Friday, April 4, 2003|
Cranky Cell Phone Inventor Derides Hot Spots. Martin Cooper, father of the cell phone, says 802.11 impractical for coverage: Sure, he's got a point, but the fellow is obviously opinionated and relying on a specific internal model of Wi-Fi hot spots that are monolithic. One company "says they will have an 802.11b site within a five-minute walk in the city and a five-minute drive in the suburbs," Cooper said, bristling a bit. "Know what that sounds like to me? A telephone booth." I can't make 11 Mbps connections to a DSL or T-1 line at a telephone booth, however. I hear more and more about people driving up to closed (or open) shops and employing drive-by Wi-Fi: powering up the laptop, performing their tasks, and moving on. They'll have to enlarge parking lots next, not seating, at many cafes.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
Cranky, perhaps, but he and Odlyzko were the only ones saying that 3G would be far more imporant to voice instead of data. |
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Analysts Call Wi-Fi a Positive Disruption. Jupiter Research expects small business to pick up momentum for 802.11 with larger companies making most of the purchases, while everyone waits for better security. [allNetDevices Wireless News] 12:36:36 PM  comment
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How 802.1x authentication works. Jim Burns at Meetinghouse Data Communications explains how 802.1x authentication works and why it is superior to WEP [Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News] 12:34:29 PM comment
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Starbucks Says 25K Connections Per Week. Starbucks sells more coffee than service: Starbucks apparently told this writer, although the attribution is general, that 25,000 people connect each week in its stores. This number isn't broken out by monthly subscriber versus hourly or pay-as-you-go patron. With over 2,200 stores unwired by T-Mobile, this averages to 10 connections a week or a little over one per day per store. In the best scenario, that income might average to $150 per store per month (say two monthly subscribers at $30 each and 15 hours at $6.00 each). The cost per store certainly exceeds $500 and might be as much as $2,000 per month. However, one could expect that certain stores are turning a profit: in dense areas, it's much more likely that a store is racking up hundreds of connections a month, not just a dozen or two. It's also disingenuous for T-Mobile to say that they aren't marketing the service: they send out direct mail, they promote it on their Web site, they tell their cell subscribers about it, and they're involved in co-marketing with Starbucks and HP (which has a so-called connection tool that works with a couple of HP-provided Wi-Fi cards, but they want on the bandwagon) as well as with Intel's Centrino campaign. Here's the kicker in the story for Starbucks, not T-Mobile, which makes their saliva start to flow: And Wi-Fi service has turned him into a loyal Starbucks customer. "Having the T-Mobile has completely locked me down here, as opposed to the Cosi across the street," he said. That's nice for Starbucks, but unless T-Mobile is given an incremental per store percentage of aggregate increased sales based on the number of Wi-Fi users at any given time, this doesn't pay the T-1 bill.... [Wi-Fi Networking News] 12:33:40 PM comment
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Czech Carrier Offers Unlimited GPRS. Alan Reiter discusses the Czech cell operator's offer of unlimited GPRS for US$34 per month: Geoff Goodfellow, an ex-pat bar owner in Prague (he also founded RadioMail and helped start JFax), sent out a note this morning about Eurotel's offer of unlimited GPRS service for a flat monthly fee.... [Wi-Fi Networking News] 12:32:25 PM comment
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Truck Stop Accord. Major truck stops agree on Wi-Fi: Two truck stop chains, Flying J and Petro Stopping Centers will both install Wi-Fi at their locations. In fact, Flying J says it has Wi-Fi at 80 of its 160 venues already.... [Wi-Fi Networking News] 12:32:01 PM comment
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Wi-Fi Investment Market May Be Overheated. Wi-Fi market sparks many investments, but too many?: This analysis suggests that the sheer number of firms might be chasing too few opportunities, although the opportunities are running ahead of the market's ability to capitalize fully on them. That would argue for a kind of heat sink equilibrium: as long as the market keeps growing furiously, the chance for experimentation to solve problems can persist.... [Wi-Fi Networking News] 12:28:46 PM comment
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More on Hot Spot Uptake. Hot spots aren't seeing the numbers yet they need to survive: T-Mobile once again says they're not promoting their service, which is specious (see my earlier comments). The crux of the article is this: Wi-Fi use "is certainly not growing at the same pace as its footprint," said In-Stat/MDR analyst Amy Cravens. "We are seeing an increase in locations, but not a significant increase in usage of those locations." This is what's motivating Intel's Centrino campaign: even though it's non-unique to stick a Wi-Fi card into a laptop, Intel would like to make the idea of wireless access with a laptop so compelling that people dump their 1997 to 2001 laptops and upgrade to a 2003 laptop. Especially businesses. I keep finding out more and more about how business purchase cycles are several years long, and thus there are plenty of laptops running Windows 98 and NT which could add Wi-Fi but not with the kind of ease and reliability of using it under Windows XP with the latest, greatest battery-shepherding technology. Businesses don't want to insert PC cards in thousands of laptops; Centrino avoids that even if it's nothing particularly special.... [Wi-Fi Networking News] 12:28:27 PM comment
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Wireless security: The case for VPNs. VPN technology is one of the best bets for managing security in Wi-Fi deployments, says Barry Fougere, CEO of Colubris Networks. [Computerworld Security News] 12:28:06 PM comment
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Sailing through the perfect storm.
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IDC lowers global IT spending forecast, citing war and economic woes. Uncertainties about the war in Iraq and a fragile global economy led research firm IDC to lower its spending forecast for 2003 -- but there may be some good news, too. [Computerworld News] 12:25:46 PM comment
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More Wireless Internet Access Set for Lower Manhattan Parks. A downtown business improvement district is planning to establish free high-speed wireless Internet access in six parks and public spaces in Lower Manhattan next month. By Edward Wyatt. [New York Times: Technology] 12:25:16 PM comment
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Never Missing a Beat (or a Phone Call). An accessory that might seem custom-made for the busy urban multitasker is the Portable Link, a headphone set from Skullcandy that connects a user with both a portable music player and a cellphone. By Judy Tong. [New York Times: Technology] 12:21:38 PM comment
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From a Slim Black Box, Shared Knowledge Streams Wirelessly. The Martian NetDrive Wireless sounds as if it might be a device capable of connecting you with extraterrestrial neighbors. Its reach is not quite that far, but it does allow people who are not in the same room to share data. By Thomas J. Fitzgerald. [New York Times: Technology] 12:18:56 PM comment
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2005
Omar Javaid
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Last update: 6/27/05; 11:58:16 PM .
Last update: 6/27/05; 11:58:16 PM .
