Week of November 29-December 3, 2004
. The extra bandwidth has meant an increase of up to 20 additional hours of computer time per student per week, double what they had previously (is that a good thing?). CISD says the network was cheaper and installed in 1/3 the time that it would have taken to install fiber. This is the first install in a deal with IBM to start offering Proxim equipment as a wireless solution for customers. —November 30, 2004Why just be a hotspot when you can be a PrinterSpot? The latest idea from PrinterOn is to provide WISPs with the ability to serve up printouts to any user that needs one. Users just go to the Web site, find the nearest PrinterSpot location, and use the Web interface to upload a file that is sent immediately to the printer. Wayport has installed 16 such locations already at its airport Laptop Lane offices for mobile workers. The cost to a WISP is only $395 for a self-configurable setup. —November 30, 2004 ParkerVision says its high-range SignalMAX wireless equipment has been installed by Aero Sport at the St. Augustine/St. Johns County Airport in St. Augustine, Fla. The connection is for airlines and passengers, and even extends out to the runway so you can get in that last-minute surfing before they make you shut down the laptop. Super Bowl XXXIX will be played in nearby Jacksonville in January, so they expect to get some extra use out of the network with the influx of visitors.—November 30, 2004 The Emerging Technologies & Healthcare Innovations Congress (TETHIC) is going on right now at The Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C. The gathering of healthcare professionals to discuss technical issues will have wireless Internet access provided by Meru Networks. Same thing at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA)’s Meeting at McCormick Place in Chicago this week—Meru is “bolstering” the existing RSNAnet network there so attendees can share papers. Meru must want to sell some products to hospitals. Meru’s not alone at RSNA: Trapeze Networks is a partner with iNOC, the group that runs the RSNAnet which covers two million square feet in several exhibit halls. —November 30, 2004 Speaking of Trapeze: Students studying in the almost 500,000 square foot J. Willard Marriott Library building at the University of Utah can now surf the Internet instead, courtesy of Trapeze Networks. Actually, they could surf before, as the library moved to the switch vendor as an upgrade of standard access points. 2,000 students have tried it so far, and by next year the network should be free and open to the 60,000-person campus community (using 802.1X authentication to make sure they’re affiliated with the school) .—November 30, 2004 Quebec’s Videotron Wi-Fi service will now offer scratch cards—customers buy the card for $3.95, scratch it off and get info for an hour of access. The backend of that is run by LogiSense’s management and billing platform. Customers of Videotron’s high-speed broadband can get an hour free per month to try.—November 30, 2004 A Wi-Fi first: RoomLinX says the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences (AAHS) picked its HSIA service as the first ever to get the Five Star Diamond Award for wireless providers to luxury hotels.—November 30, 2004 Proxim says that its AP-4000 units and a mix of its Tsunami Broadband Wireless products serve as the basis for the new wireless network covering the entire Westside Union School District (K-12) of Lancaster, Calif. The network links ten schools and a district office serving 7,000 students—Internet access is now available in every classroom in the district. What’s interesting is that the network access at the client level—the student’s desktop—is Ethernet (except for those in temporary structures). The main wireless is the 5GHz Tsunamis used for backhaul, which were installed because the 2.4GHz spectrum in the area is clogged up by competing wireless broadband providers. Four new schools are being built in the area soon, and all will connect to the district office with wireless.—November 29, 2004Itakeskus in Helsinki, Finland is called the “largest shopping center in the Nordic countries” in this release, and who are we to argue? We’re still waiting to see the Mall of America. Anyway, it turns out Radionet, Vantaan Energia, and cooperative Zonet have teamed up to turn the shopping center into the latest Wivanet hotzone, which supports both Wi-Fi and 2G/3G phones. Itakeskus is just the first, as Vantaan Energy plans to expand Wivanet to four other Helsinki shopping centers as well.—November 29, 2004
Week of November 22-26, 2004
A short-term deal: BT is hoping to get its BT Mobile customers hooked on the BT Openzone Wi-Fi hotspot network, so the company is reducing the price of hotspot access for Mobile customers to just #1 a month. That’s only for the first three months and only if you sign a contract for a year’s subscription at #25 for 4,000 minutes per month. That #1, however, covers 500 minutes of usage at any of 7,000 hotspots in the UK operated by either BT Openzone or The Cloud. Customers have to sign up by Dec. 31 to get the deal, and it also extends to users of BT Broadband, BT Business Broadband, and BT Yahoo! Broadband. Full-price Openzone subscribers have roaming access to 20,000 hotspots around the world through BT’s membership in the Wireless Broadband Alliance.—November 24, 2004 Coffee and Wi-Fi? That’s so last year. How about popcorn and Wi-Fi? The Dale and Thomas Popcorn corporate store in Teaneck, NJ, now offers a free hotspot for patrons. The access was installed by hometown integrator Network Doctor. Just don’t get any butter on your keyboard.—November 24, 2004 Vancouver-based FatPort said earlier this week that its hotspots are now part of the 25,000 dialup and Wi-Fi locations offered by RemotePipes and its IP Roamer network. FatPort’s FatZones are in several locations in major Canadian cities; they also support VoIP through sister company mobitus. RemotePipes expects to hit 35,000 locations by the end of the year, and 50,000 for 2005. Cost of the service varies depending on hourly or daily use, goes down a few cents if you add multiple users to an account, and depends on your location.—November 24, 2004 Oregon’s Portland International Airport is providing free 802.11b-based Internet access across 70 percent of the main level of the terminal, including most of the airline gates. The network provides real-time flight and airport info as well as access to the Web and e-mail. The network is run by XO Communications.—November 23, 2004 Reported by site 123bharath.com: the company Microsense plans to build over 1,000 Wi-Fi networks throughout India. They’ll do so for everything from companies to providers to hotels. They already have networks in 20 premium lodging chains in the country, and are experimenting with hotspots.—November 23, 2004 The Higher Education Wireless Access Consortium (HEWAC) and wireless ISP WiSE Technologies have announced the winners of their Campus-Wide WiFi Equipment Donation Program, wherein 10 schools (out of 120 applicants) were picked to get free WLAN equipment and installation. The University of Wisconsin in Rock County got the grand prize of an estimated $200,000 grant. Other winners included Rockhurst University, Cleveland Chiropractic College, Furman University, University of Portland, Saint Joseph College, Fisk University, Wheaton College, Johnson County Community College, and J.F. Drake State Technical College.—November 23, 2004 China Mobile will be expanding its cellular and Wi-Fi backhaul in eight cities—Su Zhou, Wu Xi, Chang Zhou, Zhen Jiang, Yang Zhou, Nan Tong, Tai An, and Huan An— found in the 100,000 square kilometer Jiangsu province on the southeast coast— the home of 70 million people. The network will be installed by Vyyo, a company that also works with competitors China Telecom, China Unicom, China Netcom and China Railcom.—November 23, 2004
Week of November 15-19, 2004
Another roamer for Connexion by Boeing: subscribers to the Singapore-based StarHub service will be able to use the in-flight wireless service for no extra charge. The two are currently testing for compatibility, and are coming up with an easy way for StarHub customers to sign onto the service that will involve simple user ID and password authentication.—November 19, 2004 Remember back in October when Connexion said it would allow users of NTT DoCoMo to roam on its in-flight network? Well, this is different from that. Today, Connexion said it would allow the same things for customers of NTT Communications. It’s as bad as keeping track of the various things named Verizon or AT&T that aren’t really related, but here goes: DoCoMo is the big Japanese mobile phone company, but NTT Communications is a full blown telecom and subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Corporation that offers access to 25,000 hotspots in 44 countries and regions, with Connexion only the latest. They expect roaming without extra charges to start in December.—November 18, 2004Navini Networks, through provider partner Winbeam, is powering the new wireless broadband being offered in the city of Erie, Pa., serving its 100,000 residents and its many businesses. The network should cover 20 square miles out into Lake Erie as well, providing service for boaters. They company calls it “a cost-effective backhaul for Wi-Fi hotspots.” Winbeam has holdings in other major Pennsylvania cities such as Harrisburg, State College, Lancaster, Reading and Wilkes-Barre, and implies that it might roll out services there in the future. —November 18, 2004 The Red Lion Hotel in Silverdale, Wash., has a high-speed fiber line, but has added a wireless hotspot courtesy of provider DONOBi of Seattle. Coverage includes all 152 guest rooms and 6,000 square feet of meeting space. DONOBi provides the access and has created a Web-based management interface for hotel use to track and manage each room’s access. —November 18, 2004Customers of Texas-based WaCool.net for dialup and Wi-Fi between Waco and Dallas, you’re now customers of Internet America of Dallas. They bought out WaCool.net, and now have control of all 100 of its subscribers. Earlier this month, they bought out My Linux ISP of Houston. —November 18, 2004The M-City (Mobile-City) Project in Taipei, Taiwan will use a mesh network with equipment from Nortel Networks to provide WLAN access. Services will be used by commercial buildings and the mass transit stations there. The network will be operated by contractor Qware—the company “expects to have 10,000 wireless access points in service by the end of 2005” to cover 272 square kilometers, serving a potential 2.65 million people.—November 17, 2004 If the price of paying for iPass is preventing your corporation from jumping on the hotspot aggregator’s service for keeping mobile workers in touch, here’s some good news: as of December 1st, they’re going to a flat rate price, at least for use of T-Mobile powered hotspots. They’ll still have per-minute and day rates if you want them, usually with a cap. But now road warriors who stay connected for long periods of time while sipping lattes won’t have to worry about costing the company extra. What the prices are for all these packages, however, depends upon the corporate customer, locations, number of users they have, phases of the moon, etc., and is worked out with iPass. —November 17, 2004 Connexion by Boeing has another customer for its in-flight hotspot service. China Airlines says it will start to put the equipment in its long-haul fleet of 747-400s by the second quarter of 2005. Service will be available on North America-bound flights to and from New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Anchorage and Vancouver. According to Wi-Fi Networking News, Connexion has its installation time down to just a few days now, so planes in for maintenance work can get the equipment installed in time, meaning it will be on more planes than was previously possible—but the service probably won’t be on any U.S. airlines until they all stop going into bankruptcy. —November 17, 2004 Skyy-Fi, owned by Alpha Wireless Broadband, says it has five brand new hotspot locations—which is great, but it doesn’t say in the announcement where these new hotspots are (they list all their venues online, if you want to try to figure it out). What’s interesting is, they state in their latest release that they’ll be monitoring their locations for usage, and if certain sites don’t make money, they’ll relocate the hotspot to a new venue. The company says it hasn’t yet reached a 100-user threshold, but when they do, they’ll also start to offer customers 24/7 tech support.—November 17, 2004 Wayport‘s latest hotel is in San Diego, at the tropical-themed Red Lion Hanalei Hotel. All 417 guest rooms will get wired Ethernet HSIA, and the lobby, meeting rooms, conference areas, and lounges will have Wi-Fi. —November 16, 2004 If your hotel stay will be over an extended period of time, then Extended Stay Hotels hopes you’ll use their Web site to find one of their 650 listed locations where overnight just isn’t enough. The site has listings for properties coast-to-coast from Extended StayAmerica (including Wellesley Inn and Suites), Homestead Studio Suites, StudioPLUS Deluxe Studios, and Crossland Economy Studios. The announcement claims that all Extended Stay Hotels properties will have Wi-Fi access by March of 2005. —November 16, 2004 BelAir Networks has joined the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Mobile Media Consortium (MMC), the folks who thankfully defined the difference between a hotspot, hotzone, and a cloud. As part of the membership, BelAir will become the hardware provider for the “WAGZone” (Wireless Athens Georgia Zone) cloud that covers 24 blocks of downtown Athens, Georgia near UGA. The existing infrastructure of the WAGZone has started to crumble due to the humid weather. The BelAir hardware will be used for more than just Internet access, though—it will be part of projects required of UGA students, including testing of mobile applications. —November 16, 2004 RoamAD has signed up with Siemens to help it get even more traction in New Zealand. RoamAD will supply the hardware and software (which they say ‘caters to VoIP’) and Siemens will do the deployments, which it says can be done in weeks instead of months. —November 16, 2004 Members of the media traveling to Texas Stadium to watch the Dallas Cowboys can now expect a faster connection back to home base (sorry, baseball metaphor): the press box has been upgraded from dialup connections to 802.11g through installation of a 3Com access point that connects back to the stadium’s 3Com-based infrastructure. The press have their own VLAN, so they shouldn’t get interrupted by any other traffic on the network, as is the right of the Fourth Estate (but we’re biased). —November 15, 2004 The Holiday Inn of Bluefield, West Virginia, is the new home of a FireTide mesh network, installed by D.C. metro area system integrator ABEO Corp. The network covers all 134 guest rooms, two conference rooms, the management area, and the pool (for those with waterproof laptops). This is ABEO’s second Holiday Inn install with FireTide, and they expect to do two more in the D.C. region. —November 15, 2004 Speaking of hotels, Marriott is trumpeting that they now have 2,400 locations with high-speed Internet access (HSIA) around the world—that’s 95% of all their rooms—and the company expects service in 100% of U.S. hotels by the end of the year. Worldwide, 1,900 locations feature Wi-Fi, usually in the public areas and meeting rooms. The access is free at Courtyard, Residence Inn, Fairfield Inn, TownePlace Suites and SpringHill Suites. —November 15, 2004 Campers at the state parks of Illinois will soon want to bring their water (and bear)-proof laptops and PDAs with them: the Illinois Department of Natural Resources is working with Transnet Wireless to offer high-speed access in state parks through Wi-Fi kiosks managed by Airpath’s WiBOSS service for billing and sign-on. The move doesn’t cost the state a thing, and they’ll make a little money back on the fees charged to surfing customers. The first kiosk is up in Pere Marquette State Park. —November 15, 2004 Alvarion, maker of WiMax-equipment-that’s-yet-to-be-officially-WiMax like many others, isn’t having a problem finding customers: The company’s BreezeMAX system will be used in Spain to provide fixed wireless broadband to suburban and rural customers in Andalusia, Spain’s most populated region, and Catalonia (home of Barcelona) in the Pyrenees mountains. The service will be installed and run by Iberbanda. —November 15, 2004
Week of November 8-12, 2004
Pan Pacific Shopping Centers will soon be offering Wi-Fi. The owners of the centers located in the western states of California, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada have an agreement signed with NextPhase Technologies to install service in five southern California centers as a test for quality and performance. They expect to have that done this month. No word on price, but the two will split any revenues. —November 11, 2004Nortel , which recently went public talking about its mesh networking equipment, says it will be rolling that hardware out on the campus of the Edith Cowan University in Australia, which they claim is the first mesh network Down Under. The setup will cover 168 buildings, and will be available to all 23,000 students, plus staff and faculty. —November 11, 2004London’s BroadGroup says its latest survey of 122 service providers in 28 countries reveals that Europe is approaching 27,000 hotspots—68% of which are in France, Germany and the UK. And as the number of sites goes up, the prices go down (though it’s still more expensive than in the US and Asia). Average price for one hour is 5.74 Euros, a fall of 11%, and even steeper falls occurred for two or three hours and for annual pricing—but prices for daily and monthly service didn’t drop much. Subscriptions, however, have dropped off, and 77% of all money paid to such hotspots is done by prepaid cards and credit cards.—November 9, 2004 Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Broadband provider Speakeasy says it’s building the world’s “first wireless broadband city.” It’s testing out a “WiMax” service in metropolitan Seattle, including Belltown, Pioneer Square, Lower Queen Anne, and Lake Union. Initial speed will be 3Mbps, and businesses can get a dedicated service level for mission critical uses. This is a test, this is only a test—but this could be their way of transitioning out of DSL to fixed wireless.—November 9, 2004 Royal Caribbean’s new ship—Freedom of the Seas—is still being built in Finland’s Kvaerner Masa Yards, but the cruise line is already calling the 158,000 ton vessel its “most futuristic ship.” Expect flat screen TVs in every guest stateroom, cell phone service on board, and, oh yeah, gobs o’ Wi-Fi connectivity for all 3,600 guests. Bookings are open now to sail in the spring of 2005 around the Caribbean from Miami.—November 9, 2004 If you’re curious about the new WiFlyer portable router/base station that’s designed to work with dialup connections, you can buy one at the airport—specifically from Wayport’s Laptop Lane business centers—for $150.—November 9, 2004 No details on when it will go live, but the city of Barstow, Calif., is planning a wireless hotzone that will run from the city hall to the Parks and Recreation Department. Network Installation Corp. will do the installation.—November 9, 2004PCTEL’s Roaming Client software—the same software that powers the latest generation of T-Mobile Hotspot’s Connection Manager software—will be used by Japan’s NTT DoCoMo to let users roam between Wi-Fi, WCDMA, and PHS (Personal Handyphone Service) networks, all with the same interface. The software supports multiple languages and full 802.1X secure authentication.—November 9, 2004 RoomLinX has a new multi-year agreement in place with Lees Inns. They’ll provide HSIA in 22 recently renovated hotels, both for guests and for internal use.—November 9, 2004
Week of November 1-5, 2004
LinkSpot Networks, known for its Wi-Fi in RV parks strategy, says it has landed two more such locations in the state of North Carolina, the Asheville’s Bear Creek RV Park & Resort and Rutledge Lake Travel Park in Fletcher. Fees are by the hour, day, week or month as needed, and are transferable if the user travels to another LinkSpot location. The company is also now offering access to ThisRVpark.com—a site displaying local entertainment options for mobile home travelers, as well as local news and weather info.—November 5, 2004 TechBirmingham, a non-profit out to help grow the Alabama city with new technology expansion, says it’s working with the Internet Professionals Society of Alabama to maintain an online list of all the region’s 50-plus hotspots at www.ipsaonline.org/wifi. Locations include the usual cafe suspects (Kinko’s, Panera Bread) and some local restaurants, truck stops, hotels, seven UPS Stores, a bookstore, a tire dealer, and St. Vincent’s Hospital.—November 5, 2004 The AP has a story today saying that Intel-installed wireless in the 500,000-acre Wolong Nature Reserve in China is helping researchers stay in touch with each other as they track the reserve’s 300 panda bears (half are in captivity, the other half in the wild). That’s one fifth of the entire population of pandas worldwide. The Wi-Fi links the reserve’s main office, the museum, research center, breeding center, hospital, and playground so researchers can instantly store data about the panda’s every move—something they used to record on paper. Intel also donated several Centrino-based notebooks to the reserve.—November 5, 2004 The Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers is building a new 28-gate terminal for 2005, but that hasn’t stopped them from installing Wi-Fi in the existing 17-gate building (currently handling 5 million passengers per year when it was designed for only 3 million). And the airport isn’t foisting the $438 million rebuild project onto the wallets of Internet users—the Internet access is free. To get on, users are first sent to the airport Web site to see flight tracking and schedules. —November 5, 2004 Wi-Fi doesn’t get much more remote than Ely, Minn. in the frozen north of the state where winter seems to rule for nine months of the year. But some people like that, and thus the Grand Ely Lodge Resort & Conference Center, run by Madison Hospitality, does a thriving business—enough that it’s the latest place of lodging to get the StayOnline for-fee broadband service. Madison will also be using StayOnline for HSIA at the Holiday Inn in Alexandria, Minn; the Inn at Reading in Wyomissing, Pa.; and the Ramada Inn in Anderson, S.C.— November 4, 2004 If you’re a member of the armed services on R&R from the Middle East and you’re passing through the Phoenix or Las Vegas airports, stop on by the America West Clubs. The airline is making the facility open to such soldiers for free, and that includes the Wi-Fi-based Internet access.—November 4, 2004 This week the Anacapa Marketing Service launched an advertising network specifically targeting hotspot operators, so the venues can offer services cheap or for free, but can still make some money. No extra software downloads are required, and ads would be viewed on the Web browser by the end user. Anacapa would provide the equipment and offer revenue-sharing with operators. —November 3, 2004 The Atlanta Motor Speedway is now a hotzone. The network, installed by two-way radio provider Racing Radios (and partner Titan Networking Technologies) using a mix of Tropos Networks mesh equipment with the 900Mhz Motorola Canopy wireless broadband system, was tested on Halloween day by 100 users at the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Bass Pro Shops/MBNA 500 race. It was successful, so Racing Radios plans to use it to provide Wi-Fi service to the media, vendors, and RV facilities around the Speedway. —November 3, 2004 Southwest Florida International Airport (SWFIA) in Fort Myers, Florida is the latest airport to offer free Wi-Fi connections. Installed by integrator TEACO using mesh equipment from BelAir Networks, the service covers both airport terminals and will eventually extend to a new terminal under construction, as well as outside (even to the runways). —November 3, 2004 Weblog BoingBoing linked this morning to a feature at HotelChatter: a round-up of what the community site considers the best Wi-Fi equipped hotels. In the top spot: Kimpton’s, with 40 locations that have wireless in the lobby—and some will even put an AP near your room to improve the signal. The rest of the top five include Omni, Marriott Residence Inn, Best Western, and Holiday Inn. They plan to follow up soon with the worst hotels for Wi-Fi. —November 3, 2004 Boingo Wireless has a new roaming partner in France. Paris-based METEOR Networks will put 400 new hotspot locations in the aggregator’s footprint, including hotels, cafés, and bus stations (the usual suspects). METEOR expects to have 750 hotspots by the end of 2004. Boingo claims 5,600 locations throughout Europe.—November 3, 2004 Airwave Wireless says lots of schools out there are using its management software to run their on-campus WLANs. Those schools include: UC Davis, University of Michigan, SUNY Geneseo, Georgia Tech, Oregon State, University of Denver, Gonzaga University, Florida State, University of Alabama, Wayne State University, UC San Diego, Yale University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Indiana University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Miami, Stanford University Law School, the University of Oregon, University of California Hastings College of the Law, California State University at Monterey Bay, and the University of Dayton. Whew. Another school going wireless, using equipment from Chantry Networks, is Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada. It will have 30 subnets, and serve 2,250 students plus staff, faculty and guests, all run by two Chantry BeaconMasters with 175 BeaconPoint APs.
One more school, this time in Paris: the American University of Paris (AUP), the oldest American higher learning institution in Europe (since way back when Kennedy was president) is using an Airespace switch to run the wireless for students, faculty and staff on its campus. The network was deployed by Cyber Networks.—November 3, 2004
Global Triad of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, says it has expanded coverage of its “multipoint next generation wireless broadband grid” into Boca Raton. Supposedly, by installing some equipment on the BankAtlantic building, customers can now get access anywhere between the towns. They’re working on putting equipment in at Delray Beach.—November 3, 2004 The Hilton Long Island/Huntington Hotel has installed a WLAN using equipment from Symbol for guests and conference goers. No surprise they went with Symbol, as the company is headquartered right there in Huntington, N.Y.; the hotel is in the center of the Melville business district, one mile south of the LIE.—November 3, 2004 Another hotel going wireless, but this time out of the country: Panama’s Caesar Park Hotel, will be the country’s first with 100% wireless coverage. It will be installed by system integrator Sistemas Inalambricos with equipment from Teletronics.—November 3, 2004 RoomLinX is entering a relationship with Pinnacle Communications to make it even easier for hotels to get high-speed Internet access (HSIA). Pinnacle handles voice systems like v-mail and guest room phones in 1,400 hotels in the U.S., so working with them could get RoomLinX service installed in a number of new locations.—November 3, 2004 Telabria says it will be using point-to-multipoint equipment from Redline Communications to install U.K.’s first 802.16-based broadband wireless network. It will be deployed for use by businesses and consumers in the southeast of England in the county of Kent, a 1,442 square mile area with 1.5 million people. It’s a hybrid of 802.16 (WiMax) with 802.11a, and Telabria even plans to offer VoIP services to customers. The last-mile connection will use equipment from SkyPilot. Telabria likes WiMax so much, it also just joined the WiMax Forum. —November 3, 2004 Back in the States, 5G Wireless says its equipment will be the backbone of a wireless broadband solution to be deployed in Pleasanton, Calif., about 30 miles southeast of Oakland. The network will be installed by Northern Pacific Wireless, and will be used for controlling traffic signals and to transmit video—the hardware could become standard for all new signal installations in the city. —November 3, 2004
