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Hotspot Hits for May 7, 2004

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May 7, 2004

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Next week at the EDS Byron Nelson Championship golf tournament in Irving, Texas, spectators can follow the play on their laptops. SBC Communications is setting up 10 FreedomLink hotspots at the course powered by 29 SBC Yahoo! DSL lines (which will also be available for wired connections in hospitality tents). The DSL equipment is provided by Telco Systems of Foxboro, Mass., which is repackaging some of its DSL equipment for carriers to superficially market it as a backhaul solution for hotspots. — May 7, 2004

StayOnline, provider of hotel high-speed Internet access, has been named the sole-provider for hotels run by Pineapple Management Services. The group has 11 of its 17 hotels in eight states already set for Internet access, and will add the rest soon. The hotel chain says it’s been moving over the last year from mostly Ethernet deployments to wireless, and even those customers with laptops that don’t have Wi-Fi can use it thanks to StayOnline providing a device called EZair, a USB to wireless adapter. — May 6, 2004

Almost a year after it was first announced, the Wi-Fi access provided by ShakaNet at the Honolulu International Airport in Hawaii is up and running at all gates for free — for about one more week. On May 15, they’ll start charging $6.95 per day or $19.95 a month for unlimited use. ShakaNet also provides other hotspot locations on the islands, which are listed at hawaiihotspots.com, plus Internet kiosks at several hotels. — May 6, 2004

Ireland based Research and Markets has put out a report called The WLAN Hotspot Report: A Complete Analysis of the Industry and Future Evolution of the Hotspot. We don’t have a copy but the announcement about the report says they talked to 206 hotspot operators across the globe and came up with the number of commercial (not free) hotspots around the world: 18,381 (as of the end of March). They say that number will go to as high as 207,000 hotspots by the year 2007. You can buy the report for EUR1,065. — May 6, 2004

Sydney, Australia’s SkyNet Global (Quote, Chart) has entered a roaming agreement with Europe’s WeRoam, a company that manages the integration between wireless LAN hotspots and GSM networks. The deal opens SkyNetGlobal customer up to 7000 new hotspots at no extra charge. Meanwhile WeRoam users can now surf on the SkyNet locations throughout Australia and Singapore (where it runs the hotspots found in 119 McDonald’s stores). — May 5, 2004

The Heartland Inns of America chain , found in the state of Iowa with 19 locations in 15 cities including Des Moines and Cedar Rapids (and one more in Eau Claire, Wis.) will be offering totally free Wi-Fi access to guests in every room and common area (including the pools) of every Heartland Inn by May 10. Chicago-based Tantus Networks will be deploying the high-speed Internet access (HSIA) using its InnFlux service. — May 5, 2004

Sprint PCS Wi-Fi (Quote, Chart) customers can now get a monthly subscription for $49.95 with unlimited access. This is in addition to the pay-as-you-go access for $6.95 per connection for a 24-hour period. Sprint says it now has access with over 2,200 hotspots, mostly through roaming deals with Cometa and Wayport. (By contrast, T-Mobile Hotspot charges $40 a month, Boingo only $34.95 a month, and both are even cheaper than that if you contract to stay for at least a year.) — May 4, 2004

Malaysia’s larges non-line-of-sight (NLOS) wireless broadband network is being launched courtesy of TIME dotCom Berhad using services from CommVerge Solutions and equipment from Navini Networks . The Klang Valley region will get ten base stations to spread the signal, with 50 more to come in other areas. The service, under the brand name Webbit (Wireless Enhance Broadband Internet) will be for residences and SMBs. — May 4, 2004

USURF America of Denver has been picked to install the wireless infrastructure for the city of Rio Ranchero, N.M., north of Albuquerque. The broadband wireless network is expected to cover 103 square miles. USURF will be working with other local tech and telecom firms in the area, and the network will be build with USURF’s own proprietary mesh networking technology, which uses 802.11 but can be extended to use other technologies like the forthcoming WiMax/802.16. — May 4, 2004

iPass users can now connect to their corporate networks while on the road — or on the side of the road at a truckstop, assuming it has a hotspot run by Truckstop.net. The latter plans to have 3000 hotspot locations along the highways of Canada and the US over the next few years, and is working with chains like Rip Griffin Travel Centers, Petro Stopping Centers, Love’s Travel Stops, Pilot Travel Centers and others. Sprint PCS Wi-Fi is building out the network, on which Sprint’s customers can also roam, naturally. — May 3, 2004

Hotspot Hits for May 7, 2004

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