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FierceWiFi October 5, 2005
- 802.11n standard discussions near conclusion
- Free-hotspots.com offers free WiFi in London
- Trend: In-flight WiFi slow to take off
- Muni-WiFi battle essentially over, incumbents lose
- TI shows VoCable gateway platform
- SPOTLIGHT: WiFi in the Bill of Rights?
- ALSO NOTED: Nikon WiFi cameras; Telstra offering free WiFi down under; and much more...
802.11n standard discussions near conclusion
The discussions over 802.11n specifications resemble the fourth movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony: The end of the final movement has so many bursts of music punctuated by silent pauses that it's hard to know whether to begin applauding or wait for the orchestra to issue one more musical flourish.
Michael Hurlston, vice president of Broadcom, told the World Broadband Forum that the impasse, which has caused delays in finalizing the standard, is about to be broken. He also said …
Free-hotspots.com offers free WiFi in London
While is mulling whether or not to offer free WiFi, Dublin-based Free-hotspot.com, launched only two weeks ago, is already offering free WiFi in 25 locations in London. The service is aimed at business people and travelers. The company is now aggressively pursuing advertisers to support the free service. The company is also in the process of publishing a directory with the locations of its hotspots. The service, by the way, is free not only to consumers, but also to venue owners, …
Trend: In-flight WiFi slow to take off
In-flight WiFi is not exactly a major trend yet. In fact, you have to look hard to find it, with fewer than 1 percent of commercial aircraft offering the service to their passengers. One reason is that most passengers are deterred by the $9.95 per hour price of the Connexion by Boeing plan, a plan aggressively promoted by Boeing. The reason for the high per-hour price is that it costs the airlines a lot of money to offer the service. It takes about $500,000 to $600,000 to equip one …
Muni-WiFi battle essentially over, incumbents lose
Remember the many stories we published last year about the not-always-honest campaign incumbent telcos launched against muni-WiFi? That effort consisted of paying obscure entities calling themselves "research organizations" to publish factually anemic studies on how muni-WiFi would not make business sense and would violate the spirit of free competition. The other part of the campaign consisted of donations to politicians' coffers in return for legislation which would prohibit …
TI shows VoCable gateway platform
Texas Instruments is showing a Voice over Cable (VoCable) gateway platform which combines voice, data, and WiFi in a single design. The TNETC731's reference design supports all the PacketCable 1.5 requirements, including primary line VoIP. The design is based on TI's Puma-3 DOCSIS chip, and it integrates a 460x cable modem SoC, voice DSP with the 1350A 802.11b/g silicon, and AP driver. The DOCSIS2.0 compliant cable interface supports transfer rates of up to 38 Mbps downstream and 30 …
SPOTLIGHT: WiFi in the Bill of Rights?
As if we did not have a sufficiently weighty issue in whether or not the right to privacy is embedded in the Constitution, now come San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to argue that WiFi is a "fundamental right" of US citizens. San Francisco is planning to build a WiFi network covering the city's 49 sq.mi. The cost of building the network is estimated at between $8 million and $16 million; with the city more than $200 million in the red, finding the money will be an issue. Story
ALSO NOTED: Nikon WiFi cameras; Telstra offering free WiFi down under; and much more...
> Nikon's new WiFi-capable Coolpix P1 and P2 compact digicams hit the market this week at $749 and $649, respectively. Last week Kodak began shipping its own WiFi camera. Story
> Telstra is offering free access to its new WiFi hotspot network until the end of this month, while continuing to expand the network all over Australia. …