Wireless News

Kyushu University and PicoCELA Inc., both based in Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture, have developed and put into use technology to build a wide-area wireless LAN at a dramatically reduced cost. The newly developed wireless multihop backhaul connects multiple wireless LAN access… Related posts:

1. University of Twente largest European hotspot
2. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, deploys WiMAX
3. How do you get quality VOIP calls on a mesh Wi-Fi network?

On Fridays from 8am – 10am San Francisco time, Esme Vos will be taking calls from people who are looking to deploy: (a) large scale wireless networks (Wi-Fi, WiMAX, etc.); (b) fiber networks; (c) blend of fiber and wireless. If… Related posts:

1. Event: 19 November 2009 – New Media, Technology and Internet use in Indian Country
2. Sauk-Suiattle Indian reservation goes wireless
3. Cool wireless application: no more waiting for hours in the ER

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has awarded grants to fund broadband mapping and planning activities in Virginia and American Samoa under NTIA’s State Broadband Data and Development Grant Program. The program, funded by the American… Related posts:

1. Ten states receive broadband mapping and planning grants from the NTIA
2. New Jersey gets $2 million for broadband data collection and mapping
3. California, three other states get broadband mapping grants

The NTIA has provided an $80 million broadband stimulus grant to the Louisiana Broadband Alliance to help bridge the technological divide, boost economic growth, create jobs, and improve education and healthcare. The grant will bring high-speed Internet access to more… Related posts:

1. Utah gets $13.4M broadband stimulus grant
2. Nevada gets $4.7M broadband stimulus grant for public computer centers
3. Illinois counties get $11.9 million broadband grant for fiber network

This is part 2 of a series written by Marc Canter about digital cities and fiber optic networks. As the economic roller coaster ride over the past 20 years has taken us to new highs and lows, Cleveland and the… Related posts:

1. Digital Cities and Fiber Optic Technology
2. Response to San Francisco RFI: Media Alliance
3. Ohio initiative addresses digital divide in Appalachia

pstrongI am compelled to write this story simply to say it does not matter:/strong Reports came out a few days ago that all the iPhone OS applications that sniff out Wi-Fi, scanning the vicinity for signals and other information, have been removed from the App Store, the only authorized place from which iPhone and iPod touch owners can download apps, free or fee. /p pIt doesn't matter, despite all the yelling about it. The sniffers were dropped because they use a private framework, hooks in the operating system that are not documented nor allowed for third-party developers to use. Apple scans and checks for these kinds of uses, and rejects programs that employ them. The sniffers got a pass for some reason, but someone at Apple woke up and kicked them out. It's a shame for the developers who put time into them, but using private frameworks is a completely well-known risk./p pThis dumping of sniffing apps is entirely distinct from Apple's arbitrary and capricious acts related to other programs and categories of programs, in which developers acting in good faith and according to guidelines find themselves on the wrong side of a shifting line. That happened to "sexy" programs, all of which not made by major firms like Playboy and Sports Illustrated, were dropped without warning./p pIt's been suggested that Apple should have an open and closed mode on the iPhone, letting people choose to run apps that haven't been reviewed and filtered by the company, but making no guarantees about those; in the closed mode, only Apple-approved apps would run. Apple seems to have no motivation to make that change, however, with its closed system working just fine for it, if not developers./p pCopyright copy;2010 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please a href="mailto:news@wifinetnews.com"notify us/a if you find this content anywhere but at a href="http://wifinetnews.com/"wifinetnews.com/a or a href="http://wimaxnetnews.com/"wimaxnetnews.com/a. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VSVwO2Z7226M82cMGbYtOuQrJQ0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VSVwO2Z7226M82cMGbYtOuQrJQ0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VSVwO2Z7226M82cMGbYtOuQrJQ0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VSVwO2Z7226M82cMGbYtOuQrJQ0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/F0SlIUPmKug" height="1" width="1"/

Winncom Technologies® is a Value Added Distributor of broadband wireless equipment and a complete telecommunication solutions provider.  Since 1993, Winncom remains at the forefront of the global technology marketplace, serving customers in over 30 countries worldwide.  As 4G becomes a reality… No related posts.

pa href="http://kachingle.com/"strongLoyal readers, I'm trying out a new way that you can support this site directly:/strong/a Kachingle just launched, and it's the latest, but most interesting in my view, in a long series of ways in which individuals can push small amounts of money that aggregate into potentially large quantities without much effort. I've tried many of these over the years, but they typically involve too much work on the part of you, the reader./p pThe idea behind Kachingle can be explained in two sentences. You pay Kachingle $5 per month and choose which sites, when you visit them, that you want to support. Kachingle tracks your visits to those sites, and then divvies up your $5 proportionately among your supported sites based on your visits. /p pFrom the user standpoint, you get transparency. You can see how much money I make overall, and how your dollars and cents are being divided. At launch, Kachingle gets 10 percent and PayPal gets roughly 10 percent. As volume increases and other factors come into play, some of those fees will drop. Those fees are taken out after you pay, netting me 80 percent of whatever proportion I get./p pThis site is obviously a labor of love, but I will guarantee that revenue from advertising and other methods is directly proportionate to the amount of time I can afford to write original reporting and analysis. I'm trying Kachingle as one experiment to see whether individual readers of the site who find it useful can, through very small increments, boost revenue enough that I can devote more time to it./p pKachingle is in the early days, so there are few user and few sites using the service yet. That will change, clearly. And the experiment is limited to the $5 you spend each month if you sign up, which make the risk small./p pTo sign up for Kachingle use the badge at the upper left below the site logo, or follow the link in this post./p pA nice side benefit of Kachingle is that the more people and sites that use the service, the more all sites that use it benefit. We can rise the tide for all boats./p pCopyright copy;2010 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please a href="mailto:news@wifinetnews.com"notify us/a if you find this content anywhere but at a href="http://wifinetnews.com/"wifinetnews.com/a or a href="http://wimaxnetnews.com/"wimaxnetnews.com/a. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HKQwb4pDZwnWL61sFYhV3045yMY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HKQwb4pDZwnWL61sFYhV3045yMY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HKQwb4pDZwnWL61sFYhV3045yMY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HKQwb4pDZwnWL61sFYhV3045yMY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/zM2vNMWZXKo" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/lock.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /a href="http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/security-expert-claims-thieves-can-detect-wi-fi-in-sleeping-computers/"strongCredant, a UK firm that sells data encryption tools, claims thieves sniff Wi-Fi in laptops stored in cars:/strong/a I've been letting this percolate for a couple of days in my head, and would appreciate comments from those of you who know the nitty-gritty. Credant is claiming that thieves can use Wi-Fi detectors to find laptops in cars that have Wi-Fi active, because some laptops don't go to sleep for 30 minutes after the lid is closed or sleep is activated. (Thus, Credant says you need to have encryption software installed to prevent access to data, rather than, say, fix your system or add a car alarm.)/p p[Update: Eric Lai has stronga href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9166399/Does_your_laptop_s_Wi_Fi_really_make_it_more_vulnerable_to_thieves_"a terrifically detailed article at Computerworld/a/strong that addresses many of the questions below.]/p pHere's my problems with this scare-via-press release:/p ulliI don't know of any operating system and laptop combo that keeps a machine awake for long after the lid is closed unless the OS is highly misconfigured or there's an error./li pliWi-Fi detectors don't pick up clients to my knowledge, only beacons from access points. (If a client were running XP in its old, bad mode in which ad hoc network names were being advertised, perhaps the laptop would be detectable.)/li/p pliLaptops in a case in a car would produce very little detectable signal, and the Wi-Fi detectors I'm aware of have very little directionality. 2.4 GHz sniffers with two antennas might be far more reliable./li/p pliApple's Wake on Demand feature relies on a Wireless Multimedia Mode (WMM) option which I have no idea how widely implemented it is beyond Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Wake on Demand keeps a tiny bit of juice fed to the Wi-Fi module to listen for a wake command from an Apple base station, but I don't believe the adapter is broadcasting./li/ul/p pAny other ideas? Or is this just plain scaremongering?/p pCopyright copy;2010 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please a href="mailto:news@wifinetnews.com"notify us/a if you find this content anywhere but at a href="http://wifinetnews.com/"wifinetnews.com/a or a href="http://wimaxnetnews.com/"wimaxnetnews.com/a. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/PUOHpja16GpRHMjkFs5ADfbqaJk/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/PUOHpja16GpRHMjkFs5ADfbqaJk/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/PUOHpja16GpRHMjkFs5ADfbqaJk/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/PUOHpja16GpRHMjkFs5ADfbqaJk/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/ZnkoR-c11rk" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/train.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/03/amtrak_brings_wifi_to_the_rail.html"strongA couple of reports on the new service Amtrak launched in the Northeast:/strong/a Amtrak's offering free Wi-Fi in six stations and on the Acela line that runs between Boston and D.C. /p pa href="http://wifinetnews.com/images/2010/penn_station_amtrak_100305.jpg"img src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/2010/penn_station_amtrak_100305_thumb.jpg" alt="penn_station_amtrak_100305_thumb.jpg" border="0" width="240" height="360" style="padding-left: 5px" align="right" //aFrom the Washington Post, a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/03/amtrak_brings_wifi_to_the_rail.html"strongRob Pegoraro runs through some of the details/strong/a he's found out. On trains, streaming services are blocked, and some content is filtered, without complete disclosure. There's no excuse for avoiding full disclosure. Pegoraro saw rates of 1 Mbps down and 200 Kbps up from the aggregated mobile broadband service. /p pNomad Digital's backend is being used, which can take signals from multiple 2G/3G operators to piece together continuous coverage. I imagine the firm uses a virtual network that uses proxies on both ends to allow a continuous IP connection regardless of the intervening network pieces. The user has no awareness of this, and remote sites maintain connections via the proxies./p pThe service in stations is quite a bit higher, with Pegoraro measuring 3 Mbps/600 Kbps. Regular correspondent Klaus Ernst, an inveterate tester of new Wi-Fi systems around Manhattan, measured 8 Mbps/1.8 Mbps at Penn Station. (Splash screen courtesy Klaus.)/p pA a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/skype-on-a-train/article1487226/"strongreport from Canada's Globe Mail/strong/a indicates that Via Rail's Internet service could use more robustness, where cellular doesn't fully cut it. The firm that operates Via, 21net, only uses cellular connections on the Windsor-to-Quebec City route over which Internet is available. That's what the train operator wants. 21net recommends adding satellite for reliability./p pCopyright copy;2010 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please a href="mailto:news@wifinetnews.com"notify us/a if you find this content anywhere but at a href="http://wifinetnews.com/"wifinetnews.com/a or a href="http://wimaxnetnews.com/"wimaxnetnews.com/a. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/DV0x2tu_hMGTZBHYFl8kY-ru05U/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/DV0x2tu_hMGTZBHYFl8kY-ru05U/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/DV0x2tu_hMGTZBHYFl8kY-ru05U/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/DV0x2tu_hMGTZBHYFl8kY-ru05U/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/t6yFyVK634o" height="1" width="1"/

Amtrak has issued a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for a communications platform including passenger Wi-Fi in its trains all over the US. Amtrak will issue another RFQ shortly after this one to support automated on-board signage, announcements and end-of-car displays that… Related posts:

1. Caltrain seeks proposals from vendors for Wi-Fi service on commuter trains
2. City Initiative: Clovis, California
3. Rome, Georgia issues RFP for wireless support services

No need to wonder what the incumbents will do. We, who have been pushing for municipal and community owned broadband, open networks, line-sharing and alternatives to the monopoly/duopoly, know all too well that cable and incumbent telecom operators will oppose… Related posts:

1. EU says telecom incumbents have too much control
2. Cities are trying to speed up broadband, running into incumbent opposition
3. Largest municipal broadband project in the US

The NTIA has awarded $4.7 million to the Las Vegas-Clark County Urban League (in partnership with the city of Las Vegas and the Housing Authority of Clark County) to upgrade existing public computer centers and open new ones in public… Related posts:

1. Rhode Island gets $1.2 million broadband stimulus grant
2. Utah gets $13.4M broadband stimulus grant
3. South Carolina gets $5.9 million broadband stimulus grant

pa href="http://www.virginmobileusa.com/mobile-broadband"strongVirgin Mobile is keeping its pricing tiers for its pay-when-you-need it broadband service, but bumping up included quantities of data:/strong/a Virgin Mobile, now part of Sprint Nextel, has a unique 3G service, in which you can pay for limited amounts of data for limited periods of time. No contracts, and no other fees. And the division is upping the amount of data at each tier starting this morning./p pFormerly, you could pay $10 to use up 100 MB within 10 days; with a 30-day usage period, you could pay $20 for 250 MB, $40 for 600 MB, and $60 for 1 GB. There are no overage fees because you are prepaying for a specific quantity of service. If you need more, you just buy another chunk./p pThe revised plan sticks with the $10/100 MB/10 days tier, but ups the data for each 30-day usage option: $20 gets you 300 MB (only a 50 MB increase), $40 gets you 1 GB (up 400 MB), but $60 now covers 5 GB or 400 percent more usage./p pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/2010/virgin_usb_modem.jpg" alt="virgin_usb_modem.jpg" border="0" width="178" height="405" style="padding-left: 5px" align="right" /The $60 plan is identical in cost and data quantity to the contract-based 3G laptop service provided by ATT, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, but there's no commitment. (T-Mobile also allows you to pay full price for a USB modem and then pay on a month-by-month basis.)/p pI suspect Virgin bumped up these numbers because as a better deal it encourages more regular purchases without feeding out much more data. I suspect most people paying for 1 GB never reach that total, and that offering 5 GB won't encourage much more consumption relative to the jump in usage./p pJust as carriers have all seemed to spawn prepaid, supercheap voice offerings--all fees are collected before usage--I expect we'll see more prepaid 3G, too. Postpaid plans are supposedly billed after the fact, but all the voice and 3G data contracts I know of required a month's advance prepayment of subscription fees, but allow you to run a tab for overages during the month of usage and then pay for those. Hardly postpaid, despite the definition of postpaid./p pThe plans all require the $100 Broadband2Go USB Device (a Novatel Ovation MC760 with microSD slot). The USB modem works over Sprint Nextel's network at EVDO Rev. A speeds where available, and supports several Windows flavors and Mac OS X 10.3 and later. (Some commenters on Virgin's open-answer FAQ say 10.4 is the minimum supported version.)br / /p pCopyright copy;2010 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please a href="mailto:news@wifinetnews.com"notify us/a if you find this content anywhere but at a href="http://wifinetnews.com/"wifinetnews.com/a or a href="http://wimaxnetnews.com/"wimaxnetnews.com/a. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/AEs6r7bBvtFd4O6rWabreAjR_UY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/AEs6r7bBvtFd4O6rWabreAjR_UY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/AEs6r7bBvtFd4O6rWabreAjR_UY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/AEs6r7bBvtFd4O6rWabreAjR_UY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/mchAySJMqwQ" height="1" width="1"/

Level 3 is one of the biggest winners of broadband stimulus funding from the NTIA. It has received $13.8 million to build new interconnection points and expand its broadband networks in California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Tennessee and Texas, bringing broadband… Related posts:

1. NTIA announces more broadband stimulus grant recipients
2. More broadband grant awards announced today
3. Louisiana gets $80M broadband stimulus grant

NTIA and RUS will grant a limited extension of time to file infrastructure applications in the second funding round. Specifically, applicants for BTOP Comprehensive Community Infrastructure projects will have until March 26th to file their applications to NTIA. Applicants for… Related posts:

1. Nevada gets $4.7M broadband stimulus grant for public computer centers
2. Utah gets $13.4M broadband stimulus grant
3. More broadband grant awards announced today

If your BTOP or BIP broadband stimulus grant application was rejected in Round 1, contact us now for help in getting your Round 2 application done. I’ve been getting a number of calls and emails from people who are in… Related posts:

1. How to get a grant from the NTIA in Round 2 of BTOP
2. BIP, BTOP broadband infrastructure grant deadlines extended
3. Louisiana gets $80M broadband stimulus grant

Fluke Networks has just released the AirCheck Wi-Fi Tester, a dedicated handheld tool that troubleshoots Wi-Fi networks. The device costs $1995 and you can buy a directional antenna for $195. The price is high for very small businesss, but may be… Related posts:

1. WiMAX protocol analysis critical
2. Users will pay more to experience AT&T’s 3G ‘upgrade’
3. Andrew Rasiej exposes $400 million telco-cable rip-off in NYC

pa href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/netgear-supercharges-home-theater-experience-with-new-class-of-wifi-products-to-support-internet-enabled-set-top-boxes-tvs-blu-ray-players-and-gaming-consoles-85807792.html"strongNetgear hasn't set the price of a href="http://www.netgear.com/HDWiFi"strongits new paired HD video adapters/strong/a, but promises 99.9 percent reliability for multiple 1080p streams:/strong/a The High-Performance Wireless-N HD Home Theater Kit, which will ship in Q3 2010, uses a 4-by-4 MIMO array to achieve the results Netgear claims, and I'm inclined to believe them. The company says it can push 40 Mpbs across multiple streams using these adapters, with the video sources being the Internet, IPTV systems, or other devices on the network. The adapters plug into Ethernet ports, and have a simple pairing mechanism./p pThe 4-by-4 array over 5 GHz coupled with the paired adapter method means that Netgear doesn't need to focus on throughput but coverage and consistency. The extra antennas let them use space-time block coding and other techniques to boost marginal signals and reduce errors in transmission. The device doesn't compress data, so the entire goal is to achieve sustained throughput./p pOf course, Netgear could charge $500 for the pair, which would make them ridiculous, but I suspect a price closer to $250 based on how other devices have been marketed in the past, and the target audience for these products. A third adapter can apparently be used to extend coverage further./p pNetgear also announced a May release at $79 of the 802.11n (2.4 GHz) a href="http://www.netgear.com/Products/Adapters/RangeMaxWirelessNAdapters/WNCE2001.aspx"strongUniversal WiFi [sic] Internet Adapter/strong/a, a driver-free Ethernet-to-Wi-Fi bridge that can be powered by a USB port even though no data is handled over USB (it saves a power adapter). The notion here is that instead of buying branded, proprietary adapters, you can just plug into Ethernet.br / /p pCopyright copy;2010 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please a href="mailto:news@wifinetnews.com"notify us/a if you find this content anywhere but at a href="http://wifinetnews.com/"wifinetnews.com/a or a href="http://wimaxnetnews.com/"wimaxnetnews.com/a. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FcXGnPACl1RotMCi9wogaJFEK_c/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FcXGnPACl1RotMCi9wogaJFEK_c/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FcXGnPACl1RotMCi9wogaJFEK_c/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FcXGnPACl1RotMCi9wogaJFEK_c/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/UCvQD3nSxLM" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/train.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /a href="http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?c=Pagepagename=am%2FLayoutcid=1241267278292"strongAmtrak's promise last year of putting Internet service in Acela trains happened quite quickly:/strong/a For a chronically underfunded government-like operation, Amtrak managed to get Wi-Fi installed fast in its Northeast high-speed Acela line after it said it planned to do so. The service, free for the interim, is in all 20 Acela trains. Amtrak has also made Wi-Fi service free in the six stations that serve Acela, and in Acela lounges. (The Wilmington Station will get unwired when renovations are completed in early 2011.) /p pAmtrak may wind up using Wi-Fi as yet another tool to bring passengers out of the air and onto the ground. With Wi-Fi at no cost in stations and on trains, the rail operator could use that as a marketing campaign against $7 to $10 per day airport and $5 to 13 per flight airline Internet access, where that's available./p pNomad Digital and GBS Group built the service out. Nomad has a many year history of train-Fi. Nomad and competitor Icomera are responsible for most of the train-based Internet access in the world. A few other firms have disappeared during that time or exited the business.br / /p pCopyright copy;2010 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please a href="mailto:news@wifinetnews.com"notify us/a if you find this content anywhere but at a href="http://wifinetnews.com/"wifinetnews.com/a or a href="http://wimaxnetnews.com/"wimaxnetnews.com/a. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/_AUmALrWU6Se7mLUHjARpdWekrM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/_AUmALrWU6Se7mLUHjARpdWekrM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/_AUmALrWU6Se7mLUHjARpdWekrM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/_AUmALrWU6Se7mLUHjARpdWekrM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/vnxB-qArTEc" height="1" width="1"/