Eric Griffith

Metro Connect, a consortium made up of Cisco Systems, IBM, Azulstar and community-centric SeaKay, has been picked to run the Wireless Silicon Valley Initiative’s network. Metro Connect beat out VeriLAN and MetroFi for the job. Earlier this year, the group (minus Azulstar) was a contender for San Francisco’s TechConnect project, but lost the bid to […]

As reported last week in our Hotspot Hits, the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota is the latest big municipality to pick a partner for installing citywide Wi-Fi. US Internet of Minnetonka is the vendor, and will use mesh equipment from BelAir Networks of Ottawa, Ontario. Wireless Minneapolis is the name of the overall initative, which will […]

After getting a $30 million infusion of Series D cash this week from investors like Juniper Networks and Nortel Networks, WLAN provider Trapeze Networks took the wraps off an upgrade to the software running its WLAN infrastructure equipment called Mobility System. “First and most interesting in this release is security,” says Dan Simone, vice president […]

Because of the expected delays in the IEEE’s ratification process of the 802.11n standard for high-speed wireless networking, the Wi-Fi Alliance has decided to step up its timetable for testing products based on a draft of the standard. Don’t think this applies to the current crop of so-called Draft-N products on the market, however. This […]

A couple of years ago, the Caribou Coffee chain was a big win for the SBC FreedomLink hotspot service. SBC was going to put equipment in 300 of the cafes around the United States and charge as little as $8 for 24 hours of unlimited access to the network. Two years later, SBC FreedomLink is […]

Cisco’s Mobility Services— that is, specific support for security, voice, location services and guest access, all announced in June — are the catalyst for a new partnership between enterprise heavyweights Cisco Systems and HP. The latter’s systems integration arm, HP Services, will be using Cisco WLAN infrastructure equipment, such as the Catalyst 3750G WLAN Controller […]

Because they “have to be there first” — as in providing software to run in future WLAN products— Devicescape Software of San Bruno, California today announced the latest version of its software for Wi-Fi device manufacturers, Devicescape Agent. Of particular note in this version: it’s the first announced software to support the Wi-Fi Protected Setup […]

Airplane maker Boeing is shutting down its in-flight Wi-Fi service, Connexion by Boeing. The company will take a $320 million charge for writing off the shutdown. It’s a pre-tax charge of 25 cents per share for the rest of the year, but the closure could lift company earnings by 15 cents a share in 2007. […]

It’s hard to argue with Tropos Networks’ success. Take, for example, a few hundred deployments worldwide and partnerships with providers on some of the most-hyped metropolitan-scale wireless networks ever (i.e. EarthLink, with Philadelphia, San Francisco and elsewhere). Yet it has always taken knocks for being the lone mesh equipment provider utilizing just a single radio […]

Boingo Wireless says its latest — and probably last — infusion of investment capital will pay for its acquisition of Concourse Communications Group and lay the bedrock for future endeavors. This Series C round brought in a whopping $65 million (the company doesn’t say how much Concourse actually cost).  Several new investors signed on this […]