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ALSO NOTED: Free WiFi in Dubai; Dublin businesses love wireless; and much more...
> WiFi comes to the Gulf: Dubai's Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) has launched free wireless Internet service at Dubai International Airport yesterday. Report
> It may be the case that in Seattle and Boston some businesses question whether or not offering free WiFi is good for their bottom line, but in Dublin more and more establishments firmly believe it is. …
FierceWiFi August 8, 2006
- Solar-powered WiFi for Indian schools
- Cheyenne's city-wide WiMAX public works network
- Airoha to bring 802.11n to consumer electronics
- Atheros bucks semiconductor sector's trend
- Bumpy start for Portland's muni-WiFi
- SPOTLIGHT: WiFi to the rescue
- ALSO NOTED: Solving WiFi hotspot security; Seamless Wi-Fi tests encryption software; and much more...
Solar-powered WiFi for Indian schools
We are a couple of weeks away from the beginning of the school year, so here is a school-related story. It is also a story in which the term "convergence"--a term which is bit overused these days--plays a central role, except that this time it is a convergence of WiFi, solar power, and the bridging of the digital divide. We reported a few months ago about the US military testing a solar-powered WiFi system for use in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan, but this convergence effort is more …
Cheyenne's city-wide WiMAX public works network
Cheyenne, WY, calls itself the Magic City of the Plains. Perhaps. We note that Excelsio Communications and BIG Wireless use gear from WiMAX pioneer Alvarion to deploy a city-wide wireless broadband network. The network aims to support the communication needs of several public safety and public works departments in the city. The combined fixed and mobile network uses Alvarion's BreezeACCESS 4900, operating in 4.9 GHz for multipoint backhaul, and BreezeACCESS 900, operating in 900 MHz, to …
Airoha to bring 802.11n to consumer electronics
The 802.11n standard is yet to be completed, a fact which has not stopped vendors from rushing pre-802.11n or draft-802.11n products to market. We note Taiwanese company Airoha Technology, is showing its AL8230, a dual-band (2.4-2.5 GHZ and 5.9 GHz) RF device armed with three RF transceivers and which uses silicon germanium BiCMOS to integrate power amplifiers. Note that the transceiver is one transmit-one receive (1T1R) architecture, but that it may be used in different …
Atheros bucks semiconductor sector's trend
There is always a silver lining. An example: The semiconductor sector has seen disappointing results this year, but--and there is always a "but"--one company proved to be an exception: Atheros's revenues grew by 70 percent in the second quarter, reaching $73 million.
We wrote last week that if AMD were to follow Intel's Centrino strategy and offer bundled chips, chipsets, and WiFi cards, companies such as Atheros and Broadcom would be facing a tough slog. We are not there yet (and …
Bumpy start for Portland's muni-WiFi
A few months ago the city of Portland, OR unveiled its plan for metro-WiFi with much fanfare. It has been a bumpy road, though, as several problems combined to make the launch of the ambitious project less than smooth (ambitious, because the city said the system would offer WiFi coverage for 95 percent of the city). First, negotiations between local utilities and MetroFi, the provider with which the city has signed the WiFi agreement, have stalled. At issue: How much should Portland …
SPOTLIGHT: WiFi to the rescue
WiFi to the rescue
As if to add insult to injury, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina were accompanies by the collapse of communication systems, hampering rescue work and emergency response efforts. The communication system connecting emergency crews proved more robust during the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks in London, but still, a recent government report on the attack highlighted that the first responder groups sometimes had difficulty talking to each …
ALSO NOTED: Solving WiFi hotspot security; Seamless Wi-Fi tests encryption software; and much more...
> You like to do your work at Starbucks or on a bench in a city park, but you are worried about the security of your communication. What to do? Eric Geier has good advice. Tutorial
> Speaking of security, Seamless Wi-Fi has completed beta testing of version 2.0 of its Phenom encryption software. Report
> Not a moment too …
Commercial UWB in Korea
Ultrawide band (UWB) has known its ups and downs (mostly downs), so this must surely be good news for a technology which came on the scene with a splash more than three years ago, but as was the case with the Brazilian soccer team during the World Cup, never quite managed to deliver on that early promise.
The good news has to do with the distribution later this year by the Korean government of UWB frequency. The move will spur greater interest in semiconductor development by both …
Will AMD emulate Intel's Centrino strategy?
The ongoing tussle between chip makers AMD and Intel reminds us of a chihuahua chewing on your ankle: It will not bring you down, but it is an irritant which just will not let go. The acquisition by AMD of Canadian graphic chip maker ATI for $5.4 billion is another indication that AMD is not going to let go.
The question in wireless circles is whether or not this move by AMD is a hint that the company is about to emulate its rival's Centrino strategy by next acquiring a small …
Ofcom mulls increasing WiFi power
The shape of things to come? U.K. telecommunication regulator Ofcom is mulling raising the power limits of WiFi, and the industry welcomes the idea. Hot zone operators, especially, see the contemplated change as giving a mighty boost to the businesses. Ofcom says its proposal was driven by the need to improve spectrum efficiency by broadening the range of devices operating in the spectrum, and by the need to make broadband more available in rural areas. The agency estimates that about 3 …
Mobile WiMAX to leap-frog fixed version
Mobile WiMAX, when it comes around, will leap-frog fixed WiMAX technology, says a new report from Juniper Research. The report says mobile WiMAX will grow from 1.7 million subscribers in 2007 to 21.3 million by 2012. Juniper analyst Aditya Kaul said he anticipates that "although fixed and mobile WiMAX were developed with a complimentary eye to serving different markets, the services they offer will inevitably become intertwined, creating complimentary as well as competing …
Nokia in UMA-WLAN trial
This may bring a cheer to Finnish hearts as they get set for another long arctic winter: Nokia has launched what must be the first public trial of UMA over WLAN in the Finnish city of Oulu. Fifty or so families in the city will be testing the new system, using the Nokia 6136 mobile device. The 6136 allows for seamless handover from GSM to WLAN networks.
UMA allows the device to make calls through WiFi networks rather than having to communicate with a base station. This is not only …
SPOTLIGHT: Not ready for prime time
Every couple of years or so a story appears about a scientist who has just succeeded in creating cold fusion. The news is received with a sense of hope and enthusiasm--perhaps, at last, the process of creating cheap, abundant and clean energy has been mastered. Alas, within a couple of days we also find that this has been yet another hoax, and we all go back to consuming oil and coal. There is another kind of fusion--between VoWiFi and cellular technologies--which also holds much …
ALSO NOTED: Ruckus shows network gateway; FCC releases list of bidders; and much more...
> Ruckus shows gateway which bridges metro-scale network into the home. Press release
> Losing sleep over the August 9 FCC AWS auction? The agency has just released the list of 168 qualified bidders. Press release
> Netgear shows good numbers: Net revenue for Q2, which ended July 2, was $130.7 million, a 21.5 …
picoChip, KT to develop WiBro/WiMAX femtocell
Important news on the WiMAX front, and as is often the case, U.K.-based picoChip is involved. The company has just signed a partnership agreement with Korea Telecom (KT) to develop WiBro/WiMAX APs (also called femtocells or home-basestations). Each of the two companies brings a lot to the table: KT has launched commercial WiBro service, while picoChip's multi-core DSP is the industry standard architecture for WiMAX infrastructure; the DSP is also widely used for WCDMA …
Trend: WiFi in white space
We know what the problems are: Anyone can put up a WiFi network because they operate in unlicensed spectrum, but the downside is that the signal is relatively weak to avoid interference with devices such as cordless phones, and must resort to elaborate multipaths scheme to overcome everyday obstacles such as office furniture. Some have suggested using lower frequency, because lower-frequency signal travels better, but desirable bands in the low frequencies are not readily …
MetroWiFi, AT&T join to offer muni-Wifi
Politics make for strange bedfellows, but so also, it seems, does muni-WiFi. CNet News.com reports that Sunnyvale, CA-based start-up MetroFi, one of the three leading muni-WiFi operators, is partnering with the venerable AT&T to bid on the 65-square-mile Riverside, CA network. Note that the Riverside bid talks about offering only 512 Kbps downstream at no cost, compared with all the other MetroFi's bids and operations, which offer customers 1 Mbps downstream. That higher rate …
Vendor-independent migration to switched WLAN
Who says you cannot teach an old do new tricks? If you could, this would be important, especially when the old dog cost a lot of money. Businesses would be delighted to know that Aruba and Airwave have teamed up to offer businesses with unmanaged legacy WLAN infrastructure a way to move to a centralized, switch-managed WLAN.
When WLAN came on the scene, the emphasis was on distributed, stand-alone, thick APs. There is a limit to what this type of architecture can deliver, and the …
WiFi-equipped washing machine
This may well be the digital age's response to the Rube Goldberg machine: The Atlanta-based Internet Home Alliance is showing a WiFi-equipped washing machine. Needless to say, the name "washing machine" is too 20th-century. The new machine is called Laundry Time System. The system is outfit with WiFi and it allows users to control the machine--temperature, cycle, laundry type, etc.--remotely, using email, instant messaging or cell phone.
The system can automatically alert you …
SPOTLIGHT: Thin is in--but which thin?
There is a general move away from fat, intelligent, stand-alone APs in WLAN design toward a centrally switched architecture (see story #4 above). There are several reasons for this change of direction: Security became an issue, as was the need to allow for cross-subnet roaming. There were other issues having to do with scalability and control. Yes, you could buy gateways from Blusocket or Cisco to help manage the distributed network, but more and more businesses realized that a better …
ALSO NOTED: Verizon upgrades network; A WiFi Skype phone; and much more...
> Verizon will upgrade its wireless network infrastructure to EV-DO Revision A which will boost the (theoretical) upload speeds to 1.8 Mbps and download speeds to 3.1 Mbps. Report
> Skype has teamed with several hardware vendors--Belkin, Edge-Core, Netgear, and SMC--to bring a WiFi Skype phone to its customers. Report
> Toronto had an …