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SPOTLIGHT: 243 Mbps WiFi chipset
Israeli company Metalink says its new baseband chip, the MtW8170, when combined with the already available MtW8150 RF chip, makes a chipset able to operate at 243 Mbps. It will also be compatible with 802.11n. The company says that the WLANPlus could be embedded in digital video recorders, set-top boxes, HDTVs, media adaptors, and other consumer electronics products. Story
ALSO NOTED: Extreme's new WLAN switches, APs; Newbury releases Watchdog 5.0; and much more...
> Extreme Networks shows new WLAN switches and APs aiming to simplify centrally managed WiFi networks. Story
> Carriers in five countries will try out a $39 WiFi phone from Irvine, California-based Hop-On. Release
> Newbury Networks releases Watchdog 5.0 which precisely locates -- and blocks -- unauthorized users trying to enter …
FierceWiFi June 22, 2005
- Mauritius world's first unwired WiMax nation
- Intel shows unified WiFi solution
- September launch for Austrian 802.16 network
- picoChip secures $20.5M in third round funding
- Metric: Robust WLAN market up in Q1
- SPOTLIGHT: Killing Me Softly
- ALSO NOTED: Janszen named AutoCell's new CEO; Cisco tries to pop WiMax bubble; and much more...
Mauritius world's first unwired WiMax nation
The tiny (very tiny: 100 sq.mi., 1.2 million people) Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius is about to become the world's first country to deploy a complete nationwide high-speed wireless network. The government calculates that the new network will make the beautiful island a hub of cyber business activity, expanding the small nation's economy beyond tourism and fishing. Navini nomadic broadband wireless access will offer covergae of the entire island, part of it rather mountainous and …
Intel shows unified WiFi solution
Intel last week showed a unified WiFi technology supporting solution. The technology will support all current and projected WiFi standards. Krishnamurthy Soumyanath, Intel's communications circuits research lab director, said, "The variable bandwidth of this solution extends capabilities beyond today's 20MHz to 100MHz and is expected to support data rates higher than 100 megabits per second that should allow people to enjoy multiple high-quality video streams concurrently."
The …
September launch for Austrian 802.16 network
Austrian service provider newcomer WiMax Telecom will invest $85 million on a fixed 802.16 network using equipment from Alvarion. Six months ago WiMax Telecom paid $194,000 for a nation-wide 3.5 GHz license in Austria. (Note: How about this price relative to what European telecoms paid for 3G spectrum a few years ago?) The company will deploy 60 base stations in the rural provinces of Burgenland and Styria by the end of this year, expecting commercial launch in September. WiMax …
picoChip secures $20.5M in third round funding
The spirit of innovation should be rewarded, so it is gratifying to see UK company picoChip securing $20.5 million in third round funding. The round brings the company's total funding to $41.5 million. Scottish Equity Partners, Rothschild, and Intel Capital joined previous investors Pond Venture Partners and Atlas Venture to put the deal together. Intel Capital's Sriram Viswanathan said, "Intel clearly believes in ubiquitous broadband wireless communications, with the appropriate …
Metric: Robust WLAN market up in Q1
The EMEA WLAN market increased by 6.1 percent to $444.9 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2005, compared with $419.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2004. IDC's EMEA WLAN Tracker says that EMEA WLAN infrastructure showed revenue growth of 14.7 percent as WLAN client revenue declined by 10.6 percent. The decline in revenue in the WLAN client sector was due to the growing number of pre-installed connections on notebooks and desktops. During the first quarter, only 1.4 million …
SPOTLIGHT: Killing Me Softly
Mobile networks center around a digital voice switch or MSC (for mobile switching center). The MSC, a circuit-switched voice technology, will soon be a thing of the past, repalced by layered soft-switch architectures based on an IP core network. The mobile soft-switch in effect breaks the more traditional MSC into two functional components: centralized MSC servers to handle mobile call control, and media gateways (MGWs) to process user-plane traffic. Ericsson is currently dominant in the …
ALSO NOTED: Janszen named AutoCell's new CEO; Cisco tries to pop WiMax bubble; and much more...
> Eric Janszen, former CEO of Bluesocket, is AutoCell Laboratories' new CEO. Gary Vacon, cofounder and former CEO, becomes chairman and will remain actively involved in the company. Story
> John Cooper has launched a new weblog dedicated to muni-WiFi.
> A new study says that by 2010, a quarter of Western European households will abandon plain …
FierceWiFi June 15, 2005
- Editor's Corner
- BT launches world's first fixed/mobile phone
- Sony Ericsson shows WiFi-3G combo card
- Samsung demos WiMax, WiBro products
- Proxim, RIP
- Pronto, BelAir aid low-cost WiFi networks in Tex.
- SPOTLIGHT: Defcon
- ALSO NOTED: T-Mobile claims 450K paid users; WiTopia.Net launches outsourced 802.1x support; and much more...
Editor's Corner
Two announcements in which you may be interested:
First, In case you missed the letter from my colleague Stephen Wellman, I'd like to invite you to join us at an exclusive FierceWiFi executive summit on wireless VoIP. The event, wVoIP 2005, is designed to help you seize the emerging market opportunities presented by the convergence of …
BT launches world's first fixed/mobile phone
BT this week became the world's first operator to offer its customers combined fixed and mobile phone service. The Fusion device works as a mobile phone when the customer is walking or driving, but switches automatically to a BT Broadband line when the customer is indoors. In addition to the ease and convenience, customers also save a lot of money: Fusion allows calls to UK landline numbers to be charged at BT landline rates, which are 5.5p for up to an hour for calls during off-peak …
Sony Ericsson shows WiFi-3G combo card
Sony Ericsson added to its line of wireless PC Cards with a card which brings WiFi and 3G mobile phone connectivity into the same unit. The company says that its GC99 card is among the very first such cards in the world, although a couple of other companies -- Belgium's Option, for one -- make similar claims. Sony Ericsson's card boasts a low-profile antenna housing and support for both 802.11g and 802.11a APs. In addition to WiFi and 3G, the GC99 offers regular GSM (quad-band) dial-up …
Samsung demos WiMax, WiBro products
Samsung has demonstrated several WiMax and WiBro products, signaling its intention of becoming a major WiMax player (in fact, Samsung first successfully demonstrated WiBro services with mobility in November 2004). By the fourth quarter of 2005, the company will unveil Mobile WiMax systems and terminals, including Access Control Router (ACR), Radio Access Station (RAS), PCMCIA cards for laptops, and mobile handsets. WiBro, a South Korean version of WiMax that will enable the world's first …
Proxim, RIP
Proxim has been an innovative and interesting company. Always a bit ahead of the herd, its insights include early support for 5 GHz and 802.11a, point-to-multipoint broadband wireless, homeRF, enterprise-wide WiFi AP centralized management and more. Alas, the company's creative, restless spirit has not been matched by commercial success, and it is closing its doors. It has entered into an asset purchase agreement with Moseley Associates, which will acquire substantially all of Proxim's …
Pronto, BelAir aid low-cost WiFi networks in Tex.
Pronto Networks and BelAir Networks will partner to offer service providers solutions to allow them to deploy complete large scale wireless networks. The companies' first joint deployment will cover the downtown/Alamo Plaza area of San Antonio. The joint offering combines the BelAir100 and BelAir200 Multi-service Switch Routers with the Pronto OSS for end-to-end metro scale solution.
The two companies are working with SA Unwired.net, Hotzone Integrators, and NAS Wireless to …
SPOTLIGHT: Defcon
WiFi enthusiasts from all over the world -- and from my experience quite a few others who escape precise defintion -- will gather in Las Vegas July 29-31 for the Third Annual Defcon Wifi Shootout Contest, in which nerdy types from all walks of life compete to see who would break the record of how far a WiFi signal can travel. The goal is to see who can achieve the greatest possible connect distance between two 802.11b/g stations through innovative engineering and antenna design. Website
ALSO NOTED: T-Mobile claims 450K paid users; WiTopia.Net launches outsourced 802.1x support; and much more...
> T-Mobile said 450,000 people paid to use its WiFi service. Story
> WiFi, security, RFID occupy center stage at Mobile & Wireless World. Story
> WiTopia.Net launches outsourced 802.1x support. Story
> …
FierceWiFi June 8, 2005
- United Airlines to offer in-flight WiFi
- Bluetooth's security woes worsen
- Alvarion offers US market WiMax in WCS, BRS bands
- Arizona tests highway WiFi network
- RFID to bolster fight against digital piracy
- SPOTLIGHT: DoD's vote of confidence in VoIP
- ALSO NOTED: WiMax applauded Supercomm; Netgear's MIMO wirleless router; and much more...
United Airlines to offer in-flight WiFi
United Airlines said it would begin to offer in-flight WiFi service to its passengers. The service will begin next year. Early last week United and Verizon demonstrated wireless data could be transmitted from the air to the ground with no disruption to the plane's navigation systems. Two days later, the FAA gave the two companies permission to start installing the equipment in planes. The initial FAA approval is only for the same planes (B757-200) in which last week's test was conducted. …
Bluetooth's security woes worsen
Bluetooth just cannot catch a break. The latest blow is a report by two Israeli security researchers (one of them a graduate student) detailing how it is possible to take control of Bluetooth-equipped mobile phones, even when the handsets have the security features switched on. This takeover uses a breaching technique which Ollie Whitehouse of @Stake detailed last year. An attacker with the right eqiupment can connect to a Bluetooth handset without authorization, and once the …
Alvarion offers US market WiMax in WCS, BRS bands
Alvarion said that it was expanding its line of BreezeMAX products to include the WCS (2.3 GHz) and BRS (aka MMDS, 2.5-2.7 GHz) frequency bands for North America. Some 80 operators in 30 countries already deploy the Israeli company's WiMax-ready system, and now US carriers will be able to do the same. The platform will use the new BreezeMAX CPEs with the Intel PRO/Wireless 5116 broadband interface. BreezeMAX 2300 and 2500 are similar to Alvarion's BreezeMAX 3500 and will feature advanced …
Arizona tests highway WiFi network
In 1995 Congress created the CANAMEX Corridor, a series of highways which extends from Mexico to Canada, running through Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Montana. The Arizona portion of CANAMEX spans 487 miles, with many parts running through rural areas with spotty cellular or landline coverage. To remedy that, the Arizona government in April launched a pilot project which would allow first responders to use a WiFi network to communicate along a 30-mile stretch of the highway, from …
RFID to bolster fight against digital piracy
Last week we reported that RFID is now being mobilized in the effort to stop DVD piracy. Many in the entetainment business believe that if the idea is implemented correctly, it will be an important step in fighting piracy, a problem costing the entertainment world billions of dollars a year in lost revenue. The RFID-equipped DVDs are developed at UCLA's Wireless Internet for the Mobile Enterprise Consortium (WINMEC) as part of a broader effort to enhance Digital Rights Management …