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European WLAN market expands
Donald Rumsfeld might be able to discern the differences between Old Europe and New Europe, but when it comes to WLAN adoption, we see only a new continent. A just-published IDC report says that, as in previous years, most of the revenue growth was generated in the consumer space, but that growth in the enterprise market has been picking up pace, with demand for enterprise equipment growing during the last 12 months. The residential market accounts for 80 percent of the total European …
Skype, The Cloud offer VoIP
It was bound to happen: Skype is joining hands with hotspot provider The Cloud in offering mobile roaming phone calls through Skype handsets across the U.K. and Europe. Customers with an SMC Networks' WiFi phone for Skype will be able to make VoIP calls automatically through Skype when they are within range of one of The Cloud's hotspots. Calls to and from other Skype users are free, and Skype says that calls to fixed and mobile users can be made at a substantially reduced cost if …
SPOTLIGHT: Boston goes WiFi
OK, so it is not as historically significant as throwing tea into the harbor, but still: The city of Boston has taken a small step in the direction of muni-WiFi. Mayor Thomas Menino has unveiled two free Internet hotspots, one in Quincy Market and another at Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park, near Long Wharf. A mayoral task force has recommended that Boston designate a nonprofit entity to build a citywide network which would act as a wholesale Internet provider, allowing a number …
ALSO NOTED: Freecom's 160GB storage gateway WLAN; Steve Jobs on the Zune; and much more...
> Freecom is showing a storage gateway WLAN which offers 160GB of network storage and includes a full-scale wireless router. Report
> The way the Canadiens hockey team is playing,anything would help, so why not install WiFi at the Bell Centre in Montreal? …
European WiMAX-3G spectrum war brewing
European mobile phone companies, chip makers, and manufacturers of wireless networks are engaged in a hot debate over how limited amounts of radio frequencies should be used for the purpose of transmitting data from the Internet to mobile devices and back. These decisions are typically made by governments, and in the case of the European Union, by the EU authorities. This is why Craig Barrett, Intel's chairman, is in Brussels this week: He will meet with EU officials to call for …
Trapeze shifts WLAN distribution model
The finale of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony includes a very long coda, in which the main themes of the movement are played in compressed form. The symphony ends with no fewer than 29(!) bars of C major chords, played fortissimo. For the uninitiated listener, the long coda presents a problem: The bars are interspersed with rather lengthy pauses, so it is difficult to know when the symphony ends and when one should begin to applaud in appreciation. No one wants to clap too early, or too …
Tide is turning on muni-WiFi
After nearly three years of legal skirmishes on the muni-WiFi front, it is time to take stock: Have the battle lines moved this way or that? What positions does the enemy hold? Who occupies the commanding ground? Jim Baller, an attorney with the Baller-Herbst Law Group and a veteran of the muni-WiFi wars, did just that at the Fiber-to-the-Home Conference in Las Vegas last week.
You may recall that the incumbent telecoms engaged in a no-holds barred assault on the very idea of …
Ruckus shows home WLAN control system
These are heady days for Sunnyvale, CA-based Ruckus Wireless. Four examples: The company has released a home-WiFi management system which brings to the home many of the strengths of similar systems in the enterprise; the company has also raised $16 million from three investors, among them Motorola, long-rumored to be eyeing Ruckus as a possible acquisition target; and then, Ruckus has been selected by Belge and Czech service providers to distribute its MediaFlex in-home wireless system; …
Is BPL about to turn the corner?
For years now we have heard predictions about how broadband over powerline (BPL) is just around the corner. It is an interesting approach to broadband delivery, but has so far failed to gain much traction. One of the main reasons is that for BPL to succeed, it must be pushed by the power companies. The trouble is, when it comes to launching into new markets, power companies make the Amazon sloth look nimble and fast-paced.
Things may be changing. Here are six indications:
* …
SPOTLIGHT: WiMAX sector galvanized
This past summer, Sprint Nextel said it would spend $1 billion next year and up to $2 billion in 2008 to deploy a nation-wide WiMAX network in the U.S. The company bets that not only laptop computers, but also phones, video cameras, and hand-held game machines will incorporate WiMAX as a standard feature, beginning in 2008. The day may soon arrive when nearly every digital device will be an Internet portal. The attendees at the WiMAX World Conference at the Boston World Trade Center are …
ALSO NOTED: First also noted headline; second headline; and much more...
> Thank God Woody Hayes was not around to knock Aruba's engineers on campus to the ground: This allowed them to install at Ohio State University what the company claims to be the world's largest WLAN. Report
> Atmel is showing its second generation VoIP chip, designed for 802.11a/g wireless VoIP applications. Press …
FierceWiFi October 3, 2006
- Maynor prevented from speaking at ToorCon
- WiFi reshapes consumer electronics sector
- T-Mobile expanding UK WiFi offerings
- Apple to offer cellular phones
- Intel shows wireless UWB link MAC silicon
- SPOTLIGHT: A new karaoke machine
- ALSO NOTED: HSDPA launches in Japan; New Intel platform to integrate 802.11n; and much more...
Maynor prevented from speaking at ToorCon
We reported last week on the swirling controversy over security vulnerability in native Mac WiFi drivers. A couple of years back, Mike Lynn used the Black Hat event to expose security vulnerabilities in Cisco networks, and the community was holding its breath this time around as to whether or not SecureWorks' David Maynor, who made the initial vulnerability charges against Apple, would detail the basis for his charges at this year's ToorCon. Well, he did not: Groge Ou reports that a …
WiFi reshapes consumer electronics sector
WiFi makes a lot of noise when it comes to metro-WiFi and hotspots but there is another area, consumer electronics, that is being reshaped by the technology as well. ABI Research said in a report released last week that the consumer electronics sector is in the middle of a "major shift"--and key to that shift is the fact that WiFi networking is becoming an enabler for the delivery and redistribution of entertainment content in the home. ABI predicts that the total number of WiFi-enabled …
T-Mobile expanding UK WiFi offerings
If you cannot beat 'em, join 'em. Some carriers see WiFi as a threat to their traditional telephony offerings. Others, accepting the inevitable, see WiFi as an opportunity to make money (whether they will make the same amount of money on monthly flat-fee packages as they did on per-minute plans remains to be seen). T-Mobile belongs in this second group. The company is unveiling a slew of WiFi offerings in the UK, aimed at both business people and consumers. Among these …
Apple to offer cellular phones
Years before it came out with the iPod, Apple registered a domain with the name "iphone.org". It was 1999, but since then, a click on the domain's name would redirect you to Apple's home page. It is thus of little wonder that speculations about Apple's move into the cellular phone business have been around for six or seven years. Nick DePlume, a keen-eyed Apple observer, says that the day has finally arrived. Specifically, he writes that Apple has reached an as-yet secret agreement with …
Intel shows wireless UWB link MAC silicon
When you cannot point to big victories, then small ones will have to do, at least for now. This is the case with UWB technology: In February 2004 the FCC approved its use, with some limitations, in commercial applications, but in the nearly three years since then, UWB has been more conspicuous for what it has failed to deliver relative to its early promise--rather than for what it has delivered. Yes, at every consumer electronics show we are invited to impressive demonstrations …
SPOTLIGHT: A new karaoke machine
A new karaoke machine
IBM, together with Japanese company Xing, a subsidiary of Brother Industries, has developed that Kyoku-NAVI S and Kyoku-NAVI II karaoke controllers. The devices will be available in Japan in November. This is the point: Instead of having to look up a code number in a printed catalog and then type it into a machine, customers can now use the devices' touch screens to search or browse a database listing tens of thousands of songs by singer, song …
ALSO NOTED: HSDPA launches in Japan; New Intel platform to integrate 802.11n; and much more...
> TheNEC Corporation supplied HSDPA infrastructure systems to NTT DoCoMo, which had already successfully launched a HSDPA service in Japan on August 31. Report
> Intel last week disclosed details about its next-generation mobile processor platform, including support for 802.11n. The platform will be introduced in the first half of next year and will improve on Intel's Core 2 Duo processor by offering new power saving …
FierceWiFi September 26, 2006
- FCC likely to permit Logan WiFi
- Debate on Mac WiFi vulnerability continues
- Aruba CEO: Need for new WLAN security model
- Intel launches World Ahead program
- Femtocell may disrupt dual handset market
- SPOTLIGHT: WiFi finds its voice
- ALSO NOTED: Linksys launches 802.11n in India; WiFi comes to trains in FL; and much more...
FCC likely to permit Logan WiFi
When it comes to a decision on whether or not WiFi should be allowed in passenger lounges at Logan Airport, the FCC has surely imbued the adjective "long-awaited" (as in "long-awaited decision") with new meaning. Be that as it may, the FCC, or at least its director, has given us an indication of what the decision will be: Kevin Martin said he would recommend that the WiFi ban at the airport be dropped. If the agency more formally adopts this position, this may well have nationwide …
Debate on Mac WiFi vulnerability continues
Apple has just released security patches for its WiFi offering AirPort--and not a moment too soon, either. As Eric Griffith reports, it all began--as these things often do--with a hacking demonstration at the Black Hat USA 2006 event, where SecureWorks' David Maynor, using an Apple MacBook laptop, showed how a hacker could hijack a computer's WiFi connection. The buzz in the tech community about the validity of the demonstration (and the very notion that a MacOS X computer could be …
Aruba CEO: Need for new WLAN security model
Dominic Orr, Aruba Wireless Networks CEO, says that enterprise WLANs are going to become less interesting because of the increasing commoditization of WLAN gear and the advent of the 100+ Mbps 802.11n standard. Both developments will combine to make wireless connectivity a routine part of the enterprise network infrastructure.
What will remain interesting and challenging, Orr says, are the corrections and improvements to traditional conventions and architectures for network …
Intel launches World Ahead program
Putting its money where its mouth is, Intel said it will spend some $1 billion during the next five years to help bridge the digital divide between developed and developing nations. Intel will use WiMAX technology, which it has already tested in several developing nations, for the purpose. It has just launched a WiMAX project in the remote Amazon town of Parintins, and this project is the first installation under the ambitious program, which the company announced in May.
The …