tri-band 3G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS chips. Morgan said that A-GPS (assisted GPS) already combines cell tower information with GPS. A cell phone can be told approximately where it is, and thus instead of cycling through 24 satellites, start with the two that are most directly overhead. This can reduce the time to gain a location to as little as 20 seconds, Morgan said, although any kind of movement usually lengthens the time to 30 to 60 seconds. Skyhook's system takes advantage of this aspect of A-GPS. They let a GPS system grab onto two satellites quickly to correct data from their Wi-Fi Position System (WPS). Morgan said that this reduces the WPS error by 35 to 40 percent through "weak fixes." Within cities' concrete canyons, "you can only get a true GPS fix about 70 percent of the time outdoor, but you get two satellites all the time," Morgan said. "In the entire footprint, we're able to use this hybrid technology, even though GPS is only available 70 percent of the time." Outside of metro areas, cell towers can still be used to improve GPS startup times. Skyhook has continued to expand its European coverage for WPS; they cover about 8,000 cities in the US and Canada, which is roughly 70 percent of the population; "it looks exactly like a cellular coverage map," Morgan said, and includes "any town with five streets in it." In Europe, their current big push, partly because of their inclusion in the iPhone, they cover 70 percent of population in the current countries--the UK, France, and Germany--but they're now at 50 percent of the population of the rest of Western Europe. They're working assiduously in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Australia as well, and looking into China and India. India has very little Wi-Fi, so they may rely more on cell towers there. The company also announced a partnership with wireless chip maker CSR today, which is a major providers of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips to computer and handset makers. Nearly a year and a half ago, Skyhook partnered with SiRF, the dominant worldwide chip supplier for stand-alone GPS gear, that's also making a push into mobile devices. Skyhook obviously needs a win with a cell chip maker, like Infineon, Broadcom, or Qualcomm, given the XPS technology, to score a place in tens of millions of cell phones beyond the iPhone. Skyhook's technology most recently appeared in a soon-to-ship model of the Eye-Fi--the Explore. The $130 Secure Digital card with Wi-Fi built in allows you to take pictures with any camera, and have the Wi-Fi signal space recorded for later lookup when you upload photos. The pictures are geotagged with that information. The card can be used with Wayport's 10,000 strong Wi-Fi network in the U.S for free in the first year, and $20 per year thereafter. David Pogue of The New York Times recently wrote up the Eye-Fi Explore. Copyright ©2008 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.

I'm going for the sensational in the headline, but it's part of the story's intro, too: The New York Times reports on some early uses of the city's $500m wireless network designed for non-public uses. The network uses UMTS over licensed spectrum specifically devoted the city's municipal and public safety purposes. One of the projects leaders uses terms that should warm every New Yorker's heart, if he or she knew what they meant. IT head Paul Cosgrave says the system will overcome silos, an often disparaging term for the separation of resources across groups that can only expensively be overcome. It's the government and business equivalent of the academic problem of a lack of cross-discipline focus. One of the first applications allows sanitation workforce managers a frighteningly precise amount of knowledge about routes, activities, and behavior of trucks in their territory. Let's hope that's not misused! Efficiency is one thing; micro-management is another. Another project is testing wireless water-meter reading. The city hopes to spend $90 per meter for the upgrade and shed part of a $12.2m contract with Con Edison that covers 850,000 units. What should be useful about this is that problems can be detected by monitoring waterflow patterns, which in turn allows the often huge problems that take months to notice (occurring underground or in basements where rivers formerly flowed) to be stopped before they turn into multi-million-dollar problems for property owners or the city. Anytime anything happens in Manhattan, it's a multi-million dollar problem. Copyright ©2008 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.

The New York Times takes guided Wi-Fi tour: An interesting article by Seth Kugel avoids the usual, "here's where you find Wi-Fi approach." Rather, he tours the city, pairing Wi-Fi with historical and political details you can find around you. Kugel, like our faithful correspondent Klaus Ernst, has found that CBS MobileZone is a no-show. The advertising group told him that they were improving the signal. I love the idea of super-local information, too. With Google Maps, Google Earth, Flickr, Dopplr, and other services, you can pair your current location with what's happening right around you in the past or right now. Oakland County, Mich., project officially "on hold": For "on hold," read, "never going to be built." The pilot area in seven communities has been turned off, and MichTel has been unable to obtain the $70-odd million they project needed to build out the county-wide service. The state's ongoing reliance on the automotive industry makes it a hard sell to commit public dollars in advance of a return on those dollars, too. Virgin Mobile buys Helio: The last vestiges of EarthLink's three-pronged approach to fighting the wireline monopoly appears to be at an end. EarthLink pushed its 50-50 partnership with SK Telecom in mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Helio as one prong; its municipal Wi-Fi division as another; and its DSL business as a third. The muni division is nearly out of operation, and DSL lines continue to fall in quantity quarter over quarter. Dial-up is still their cash cow. Helio lost hundreds of millions to obtain just 170,000 subscribers (that number down from 200,000 at the start of 2008). EarthLink will receive a pittance for its investment, part of the $39 million in stock that Virgin will pay for Helio; SK Telecom will invest in Virgin Mobile to obtain a total 17 percent state. Virgin itself makes just a very tiny sliver of profit. MVNOs buy minutes and data from carriers, and Virgin Mobile involves Sprint as a partner, making it the only tolerably successful MVNO. Copyright ©2008 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.

Chrysler's in-car Internet $30 per month: The service, announced today but leaked yesterday, will cost about $450 and $35 to $50 for installation, using Autonet's system. The monthly fee is $30. I'm not sure I'm in love with the idea, because at that price, you could buy a Junxion box or equipment from another maker, and have the flexibility to move the portable hotspot around or stick an adapter into a computer. It might make sense for fleet deployments, though. Alltel launches domestic US hotspot service: Alltel is reselling Boingo's offering at $20 per month or $4 per day with no commitment. That's 25,000 US hotspots. The No. 5 cell operator, which is in the process of being acquired by Verizon, also runs a EVDO network available nationally as part of a Verizon partnership (Alltel covers a ton of areas Verizon doesn't), which costs $60 per month. Combine Wi-Fi and 3G and pay $70 per month. Beijing's Wi-Fi network launches with a limp; no 3G at Olympics, either: The Wall Street Journal says the WiCity project that will cover the Olympic venue with Wi-Fi (about 100 sq km) got off to a rough start at its launch, with reports from their bureau and others of poor signal strength; no answer on the customer-support hotline; and broken links on the Web site. The blog entry also notes that visitors who expect 3G over their cell will be bitterly disappointed, as anyone in the industry knows: China didn't adopt either worldwide 3G standard. They claim that their own TD-SCDMA 3G technology will be up and running in time, but that won't really help visitors much, now will it? I'm surprised no waivers were granted to run temporary cell installations for EVDO and HSPA just for the games. Wouldn't have been that big a deal. Copyright ©2008 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.

The nearly finished IEEE 802.11y could make Wi-Fi more practical over longer distances: Wi-Fi is a compromise. In the unlicensed bands in which it operates, it has to deal with interference from noise sources and other networks, while using very low power, and trying not to make a pest of itself. It's done very well. In the 2.4 GHz band and parts of 5 GHz, the maximum power from the radio is 1 watt (W), and the effective power (EIRP) is 4 W on an omnidirectional antenna. (You can push far more power if you narrow the antenna's beam. And parts of the 5 GHz band restrict radio power below 1 W. I wrote a long rundown of 5 GHz issues back in Jan-2007.) But there's this lovely new segment of lightly licensed spectrum in the U.S., the 3.65 GHz band. It's a non-exclusive licensed band available only in parts of the country that don't have pre-existing ground-to-satellite or radar uses that overlap. This omits most of the eastern seaboard and most major cities; Seattle is one exception. The licensing mechanism allows any number of operators to obtain inexpensive licenses, and register the base stations they use by location. If interference arises among base stations, operators are required to work out the problems themselves. I wrote extensively about this band and its rules on 9-May-2008 in profiling Azulstar, formerly a metro-scale Wi-Fi firm, but now a big proponent of WiMax in 3.65 GHz. I also went over the rules for the band on 11-June-2007 when the FCC announced the arrangement. Several firms offer base station and customer premises equipment for this band now, so close to the 3.5 GHz band more commonly exclusively licensed in Europe and elsewhere. WiMax equipment is available because the 3.65 GHz band can be used with WiMax without any modifications to that protocol, although limited to just 25 MHz of the 50 MHz that the FCC set aside. Equipment that conforms to a more stringent set of rules about contention and other factors can use the whole 50 MHz, and that's where 802.11y comes in. It's an extension of Wi-Fi to cope with the specific needs--and to open Wi-Fi technology up to 20 W EIRP, a vastly higher power output. This could allow connections over 5 km, the group says. The Wikipedia entry on 802.11y, clearly written by someone involved with the specification, notes that three specific additions are needed: a tweak to support the way in which the FCC wants contention among competing devices to work; a method for an access point to tell a station (a connecting radio) that it's about to switch its channel or its channel's bandwidth, and the station should do likewise; and a mechanism to handle a base station allowing or revoking permission to use the spectrum without uniquely identifying the user's system or broadcasting its precise GPS-based location. The standard is near completion and initial approval. I don't have any knowledge about whether any mainstream Wi-Fi equipment makers or metro-scale equipment makers are looking into building 802.11y into their gear. The fact is that this could be a great technology for the mostly sub-metropolitan markets that 3.65 GHz is available in, although it has the same pain as WiMax: all new gear on the towers and all new adapters for customers. Copyright ©2008 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.

Chrysler offers automotive Internet access as 2009 model option: All its newest cars and trucks will, for an undisclosed price, act as cellular relays over Wi-Fi. The news was leaked and details should be available tomorrow. The LA Times writer notes that while only passengers should use the Internet while the car is in motion, there's no way to prevent the driver from surfing. Except common sense. Yeah, that'll work. (The writer has confused his megas and kilos; the likely EVDO Rev. A service that will power this system runs at 600 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps downstream and 350 to 550 Kbps upstream, according to the cell operators.) Boston ferries gain Wi-Fi: The MTBA has put Internet access on its 11 commuter boats that serve 4,500 daily riders. Ridership is way up this year. Bangkok builds slow Wi-Fi network, free for first year: The details are a bit sketchy, but the government has built a 15,000-hotspot network that offer 64 Kbps connections, and will be free (with an access card) for the first year. The government is handing out 500,000 such cards at shopping malls before this week's launch. AT&T will manage Motel 6 and Studio 6 locations: The low-cost properties' parent corp., Accor North America, which also runs premium hotels, chose AT&T to handle its network. 600 company-owned and 200 franchisee-owned locations have service so far. Copyright ©2008 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.

T-Mobile launches nationwide July 2nd with its home-line replacement service--or is it a cell plan extension service? I link here to Seattle Times's columnist Brier Dudley's take on @Home, T-Mobile's $10 per month unlimited domestic home calling service that leverages customers' existing cell service and broadband connection. The service launched in the Seattle area several months ago, and is expanding nationally, and Dudley interviews T-Mobile's boss Robert Dotson for the story. Dotson says T-Mobile doesn't see @Home as a way to get folks to necessarily cut their landline cord, but rather to extend the function of a cell phone inside the house, even if you're using cordless not cellular devices. The service uses a router that accepts SIM cards for authentication, but the backhaul is pure VoIP over Internet. Regular POTS (plain old telephone service) phones can be plugged into the router. The router is also compatible with HotSpot@Home (an additional $10/month), which allows unlimited domestic calling over Wi-Fi using special handsets from T-Mobile; there are now 8 handset models available. Customers have to have at least a $40 single-line or $50 family plan service to add either @Home or HotSpot@Home. Probably the key remaining advantage for Vonage and other Internet telephony services that typically charge $20 to $30 per month for unlimited calling is that they include unlimited calls to any number in Canada or the U.S., not just the U.S., as well as unmetered calls to landlines in dozens of other countries in Europe as well as Australia. For those who regularly call outside the U.S., the @Home service would quickly become ridiculously expensive for its international tolls. Copyright ©2008 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.

I wish I was so high with some guy in the sky: In today's Mobile Post, I talk about the big event today: American Airlines flying the first commercial flight since Connexion shut down with broadband onboard. It's a test; it launches commercially in a few weeks. More in the post. Copyright ©2008 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.

American Airlines will fly its first commercial round-trip with Aircell's Gogo service active tomorrow: On Wednesday, 25-June-2008, in-flight broadband briefly flickers back to life with a JFK to Los Angeles round-trip flown by American on which passengers will get free use of the onboard, in-flight Internet service via Wi-Fi. The test flight is a kind of soft launch, which will be followed in a few weeks by full-on service. American will offer Gogo on its 15 Boeing 767-200s, which means all JFK-LAX routes and some JFK-SFO and JFK-MIA (Miami) routes. The test will likely stress the system because more people will get on than on a typical flight since they won't be paying, and I would guess a lot of people will immediately try streaming video just to see if it works. The full-on launch is still a pilot project even though it involves so many planes, routes, and passengers. BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin asked me to participate in an interview call today with execs from Aircell and American Airlines, and I've written up the full account for their site. Among other interesting tidbits I learned today, the onboard systems have 800 GB of capacity for future expansion--streaming media, most likely--and the AA-configured 767-200 has power outlets scattered around coach, and at every seat in first and business class. Copyright ©2008 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.

More hotels have Internet service, while fewer charge for it: A hospitality industry trade group says that 91 percent of 10,000 hotel properties surveyed have Wi-Fi service, a 35 percent increase over 2004, while only 16 percent of those polled charge for in-room service, down from 19 percent in 2006 and 22 percent in 2004. Many hotels offer wired connections in the room (sometimes at a fee), and Wi-Fi in lobbies and public spaces (often free). But clearly, the trend is for more Wi-Fi and less charging. A second study focusing on information technology received about 250 responses, and indicated that Wi-Fi was present in 86 percent of those surveyed, but that 20 percent of the remaining hotels would add it within five years. Copyright ©2008 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.

Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing gets the scoop on when American Airlines launches its in-flight network using Aircell GoGo service: She writes that it might be as early as this week on JFK, LAX, SFO, and MIA flights (that last one is Miami; took me a moment). Virgin is probably still a few months away, although they told Jardin that they're more prepared, but they have more integration to do. Jardin notes that Virgin is thinking about what gets cached on planes. I would note that the idea of onboard media and caching servers is a great one, because it means that passengers could ostensibly stream or purchase downloadable digital content; and that whenever an airplane lands, its servers could automatically suck in at 802.11n speeds from a gate-mounted access point all the latest data to cache, including video. On the cost of fuel to carry the Wi-Fi gear--probably a total of 200 pounds of dead weight and drag, based on information that Aircell and others have been giving out--I may have been close tot the mark when I suggested it was $50 for a cross country flight a few days ago. The excellent Scott McCartney, author of The Middle Seat column in The Wall Street Journal, ran down the numbers on 10-June, and he says LAX-JFK costs about $500 per passenger when all the costs are figured out. But that includes all fuel divided by average passenger count: that is, the weight of the plane, everything in it, and its drag are all contributors. That means that an added couple of passengers due to the availability of Wi-Fi; their willingness or the overall willingness to pay slightly more for the flight (which would be even fuller if more people want on); and the airlines' cut of a dozen or sessions per flight could clearly outweigh the gas cost. Copyright ©2008 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.

Milwaukee, Wisc., network likely won't expand: Midwest Fiber Networks spent $700,000 to build a pilot network that they can't fund citywide. They want anchor tenants for the $20m network, and can't get the city signed on. The company will continue running the network, though, and is looking into alternatives. I always thought a fiber provider had a great win in having their backhaul to operate the many Wi-Fi nodes needed. Nashua, N.H.'s downtown network may never launch: The local paper says, c'mon, already. The network was to span a 1.2-mi stretch of the main street and use donations. Deadlines have come and gone for a year. Covad may launch San Carlos, Calif., test network: The company know for wired installations as the last-man-standing among competitive DSL and other digital line providers nationwide, is looking for city access to build a square mile test area. This is the latest wrinkle in trying to get Wireless Silicon Valley underway after the consortium was unable to raise funds, and lead-partner Azulstar stepped back or was replaced. Lexington, Kent., may relaunch shuttered network: The city bought SkyTel's network assets for $10 over a year ago--10 dollars, not 10 plus any zeroes--and the city may partner with the University of Kentucky to build a public-safety network. The university would manage the network. It's unclear from the article if any public access would be included. Copyright ©2008 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.

Regular readers of this site knows that Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil patented the first known description of spread-spectrum communications: Yes, that Hedy Lamarr. Studio 360, a public radio show, looks into Hedy's co-invention. Copyright ©2008 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.

It was a matter of time, but the death knell date has been set for Portland, Ore.'s Wi-Fi network: MetroFi told the city that it will turn its network off on June 30, and remove all devices by about July 30. MetroFi's business model required most of its revenue to come from advertising shown to users of the network; they also offered ad-free service, and business services. The network never reached a scale in Portland with enough reach to hit a critical mass. As with most Wi-Fi networks built or planned in 2005 and 2006, indoor coverage required wireless boosters, and the necessity of those signal bridges wasn't clear to early users. That led to early adopters rejecting MetroFi's and others' services, which didn't help spread use. Copyright ©2008 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.

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal uses test version of Aircell Gogo: He finds it works pretty much as the company is promoting it. Most medium-bandwidth activities work well, while video is choppy. The company told him it would prioritize data, so that email and Web connections would work for the most people. There's nothing new in the article for readers of this site about the technology (modified cell data), cost ($10 for sub-3-hour flights, $13 for longer flights), or speeds. But Mossberg says the service could launch in three American cross-country routes as soon as July, with Virgin following. Copyright ©2008 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.

Okay, the name is Network Acquisition Corporation (NAC), so it's likely to change: But the deal closed yesterday. Tropos gets a win here because their equipment will continue to be used as the Wi-Fi network is upgraded. As I noted yesterday, NAC's plan (elaborated in this press release) is to rely on well-understood business services that are undelivered or overpriced in Philadelphia to provide recurrent, baseline revenue, rather than being yet-another-Wi-Fi-network-operator. Three other significant details appear in the release, as well: The network will be free (that was discussed but wasn't entirely clear before), and may includes advertising, sponsorships, and other programs; the network will be focused on outdoor applications, not indoor service, hurray; and there will be no customer support--this will be a best-effort network that you can't complain about when it doesn't work. So far, promising. Copyright ©2008 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.

What do you get with that $17m network? A lot of heartache, but also a new business model that just might work. I discuss the new plan in Philadelphia in this audio mobile post. Copyright ©2008 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.

UPDATE: Investors announce plan to complete Philadelphia Wi-Fi, built wired network: Now this is clever, and a new way of thinking. A group of investors will take over EarthLink's Wi-Fi network and complete it, while also building out business-grade wired service in competition with local carriers. The anchor tenants on the wired and wireless networks will provide the revenue to support the Wi-Fi side. This is not a new model, but this is the largest scale on which it's being tried commercially. The OneCommunity organization, started in Cleveland, and in the process of expanding to other communities, is a non-profit-focused effort based on having academic, municipal, and business stakeholders that would make use networks that were built. The lack of a profit motive allows the participants to get reasonably priced or even cheap service, while serving community, business, and economic development goals and also offering Wi-Fi at no cost. (OneCommunity benefits from 500 miles of donated fiber-optic backbone, too.) The Wall Street Journal separately reported in a brief story that EarthLink's CEO released a statement in support of this new group's plan, and a spokesperson told the Journal that EarthLink would work closely with them on a transition. Based on what I have heard in Philadelphia, Verizon and other players could use competition on the wireline side. Back in 2006, the city's then-CIO Dianah Neff said in an interview that the city could replace 300 to 600 lower-speed, expensive wireline connections with point-to-multipoint wireless links that would leverage the Wi-Fi infrastructure's backbone--its backhaul distribution network--to reduce the city's cost while improving connectivity. That same opportunity exists today, and it's a big reason that Towerstream has expanded so rapidly. Towerstream and its competitors can bring out a T-1-and-faster competitive wireless product in as little as a day that rivals or is cheaper than the wireline alternative. When you go to rates faster than T-1, costs often go way up; wireless broadband doesn't have an automatic price hop into more expensive gear when you cross the 1.5 Mbps T-1 limit. That's changing as fiber is brought to businesses (AT&T via its small business division), and alternative offerings such as a new 10 Mbps/10 Mbps Speakeasy offering hit the market. In this scenario, the Wi-Fi network serves as a useful adjunct for resident, visitor, digital divide, and business purposes without being the sole pivot on which the entire service rests. We'll see what happens. The folks who will run the network haven't even picked their business name yet. How about, "The City of Brotherly Wireless." (I'm not a naming consultant.) EARLIER TODAY: Local investors poised to assume control of Philadelphia Wi-Fi network: The Philadelphia Inquirer says two local businessmen will form a new company to create a for-profit service that will have a combination of fees and advertising support. One of the two was briefly the head of the non-profit Wireless Philadelphia that technically is responsible for the network; the other, a former Verizon executive. Their announcement is expected later today. Can they succeed where EarthLink (and others) failed? Possibly. If they get the same deal that EarthLink previously offered, they're getting a lot of equipment for free and a quantifiable set of problems. I had written earlier it wasn't a good deal for Phila. to accept the network, but a private operator that's locally based and is trying to do good and get a return on its investment may be able to raise money and set more modest goals. Starting from scratch is a non-starter for any firm at this point. What they desperately need to do if they acquire the network is immediately bulk out several critical square miles, convince the city to buy some service right away (point-to-point dedicated connections to replace wirelines comes to mind, but will an ex-Verizoner be able to convert municipal revenue that's going to his old employer without qualms?), and show that the network can work. The advertising part is interesting. MetroFi has shown that their particular flavor of ad-supported Wi-Fi doesn't work. But their goal wasn't crossing a digital divide, and the Portland, Ore., network was never given high marks by local users as to its robustness and reach. Copyright ©2008 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.