Wireless News

pstrongThe firm that promised mobile everything for a low, low price but owned no network has disappeared:/strong My friend Nancy Gohring at IDG News Service a href="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/168706/zer01s_mobile_offer_may_be_too_good_to_be_true.html"strongwrote a series of articles/strong/a in mid-2009 about Zer01, a firm that said it was not a mobile virtual network operator, but somehow had access to a national network on which it would offer unlimited calling, mobile broadband, texting, and other features at a rate far below what operators charge. Unlimited mobile data seemed particularly impossible, given carriers cap at 5 GB for laptop use, and only a handful have specific unlimited smartphone (no tethering) data plans./p pa href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/031210-a-year-later-zer01s-web.html?hpg1=bn"strongNancy writes today/strong/a that Zer01's Web site has gone dark, referring users to Google; its press spokesperson, Ron Dresner, didn't return calls and his Web site no longer lists Zer01 as a client; and Zer01 doesn't appear to be involved in the upcoming CTIA trade show./p pI reiterate to anyone who doesn't know but will listen: all these deals that seem too good to be true are binvariably/b too good to be true./p pMeanwhile, the mainstream carriers now offer unlimited calling and texting plans that, for heavy users, are relatively inexpensive compared to previous plans that used pools of minutes and messages./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/xl7RJpf5rp2yF9TWlzPRRHGDrYg/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/xl7RJpf5rp2yF9TWlzPRRHGDrYg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/xl7RJpf5rp2yF9TWlzPRRHGDrYg/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/xl7RJpf5rp2yF9TWlzPRRHGDrYg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/FI_lQ5wAjdU" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/3g/"strongApple started taking pre-orders for the iPad this morning, and provided more details of the optional 3G data plan:/strong/a Apple's deal with ATT, assumed to be somewhat similar with non-US carriers when those plans are announced, called for $15 price tag on 250 MB of combined upstream and downstream data usage, and $30 per month for unlimited usage. Neither plan required any contract commitment./p p[Update: To expand on a question and my answer in the comments, Apple and ATT market the iPhone and iPad 3G unlimited plans as truly unlimited. Average iPhone user is a few hundred MBs per month; heaviest use is likely on Wi-Fi networks. With no tethering, an unlimited plan isn't a huge risk for a carrier. If ATT ever lives up to its promise to offer tethering, expect a separate fee and 5 GB limit.]/p pApple made clear today that the 250 MB plan doesn't tack on overage fees when you exceed that quantity of data: rather, you can either upgrade to unlimited (presumably for $15, but that's not stated), or shut off 3G when you run out. That's the most humane offer I've seen to date./p pAs stated at the iPad launch announcement, iPad owners with 3G built in ($130 more than the Wi-Fi-only version) can sign up for a plan or turn it off from the iPad without having to visit a Web site or go through a separate process. Reducing friction always improves sales, and that also dramatically reduces ATT's costs by making it a self-service, Apple-handled option./p pAll four major US carriers offer a low-bandwidth option for 3G service in which 200 to 300 MB of usage is included, but extra megabytes are charged at 10 to 20 cents a piece--$100 to $200 per GB. Virgin Mobile is the only firm that lets you buy preset chunks of data (which must be used within either 10 days for the smallest increment or 30 days for the three larger options)./p pApple says that 250 MB subscribers will be warned when they have 20, 10, and no data left, and can then choose to upgrade. Because the plans are month-to-month, a subscriber could upgrade one month and return to the 250 MB level the next./p pThe lack of "gotchas" will definitely go a long way in getting more people to buy the 3G model and use the service./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/LR1tuwBh8Zfr4Oi-z1N5Jx4JNOo/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/LR1tuwBh8Zfr4Oi-z1N5Jx4JNOo/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/LR1tuwBh8Zfr4Oi-z1N5Jx4JNOo/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/LR1tuwBh8Zfr4Oi-z1N5Jx4JNOo/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/W4PDSPF4ltc" height="1" width="1"/

Residents of the Calgary neighborhood of Hawkwood can now get free Wi-Fi access throughout their community and they can upgrade their service at lower prices than the traditional ISPs, says Wi-Fi provider GoNaeco. Every resident and business using the GoNaeco… Related posts:

1. Sponsored Post: Thanks to MuniWireless sponsors
2. Calgary “Wireless City”

Winncom Technologies, a value- added distributor of wireless equipment, has a new distribution agreement with Wavion Wireless Networks for North American customers. Wavion makes Wi-Fi base stations that use spatially adaptive beam-forming technology. Read the full announcement here. According to Wavion, the WBS-2400… Related posts:

1. Wavion, ACD partner on new architecture
2. Creating Apple Airport hotspots

Broadband speed tests are nothing new to many readers of this site. Most of us probably use Speedtest.net. But the fact that the FCC has posted a broadband test tool profiled prominently on the Broadband.gov website, shows how politically sensitive broadband —… Related posts:

1. Our broadband sucks but at least we have a lot of company
2. PC World survey shows AT&T with fastest download speeds
3. Broadband speeds in the United States are shockingly low

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/muni_icon.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /a href="http://www.muniwireless.com/2010/03/11/whats-up-with-riverside-citywide-wifi-network/"strongOne of the legacy muni-Fi networks will have new (or no) owners:/strong/a Esme Vos writes at MuniWireless.com about the current state of the Riverside, Calif., network operated by ATT. The network was the first and only bid by ATT with MetroFi, which was unable to complete that network along with many others, and which shut down in 2008. In Riverside, ATT kept up much of its end of the bargain, hiring Nokia Siemens to complete the network, which Vos says only reached 77 percent of the city. (One expects there's no SkyPilot gear left in place, either, but I don't know that for sure.)/p pThe network has 20,000 daily users out of a population of about 300,000 (in 2000); the county has over 2.1 million residents./p pATT wants to give the city the network at no cost, but the city is facing revenue shortfalls like the rest of the country (and most of the world). It's trying to get a federal grant. /p pOf the networks originally built in part or whole by EarthLink, Kite, and MetroFi, only a handful remain in operation. Philadelphia recently moved to take over the remains of the network there from an interim firm that had been planning to build out a variety of access services./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/pXkl-wDynBhSdo_db5k8sccwR8k/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/pXkl-wDynBhSdo_db5k8sccwR8k/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/pXkl-wDynBhSdo_db5k8sccwR8k/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/pXkl-wDynBhSdo_db5k8sccwR8k/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/kcKvmdbAq2A" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/11/t-mobile-webconnect-rocket-available-march-14-already-blowing-m/"strongT-Mobile cuts its 3G prices by $10 per month for unsubsidized hardware:/strong/a It's long been an irritation of cellular customers that even when they pay the full price of a phone or 3G modem, the monthly data charge remains the same as people who get a subsidized version. That's changing, with T-Mobile in the lead. T-Mobile cut its unsubsidized monthly fee for 3G service by $10 per month for its 200 MB and 5 GB plans./p pLast month, T-Mobile dropped the monthly data cost for some smarpthones by $20 per month for people who purchase outright. The a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/technology/personaltech/25smart.html"strongNew York Times noted/strong/a that the MyTouch 3G is $400 without subsidy or $150 with a two-year contact. The most basic voice and data plan is $60 per month for the unsubsidized phone or $80 per month with a subsidy--a $230 difference over two years./p pThe latest deal comes with the announcement of a ship date and price for the webConnect Rocket, an HSPA+ modem that works at a raw data rate of 21 Mbps. The new 3G service plans for 200 MB and 5 GB per month (combined upstream and downstream usage) will be $19.99 and $49.99 with a modem purchased at list price; the $29.99 and $59.99 remain in place for subsidized modems. The lower price also doesn't require a contract commitment./p pT-Mobile sells its HSPA 7.2 webConnect modem for $129.99 retail and $19.99 with subsidy; that's a $110 difference upfront for $240 worth of savings over two years, plus the flexibility to cancel at any time./p pOf course, T-Mobile also charges the highest rate for data overages: 20 cents per MB ($200 per GB) above the 200 MB or 5 GB limits of the plan. Virgin Mobile Broadband's prepay plan is $60 for 5 GB (used within 30 days), but an additional 5 GB is another $60 even within 30 days, while T-Mobile would add $1,000 to your bill for that privilege. /p pIf T-Mobile wants to be truly progressive, it needs to sort out that discrepancy, designed to keep down usage rather than truly penalize subscribers. With HSPA+ offering potentially three times or greater the speed of the current network, limiting users to 5 GB and charging $20 per GB for overage seems very out of sync./p pThe Rocket, by the way, will cost 99.99 with a two-year contract; the outright purchase price wasn't announced./p pOf course, the carriers have risks in carrying your subsidy over two years, plus early cancellations, the costs of churn, and so forth. By having you pay upfront, they don't carry the cost on their books, and it likely on average costs them less to handle you as a customer./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/EjNTC2CDTdS-3PeP0RCrRkEcE7k/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EjNTC2CDTdS-3PeP0RCrRkEcE7k/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EjNTC2CDTdS-3PeP0RCrRkEcE7k/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EjNTC2CDTdS-3PeP0RCrRkEcE7k/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/06hH6rtnVmw" height="1" width="1"/

I spoke to Steve Reneker, CIO of Riverside, California, about the status of the citywide Wi-Fi network that AT&T and MetroFi deployed in May 2007. AT&T wants to give the network back to the city, but the city council must… Related posts:

1. Riverside, California issues RFP for citywide Wi-Fi network; my commentary included
2. Riverside, California, muni network officially launches on Tuesday
3. Update: AT&T-MetroFi win Riverside muni Wi-Fi bid

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

pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/train.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="5" /strongAmtrak has a request for qualifications to build a system-wide communications platform operational and passenger purposes (link not yet available):/strong The RFQ looks to find vendors who could build a system for giving Wi-Fi to passengers, and running a host of operational data needs for the railroad. /p pThe RFQ spells out platform requirements, which include inter-car communication via wireless signals--no wires connecting cars--and dynamically assembly of a network when cars change in a train. The system has to support the ability to use multiple cellular networks, aggregating in additional bandwidth as available (such as "external Wi-Fi and track side wireless networks"). Heterogeneity seems to be the message here: no single-platform/single-technology commitments, and a plan for simple module-swapping 4G migration must be included./p pThe RFQ asks for a number of specifics from vendors who choose to bid. I don't see any schedule information in the document I was provided./p pThe document gives some marvelous numbers: Amtrak carries 66,000 passengers a day; 38 percent travel for business, and 14 percent commute. Atlanta's airport, the busiest in the world, had 222,000 "emplanements" (counting stepping off and on separately) per day in 2009./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/qiO9CEnrbCw0QodSdvGFpbtVZB0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/qiO9CEnrbCw0QodSdvGFpbtVZB0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/qiO9CEnrbCw0QodSdvGFpbtVZB0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/qiO9CEnrbCw0QodSdvGFpbtVZB0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/rWnmn03mies" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-02/disconnected"strongIt is my pleasure to link to the finest mainstream article I've read on the quandary of whether there's a health risk from EMF radiation:/strong/a I salute James Geary for not dismissing the concerns of people who are obviously suffering from something, for not pandering to those people, for not citing junk science, for not posing the issue as a "debate" between two sets of equally valid information, and for not ignoring all the uncomfortable issues around the edges that have not been fully explained./p pimg src="http://wifinetnews.com/images/2010/popsci_cell_graphic.tiff" alt="popsci_cell_graphic.tiff" border="0" width="150" height="174" style="padding-left: 5px" align="right" /This is "fair and balanced" in the true sense of the word. Geary looked at an obviously large amount of research, and presents everything in context. This stands in sharp contrast to a href="http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2010/02/gq_on_dangers_of_emf.html"strongthe GQ article I eviscerated/strong/a a few weeks ago, which misstated research and was sensationalist. I would also critique any article that stated there was no risk and no need for further research, as that's not established, either./p pIt's a good read, partly for the people involved, and partly for the route Geary picks through the minefield to present good information to a mass audience./p pI have two quite minor quibbles with the article. First, there have been dozens of studies on electrosensitivity, and all but a handful (which haven't be reproduced) show that self-identified sensitives cannot determine whether a signal is present or not. The article mentions this in passing, but the scope of work in this field is quite large. Second, the Interphone study as a whole is yet to be released, but multi-country components are out, and they generally confirm a lack of correlation between cancer and usage, with some exceptions that may get further study./p p(Disclosure: I write for Popular Science on occasion, but I had nothing to do with this article.)/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/G3iLvtRILQC_PLBIPB96EPxRjOE/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/G3iLvtRILQC_PLBIPB96EPxRjOE/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/G3iLvtRILQC_PLBIPB96EPxRjOE/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/G3iLvtRILQC_PLBIPB96EPxRjOE/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wifinetnews/~4/yFTeFlTWUyw" height="1" width="1"/

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. NTIA announces more broadband stimulus grant recipients
3. Nevada gets $4.7M broadband stimulus grant for public computer centers

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. Philadelphia addresses the digital divide
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"/