Gerry Blackwell

Everybody is excited about the promise of WiMax, for all kinds of different reasons. WiNetworks, a U.S.-based firm with R&D operations in Israel, has a somewhat unusual and highly targeted WiMax strategy. It wants to use the wide area wireless networking standard (AKA 802.16-2004) to help direct broadcast satellite (DBS) operators offer triple-play services – […]

Everybody, it seems, is working on a solution to integrate mobile and Wi-Fi-based telephony. One of latest to enter the fray is VeriSign, a provider of secure network services to both wireless and wireline carriers, including managing roaming between cellular carriers. VeriSign recently announced field trials of its wireless integration solution at three U.S. university […]

Inco Ltd., the world’s largest nickel company, may seem an unlikely candidate to be a wireless trendsetter, but the giant Canadian mining operation is at the forefront of a couple of important trends in Wi-Fi.   Inco deployed Cisco Aironet WLAN gear in its mines in Sudbury, Canada, not just to provide local area network […]

US Wireless Online , a mid-size regional WISP serving mainly enterprise customers, has been bulking up through acquisition recently, girding itself for a bigger play. It has also diversified with campus, municipal and hotel Wi-Fi hotzone deployments, and a move into wireless VoIP services. USWO won’t come right out and say it has aspirations to […]

In the big-money world of U.S. military spending on information technology, Wi-Fi is hot, hot, hot. System vendors and integrators are scrambling for their stake in a bonanza of opportunities flowing from the massive infrastructure modernization program currently underway in the Army. As the Army upgrades its networks at bases and posts across the country, […]

For an intro on Rio Rancho, New Mexico‘s citywide VoWi-Fi, check out part one. One of the company’s VoWi-Fi innovations is to bundle a stripped-down, small office version of Broadsoft’s software PBX with its business phone service. The business service costs $44.95 a month and includes unlimited long distance calling within the U.S. and Canada, […]

Wireless ISP Azulstar Networks (formerly Ottawa Wireless) has scored another first – the first U.S. city to offer metro-wide voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) service. The city is Rio Rancho, New Mexico, with a population of about 65,000. It’s home to Intel’s largest manufacturing facility, as well as other high-tech companies. Last year Azulstar lit up […]

Microsoft, having achieved dominance on the data side of the enterprise information technology market, is now clearly setting its sights on the voice side. With IP telephony accelerating the convergence of voice and data in the enterprise, the move into telecom was a no-brainer for Microsoft. The company is building a strategy around its vision […]

With a little help from Britain’s nominally socialist Labor government, municipal councils in the UK are getting into the Wi-Fi hotzone business. Cityspace Ltd. has recently launched two major city center hotzones, one in Bristol last September and another, launched in June, in the London borough of Islington. Cityspace was formed eight years ago to […]

The Wi-Fi hotspot industry in Canada got a little more interesting recently with the launch by Bell Canada of a new network of 275 hotspots in Mail Boxes Etc. locations across the country. Mail Boxes Etc. is just the first deployment in a new, more aggressive Bell hotspot strategy. The company expects to have 500 […]

Global Crossing recently announced its Carrier VoIP Community Peering service, extending to carriers a service that the company first offered to its enterprise customers in June of this year. The service is intended to help the company’s carrier customers manage their costs, support advanced IP functionality, and potentially offer flat-rate pricing to their end users. […]

It sounds like something out of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. Deep underground, a huge Toro 0011 loader with a 25-foot wide shovel scrapes up and dumps ore in hoppers. The cab of the vehicle is eerily empty—the machine appears to be driving itself. Meanwhile, 12 miles away on the surface, […]