Gerry Blackwell

It’s easy enough to see why established players in the broadband internet business wanted to block M2Z Networks Inc., the wireless broadband startup that proposed a novel and contentious way to exploit unused radio spectrum in the 2155-2175 MHz band. If the FCC had allowed M2Z to use the spectrum to create a nationwide wireless […]

The U.S. real estate boom may be busting but mom-and-pop WISPs are suddenly a hot commodity on the mergers and acquisitions market. Aggressive public companies with an eye to the main chance are binge buying. ERF Wireless of League City, Texas is one. The company has made 10 WISP acquisitions in the last two and […]

Mac OS X version 10.5 or Leopard, the latest upgrade to Apple’s Macintosh operating system, created quite a stir when it was released in October. Pictures of excited Mac-heads lining up at mall outlets to buy the new release (for $130) appeared in newspapers and on TV. For a platform that traditionally has accounted for […]

It’s an old idea finally seeing the light of day: a multi-zone wireless phone service with handsets that work at home, on the go, and in the office. The question is, which set of technologies will ultimately drive it forward? Will it be Wi-Fi and dual-mode 3G/Wi-Fi phones, or femtocells, the 3G home base stations […]

The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet was already an intriguing product, a multifunction Wi-Fi-powered device, neither cell phone nor full-fledged PDA, but useful and appealing in a number of ways. It became a little more useful and appealing recently when Nokia and Skype joined forces to put a tailor-made Skype client on the N800. We reviewed […]

When the United Villages bus comes to town in rural Orissa, India, it might bring some lucky farmer long-awaited news of his ideal bride—or just the bag of seeds he ordered, or a voice mail from his brother in town, or a Web page with the latest cricket scores.   All of this is thanks […]

You don’t hear so much these days about good old-fashioned tornados, the kind that took Dorothy out of Kansas and deposited her in Oz. Hurricanes sweeping in off the Atlantic or Caribbean get all the press. But, twisters haven’t gone away. In fact, they still terrorize Kansas. Just ask the folks in Greensburg.   When […]

The dust has settled after Skype’s mid-August meltdown. Millions of users around the world lost service for up to two days, producing much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Everything appears to be back to normal now, barring the odd Skype-borne virus. But we wondered.   What really happened when the lights went out in Skype-world? […]

It’s not clear yet whether Z-wave technology will make home automation any more consumer friendly than first-generation technologies such as X10. But market response to new Z-Wave-based products such as Hawking Technology’s HomeRemote Wireless Home Automation Gateway ($230 direct from Hawking) and Wireless Video Camera ($180) should tell the story.    Z-Wave is the narrowband […]

Nortel, the often troubled voice and data network equipment provider, has been making noises of late about its ambitions in the emerging 4G – aka mobile WiMAX – market.   The company started selling fixed WiMAX gear, based on the 802.16d standard, two years ago. It buys OEM equipment from Airspan and resells under the […]

The market for wireless sensor networks using tiny, low-powered sensor devices called motes that can measure everything from soil temperature to motion is about to take off, and Moteiv Corp., a San Francisco startup, hopes to cash in big with products it says are smaller and easier to use than the competition’s. Moteiv’s latest, the […]

Fixed-mobile convergence (F/MC) may be closer to market reality in North America than many people think. Or so says NewStep Networks Inc., the Toronto-based developer of F/MC software solutions for carriers and enterprises. NewStep has had some promising early success selling its technology-agnostic service platform to carriers, including Embarq, the new Sprint local phone service, […]