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McCaw set to disrupt wireless landscape
What is past is prologue. Last Thursday Craig McCaw's Clearwire filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. The IPO is expected to raise $400 million and the company says it will use the money to acquire radio spectrum. The timing of the filing and the announcement mean that the small Kirkland, WA-based company is planning on being one of the important bidders in the June 29 auction by the Federal Communication Commission of wireless spectrum. The FCC has auctioned off …
BT rolls out fixed-mobile convergence services
There will always be an England. BT will begin offering converged fixed-mobile (FMC) services to large enterprise customers in the UK and several other countries. Employees in businesses which sign up for the service will be able to use one phone for mobile and office calls. The service is an application of BT's 21st Century Network (21CN), a next-generation network being rolled out in the UK and which is set to expand to global markets as well.
The new service is called Enterprise …
, Nokia bet on muni-WiFi
Mark Twain said, "Find out where the people are going and get there first." This is precisely what and Nokia are doing. Today the two companies launch a version of Nokia's handheld Internet browsing device containing 's Talk service, which allows for voice connections and instant messaging. It is an upgrade to a Nokia-first: Last year Nokia came out with its Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, the company's first mobile device which was not also a cellular …
Fon eying Argentina deal
Fon is in negotiations to provide free broadband wireless across Buenos Aires. Alejandro Piscitelli, the head of Argentinian education portal Educ.ar, is quoting Fon founder Martin Varsavsky as suggesting that 50,000 to 100,000 Fon hot spots (or Foneros) across the city would achieve this goal. The article notes that this is not going to be an easy project on that scale. Note that Piscitelli is also involved with the MIT project for affordable developing world laptops for …
Altera, Sequans show first 802.16e-2005 base station
One sparrow does not a spring make, but sparrows do have a habit of showing up just as spring is around the corner. So it is with Altera and Sequans Communications. The two companies are showing the first mobile WiMAX base station modem chip set supporting the recently ratified 802.16e-2005 broadband wireless access standard. Consisting of three Stratix II FPGAs, the Sequans SQN2110 modem chip set provides wireless OEMs with a ready-made solution for developing mobile WiMAX …
SPOTLIGHT: Fixed-line telecom: It only looks dead
It only looks dead
Fixed-line telecommunication is not dying. It only looks dead. Telkom, a leading South African telecom, is ramping up its investment in new infrastructure in an effort to fend off new rivals and take back some of the market share it has lost to the mobile operators. "It would be foolhardy for anyone to think we are sitting here waiting to die," says CTO Thami Msimango "The fight is on." Telkom will award a number of big tenders in the next few weeks …
ALSO NOTED: TerraTec shows WiFi Internet radio; Maxisat selects Ruckus Wireless WiFi system; and much more...
> TerraTec is showing its Noxon 2, a WiFi Internet radio and network audio player. Release
> New Rochelle, NY, will offer an outdoor wireless Internet network in the city's downtown. Report
> Farther north, the city of Poughkeepsie installed a high-speed WiFi network to connect police …
AT&T uses WiMAX, satellite to expand service
Time was when the terms "AT&T" and "telephony" were synonymous. Changes in the communication regulatory climate, the rise of able competitors, quite a few missteps on the wireless front, and this is no longer the case. AT&T is not exactly a shadow of its former self, but it is not its former self for sure. The recent merger between AT&T and SBC should help revive the company's flagging fortunes, so we should listen to what its leaders say. The other day, speaking at the …
Trend: Bonded wireless for back haul
Meru is a company which likes to make news. At last year's Interop it offered "single channel WLANs" (together with Extricom). This year, the big new idea seems to be wireless backbones--systems in which wireless links push the wires one step further back toward the wiring closet. And, yes, Meru is pushing it with a system which bonds channels to make a 100 Mbps back haul from APs to distribution switches. Not only Meru: Xirrus also talked of a bonded back haul for enterprise WLANs, in …
Biometric access control for WLANs
Not so strange bedfellows: WiFi and Biometrics. Silex technology america is releasing its Bio-NetGuard, an industry-first fingerprint-based access control system for WLANs. More and more governments and corporations use biometric information for identity authentication and access control, and we should thus not be surprised that technology is being brought to control access to wireless networks. "Today's workforce is becoming increasingly more dependent on mobility, which increases …
Symbol shows new Wi-NG platform
The late Cyrus Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, titled his autobiography A Long Row of Candles. The author of the history of the wireless age may want to call his book A Long Row of Acronyms. There is another one yet: Symbol Technologies is gearing up to launch its Wi-NG (for Wireless Next Generation) platform. The new radio frequency switches planned will consolidate technologies such as 802.11, 802.16, passive RFID, mesh networks, EV-DO and …
on the prowl
More and more mobile operators are viewing 's wireless move with anxiety. The search engine behemoth is set the begin offering free wireless connection, supported by location-based advertising in major U.S. cities. Market research firm Visiongain says this and more in a just-published study. Another finding in the report is that is set to become a major player in the mobile search market, continuing its current strategy of partnerships with operators and …
SPOTLIGHT: Viva Fractus
More than a year ago we wrote about the innovative Barcelona-based company Fractus and its fractal antenna technology. Good to see others noticed, too. Red Herring has just recognized Fractus as one of the most innovative technology companies of 2006. The magazine has included the company in its top 100 private companies in Europe and the Middle East. The company already has several contracts: Siemens sells its base station antennas, Samsung uses its handset antennas, …
ALSO NOTED: MediaRing launches WiMAX in Cambodia; Bulgaria orders halt to WiMAX licenses; and much more...
> MediaRing launches WiMAX service in Cambodia. Release
> Bulgaria's top court has ordered a halt to awarding WiMAX licenses in the country as complaints about favoritism mount. Report
And Finally... Share the wealth: Intel will expand its effort to provide …
FierceWiFi May 3, 2006
- Editor's Corner
- Mex. offers concession-free access to WiMAX
- Standard gear and first-mover advantage?
- Vonage expanding hotspot service
- Using neighbor's WiFi goes legit
- WiFi health concerns mount
- SPOTLIGHT: Better safe than sorry
- ALSO NOTED: Review: Cognio WiFi spectrum analyzer; second headline; and much more...
Editor's Corner
As reported in our first story, Mexico is experimenting with offering concession-free access to a portion of the spectrum to be used by WiMAX service providers. The move will certainly have the effect of encouraging more companies, including small start-ups and ISPs, to offer the service and offer better deals to consumers; but there are potential negative consequences as well. …
Mex. offers concession-free access to WiMAX
Is there such a thing as a free lunch after all? The authorities in Mexico decided to open up frequency bands for wireless technologies without the need for a concession license. Analysts have generally welcomed the move and say it should help define future WiMAX spectrum use parameters. In March, Mexico telecom regulator Cofetel published regulations which will monitor the use of certain frequency bands for wireless technologies such as WiMAX and WiFi. Authorities agreed that spectrum in …
Standard gear and first-mover advantage?
Which of the following moves more slowly: IEEE standard bodies or the planet's tectonic plates? While they contemplate the answer, consumers should be aware that buying pre-standard or draft-standard gear may cost them when the standard is finally ratified. Analysts point to 802.11n as the latest category at the heart of the debate on whether it is wise to buy non-certified kits. The increasingly common practice of launching pre-standard gear has been the source of contention in WiFi and …
Vonage expanding hotspot service
Citron's Vonage is increasing the number of wireless hotspots where U.K. users of WiFi telephones may place calls. Vonage's service expansion comes against the backdrop of news that Vonage's F1000 series has been plagued with service problems, with calls being cut off mid-conversation whenever a user exits wireless-enabled hotspots such as Internet cafés and Starbucks coffee shops. Rushing to fix the problem, Vonage has just signed a deal with U.K. national WiFi network operator …
Using neighbor's WiFi goes legit
Typically the residents of a building or suburb would use their neighbors' WiFi access stealthily, and in some states it is already against then law. Never mind. Haiyun Luo, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and head of the Systems, Wireless, and Networking Group at the university, has developed a technology which would allow neighbors to pool their WiFi Internet access to deliver better performance and exploit bandwidth which …
WiFi health concerns mount
Concern about the health consequences of steady exposure to radiation emanating from WiFi networks just won't go away. A few months ago the president of a small Canadian college banned WiFi from campus owing to health concerns, and there is an increasing body of evidence to suggest that certain people are sensitive to the emissions from wireless APs and other electromagnetic devices and, when spending time in a WiFi-saturated environment, tend to suffer from headaches, fatigue, …
SPOTLIGHT: Better safe than sorry
Do you own a business in Westchester County, NY? Do you use WLAN to handle sensitive customer or client information? Now you'd better make sure your network is secure against hackers or you will run afoul of the law. Westchester County and the city of White Plains have just passed a law that makes it illegal for a business not to take the necessary precautions to protect its wireless networks from accidental or deliberate abuse. Precautions range from internal firewalls to switching …
ALSO NOTED: Review: Cognio WiFi spectrum analyzer; second headline; and much more...
> WildPackets has introduced the OmniSpectrum, a portable RF spectrum analyzer which runs in a standard Windows laptop PC and identifies the devices causing interference on a WiFi network. Release
> A look at Cognio's WiFi spectrum analyzer. Review
> Linksys, NetGear and …
FierceWiFi April 26, 2006
- Pioneering muni-WiFi's early struggles
- Motorola to offer downloadable support for 802.11s
- Trend: Handsets will be doing more with more
- WiMAX Watch: Broadband in Africa
- 802.16e revenues to reach $53B by 2011
- SPOTLIGHT: More draft-n products
- ALSO NOTED: Intel, PacNet team to deploy 802.16e in Singapore; AdventNet releases version 4.3 of ManageEngine WiFi Manager; and