MuniWireless

The NTIA and RUS have released the guidelines they will be using to evaluate grant applications. I have not read the entire 121-page document, but I will do so and post my analysis here. I am also writing a How…

Europeans going on holiday this summer will get a very pleasant surprise: lower roaming charges. Viviane Reding, EU telecoms commissioner, is happy to announce that that roaming rip-off is now coming to an end. Beginning 1 July 2009, the new roaming…

Novarum tested major 3G services in 13 American cities, including New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, for PC World. The test results reveal that “Verizon’s service showed a combination of speed and reliability, Sprint’s results lent credence to its ‘most…

In news announcements today cable giant Comcast announced that it would start reselling Clearwire’s WiMax services, a business move they promised earlier this year. From the press release, the main pricing plan for the service (which they are calling Comcast High-Speed…

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for Consulting Services for Initial Engagement with Private Sector Participants (No.2009- MBI-01) on behalf of the Massachusetts Broadband Institute. They are seeking consulting firms that can provide services “on the…

Not very patriotic, is it, especially during the week of the Fourth of July? The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the agency charged with administering the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), known to most people as the broadband stimulus…

I am staying in an apartment building in San Francisco, which is served by an ISP called Webpass. I became a customer at the beginning of June and have been measuring their upload and download speeds (on my wireless network…

Last week, Jean-Ludovic Silicani, the new president of ARCEP, held a press conference and announced several propositions to stimulate commercial investment in FTTH deployment in France. These propositions were put together after year of tense negotiations between ARCEP, the operators…

Wireless Ypsilanti in Michigan has reached a milestone this week as it logged over 25,000 users since the launch of the network in January 2008. Last week, the network had 1399 users who downloaded 310.4 GB (statistics from the interactive node…

I receive emails from time to time asking if I know of studies that show the economic benefits of broadband. I know I’ve read some of them but I can never remember any one in particular. Today I came across…

Although the dream of accessing Wi-Fi everywhere in San Francisco is almost dead, San Franciscans can at least get free Wi-Fi access in city hall while they’re waiting outside the Legislative Chamber and the Supervisors’ offices. The Board of Supervisors and…

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District will replace energy meters in 600,000 homes and businesses in Sacramento County over the next 2 years with wireless “smart” meters to enable it to monitor in real time the amount of energy use in the…

NYCwireless, a non-profit organization founded in 2001 that enables free, public Wi-Fi access, has posted its response to the NY Parks RFI. Here is an excerpt from their response concerning the city’s unwise insistence on funding the network through advertising: NYCwireless…

Boingo Wireless has been awarded a patent covering the method and apparatus for accessing networks through a mobile device (patent No. 7,483,984). According to Boingo, the methods covered by the patent include “accessing wireless carrier networks by mobile computing devices, where…

A Texas charter bus operator will be offering Wi-Fi access to passengers starting this summer. Executive Coach, the largest privately owned charter company in Texas, has signed a deal with Icomera, a vendor of Wi-Fi access points and gateways that…

Boingo has just released its latest statistics concerning Wi-Fi use by mobile devices in Boingo hotspots. The numbers show a dramatic increase in the percentage of smartphone users on the Boingo network and in the amount of data transferred over…

Aria, the only operator in Italy with a nationwide WiMAX license, has chosen Alvarion as its equipment provider. Aria will use the 3.5 GHz frequency band in its attempt to bring mobile WiMAX service to all 21 regions in Italy. Although…

Marion, North Carolina is offering free Wi-Fi service in its downtown area. The network was set up by Trificient Technologies, which was one of the respondents to an RFP issued by the city. The city used a grant from the…

European countries are now actively discussing the impact of the new generation of broadband networks to be put in place for the next decade. Last week, the European Commission issued a set of revised proposals for the regulation of Next…

The city of Corona, California has deployed a municipal WiMAX network that uses point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, and wireless mesh technologies to link the city hall to various municipal divisions. According to NetLogix (the firm that designed the network), “the WiMAX infrastructure…