Gerry Blackwell

With the advent of relatively low-cost Wi-Fi IP phones that can be used to make calls from hotspots — or any Internet-linked Wi-Fi network — the red hot wireless LAN industry is converging with the even hotter VoIP industry. To keep score, you’re going to need to know the VoIP players. Here’s one to watch: […]

voiceglo, an IP telephony company with an interesting past and a more interesting product (and a name written in lower case letters), wants to be your partner. And according to voiceglo president Edward Cespedes, a fair number of ISPs already want to be his partner too. voiceglo, which came out of the chutes earlier this […]

After ten years in Silicon Valley, British-born high-tech entrepreneur Jim Baker felt a yearning for his home land. Last year he moved his family back to "deepest, darkest" Kent, a green and pleasant shire in southeast England. There Baker ran into a slight snag. He discovered it was virtually impossible to get broadband Internet access […]

Model: SMCWMR-AG Price: $249.99 MSRP Pros: Supports both 802.11b/g and 11a. Cons: Inconsistent performance and installation issues with server software Wi-Fi media players that let you pipe digital music and sometimes video from a computer in one room to a stereo or TV in another have terrific appeal. Products like the EZ-Stream Universal Wireless Multimedia […]

Hotels have been using Wi-Fi to deliver high-speed Internet access services to guests for a few years, but despite some signal successes and a glut of Wi-Fi companies targeting the sector, the technology has failed to dominate the market. Travelnet Technologies has been in the business as long as anybody and longer than most. Its […]

Wi-Fi is about to take off. Later this month, German airline Lufthansa will launch the first commercial in-flight Wi-Fi Internet access service using Connexion by Boeing, a product/service the aircraft maker has been developing and testing for the last two years. Lufthansa will start small with four aircraft operating on European routes yet to be […]

Why wait for WiMAX when there’s NextNet Wireless? That’s the thinking behind yet another major wireless Internet service provider (WISP) initiative based on NextNet’s proprietary 3G-based Expedience technology, this time in Canada. A yet to be named joint venture between a major wireline service provider and one of the country’s four national mobile phone carriers […]

Thanks to New Zealand director Peter Jackson’s multi-Oscar-winning movie series, the tiny antipodean nation will now forever be associated with J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy The Lord of the Rings. New Zealand, however, has another, and totally unexpected, cultural export: Christian rock music. The other land down under recently hosted Parachute 04, a veritable Woodstock of Christian […]

Daniel Ghansah says he’s about to explode. Or at least his small Wi-Fi company, Webgineering LLC of Miami Fla., aka SmartWires, is about to explode. But Ghansah is SmartWires and SmartWires is him; he’s the only employee, though he hopes that is about to change. In the meantime, Ghansah is the poster boy for single-handed […]

Next year when visitors fly into Toronto, the city’s main international airport, Pearson, operated by the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), should be lit from stem to stern for Wi-Fi access. Hewlett-Packard Canada is in the process of building one of the most ambitious Wi-Fi networks in the world at the airport’s new Terminal 1, […]

Ryan Easley, founder and president of Irvine, California-based EdgeFocus, claims his small company is the largest provider of Wi-Fi-based high-speed Internet access systems to apartment buildings in North America. In fact, Easley says nobody else is attacking this market niche seriously. If true, this is surprising given that the notion of using Wi-Fi to light […]

Smart antennas, if they work half as well and deliver half the benefits vendors claim, could be the making of Wi-Fi in the next phase of the industry’s evolution. The popular vision for that next phase is ubiquitous Wi-Fi coverage, indoors and out, public and private. However, given the range, coverage and capacity characteristics of […]