Gerry Blackwell

Four years ago, when Sharp HealthCare installed Cisco wireless LANs in its seven San Diego area hospitals it was a Wi-Fi pioneer. Today, with Wi-Fi increasingly a mission-critical resource in the company, Sharp is moving on to the leading edge again, installing a next-generation Wi-Fi WLAN based on equipment from Aruba Wireless Networks. It first […]

The hospitality industry continues to be a hot market for hotspot service and software providers. Add one more vendor to the increasingly crowded roster: I-hotel International, a Canadian Wi-Fi systems software, integration and management services company. Like most vendors in this market, I-hotel believes it has an infallible formula for success. They can’t all be […]

You have to admire the chutzpah of FishGrin, aka FG Communications LLC of Danville, Calif., which recently began marketing its home-grown back-end software for multiple dwelling unit (MDU) Wi-Fi systems. A press release announcing the launch of the product notes that it will be supported by FishGrin’s “Managed Services group.” Given that the 18-month old […]

A new trend in thinking about the Wi-Fi service market is emerging, a reaction against the prevailing business model exemplified by Wayport, T-Mobile and others. That model, in which a service provider secures rights of way to business premises — coffee shops, hotels, etc. — and builds Wi-Fi cells to create a ubiquitous cellular-like footprint […]

Aireo from SoniqCast, first shown at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in January and now generally available, opens up another new Wi-Fi product category. It’s the first pocket-size digital music player with a built-in Wi-Fi radio for copying files to and from a networked host PC. Transmitting large media files over an 11Mbps 802.11b wireless LAN […]

Everybody in the Wi-Fi hotspot industry thinks they have unique knowledge of how to make a buck at this game. Trouble is, few if any have proven it yet. Single Digits, an 18-month-old hotspot software and services company that announced its "debut" recently, is no different. It does however have some intriguing ideas and, surprising […]

The first consumer Wi-Fi phones are a little like dancing bears. You’re so disarmed by the fact that they can do it at all that you’re prepared to overlook their occasional stumble. Pulver Innovations is the product arm of Pulver.com, Jeff Pulver’s VoIP (Voice over IP) consulting and conference empire and it has one such […]

If you’re a small independent hotspot network operator looking for a successful model to copy, you could do worse than Tadaa Wireless, a regional player in Montreal, Canada. In March, Tadaa made news when it launched a breakthrough project to provide wireless service at Westmount Square, a landmark residential-business-retail complex in the city. It was […]

Brussels, Belgium, a lively city of just under a million that sometimes refers to itself as the "capital of Europe" for the European Union institutions it hosts, is suddenly busting out all over with Wi-Fi projects. Three are being spearheaded by the Centre d’Informatiques pour la Region bruxelloise (CIRB), an agency of the Brussels Capital […]

Previously we looked at a grassroots effort in Portsmouth, N.H., to provide citizens and visitors with free high-speed wireless Internet access. Chaska, Minn., just south of Minneapolis, a city about the same size as Portsmouth, is going at it in an entirely different way. In Chaska, the city has been involved in providing commercial Internet […]

All across the country, citizens groups, municipalities and private companies are looking for ways to spread low- or no-cost Wi-Fi access, to unwire their communities. There are almost as many different approaches and reasons for doing it as there are Wi-Fi communities. Some are grassroots and private sector funded; others are government run. Here’s a […]

Price: $199.99 Pros: Does well with video playback in some formats, easy setup. Cons: Spotty Internet radio playback, doesn’t support Windows AVI files. Wi-Fi media players like the Wireless Digital Media Player (WDMP) from Actiontec that let you play digital media from a computer through your home entertainment system are by now a glut on […]