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News that's changing the Wireless World!
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Tuesday, May 25, 2004 |
Source: Wi-Fi Networking News
Cingular Commits to
UMTS by 2006 or 2007
Cingular says it will build UMTS, but needs spectrum first: The article
doesn't cite Cingular's expected speed, but notes that the company will
finish its EDGE (roughly 100 kbps) build-out by this summer. Merging with
AT&T Wireless provides Cingular with that firm's EDGE infrastructure, as
well as the four trial cities for UMTS that AT&T Wireless has scheduled.
UMTS service by Cingular might take until 2006 or 2007 for broad
availability; testing begins in Atlanta this summer....
Source Link
9:22:45 PM 
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Source: Wi-Fi Networking News
Buffalo Offers "125"
Gear
Tim Higgins covers Buffalo's announcement of its "125" gear: This equipment
uses the latest firmware and chips from Broadcom, which Buffalo very neatly
clarifies has about 34 Mbps of throughput and 125 Mbps of signaling
bandwidth. This is quite fair: it's one of the clearer statements from any
vendor about real-world performance of increasingly higher signaling rates,
or rates at which symbols are encoded. Real throughput measures the actual
data transferring end-to-end over the network. Buffalo has its wireless
gateway ready to go now for about $110 street price, Higgins notes. The unit
supports all current security options. The CardBus (PC Card) and PCI cards
will ship next month for about $100 list. Each of the new Buffalo devices,
plus some existing Buffalo equipment, will support its AOSS or AirStation
One Touch Secure System. AOSS is supposed to set up an encryption key
between a base station and a client adapter when you hold down a button for
a few seconds on the access point and then run client software on the
computer you're connecting. I just spent 40 minutes with two
fresh-out-of-the-box Buffalo units (the WBR2-G54 AirStation and WLI-CB-G54A
PC Card) without reaching a successful conclusion. I'm talking to Buffalo
about this to see where I went wrong. This obviously can't be every user's
experience. Buffalo also announced a partnership with my editorial and
advertising partner, Jiwire. The Jiwire Portable Hotspot Locator will be
bundled with the software distributed by Buffalo on CD....
Source Link
3:33:15 PM
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Source: Wi-Fi Networking News
Wayport
Metrics
During Wayport's briefing yesterday, they shared key metrics about the
company: It's rare to see this much data from any hotspot provider, which
goes to show the confidence Wayport has in its current and future
businesses. The old saying is, never write your competitor's business plan
for them. Wayport fears no such animal, it's clear, especially with its
Wi-Fi World partnership model ahead of it. In terms of core connections or
24-hour sessions, Wayport shows 124,000 in the first quarter of 2001, rising
to 301,000 in first quarter of 2003, and 645,000 in the first quarter of
this year. They estimate 714,000 connections for this current quarter, and
over a million for third quarter. These connections include all direct and
third-party pay-as-you-go and subscriber uses. Wayport also provided its raw
revenue figures for the last three year. The company started with $1.5
million received in 2002's first quarter, rising consistently and steadily
to $6.1 million in the first quarter of 2004. They estimate $6.7 million for
second quarter, $8.7 million for third quarter, and over $10 million in the
final quarter of 2004. The company's CEO expected to produce about $1.5 to
$2 million per week within 12 months for an annual runrate of $75 to $100
million. Under Wi-Fi World, subscriber connections ostensibly won't be
counted because Wayport will receive fixed fees per venue regardless of
connections. However, Wayport will still collect walk-up fees for two-hour
sessions ($2.95 for two hours) which they will share with the retail
venue....
Source Link
1:49:45 PM
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Source: Wi-Fi Networking News
Wi-Fi Alliance
Improves Symbols for Certification
The Wi-Fi Alliance updates standards, certifications: The new branding
should make it clearer to consumers what's available in a given unit. Tom's
Networking, through which we found this link, shows a version of the
branding with more attractive colors. In a related story, the group is also
readying testing programs for IEEE 802.11i's final form, which they will
label WPA2, and for 802.11e's Wireless Multimedia Extensions (WME) to
improve streaming media over Wi-Fi networks, which they will call WSM for
Wireless Scheduled Media. The group is also considering certifying EAP
types....
Source Link
1:07:35 PM
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Source: Wi-Fi Networking News
Wi-Fi Alliance
Improves Symbols for Certification
The Wi-Fi Alliance has updated how it expects its members to indicate Wi-Fi
certification standards that a product has met: The new branding should make
it clearer to consumers what's available in a given unit. Tom's Networking,
through which we found this link, shows a version of the branding with more
attractive colors....
Source Link
12:56:55 PM
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Source: Wi-Fi Networking News
Motorola Offers
Push-to-Talk over Cell Data, Wi-Fi
Push-to-talk has become the must-have technology for cell phones; new
Motorola equipment offers support over GPRS, 1xRTT, and WLAN: PTT provides
an intercom-like service immediately, without dialing, for members of a
group. Nextel owned the market until recently. Motorola's technology is in
testing, and they expect to offer support over a large variety of other cell
data standards, too, such as EDGE....
Source Link
11:23:35 AM
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Source: Wi-Fi Networking News
Boxers or
Briefs?
We're not making this up: 64 percent of those surveyed about their Internet
surfing habits admit to surfing in their underwear: At least it's not in the
altogether. Iogear's survey, intended to promote some coverage of the
company (viz., this item), had some interesting results though. 56 percent
said they use Wi-Fi in hotels and airports while traveling (although the
hotel usage has to be mostly wired in-room access), 27 percent in fast-food
restaurants (which is odd, since McDonald's is the only chain that has it
that you'd call fast food), and 17 percent in bookstores....
Source Link
9:50:17 AM
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Source: Wi-Fi Networking News
Editor on New
Hampshire Public Radio Wednesday
Glenn Fleishman appears on The Exchange on New Hampshire Public Radio
tomorrow: Tune in your crystal radios or click this link to listen live as I
discuss wireless technology with the host of the program at 6 am Pacific/9
am Eastern on Wednesday. We have a wide-ranging agenda, part of which will
focus on wireless broadband, given New Hampshire's substantial non-urban
population....
Source Link
9:50:15 AM
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Source: Wi-Fi Planet
Certified
Wi-Fi gets New Logo
The Wi-Fi Alliance has upgraded the look of its seal of certification,
dropping the radio frequency check boxes in favor of showing off the a, b,
or g.
Source
Link
8:05:25 AM
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Source: Wi-Fi Networking News
Yakety Yakety in
Nepal
Nepalese community wireless network helps sell, trade yaks: Villagers in
remote Nepal are using a wireless network to communicate between where they
live and where others take care of the yaks. They find out whether the
tenders need medicine or assistance, and the herdspeople use NetMeeting to
videoconference with their families. Several villages are hooked up with
each other and out to the Internet. Distance learning is in the
future....
Source Link
7:02:55 AM
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Source: Wi-Fi Planet
Wayport Plans
for the Future
The McDonald's rollout is underway and Wayport spells out what the
deployment and their new business model mean for the company and maybe for
hotspots in general: a 'Wi-Fi World.'
Source
Link
3:06:15 AM
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© 2004 [OCCalWUG]
Last Update: 6/1/2004; 2:48:25 AM
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