Gerry Blackwell

It takes all kinds to make a wireless roaming world. We already have the Wayports and Mobilestars, pioneering public access wireless network operators. We also have a slew of local and regional johnny-come-latelies and free-wireless peaceniks adding to the public access footprint a few hotspots at a time. We have iPass and GRIC, carry-overs from […]

As we saw in Part I – though it was hardly a news flash – 802.11b wireless LANs can be, and usually are, a security nightmare. For particularly security-conscious organizations, such as most federal government departments, WLANs remain a no-no, even more so since September 11 raised new fears of cyber terrorism. On advice from […]

Jim Gemmel was shopping in a Circuit City near D.C. recently, when he bumped into, as he puts it, “two gents from an unknown government agency.” They attracted his attention a) because they were obviously feds, a species Gemmel knows well, and b) because they had a big shopping cart into which they were tossing […]

Jim Gemmel was shopping in a Circuit City near D.C. recently, when he bumped into, as he puts it, “two gents from an unknown government agency.” They attracted his attention a) because they were obviously feds, a species Gemmel knows well, and b) because they had a big shopping cart into which they were tossing […]

It’s always a carnival atmosphere at the annual Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) National Championships in Camden NJ. Fans crowd the grandstand at the finish line, alumni groups from competing schools set up hospitality tents, raucous tailgate parties are in full swing all along the course. The event this past June was no different, but it […]

This is good news because giving international roaming customers what they want is great business for ISPs. They’re premium customers. Just ask Mark Stout, president of Folsom CA-based VPM Internet Services Inc. VPM is an Internet and e-commerce company with about 4,000 corporate users, mostly in Fortune 500 companies, including Sun Microsystems and Texas Instruments. […]

Action Stations Another small regional company is damning the torpedoes and launching fixed wireless services—this time in upstate New York. eNvizion Communications Group Ltd. of Rochester, NY announced this month that it had deployed high-speed wireless data networks in Rochester and Syracuse and was launching service in the two cities. eNvizion already has two buildings […]

Building WLANs that really work may not be as easy as it’s cracked up to be, as we started to discover last week in the first part of this two-part primer on design and implementation. In Part I, Jesse Frankel, chief strategy officer and vice president of advanced technology at Akron OH WLAN integrator NeTeam […]

Las Vegas-based BeyonDSL is not that different from any number of other regional wireless ISPs with larger ambitions. Like others, it finds itself becalmed right now by the economic downturn. Its aspirations to expand a narrow base of operationsthe company launched in Vegas last August and has added two small southern California towns sincehave been […]

The sudden explosion of Wi-Fi equipment on the market and the broad acceptance of the technology by business and home users is mostly a good thing for the industry and for users. But there is a downside. Vendors, not without justification, have pushed the idea that Wi-Fi networks are extremely easy to set up – […]

It’s Saturday, shopping day, and you’re off to the mall. Don’t forget to pick up a wireless flyer at the Information kiosk on your way in. You’ll need it to access all the location specials as you roam around the stores. Wireless flyer? Location specials? Okay, I made those terms up. And the things they […]

If you sell to business customers, it’s only a matter of time before some of them, maybe most, start to demand broadband roaming service—if they haven’t already begun. And if you can’t provide it, those customers will look for another supplier that can. With longer flight delays and more flight cancellations an almost guaranteed feature […]