Gerry Blackwell

It takes all kinds to make a Wi-Fi world. The variety of business models being tried fairly boggles the mind. Which ones will win? Place your bets. Take, for example, RoadPost‘s. A Canadian firm with a Rockville, Md., office and a customer base over 50-percent American, RoadPost is a long-time player in the niche-y but […]

Despite a unified currency and a European parliament, when it comes to Wi-Fi Europe remains a patch-work market. In the case of Wi-Fi, it’s mainly because of differences in national regulatory policy. The Scandinavian countries were first and fastest out of the gate, followed by the UK and Germany. Now France, which only officially removed […]

The notion that wirelessness in and of itself delivers strategic benefits may sound like part of a tail-wagging-the-dog style pitch from a wireless equipment vendor or service provider. Not many enterprises would buy it. Hawaii HomeLoan (HHL), a year-old Honolulu-based mortgage banking operation, would, though. In fact, HHL could be the poster child for wireless […]

The winter weather at the top of Mount Washington, the highest peak in New Hampshire and in the whole northeast United States, is, in a word, foul. On one record-breaking occasion, the wind speed measured at the Mount Washington Observatory reached 230 miles per hour. While it may be true that you can’t fall off […]

Coffman Cove in southeastern Alaska is by no means the remotest place in the world, or even in Alaska–just one of the remotest. Yet as of June 6, this tiny, isolated village on the shores of Prince of Wales Island will officially join the global village. Broadband Internet access is coming to Coffman Cove. To […]

The guys at FastKat Wireless of Roseville, Calif., like to see themselves as modern-day Davids battling the telecom industry Goliaths, and winning. Their story of adventures in WISPland could be inspiration to others who find themselves in the same fix. In just a few short months, FastKat’s original two partners — president Eric Fine and […]

The big mobile carriers are still having trouble making a commitment to Wi-Fi, and that is creating uncertainty at all levels in the mobile and Wi-Fi markets. Consider the case of QPass Inc. of Seattle, Wash. QPass supplies "activity management business system software" to mobile carriers. It stands ready to serve the Wi-Fi industry, it […]

Spectator sport has become such an electronic pastime that even crowds attending live events can’t live without their JumboTrons, thumping recorded music and pixel boards for out-of-town scores anymore. Heck, the players can’t live without them. Now a Denver area firm is offering big league sports franchises a Wi-Fi-based service that will give their ticket […]

Your family doc bustles into the examination room and without saying a word, pulls out a Palm Pilot, taps the screen and pauses to read something on it. The last time you were at this clinic, the guy was carrying around dog-eared manila folders on a clipboard. He looks up. "So," he says, "you’ve had […]

It’s a sure sign that a technology or business idea is gaining acceptance when market research and consulting firms fall all over themselves publishing studies on it. In the last several months industry watching organizations have been intensely studying the Wi-Fi hotspot phenomenon, and writing about it endlessly — especially overseas. We looked at three […]

A Wi-Fi hotspot map of the U.S. would show a black hole in the middle of the country. Most of the activity is coastal. However, EthoStream LLC, a Wi-Fi services company from that quintessential Midwest town, Milwaukee, WI, aims to change all that. EthoStream is mounting a multi-pronged attack on various venues — café hotspots, […]

If you’re a wireless ISP, says Scott Redman, “Coverage is king.” That’s why Redman, vice president of sales for San Diego-based SkyRiver Communications, Inc., initiated talks earlier this year with two other California WISPs, resulting in the formation of SkyWeb Alliance, possibly the first coalition of its kind in the wireless access industry. The other […]