Wireless News

I'm not sure why this article was written, as there appears to be nothing particularly newsworthy in it: The News.com reporter Marguerite Reardon has covered muni-Fi for as long as I have, and after reading this in-depth piece, I'm left wondering whether it was assigned far too early, and she was meeting an editorial desk requirement instead of feeling like the story was ready to "print." The article looks at Network Acquisition Corp. (NAC), the allegedly interim name for the group that's taken over Phila-Fi. One source at the Knight Center for Digital Excellence notes, "The new network owners are supposed to have a much more sustainable business model." Supposed to. Later, "Network Acquisition Company, which acquired the network, hasn't talked publicly about the details of its new plan, but it has hinted that its strategy will differ from EarthLink's." Hasn't talked publicly. Then, "[NAC and Tropos] spokespeople said the companies would talk more about the network later this month when details of the new business plan are ready." Huh. Reardon explains digital divide issues and looks into what Wireless Philadelphia has been up to, although doesn't note that delays in EarthLink's deployment and other factors have led to just a few hundred individuals that have been assisted by the non-profit; numbers may have changed, but that was as of a few months ago. Still, Wireless Philadelphia has apparently diversified its funding sources--Reardon cites 30 now. I think we're still coming off the doldrums of August. Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

So you think it’s the FCC’s order telling Comcast not to block P2P applications? Not so, according to Harold Feld of the Media Access Project. It’s actually Comcast’s settlement with the Florida Attorney General. Apparently, Comcast had kicked off the highest 1000 users regardless of bandwidth use or geographical location because they were violating Comcast’s [...]

If there’s one municipal wireless application I am going to push, it’s wireless digital parking meters. I have been stuck so many times without enough coins to feed into those ancient meters that I think this is the one thing all cities need to implement now. It’s time to stop using Roman technology (i.e. coins). [...]

The police department of McAllen, Texas is installing 120 video surveillance cameras over the next five years in an effort to deter crime and catch suspects on film. The cameras will be linked via a wireless network, whose backhaul is a fiber optic network that runs through the city. The city is paying close to [...]

Cablevision has launched its Wi-Fi service in various parts of Long Island, but it is available only to customers of Optimum Online. The cable company has set up several Wi-Fi hotzones (they call them community zones) including Long Island Railroad station platforms and parking lots, using equipment from BelAir Networks. It’s unfortunate that non-Optimum Online [...]

New York area cable operator Cablevision flips switch for high-traffic areas of Long Island: They're announcing Thursday that they've turned on the initial phases of their network in Nassau and Suffolk counties, as well as at commuter rail platforms and station parking lots throughout Long Island. The service offers 1.5 Mbps in each direction, the company claims. Detailed site maps for their previous much smaller activated areas are up at their Wi-Fi information site, and I expect to see these updated soon. Cablevision will ultimately spend about $300m in building a Wi-Fi network exclusively for its customers; 2.4m of these customers qualify to use the service at no cost. There's no pay as you go option, no monthly subscription; you're either a subscriber of theirs, or not. It's a fascinating strategy, because they're leveraging all these dollars as a tool to crack its competitors in the market. With increasing competition from telephone companies that are offering television service, cable companies need to compete on voice, data, and video, as well as well as on mobile offerings. When the network is built, Cablevision can conceivably offer Wi-Fi telephony service, too. I'm dying to know what the reduced churn rate and increase in subscriptions will be in six months. Given that hotspot access costs $10 to $30 per month depending on the network, Cablevision is delivering something of value. It's great honey for new subscribers and glue to keep current subscribers. The company is claiming that with this latest activation, they have the largest Wi-Fi network for consumers in the U.S. They're likely correct. The only other public access network of scale that's being used by large numbers is in Minneapolis, and based on what I know about both networks, Cablevision probably deserves bragging rights. The network in Taipei, Taiwan, is likely still larger, but I haven't heard any usage number in nearly two years; at that point, subscription rates were 10 percent of what had been projected. Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

NebuAd, the company accused of wiretapping, forgery and browser hijacking by a Free Press report, has just lost their CEO, Robert Dykes. Sources report that the company has also laid off a significant number of employees. What happened to NebuAd? I remember them a year or so ago at one of my conferences — they [...]

Wired reports today that iPhone users have been reporting a lot of outages of AT&T’s data service in places such as Boston, Chicago, Washington DC and St. Louis. Meanwhile, a retired Chicken of the Sea executive has filed a lawsuit against AT&T and Apple alleging the carrier and device maker misrepresented the performance of the 3G [...]

Judy Estrin, former Chief Technology Officer of Cisco and an entrepreneur who started several tech companies, gives a video interview on why the US is losing its edge in tech and many other fields. Estrin has just published a book entitled “Closing the Innovation Gap” where she focuses not just on tech companies, but also [...]

Last week I posted an article about the ubiquitous presence (and sponsor support) of AT&T at the Democratic Convention so I wondered whether an Obama administration would really push for net neutrality. Several people pointed out that Barack Obama has always been a proponent of net neutrality and is well aware of the lack of [...]

ARCEP, the French regulator (equivalent to the FCC in the US) released a report which revealed that the number of fixed broadband access lines reached 16.7 million households in the country, up 18% from last year. In the last quarter, only 450,000 new subscribers were registered: “This confirms a slight slowdown in growth since the [...]

You wouldn't listen, but continued to generate products, news stories, and analysis about wireless networking in my absence: Here's the run down of the last week or so's Wi-Fi and wireless stories. (Yes, I enjoyed my time off.) Fourth US airline to go Wi-Fi: Aircell says they have a fourth airline--after American, Delta, and Virgin America--on board for its in-flight Wi-Fi service. The aerial broadband provider's latest partner will be announced soon. Aircell's service went live in 15 American Airlines planes two weeks ago, and there's been a surprising lack of reporting from regular travelers or journalists since the big splash at the launch. Microsoft, two universities research methods for better Wi-Fi handoff for vehicles: The researchers developed a method they call Vi-Fi, writes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Todd Bishop, which allows a system to maintain connections with several base stations at once, using a primary access point for traffic until a discontinuity is predicted or encountered. This allows seamless handoffs and continuous voice conversations. Speaking of autos and Wi-Fi, concerns raised about Chrysler's in-car Wi-Fi option: Randall Stross wrote nearly two weeks ago in The New York Times about the problem of distraction. With the Internet at your fingertips, can you restrain yourself? The only problem with the humorous and accurate analysis is that millions of business travelers have 3G access via laptop cards already, so you'd think we'd already be seeing the bad effects of automotive area networks. A Wi-Fi booster can't post availability signs on highway: The Nebraska town of Louisville has free Wi-Fi downtown, and wanted to post "Visitor Wi-Fi" on a highway sign as another amenity. The state highway department has a policy that doesn't allow the promotion of Wi-Fi, because they believe they'd be inundated. A resident who runs a local Internet firm installed his own signs on the highway; the roads department removed them; he remounted them; they were removed again. The idea of zoning and mounting a billboard apparently hasn't come to the city officials' minds (or perhaps they're prohibited). The folks spreading misinformation about Wi-Fi health effects cause Ulster school to disable network: I can understand why non-technical folks might think that Wi-Fi has been proven to be unsafe, given the kind of information that's available on the Internet about wireless safety. While there are ongoing studies about the safety of cellular signals--and I'm convinced at this point there's no increased risk to an adult's health by using a cell phone--there is no specific and credible research linked to Wi-Fi, which broadcasts signals at a far lower level than a cell phone, most of the time in most uses. Washington state shuts down rest-area Wi-Fi: The $3 for 15 minutes, $7 per day, or $30 per month Wi-Fi service at 28 of Washington's 42 rest areas has been turned off after a year for lack of use. Figures. The fees charged by Parsons and Road Connect aren't unreasonable for a nationally scoped plan, but are ridiculous for limited use. States should either bite the bullet and offer these service for free, partner with national roaming operators who can resell service into large networks of business travelers, or use ads to support the service. Highways in remote areas can typically pick up cell data networks, and ongoing costs should be minimal to operate such networks. IEEE approves fast-roaming standard, 802.11r: This new standard is designed to improve the handoff of devices between base stations. This is accomplished in part by allowing base stations to communicate security and quality of service information so that a VoIP over WLAN phone can immediately reassociate without the delay of authentication and other handshaking. Denver airport sees 7,000 connections on a single day last week due to Democratic National Convention: FreeFi released the usage figures recently to show how their service is operating. The network started with about 600 daily users when the switchover from fee to free happened 10 months ago, and now carries about 3,500 daily connections. Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf goes free: The chain of about 700 cafes will have free Wi-Fi installed by now in all its company-owned stores (about 300). Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

I'm not a big fan of the term "cyberterrorism" -- it's been defined so broadly as to be basically meaningless. But today, we do now have confirmation that multiple journalist sites that have been covering the RNC police actions and documenting massive police oppression are today being attacked by a distributed denial of service attack. Thus far, I've heard that Daily Kos, Fire Dog Lake, [and] Eschaton, and Free Press [Free Press was just super-slow due to the huge number of people accessing their info on police malfeasance -- folks there reported 100,000 site visits since this morning, about ten times normal] have all been attacked. In related news, Amy Goodman has indeed been arrested -- at least 283 other people have been as well. Many of those arrested were simply witnessing events or covering events for various news outlets. [UPDATE01]Here is video of Amy Goodman's arrest: Democracy Now released a statement condemning the arrests of Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar -- it is available here. [UPDATE02]I heard from a few folks who stated that journalists were not being specifically targeted by the police. Below is a video of the I-Witness journalists house raid documenting undeniably that they are:

The IEEE has approved the 802.11r standard that allows Wi-Fi devices to roam between Wi-Fi access points with a delay of less than 50 milliseconds during the handoff. Handoffs are already supported by the 802.11 a, b and g standards but only for data, not for voice or video. So if you are walking down the [...]

The past 24 hours in the Twin Cities have been remarkably chaotic, yet the mainstream media isn't covering the real story. Scores of people have been arrested, hundred (if not thousands) shot at by police wielding tear gas, pepper spray, etc. Medics and journalists have been attacked by the police (yes, the same journalists who are not covering the event). There have been numerous confirmed reports of individuals being snatched off the streets. Mass transit has been suspended and protests that have permits disrupted. Amazingly, this has all being going on with unprecedented documentation. Legal observers (i.e., the lawyers who have gone to Twin Cities to ensure that people's first and fourth amendment rights are respected) have themselves been both harassed and arrested by the police. And photographic, audio, and video of many of the most egregious events has been been uploaded online within hours (and sometimes minutes and/or live) of their happening. There have now been close to 10 different raids at locations around the city (targeting everything from independent media to Food Not Bombs). You can find out more at:

• http://tc.indymedia.org -- updates and in-depth reporting from independent media
• http://twitter.com/coldsnaplegal -- live legal updates from legal observers reporting in from protests throughout Twin Cities
• http://theuptake.org -- live video uploads from journalists located throughout the Twin Cities

[UPDATE01]It's now being reported that police arrested journalist Amy Goodman while she was covering the RNC for her show, "Democracy Now." The National Guard is also being mobilized and moving into the Twin Cities. [UPDATE02]From Cold Snap Legal:

As of 10:30pm today, the arrest tally from Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office was: 284 total; 130 felonies; 51 gross misdemeanors; 103 misdemeanors. The jail is seemingly severely backed up and not everyone has been booked or processed, so these numbers clearly don’t represent the total arrestee count for the day. These numbers also do not necessarily include the numbers of arrestees whose identifications have not been verified. In regards to the arrestees from this weekend’s raids, five of them are still being held at Ramsey County Jail on probable cause, which means that they might not be able to see a judge until Tuesday or Wednesday. One of the arrestees was released yesterday evening. Though some people have been cited and released, the majority are still being held in jail. We’ve gotten many reports that people are not getting proper medical attention, are being refused their medication, and/or have been separated from the rest of the group. Also, there are also many felony charges, which allow the state to hold the protesters for a longer period of time. Felony charges have historically been used as scare tactics against activists, and there is much less precedent for them to hold up in court. More often, these bogus charges are simply used to keep protesters off the streets and as a way to oppress and silence people.

OneBroward. a non-profit organization, has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a community-owned wired and wireless broadband network covering 500 square miles (1300 square kilometers) of Broward County, Florida. The goal of the project is to provide broadband Internet access to residents, improve public safety and law enforcement, as well as efficiency in local [...]

They’re whoopin’ it up at Sprint headquarters, as the Xohm WiMax folks there celebrate hitting an internal infrastructure deployment date well ahead of schedule. A confident and happy Xohm president Barry West spoke with us by phone Thursday afternoon for an update on the inaugural Xohm launch in Baltimore in September, as well as device, [...]

The Twin Cities Independent Media Center was just raided by the police and shut down. Having worked extensively with TC Indymedia folks for years, I know first-hand that they are avid journalists who have a multi-year history of covering important local stories. Ongoing coverage is available at: http://twincities.indymedia.org Details are still coming in, but the official line appears to be that they're shutting the place down for building code violations. The fact that they raided the space, handcuffed people, photographed people and took down information from their IDs, and confiscated hard drives and laptops seems to contradict this official reasoning. It looks like the police have also raided (as of two hours ago) the Food Not Bombs house (a group of vegans that hands out food and opposes war) and a second house (just an few minutes ago). This is going on right now. This is clearly a very wide-reaching and well-orchestrated police action to shut down independent media coverage and disrupt local organizing efforts ahead of the RNC. First Amendment be damned. Please help spread the word. [UPDATE01]A third private residence was just raided by the police. [UPDATE023]Another location raided by police bringing the total to 45:

• 2301 23rd Ave South (home to Minneapolis chapter of Food Not Bombs)
• 3240 17th Ave South
• 3500 Harriet Ave South
• 627 Smith Avenue (RNC Convergence Space)
• 951 Iglehart

[UPDATE04]Just when you thought it couldn't get more big brotherly, legal observers have now confirmed that "snatch squads" in unmarked cars have been grabbing people off the streets in the Twin Cities. Lawyers on the scene at 3240 17th Ave are also reporting that the city says the house "will stay boarded up unless code violation is fixed by 6pm" -- the code violations being that the doors were kicked in by police during their raid today. One of the people detained by police during their 951 Iglehart raid is a reporter for "Democracy Now!" -- ironically, I had e-mailed Amy Goodman earlier today with a heads-up about what was happening in the Twin Cities. --Sascha

Reading, Pennsylvania (pop. 400,000) is installing a municipal wireless video surveillance network. In phase one they are setting up 22 cameras around the city and providing 4.9 GHz mobile access to police officers. The backhaul is the fiber optic network owned by MAW Communications. The city has partnered with Wi4Net, a division of CelPlan Technologies. “We [...]

Comcast announced that starting October 1, it is imposing a 250 GB monthly limit on its customers’ downloads. You might say, 250 GB seems awfully high, I’ll never exceed that. Indeed, just sending emails, browsing websites and downloading music occasionally won’t get you even near 100 GB per month. So what’s the cap all about? High [...]