Looking Back at 2008 and Forward to the Years Ahead

Let’s look back and forward: It’s traditional to wrap up the year, during a quiet news period, by looking at what just went by. This is the one time of year that I also prognosticate, and I got lucky: My forecast for 2008 made a year ago turns out to be weirdly accurate. I don’t mean to take too much credit, though: I was expecting big news from things in 2008 that were much quieter affairs.

In-flight Internet (over Wi-Fi). It took almost until the end of the year, but this expectation finally became fulfilled not quite in the form or extent I envisioned. Several companies are separately pursuing offering in-flight Internet, but only Aircell managed to put the service into planes. American Airlines, Virgin America, and Delta Airlines all lofted flights in 2008 with broadband on board.

Of course, the expectation was that between 300 and 500 planes would be equipped with one vendor or another’s flavor of in-flight Internet in 2008. Instead, the total is about 25 to 30 across those three airlines. Ryan Air’s multi-year promise to put OnAir service on its European routes hasn’t yet gone into public trials. Southwest and Alaska’s promised tests of Wi-Fi appear to be invisible.

Still, Alaska and JetBlue both told me that there’s work ahead in 2009, and Delta said it would equip over 300 planes in 2009 in its fleet, and start equipping its merger partner Northwestern Airlines with Internet service in 2009 as well.

We can count 2008 as the year in-flight Internet taxied down the runway; 2009 will likely be the year that it takes off. Whether it’s financially viable is a different story; but it appears that service will be available on perhaps 20 to 30 percent of wide-body jetsfor routes within the U.S. in 2009.

Wi-Fi in every smartphone. Here, I feel I nailed it. It wasn’t too much to call this, but Research in Motion and other established phone makers still seemed to have a slight resistence to including Wi-Fi. Now, it’s de rigeur. The iPhone 3G and first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, shipped in 2009 with Wi-Fi along with Bluetooth, 2G and 3G radios, and GPS. Wireless all around. The BlackBerry Storm was widely criticized for being an iPhone me-too without the quality, but also because it lacked Wi-Fi; most other new BlackBerrys are fully Wi-Fi’d.

Tens of millions of smartphones now have Wi-Fi built in—about 10 million of those are iPhones alone. I’m not sure if the industry tracks this, but the mark of 100 million Wi-Fi equipped smartphones will certainly hit in the first quarter of 2009.

The new trend I call for 2009 is the inclusion of Wi-Fi in so-called feature phones, the inexpensive phones that offer far more limited capabilities than smartphones. Talking to chipmakers and handset makers in 2008 made it clear that Wi-Fi chips will be available in early 2009 with low-enough power at an inexpensive price with better integration for multiple wireless standards. This makes it affordable and keeps batteries from being drained.

Carriers want Wi-Fi as a way to offload usage from celluar networks, especially in people’s home, and putting Wi-Fi into feature phones gives carriers an advantage in stretching scarce spectrum even further.

Wi-Fi everywhere. With municipal Wi-Fi in its 2004-2006 form dead in 2007 and buried in the first half of 2008, we’ve seen a resurgence in efforts to put a plan in place first (why do we need Wi-Fi or some other wireless technology?) and then build a network.

In a round-up for Ars Technica six weeks ago, I highlighted several cities that have working large-scale networks all built for slightly different purposes. These networks are all successful in the sense that they have been built and appear to be working for the purpose for which they were intended. Only time will tell—another year or even two—as to whether the long-term benefits or sustainability are there.

I also said a year ago that 2008 would be the year of hotspot saturation. I think I was right on that. It’s hard to find any venue in North America and Europe that lacks Wi-Fi. Wayport’s acquisition of Opti-Fi airports and Parsons’s Washington State Ferry operations, along with AT&T’s purchase of Wayport demonstrated that consolidation had arrived, too. (Wayport operated Wi-Fi in U.S. McDonald’s locations, and managed AT&T’s Wi-Fi hotspots.)

Starbucks switching to AT&T and offering loyalty-based free service to customers, as well as AT&T radically expanding free access to its hotspot network, dramatically expanded the ability to get Wi-Fi for nothing.

Years ago, I was somewhat excoriated for saying that Wi-Fi hotspot access will either be free or cost you $20. Some people insisted Wi-Fi would trend to zero—some even cite Starbucks 2-hours-a-day loyalty reward as proof, even though you need to make a regular purchase to get the “free” service. Others insisted that you would need several subscriptions, each at $20 to $40 per month, to have a national or international personal footprint.

I wasn’t too far off, in the end. If you want, there are now extensive networks in the U.S. and Europe of free hotspots and AT&T gives free Wi-Fi to about 15 to 20 million customers. The Fon network, however you count it, seemingly offers reciprocal free Wi-Fi to as many as hundreds of thousands of its Foneros.

If you want a larger pool of access at premium venues, especially airports and hotels, you can pay a bit more than $20 per month—maybe I should give myself the benefit of inflation, since I’ve been saying $20 for a few years? Boingo offers unlimited Wi-Fi for North America for $21.95 per month; iPass includes dial-up and Ethernet service as well for $29.95 per month. (Internationally, aggregators meter service because of the exceedingly high cost in some markets. You can get a few thousand minutes a month for about $45 with iPass or $60 with Boingo.)

WiMax arrives. Again, slipping in towards the 11th hour, my prediction that WiMax would be deployed widely enough to see whether it works wasn’t precisely what happened. WiMax is commercially available in one market—Baltimore—although reports from reviewers and residents seem to all be positive.

The new Clearwire, a product of the old Clearwire firm and the WiMax division and spectrum portfolio of Sprint Nextel, will launch its first market under the Clear product name in Portland, Ore., on Jan. 6 (badly timed before CES and Macworld Expo). Then they’ll start rolling out cities on a regular basis.

Gadget-Fi a go-go. I’m now going on about 3 years of saying that next year, Wi-Fi will be in everything. It’s getting there. I’m still waiting for a good implementation of Wi-Fi in a camera, but at least the Eye-Fi adapter—which debuted in 2007 and expanded options in 2008—provides a good substitute.

Apple apparently shipped a jillion iPod touch players; they don’t reveal specific model unit shipments, but it’s possible that several million iPod touch models are in people’s hands.

What’s Coming in 2009?

A real security meltdown for some version of WPA. I hate to say this, because it sounds like fear mongering, but after the clever but not significant WPA exploit revealed a few weeks ago, it’s clear to me that worse is to come. We will likely see the death of the TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) flavor of 802.11i (supported in WAP and WPA2), at least in the pre-shared key/Personal flavor in 2009 due to additional weaknesses that relate to backwards compatibility with the long-depreated WEP.

Whatever attack results, it will likely still require a lot of effort on the part of the attacker, but will have a chilling effect, and move more people to the AES-CCMP flavor of encryption available only in WPA2.

LTE. Long Term Evolution, the GSM-evolved fourth-generation (4G) cell data standard, should appear in commercial form in 2010, but we’re going to hear a lot about it in 2009. We may even see some test markets. Verizon sounds like they promised at least one production market for regular use.

LTE and WiMax convergence. There’s apparently enough interest in converging the mismatched elements of LTE and WiMax that we may see a full-fledged convergence effort in 2009. This would mean that nearly all 4G efforts worldwide could come together around two intercompatible standards.

Train Fi. Yes, I’ve been writing about Internet access in trains for a few years. It’s finally arrived. The faster cellular data speeds, the brief huge spike in oil prices, and lengthy tests that have concluded successfully are finally leading to Wi-Fi-based access being installed on commuter and long-haul trains worldwide. In the U.S., the BART system in the San Francisco Bay Area could wind up being the largest such deployment in 2009. But train-Fi has broken out all over.

SMS Fi. Twitter or a firm like it will move to supplant the ridiculous cost of SMS, especially for smartphone owners with unlimited data plans, by offering an SMS-like service for a pittance with gateway service to existing SMS offerings. Wi-Fi and 3G will be the preferred method. With carriers pursuing predatory pricing on SMS, the only universal messaging format, an alternative will be formed out of the pressure. Coal becomes diamond.

Very high speed Wi-Fi’s first steps. In 2008, representatives most from chipmakers worked through the formation of two new 802.11 task groups for Very High Throughput wireless LANs: one, formed late in the year, 802.11ac will cover frequencies below 6 GHz; the other, likely to be 802.11ad, will cover the 60 GHz band, used for millimeter-band radar and with SiBeam’s video streaming approach. The goal is for 1 Gbps or faster raw throughput rates. A timeline isn’t yet set; given how the group and manufacturers work, it might be 2010 before we see 802.11ac devices and longer for 802.11ad.

What Was Hot in 2008?

The top stories by page views for 2008 were mostly stories from years before. While readers were most interested in T-Mobile losing its Starbucks contract to AT&T (February), they also looked at a pair of 2003 items on WPA passphrase weakness (my introduction and a paper on the topic), perused my outdated 2006 essay on not buying into early Draft N gear, and followed a dead link from an item about installing a free WPA client (no longer available) for Windows 2000.

Also in 2008, readers were equally interested in a third-quarter 2008 review of Linksys’s WRT610 router—but more people read the 2007 review of the preceding WRT600 model. And apparently people still aren’t changing their WRT54G’s admin password, given that it’s the No. 4 story for 2008, but published in 2004.

Perversely, a top story in 2008 was a review I wrote in 2004 of an early Wi-Fi signal finder, a category of product that now seems tediously useless. Showing that people are interesting in what Wi-Fi means (literally), a 2005 story on the origins of the choice of the Wi-Fi name still gets a lot of attention.

Of the top 15 or so stories, all but 2 were from before 2008, and three-quarters were about security.

Wee-Fi: Bullet Train-Fi, Curve-Fi (No 3G)
The New Clearwire Taking Orders in Portland, Ore.
Music industry ends mass piracy lawsuits
(Reuters)

Wee-Fi: Bullet Train-Fi, Curve-Fi (No 3G)

Japanese bullet trains will gain the Internet service originally promised in 2006: The service wasn’t delayed, but tied to new trains arriving for the Tokyo to Osaka line. The 270 km/hr line will offer Internet access over Wi-Fi, and will use leaky coax for its backhaul. Leaky coax is a kind of purposely undershielded wiring used to create a linear antenna for train lines and subway lines. WiFi Rail plans to use leaky coax to deliver Wi-Fi directly to passengers on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in California. NTT is handling the bullet-train service, which is expected to offer 2 Mbps downstream for from 500 (about US$5.50) for day pass to 1,680 (about $19) for monthly access.

AT&T will sell BlackBerry Curve with EDGE, Wi-Fi, no 3G: The Curve 8320’s reliance on EDGE (2.5G) allows AT&T to offer a sort of bargain BlackBerry. It’s just $150 with a two-year commitment, and the data contracts for EDGE are usually $20 per month (or less with corporate deals) instead of the $30 for 3G. AT&T will bundle its free access to its domestic hotspot footprint, as well.

SNCF Promises Fleetwide Service for TGV Lines by 2010
Busta Banned in the U.K.?
(E! Online)

Embargoes Still Honored Here--As Appropriate

Michael Arrington is planning to lie to press relations folks: Over at TechCrunch, a site I read in sick fascination, founder Arrington says that he’s tired of the inconsistency that’s resulted from embargoes, and will no longer honor them. Embargoes, delays in the release of news, are used by firms that want to have go out simultaneously about some new product or service or company change.

Reporters typically are asked if they’ll agree to an embargo and not write about a given company topic until a specific date and time. In exchange, we are typically offered briefings (one or more) with product managers and executives, sometimes provided hardware or software to test in advance, and the opportunity to reflect and write something that isn’t produced in the heat of the moment after an announcement is made.

Some people break embargoes, usually unintentionally, where a story in a content-management system is timed to go live at a given time, but the system errs or the wrong date and time is entered. I have never knowingly broken an embargo, but I have made an error a couple times in posting a story prematurely.

Arrington points out, pretty accurately, that because some PR folks are becoming a bit desperate, and are often blasting out thousands of emails about embargoed items to reporters and bloggers they don’t know, that embargoes are being broken all the time.

He notes, “…when an embargo is broken[, it] means that a news site goes early with the news despite the fact that they’ve promised not to. The benefits are clear - sites like Google News and TechMeme prioritize them first as having broken the story. Traffic and links flow in to whoever breaks an embargo first.”

I often receive emails with news that says it’s under embargo before I’ve agreed to hold the news, which isn’t kosher. I also hear more from PR folks I don’t know at all, and thus don’t know whether to trust that they will work to make other reporters and sites hold the news, too.

Frankly, as someone who is more analytical than newsy here—it’s pretty hard for me to break news, and I try to take a 35,000-foot view—embargoes aren’t quite as critical to me as I might write about a story hours or days after the news comes out.

And if it is a story that I’ve written in advance and someone else goes live, I don’t hesitate to alert the PR person, and go live with my own story. If anyone breaks the embargo, we all get to, because there’s no reason for anything to be withheld.

The only problem with Arrington’s post is that he says he’ll simply lie to press folk. I don’t lie. I’ll tell someone that they can tell me details and I’ll honor the embargo, and I will; or that they can tell me, but I’m not going to agree to the embargo, and they can choose whether or not to tell me.

Honesty is the only policy here.

Comments Back
The Jonas Brothers top list of celeb charity draws
(AP)
Dell expands music tie-ins on festival circuit
(Reuters)

Comments Back

I welcome your input, folks: Sorry about the gap here for the last few weeks with comments turned off. I want to hear what you have to say—but the bottomfeeders of the Internet were using robots to attack my comments system. (Long version: Old Movable Type 3 JavaScript library reference bug, long fixed, was still embedded in some of my templates and pages. Short story: I fixed it.)

Sound off! Or, rather, sound on!

Jennifer Hudson’s old dream, music, is a new dream
(AP)
APNewsBreak: Andrews to succeed Cronkite on PBS
(AP)
Don’t Panic over WPA Flaw, But Do Pay Attention
Quantenna: Radical New Design or Great PR?

He's No John Dvorak, But He's a Wi-Fi Hater

Andy Ihnatko, the hat-wearing, glacially intelligent Mac writer, seems to have woken up on the wrong side of his Wi-Fi network: Andy writes in praise of Ethernet cables, including tacking them up around the house. Sounds as if, as he describes it in his regular Chicago Sun-Times column, he has some ugly kind of Wi-Fi environment in which his wireless signals run as sub prime as many mortgages issued in the U.S. in the last few years. Bada bing! I gotta million of them.

Andy is no John Dvorak: he’s doesn’t use the language of super-hyperbole to provoke reasonable readers and trolls alike into providing some heat and light. Rather, Andy is generally reasonable and extremely funny. All the concerns he raises in this column seem to be better raised about 3 years ago: reliably, range, consistent DHCP assignment, throughput, and so on.

Andy, maybe you need a working 802.11n router and some modern hardware? Or maybe your apartment building is simply being bombarded by untoward RF interference.

Don’t get me wrong: I like my copper Ethernet wiring, too, especially when I’m moving big files around my network. But with Draft N, I’m more likely to have a gating factor at my Internet gateway or a particular computer’s ability to shoot files over a given protocol than I am by the network’s raw speed.

Wee-Fi: Broadband Test Fairness, Network Magic 5, Manassas BPL, Wi-Fi Thermostat
St. Louis Park Settles with Arinc over Failed Network
Q&A: MySpace CEO aims to build music site’s community
(Reuters)
Foos Fighting With McCain
(E! Online)

SMS on Planes

Reporters are conflating text messaging, instant messaging: I keep seeing articles like this one from the Washington Post, in which it states that Aircell’s in-flight Internet service won’t allow voice calls but will allow a variety of Internet services, like instant messaging (IM), as well as text messaging. That’s not quite correct.

SMS messages require a cell network to back them when sent and received using a carrier’s system. There are SMS gateways, including a free one built into AOL Instant Messenger, that allows a gateway user to avoid fees for sending or receiving IMs, or to use a fixed-rate plan (depending on the service) via an Internet connection. That includes services like Truphone which allow SMS and VoIP over WiFi, although VoIP will be blocked.

Aircell has no current plans to put picocells on board, that would act as mini cell towers, and that would be required for native SMS. The fact that people can use gateways and workarounds still doesn’t allow them to continue to use an understood mechanism while in flight. People will need to change behavior.

Delta Launches In-Flight Internet Next Week
Live from Virgin America’s Inaugural Wi-Fi Flight
Busta Banned in the U.K.?
(E! Online)

Stephen Fry, Five Miles High

Actor, director, genius Stephen Fry uses American Airlines Internet service: I admit to being an unabashed fan of this British performer, who also happens to write quite well about technology, and who uses Twitter. He filed this tweet from an AA flight taking him from NY to LA, after watching his friend and “m’colleague” Hugh Laurie host Saturday Night Live last night.

Live from Virgin America’s Inaugural Wi-Fi Flight
Busta Banned in the U.K.?
(E! Online)

Delta Launches In-Flight Internet Next Week

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that the newspaper’s local airline Delta will put Wi-Fi in planes starting next week: Just six planes will be equipped initially with Aircell Gogo service, which costs $10 for flights of less than 3 hours, and $13 for 3 hours or more. A total of 10 planes will be wired up for wireless this year, as opposed to the 75 that Delta had hoped to have ready to go.

The J-C says that initially, New York-based McDonald-Douglas MD88s and Boeing 757s will have the service. The airline told the newspaper that they were targeting 330 planes during 2009. As I noted a few days ago, reports that Delta had changed its plans were incorrect: they had always intended to put planes in service with Wi-Fi during 2008.

Because the FAA certifies airworthiness of equipment by its installation on specific models of aircraft, it’s worth noting that Delta has the greatest number of any model of planes in those two models: Planespotters.net says Delta has 132 757s and 116 MD88s in service. It has a sizable number of 767s (99) and 737s (75), as well. Delta’s total in-service count is about 450.

Many of these planes serve international routes, and Aircell’s service currently works only over ground and only over the U.S., so 330 may represent the total number of primarily domestic wide-body craft. (Aircell has a satellite add-on via Inmarsat for general (private) aviation, and the company told me a few weeks ago that they’re already talking with airlines that fly over water about a hybrid ground/satellite operation.)

Delta’s merger with Northwest Airlines adds about 275 more, of which 71 are Boeing 757s, although Airbus craft form the substantial majority of its fleet. Again, it’s unclear how many of these planes are used mostly for international or mixed US/international routes.

Live from Virgin America’s Inaugural Wi-Fi Flight
Delta Hasn’t Changed Plans for Planes
Delta museum is a tribute to bluesman B.B. King
(AP)

Metro Bits: Ok. Network Applications Emerge; Harvard Solar-Fi

Oklahoma City, home to several hundred sq mi of municipal Wi-Fi, finds another application: Okla. City is working on a $4m plan to reduce the costs and inflexibility of their traffic-light management system. A local news station quotes the city’s IT director saying that such a move could cut commuter time on average by 5 percent and stops by 8 percent, as well as allowing dynamic changes for special events. Many cities use outdated and bizarre control channel systems that long predate modern networking; Oklahoma City has none in place at all right now.

I’m channeling one Mr Craig Settles here, but if you have applications for a network before it’s built, then you have a purpose to build it, and then more applications emerge that make sense once it’s built. Paying $4m to allow remote signal control will likely save residents, commuters, and businesses far more in increasing productivity and reducing gas use, if the numbers the IT director holds up. Beyond that, it likely makes the efficiency of managing intersections far far higher, reducing delays and expense from signals that stop working.

On the other hand, predictions about changes in travel time to improvements in congestion tend to not come true, according to the book Traffic. If you make roads easier to travel, people travel those roads more.

Harvard Square Business Association uses Meraki Solar to extend network: The eagles come home to roost. Meraki was founded by nearby MIT graduate students. The Industry Standard says Harvard Square is officially the first customer for the solar devices. Meraki’s founder told me a few weeks ago that in beta testing, they found that solar devices were just as important in the developed world for difficult-to-reach locations: Places where bringing power was so expensive (and involved a recurring bill, in some cases) that solar was more sensible even with the $850 to $1,500 price tag for Meraki Solar.

If you figure that such a device might only burn $50 in power a year, but that bringing power to a rooftop could cost $500 to $2,000, if you’re even allowed to hire someone to wire the power correctly), the solar option is perfectly sensible.

St. Louis Park Settles with Arinc over Failed Network
Abdul chides Fox, `Idol’ producers over stalker
(AP)
Wee-Fi: News from Meraki, Violet, Qualcomm
Rocker Meat Loaf hospitalized for 3 days in London
(AP)

Delta Hasn't Changed Plans for Planes

Gizmodo and Engadget are engaged in the usual echo chamber of blogging: Some of us, you know, make a few phone calls to see what’s going on—i.e., reporting—instead of regurgitating press releases. Both Engadget and Gizmodo in the last day have seized upon a year’s end summary press release from Aircell to say, hey, wait, Delta’s launching in 2008 instead of 2009!

Well, no. The press release reiterates what Delta and Aircell have said earlier: Delta still expects to have service launched in 2008, although they did say fall, and they have 10 days left to execute on that. When I called Delta a few days ago, they said they had nothing to add, but might soon, which I take to mean that they’re striving to meet their 2008 deadline for having some birds with Gogo Internet service.

Likewise, when I spoke to Aircell a few weeks ago, they had nothing to add about Delta’s plans beyond what Delta was saying.

The two gadget sites are under enormous strain to post a million new, previously unseen items every day. The pressure must be getting to them.

Delta museum is a tribute to bluesman B.B. King
(AP)
Virgin Announces Launch Schedule
Country star Tim McGraw rips label over hits CD
(Reuters)
Live from Virgin America’s Inaugural Wi-Fi Flight

Clarification on Philadelphia's Usage

A few days ago, I questioned the Wall Street Journal’s statement about 28,000 daily unique users on Philadelphia’s network: The Phila. network, operated by NAC, covers more than 75 sq mi of the city, but the Journal said that the areas available for free usage were only the parks. I couldn’t reconcile how 28,000 unique people (or devices) were using the network in public areas (parks?) each day.

Turns out the Journal was conflating “public areas” with public access. The Wi-Fi service is available throughout the city, in the same way it was under EarthLink’s operation, which means that many people are using it from their homes or businesses. Still, it’s a relatively remarkable number.

The folks behind the network said that weekdays see 25,000 to 28,000 unique users based on MAC addresses, which are reasonably good gauges for unique users. Someone with a laptop and an iPhone would be counted twice, of course, but the overall contraction from unique devices to people is probably less than 10 percent.

One of the principals behind the current network’s owner also noted that 40 percent of network use is from Apple gear, including the iPhone, iPod touch, and computers; PC systems represent 30 percent.

I keep trying to pin down which network has the most usage in the world, and Philadelphia is the likely winner, with San Francisco’s Meraki network as No. 2, and Minneapolis (with a claimed 10,000+ subscribers) at No. 3.

Wee-Fi: Cities That Work, Boingo iPhone App
Burning Qs: Miley’s Poll Numbers & LOL Religion
(E! Online)
Actual Numbers on Paid Airport Wi-Fi Usage
R&B trio Labelle back in spotlight with new album
(Reuters)

Novatel's MiFi 3G Router Acts as Server, Too

Novatel Wireless has introduced a sleek mobile 3G router that’s seemingly far more than its competition: The MiFi is a cellular router due out in the first quarter of 2009, with pricing not yet disclosed. While there are several competitors on the market, notably from Junxion, a firm acquired by Sierra Wireless earlier this year, Novatel claims some unique qualities. The MiFi will have an internal battery that can offer 3G to Wi-Fi bridging for up to 4 hours of use and 40 hours of standby.

The slim unit appears to be designed around an integral card that’s not removable, which is a departure from most similar designs, which allow interchangeable cards supplied by an integrator or an end-user. Novatel hasn’t yet said what technology will be inside, but it’s easier to see both EVDO Rev. A and HSPA versions with slots for inserting the necessary authentication card.

Novatel also says it will differentiate the MiFi by allowing third-party applications to run on the system, and supporting external storage with a microSD slot that can handle formats up to 8 GB. That means that the MiFi could act as a caching Web server, a store-and-forward mail server, a VPN end point, and other purposes as well.

Bruce Springsteen Preps for the Big Game
(E! Online)
Autonet Mobile Reviewed
Busta Banned in the U.K.?
(E! Online)

Wee-Fi: Cities That Work, Boingo iPhone App

The Wall Street Journal takes a brief look at four cities for which Wi-Fi is working: I wrote a piece for Ars Technica a few weeks ago that’s a superset of the cities mentioned here: Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. But it’s good to see the coverage about what’s working in a national newspaper. The reporter is on the ball about what’s different and useful about the networks that got built and are running. In 2009, we’ll see how what we think is working in 2008 proves out. So far, so good. Expectations are lower, but projects planned better, than in 2004 to 2007.

The only nit I’ll pick is that for Philadelphia, the reporter says that 28,000 unique users connect to free Wi-Fi in the parks each day, which is entirely impossible. (A typo that’s there right now says “28,0000,” but I’m assuming the number is 28,000 instead of a plausible but high 2,800.) Could there be 28,000 unique users over a month? Maybe. But just in the parks?

Boingo releases iPhone, iPod touch app: The free application lets you enter your account information once, and then connect by selecting the Wi-Fi network and letting Boingo do the work.

Actual Numbers on Paid Airport Wi-Fi Usage
Rapper Lil Wayne at work on “Tha Carter IV”
(Reuters)
Airport News: Boingo Buys Opti-Fi; FreeFi Adds Oakland

Actual Numbers on Paid Airport Wi-Fi Usage

I’ve been trying for years to get real numbers about paid airport sessions and usage from Wi-Fi providers: Then the Miami-Dade airport authority just goes and reveals them all. Cool. A local paper reports that the the authority expects to net $700,000 instead of $900,000 as its share of service. The article says that the airport saw 12,500 sessions in September and 14,000 sessions in October, including pay-as-you-go users and roaming customers of Boingo, iPass, and T-Mobile.

The airport adjusted the price for service from $5 per hour and $10 per day to $7 per day and $20 per month during the summer, which accounted for some of the reduction in revenue, along with a drop in air travel.

We can run some numbers here, of course, as I’m having trouble with the math. If the airport is netting $700,000 on perhaps 200,000 sessions for the year (assuming that there was higher usage when travel was heavier, coupled with an increase late in the year), then their take is $3.50 per session net. It’s possible the reporter was mistaken, and this is gross revenue.

At $7 per day or $20 per month for half the year, that would mean that the majority of sessions were pay-as-you-go; a $20 per month user could represent 10 or 20 sessions. If you assume an average of $5 per session for pay-as-you-go (by taking into account monthly users and rates across the year), you need about 70 or 80 percent of my estimated sessions count. That would leave 40,000 to 60,000 sessions paid a buck a pop, if that, by Boingo, iPass, and T-Mobile.

Burning Qs: Miley’s Poll Numbers & LOL Religion
(E! Online)
Airport News: Boingo Buys Opti-Fi; FreeFi Adds Oakland
Lil’ Kim Sued and Silenced
(E! Online)
Boingo Tweaks Rates, Raises Global Price

The New Clearwire Taking Orders in Portland, Ore.

It’s no secret that Portland had WiMax service: It’s just that you couldn’t buy it. Intel has been WiMax with Clearwire for many months—it may be nearly 18 months now, if I recall correctly. Intel employees have been walking around the city and their campus in Beaverton with WiMax cards in their laptops, and not allowed to talk about it.

Thus, it’s no surprise that the first market for Clear, the new brand for the combined Clearwire/Sprint Xohm operations, is Portland. I just qualified an address there of a friend, and find that the service can be ordered for the home with prices from $20/mo for 768 Kbps/128 Kbps to $40/mo for 6 Mbps/512 Kbps. Mobile prices are all rated for 4 Mbps/384 Kbps with monthly data limits: $30/mo for 200 MB, $40/mo for 2 GB, $50/mo for unlimited.

There’s also a $35 activation fee, and a modem fee: $175 or $5 per month. This is far higher than Sprint’s subsidized $50 modem deal with Xohm. Expect that to be harmonized.

Note that Clearwire suggests you read their Terms of Service for more details. As far as I can tell, unlimited isn’t footnoted with a 5 GB or other limit. They will still obviously check for abuse, and the low upstream rates make it both difficult to run services and painfully clear if you are.

The upstream speeds are still far too slow. WiMax can be configured to allow relatively symmetric upstream rates, and I expect we’ll see more of that as an option as Clearwire learns usage patterns.

The ordering process doesn’t suggest that you have to wait, while Clearwire was saying yesterday that Portland service would be available in 2009. This might be noted when you consummate the order.

Positive Response to WiMax Launch in Baltimore
Vallenato duo bring Colombian genre to U.S. fans
(Reuters)
Busta Banned in the U.K.?
(E! Online)

Buffalo Allowed to Sell Wireless in U.S.

Buffalo Technology has had an injunction lifted in its ongoing patent litigation with Australia’s CSIRO technology agency: Buffalo was unable to sell Wi-Fi equipment in the U.S. since a permanent injunction was put in place in June 2007 following their 2006 loss in a lawsuit. CSIRO has a patent that they argue covers aspects of OFDM in 802.11a/g. CSIRO sued Buffalo after the Japanese equipment maker declined to pay royalties.

The injunction prevented Buffalo from selling gear that it offers in Japan and elsewhere in the world during the huge expansion of Draft N sales. This likely caused tens of millions of dollars of lost revenue, if not more. Buffalo was formerly mentioned in a single breath with D-Link, Linksys, and NetGear. (Linksys, as a division of Cisco, already pays CSIRO license fees: Cisco agreed to honor CSIRO’s patent assertion because of a purchase of an Australian firm a few years ago.)

Buffalo can now sell Wi-Fi gear in the U.S. due to winning a narrow appeal in October that sent the case back to a lower court to resolve an issue. The company could still be liable for damages and other fees if the lower court finds for CSIRO and higher courts agree.

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing allows a single Wi-Fi channel to be subdivided into a smaller number of channels, improving performance in reflective environments and adding robustness against interference. It’s also used in WiMax, LTE, and other standards. This could mean CSIRO would pursue makers of other technology eventually as well.

CSIRO has never given any sign of asking for predatory royalty rates, but several firms have countersued, including Intel, Dell, and Microsoft. Those cases are still in litigation, as far as I can tell.

Different Interpretation of Buffalo, CSIRO Patent Appeal
Busta Banned in the U.K.?
(E! Online)

Wee-Fi: Virgin America Formal Launch, Heathrow Coach-Fi, Laptop Recovery

Virgin America formally launches: Last week, Virgin America offered free Wi-Fi on its single Internet-equipped aircraft, My Other Ride’s a Spaceship. Today, the service goes commercial ($10 for flights 3 hours or shorter; $13 for longer flights), and the rollout to other planes begins. Virgin has a special URL—http://wifitracker.virginamerica.com/—that takes you to a tracking page showing which flights in progress have Wi-Fi, but they don’t yet tell you how to determine whether a given flight you’ll be on will offer the service. With 24 planes and a plan to add service one per week, that shouldn’t be a problem for long.

Heathrow Airport Coach Link adds Internet service: Icomera, a leading transportation Wi-Fi firm, has added free Wi-Fi to FirstGroup’s RailAir coach service that connects Heathrow Airport with Reading in England. RailAir runs every 20 minutes for a 50-minute route. FirstGroup handles 3 million passengers a day across all its routes, which makes it a plum market for future expansion.

Awareness Technologies adds Wi-Fi positioning for laptop recovery: Awareness is the latest firm to partner with Skyhook Wireless to use Wi-Fi positioning to its products, in this case Laptop Cop, software designed to aid in recovery. The software starts at $50 for a 1-year license, with discounts for quantity.

Travis Barker Still in Recovery Mode
(E! Online)
Virgin Announces Launch Schedule
Breaking News: AT&T Buys Wayport; WPA’s TKIP Cracked?; Virgin America Sets Launch Date

Eye-Fi Share on Sale for $65 at Amazon

Amazon.com is offering a so-called Black Friday special on Eye-Fi Share:

The 2 GB Wi-Fi-enabled Secure Digital card normally runs $90; it’s $65 while the sale lasts.

Given that Eye-Fi introduced a limited-time-only 4 GB “Anniversary” model that replaced the 2 GB Share version in its current line-up, and that the Anniversary model was $130 list but $100 for Costco members, it’s pretty clear that the 2 GB won’t re-appear, the 4 GB model will drop in price, and Amazon’s acting as a clearance center.

The Eye-Fi Share lets you upload pictures over a local network to a designated computer, or upload via a Wi-Fi network for which the Eye-Fi is configured to connect over the Internet to Eye-Fi’s servers, and from there to a specified photo-sharing, social-network, or photo-printing service.

I’m a fan of the Eye-Fi, although I favor the currently $130 Explore model (see my review), which comes with geotagging (via Skyhook Wireless) and adds a year of included uploading via Wayport locations (now part of AT&T).

Book: Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Network
Country star Tim McGraw rips label over hits CD
(Reuters)
Britney Spears Ready to Hit the Road
(E! Online)

Weekend Remembrance of In-Flight Internet Past

I was digging around my basement looking for a USB extender and came across this gem: Anyone remember Tenzing? Anyone? First folks to put Internet access (sort of) on planes? Well, I do. Tenzing was a Seattle company that was later merged into what became OnAir (a Airbus/SITA joint venture).

Tenzing’s ultimate goal was Internet access via satellite on planes, but they started with a clever workaround. Using Verizon AirFone’s narrowband air-to-ground phone service and an onboard proxy server, Tenzing offered email on United and, I believe, Delta for a short period. The service offered subject lines for a small fixed fee (a few dollars a flight) along with the first part of a message, with longer messages being charged by the K.

The service didn’t catch on fast enough, and then 9/11 hit, which put the domestic airline industry on the skids from which it still hasn’t recovered. Tenzing shed workers, and then reorganized its assets into what was transferred to OnAir.

This Connectivity Kit that I dug up was a promo to let people test out Tenzing’s service. It came with a card good for a short, free Verizon AirFone call; a code for one free Webmail session; and a retractable RJ11 phone cable because this required a modem connection over the local phone network. A CD came with Windows software; Mac users just entered 123-4567 for the dial-up number.

Now, what’s amusing about this blast from the past? This is precisely the service—sans phone cord—that JetBlue is offering on its single equipped test plane that has Internet access. Back on 8-June-2008, the LiveTV division of JetBlue that won 1 KHz in the U.S. air-to-ground spectrum auctions in 2006 purchased AirFone’s ground assets—communication gear on 100 towers.

While I don’t have direct proof that JetBlue is using the same sort of system as Tenzing, the reported onboard features and speeds make it pretty clear that the company hasn’t upgraded equipment on the towers yet, though they plan to do so.

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans; enjoy a few days of peace and quiet, the rest of the world.

Norway consumer body challenges Apple over iTunes
(Reuters)
Live from Virgin America’s Inaugural Wi-Fi Flight
Exhaustive Summary of In-Flight Filtering

Interview with Aircell CEO on BoingBoingTV

My interview with Aircell CEO Jack Blumenstein is now available: Through a variety of happy accidents, I wound up interviewing Blumenstein for BoingBoingTV while we were on Virgin America’s inaugural Wi-Fi flight/press launch last Saturday.

If we appear hurried, we were trying to finish the interview in the remaining window for access as we were getting close to starting an approach for landing at SFO. Aircell’s service is ground-to-air, and they’re covering only domestic U.S. flights (and Air Canada’s flights for their intra-U.S. portions).

For this test flight, which left and returned from SFO, the route was carefully plotted to keep the plane over the ocean, but oriented towards ground stations to make a loop that wouldn’t interfere with SFO ground traffic but which would provide continuous coverage. The company flew a test in their own smaller craft, and then did a test run with the actual Virgin America flight before the press event.

Live from Virgin America’s Inaugural Wi-Fi Flight
Britney Spears Ready to Hit the Road
(E! Online)
Observations on Gogo Internet from Virgin American Launch Flight
Norway consumer body challenges Apple over iTunes
(Reuters)

Observations on Gogo Internet from Virgin American Launch Flight

Yesterday was the party flight, today the light of day: For a couple hours on Saturday evening, I was on the hottest flight in the air—well orchestrated by Virgin America to bring together bloggers, press, online celebrities, and a few others, along with a hunk of the staff from Aircell and Virgin America’s PR and marketing group. I’ve uploaded a small set of photos (some a bit abstract due to low lighting).

It seemed like a rousing success to me from both the technical and marketing angle. The service received positive reviews from all aboard, including me, Gizmodo, Engadget, and Cnet. (I was surprised to not see more blog entries or news stories given the quantity of press aboard, but many of those stories will likely follow during the work week.)

I spoke briefly with Dave Cush, the chief executive of Virgin America. He seems very taken with the idea of having a service that no other airline is offering fleet wide. There’s a predictability with fleet wide deployment. American’s tentative step has probably resulted in low usage due to travelers simply not being aware of the service or trusting that it’s available.

Gogo’s sign-up process is the only friction in using the service. You must sign up for an account, just like at Amazon or any ecommerce site, and that’s irritating although perfectly reasonable. One trick to sidestep this on flight is to sign up in advance. There’s no cost, and this allows you to put your credit card number on file. The company has a deal in place with iPass that hasn’t turned into anything public yet, but I expect that when that goes live, iPass customers will have the single sign-in they have now, which will bring hundreds of thousands of business travelers into the mix. (This also avoids separate expensing and itemization—and rejection of same—because IT departments can pre-approve certain extra charges via iPass, as I recall.)

Although I didn’t have to a chance in my conversations with Jack Blumenstein, the chief executive of Aircell, to talk about the future of the service, I did glean that Aircell is interested in LTE as that standard developers. Aircell uses essentially off-the-shelf EVDO Rev. A over their exclusively licensed frequencies. EVDO Rev. A uses 1.25 KHz channels; Aircell has 1.5 KHz in each direction, so it’s a neat fit. That gives them a raw rate of 3.6 Mbps over 1.8 Mbps, with actual top performance somewhat lower. (In some tests, people have gotten 2 Mbps downstream on an American Airline flight with Gogo installed.)

LTE could potentially double to quadruple that rate when it’s commercially available, and there should be 1.25 KHz profiles available, even though LTE will typically be used with 5 KHz to 20 KHz channels.

In talks with various folks at Aircell, it’s clear that the company is still early into its settling-in period with airlines, and that more baroque and interesting options will be appearing over time. For instance, should the charge for a red-eye flight be the same as a daytime flight? Right now, it is, but the company is interested in dynamic pricing, in which time of day and other factors play in.

They’re also aware that that their two-tier pricing ($10 for 3 hours and shorter; $13 for longer flights) isn’t that appealing for short hops, such as the one I took yesterday from Seattle to San Francisco. Right now, most of system will be built on cross-country or 3- to 4-hour flights, and as more planes come online, all of this will be examined.

Aircell staff mentioned in passing yesterday—and FlightGlobal expands on—that there’s another airline in the wings beyond the four announced airlines. Aircell told FlightGlobal that a sixth airline is near a decision, too.

One staffer told me that the company is also working on planes to integrate satellite Internet at the peripheries of their American profile, so that airlines that fly into and out of the Aircell ground footprint would be able to have some kind of seamless access. I’m looking to get more details about this.

Beyond the Wi-Fi, the Virgin America experience is rather marvelous, because you’re flying new planes that were designed with 2006/2007 in mind, not 1996/1997. For every seat in first class and between each seat (thus two per row) is a charging/networking setup: power, using a normal North American three-prong jack; USB; and Ethernet.

The seatback entertainment system, Red, didn’t live up to reports. I used Red on three different planes, and was unimpressed by the system’s responsiveness. It’s a very “heavy touch” touch screen, and doesn’t support gesture. Navigating the TV schedule was baffling. The TV system didn’t show more than a couple channels on the two commercial flights I took, showing a technical error screen from Dish TV instead. The selection of music was good, along with the ability to create a playlist, but the sluggish interaction coupled with touch responsiveness made it a chore.

Several Red features will require Internet connectivity, and it was interesting that they listed those options (like email and chat) with a “no yet available” label, to pique interest. In every arm rest is a tethered two-sided controller: a keyboard on one side and buttons for the entertainment system on the other. The keyboard makes chat and other features possible, especially as Internet access is rolled out.

Virgin America doesn’t take cash, which is fascinating and makes a lot of sense. Every Red screen and every controller can handle a credit card swipe. You order drinks and food from the Red system, paying for them with the card. Once Internet access is in place, it looks like you’ll be able to set up an account with Virgin, and simply login and charge movies, premium TV shows, food, drink, and even Internet access to that account.

Busta Banned in the U.K.?
(E! Online)
Live from Virgin America’s Inaugural Wi-Fi Flight
Virgin Announces Launch Schedule

Live from Virgin America's Inaugural Wi-Fi Flight

This is a first for yours truly: I’m blogging from somewhere above 10,000 feet on Virgin America’s press event flight to kick off its commercial launch of Internet in-flight Internet service. The flight is littered with e-celebrities and a few real ones (a couple of the great ensemble from 30 Rock are here). We’re flying over the ocean. And the Gogo Internet service from Aircell seems to be working just fine. I’ve Twittered, I’ve IM’d, and I’m about to post a blog entry.

This is the first time I’ve used Internet service on a commercial plane. Back a few years ago, I was on a Connexion by Boeing press flight that used ground stations for the flight instead of the production satellite servers.

Virgin isn’t the first domestic airline to launch Internet service; American Airlines has a pilot with 15 planes that have been in the air on cross country routes for nearly three months. But Virgin is poised to be the first airline to launch Wi-Fi fleet wide. Delta has made a commitment—and they have several hundred planes in the U.S.—but hasn’t gotten its first bird launched with service.

The service works as one might expect: Aircell has had months to troubleshoot problems via the American pilot, and we’re flying right around San Francisco, so nothing unpredictable in the middle part of the country.

There are about 130 people on board for a combination press event and YouTube broadcast. I should apparently recognize lots of people, but I am so unhip, as Douglas Adams once wrote, that it’s a wonder my bum doesn’t fall off.

Breaking News: AT&T Buys Wayport; WPA’s TKIP Cracked?; Virgin America Sets Launch Date
Virgin Announces Launch Schedule
Busta Banned in the U.K.?
(E! Online)
Dell expands music tie-ins on festival circuit
(Reuters)

SNCF Promises Fleetwide Service for TGV Lines by 2010

SNCF in France says they’ll install Internet service on their entire TGV fleet by 2010: We’ve seen this promise before, so excuse me if I’m a wee bit dubious about the French train operator SNCF’s claim that the service will span all their equipment. Despite Internet access over Wi-Fi being available on several train lines in Europe, including multiple lines in the UK, the biggest announcements always seem to fizzle out. The Dutch train operator was supposed to unwire their fleet a couple years ago and backed away, for instance.

SNCF says they’ll have for-fee service in 1st and 2nd class areas of TGV trains by third quarter 2009 in some trains, and full coverage in 2010. These high-speed trains cross borders in all directions.

A free portal will be available for information and entertainment access within a train. Fees for access might cost €5 to €10, which is outrageously high, unless you compare it to the very high costs of Wi-Fi across Europe, where you can pay US$30 or more for 24 hours access in some hotels.

Busta Banned in the U.K.?
(E! Online)
Wee-Fi: Mass. Train-Fi, iPhone App Location Awareness

DeFi's VoIP Offering: Flat Rate, Worldwide, and Integrated

Startup VoIP provider DeFi makes big claims, but delivers worldwide calling from a smartphone for $40 or $50 per month: DeFi has a very stripped down business model designed to appeal to a specific, but large class of traveler. They make software that’s currently available for Nokia S60 phones (E and N series), and later this year for the iPhone, that acts as a kind of VoIP shunt for calling behavior. When you place a call, the software determines whether you’re on a Wi-Fi network, and routes the call out that way; if not, it goes to cell. It also routes inbound calls, and can ring your cell phone’s number if you’re not on a Wi-Fi network and your inbound DeFi number gets a call.

For $40 or $50 per month (1 or 3 inbound phone numbers, respectively, in any of about 30 countries), you get 3,000 minutes (they call it “unlimited”) of calling to and from 75 countries. This includes cell lines in Europe, typically a huge extra for most VoIP plans. DeFi said they signed deals directly with carriers, which they say most VoIP providers have not.

Wi-Fi access works at what they say is “1 million” hotspots, but is really Fon plus several tens of thousands of typical hotel, caf, and airport venues. Wi-Fi fees are included for VoIP and data in the monthly subscription. DeFi uses Devicescape behind the scenes to handle no-entry authentication to their Wi-Fi footprint.

The integration is the key point DeFi makes about their product, and may be a stumbling block for an iPhone application. The head of DeFi told me that the company wants their service to require no behavioral changes for customers. Of course, users still have to make sure when they’re in areas in which a cell call would be expensive that they don’t accidentally wander away from a Wi-Fi hotspot. And Apple doesn’t currently allow the kind of integration that would be required for call handling and interception, although DeFi said it’s having no problems in its development work.

Norway consumer body challenges Apple over iTunes
(Reuters)
Wee-Fi: WalkingHotSpot, T-Mobile’s 3G Footprint, Devicescape’s Easy Wi-Fi
Wee-Fi: iPhones Get Free Wi-Fi; Another Loiterer Arrested
Britney Spears Ready to Hit the Road
(E! Online)

Virgin Announces Launch Schedule

Virgin America has formally announced their in-flight Internet launch and plans: Virgin put out the news a few weeks ago that they’d have a press event flight on 22-November to show off their in-flight Wi-Fi with GoGo (AirCell’s branded service). They’re now formally noting that service will start for all flyers on a single aircraft 24-November, and expand to their entire fleet by second quarter 2009. Earlier reports indicated the airline would equip about one plane per week, which probably conforms to overnight maintenance schedules for their fairly new planes.

Virgin America goes quite a bit beyond other airlines in the electronic amenity department. They have an advanced seat-back system that includes in-flight chat (currently intra-plane, soon across the fleet as Internet access is added); it’s gotten rave reviews. They also have power available at every seat, which is an easy choice to make when you’re building planes for today’s passengers.

I’ll be on the press event flight, covering it for a few publications including this fine site, and will try to blog from the air just for the fun of it. If you can blog from the top of mountain, it seems necessary to do so. (Disclosure: I’m paying for all my expense associated with getting to and from the press event.)

Virgin America is the only airline worldwide that’s committed to putting Internet service on all its planes, although it has a fairly small fleet. (Planespotters has the full list of 27, including their names, such as the BoingBoing-plumed Unicorn Chaser.)

For a mainstream media article I’m writing, I’d love to hear the experience of anyone who has used American Airlines’ GoGo service, which has been in operational on long-haul 767-200s for the last few months. (Email me at news@wifinetnews.com.)

Busta Banned in the U.K.?
(E! Online)
Dell expands music tie-ins on festival circuit
(Reuters)
Breaking News: AT&T Buys Wayport; WPA’s TKIP Cracked?; Virgin America Sets Launch Date

Dying Services for Those Who Follow Such Things

Are you noticing that hosted services are starting to disappear? Me, too: I haven’t launched a new blog in some time, but was motivated to start up ItDied.com recently after receiving about one email a day about a photo gallery, video service, online storage, or other company or division shutting down. It’s not related to Wi-Fi, but if you’re tracking what’s about to go belly up—or worried that a service that stores your data in their cloud is about to disappear—check ‘er out.

Wee-Fi: Cablevision Expands, Burbank May Go Free
Norway consumer body challenges Apple over iTunes
(Reuters)
Wee-Fi: Phila-Fi Developments, Cablevision Hires
Britney Spears Ready to Hit the Road
(E! Online)

Wee-Fi: News from Meraki, Violet, Qualcomm

Meraki offers wall plug, solar unit, apartment package: Meraki has added two products to its line up. A wall plug ($179) can be screwed into an outlet’s center screw hole for theft prevention and stability, perfect for hotels and public venues. The long-awaited solar product is nearly ready, with a 4-December ship date ($749 with no solar panel up to $1,499 with highest-end panel).

Meraki switched battery technology to lithium iron-phosphate during the year-long delay, partly due to an increase in cost and shortage in solar panels. Meraki’s also got a new bundle: $5,000 for a set of nodes designed to cover an apartment building.

Over at Ars Technica, I wrote a long recap of the state of municipal Wi-Fi, noting that Meraki seems to be on the winning side of the equation with its start-small approach. A number of municipal wireless projects (not all Wi-Fi) are getting rave reviews. We may be over the hump: applications (purposes as it were) are now driving network building rather than networks seeking reasons to be.

Violet prepares to ship an RFID tag reader, Mir:ror: The new device plugs in via USB to a computer and can read standard RFID tags, as well as new ones offered by the company. Some of Violet’s tags look like postage stamps and are adhesive; others, like tiny versions of their Nabaztag/tag bunny. It’s weird, but interesting, like all their stuff.

Qualcomm brings in Skyhook’s Wi-Fi positioning: Qualcomm becomes the latest GPS giant to add Skyhook Wireless’s technology to their platform. The gpsOne system, found in 400 million cell phones, will be enhanced in future versions with an option for Skyhook data to assist and integrate with GPS lookups. Qualcomm’s sold so many chipsets due to E911 requirements for location finding.

Wee-Fi: Clearwire’s New Name, Challenges; $3b in Wi-Fi; Meraki Offers $10K 1 Sq Mi Kit
Wee-Fi: Mass. Train-Fi, iPhone App Location Awareness
Dell expands music tie-ins on festival circuit
(Reuters)
Travis Barker Still in Recovery Mode
(E! Online)

Autonet Mobile Reviewed

The in-car Internet system gets reviews: Autonet is packaging a car-oriented router that combines a cell data modem and subscription with a Wi-Fi gateway. The device costs $500 and plans are $30 per month for a measly 1 GB of data or $60 for 5 GB. The higher rate is precisely what you’d pay a carrier directly for such an item with a 2-year contract; Autonet requires just a 1-year commitment. Unlike portable cell routers that come with car-power adapters, Autonet’s device is installed in the trunk or back, and is wired into a car’s electrical system. Antennas are part of the unit, however.

Edward Baig of USA Today reminded potential buyers that a 3G connection requires a 3G cell network, and traveling in areas with spotty or no 3G coverage could be disappointing. Overall, he’s not unhappy with it. He concludes, “Having a rolling hot spot is an appealing, if expensive, service for a lot of families. Just keep your expectations — and those of your kids — in check.”

The Wall Street Journal’s elder tech statesman Walt Mossberg finds the service too slow for video beyond YouTube snippets, just as Baig does, but seems to agree that for the right person or family, having continuous Internet access is worth the cost.

I haven’t tested Autonet, but the router’s cost isn’t out of line with similar systems: Junxion, acquired recently by Sierra Wireless, sells its devices for $600 to $700 a pop, with discounts for quantity, because they’re aimed at corporate road warriors.

But I can’t see the benefit of getting a box with a sealed 3G card permanently installed in your car. For those who might find the Autonet a reasonable choice, the Kyocera KR2 ($220) coupled with the 3G EVDO card of your choice—including tethered handsets. The KR2 is portable, cheaper, and more flexible. The disadvantage is having to use a car-power adapter, an increased likelihood of theft if left in the car, and a unit that’s not designed to be as rugged.

Norway consumer body challenges Apple over iTunes
(Reuters)
Wee-Fi: Boingo Ups Count, Nationals-Fi, Free AU Mickey D-Fi
New Credit Card Processing Rules Kill off WEP (in 2009)

Boingo Takes over Washington State Ferries

Boingo adds biggest U.S. ferry system to network: On the heels of acquiring the Opti-Fi set of airport Wi-Fi networks from Parsons and ARINC, Boingo Wireless has purchased Parsons’s separate business operating Wi-Fi-based Internet access on the Washington State Ferry (WSF) system. WSF handles 26 million passenger rides per year, which is about half of all U.S. passenger ferry volume. (Just north, British Columbia’s ferry system handles slightly more riders.) The announcement is slated for Monday.

Boingo already had a roaming relationship in place with Parsons for ferry use, and thus the purchase doesn’t affect users of any of Boingo’s monthly subscription plans; subscribers still have access folded in to the company’s $8 per month handheld/mobile, $22 per month unlimited North America U.S., and $59 per month global (2,000 minutes) plans.

While neither Parsons nor Boingo released statistics on use, I ride ferry on a regular (not routine) basis, and have found the Wi-Fi relied and widely used. WSF runs two big routes that serve Seattle metro commuters: from Bainbridge Island, which unloads passenger after a half-hour run in downtown Seattle (right near Pioneer Square), and from Kingston, which brings riders also after a half hour into Edmonds where they catch express buses. Those two routes represent half of all WSF passenger trips.

Wi-Fi service is available on the majority of WSF’s routes, as well as in terminals and in the car waiting areas. For regular rush hour commuters who drive, they may spend over 2 hours round-trip between waiting and the ferry passage, and far more on bad days.

WSF runs on time, however. This may baffle people used to train, bus, and plane schedules, but it’s a thing of wonder to watch the ferry workers cast their lines, tie the boats up, and shepherd hundreds of cars and passengers off and on in a matter of minutes, and then return to the bay or sound for the direction or next stop. I’m not saying the system is a miracle, but it’s well-tuned. A notable failure, due to initiative-driven cuts in transportation spending, has led to devastating reductions in service to Port Townsend; its regular boats were found to be irreparable. Replacements haven’t yet begun to be built for a variety of reasons.

Port Townsend occupies a significant role in the history of Internet access on the ferry system, however. A small firm, Mobilisa, located in “PT” (the affectionate name town residents use) was able to secure a Department of Transportation no-bid contract to unwire the boats. The line it tested service on was the Port Townsend-Keystone run, and it’s where I first encountered the service, when I visited PT to write a New York Times article about commuter Wi-Fi: “Destination Wi-Fi, by Rail, Bus or Boat,” 8-July-2004. (Mobilisa has been adept at using earmarks to obtain contracts, the Seattle Times reported in a detailed article on 29-December-2007.)

The service launched for production use in late 2004, and on the Bainbridge route in early 2005. The original contract called for an RFP to be issued, and for Mobilisa to operate the network just briefly—perhaps for a year or so, building out service that another firm would take over. Mobilisa was, I was told, specifically barred from bidding on operating the completed network.

Parsons got the contract in late 2006, and slowly extended service to routes that weren’t yet covered. At one point, Parsons seemed to be developing a specialty business in building and operating difficult Internet service networks. That line of business is apparently being shed, however, given that only VIA Rail (operated under the Opti-Fi name) apparently remains in its holdings.

Boingo’s original plan was to never operate any physical infrastructure. But the opportunity arose a few years ago for it to buy Concourse Communications, which already managed several major airports’ Wi-Fi (and sometimes cellular) networks, and it leapt in with both feet. Boingo now runs vastly more large-scale commuter and business traveler nodes than the next largest operator in the space worldwide.

Wee-Fi: Boingo Ups Count, Nationals-Fi, Free AU Mickey D-Fi
Airport News: Boingo Buys Opti-Fi; FreeFi Adds Oakland
T.I., Jennifer Hudson Dominate Charts
(E! Online)

St. Louis Park Settles with Arinc over Failed Network

First, it was the poles; then the performance; then the lawsuit: Now, the settlement. The city of St. Louis Park, Minn., wanted to build a city-owned Wi-Fi network that would cope with the problems of its dense canopy. They chose a vendor, unfortunately, that had never built a network using the technology that the vendor chose to use.

The network required 16-foot tall poles that were originally rather unsightly. And 400 poles would be needed city wide. Citizens were revolted and did revolt; a new design for the poles reduced their ugliness, one can see from photos, but the network—solar powered to boot—never achieved the performance required under the contract, the city said.

Last December, the city moved to terminate its contract and later filed a lawsuit. The settlement signed by Arinc and approved by the city a few days ago calls from Arinc to pay $1m, and grant ownership of about 8 miles of fiber run by Arinc along with related gear. The city will be responsible for the estimated $150,000 cost to remove the equipment from poles and take the poles down, but the Wi-Fi nodes and solar panels go back to Arinc. (Which will sell them on eBay, most likely.)

Arinc claimed at various times that it had performed the tasks for which it was contracted, and that interference was beyond its control. Given that there’s an incredibly successful network nearby in Minneapolis that appears to have suffered from few or none of the problems in St. Louis Park, it’s hard to credit that. (Minneapolis paid nothing for the network, but is paying $1.25m a year for 10 years for services.)

St. Louis Park is thus left without a network, with at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in hard costs and staff time that lacks recompense (as the settlement covers only expenses after the network started to be built), and with a bunch of fiber they say they have no particular plan for.

Lil’ Kim Sued and Silenced
(E! Online)
Airport News: Boingo Buys Opti-Fi; FreeFi Adds Oakland

Starbucks Adds New Way to Get Free Wi-Fi

Starbucks has launched its Gold card, a paid membership with Wi-Fi included: The Starbucks Gold card was in testing for some time in Seattle—the outlet near my office has had a Gold logo in the window for months, I believe—but it’s now unleashed for general consumption. The card costs $25 per year, and includes two hours of continuous Wi-Fi access each day; the firm’s stored value card offers Wi-Fi for 30 days following a purchase or adding value.

Gold has a bunch of frequent sipper benefits: a free drink when you purchase the membership, followed by 10 percent discounts on most stuff you buy (drinks, food, merchandise, hard goods), a free beverage on your birthday each year, and other discounts and deals that will be announced during the year.

I suppose the logic is that for someone who spends over $175 per year at Starbucks would likely make up the difference (10% of $175 plus a couple free drinks should top $25). It’s possible I spend that much, even though I only have casual interest in their shops, because of frequenting them in strange towns, enjoying their sandwiches (not their roasts), and airport purchases.

R&B trio Labelle back in spotlight with new album
(Reuters)
Wee-Fi: iPhones Get Free Wi-Fi; Another Loiterer Arrested
Jay-Z Gets Out Vote for Obama; Boss Adds Shows
(E! Online)
Airport News: Boingo Buys Opti-Fi; FreeFi Adds Oakland

Wee-Fi: Houston's Burst Bubbles; BuyAnotherCupYouCheapskate

Houston, we have a problem: While the city reports its Wi-Fi-connected parking meters work great doubling as Wi-Fi hotspots downtown, their much-ballyhooed “bubbles” efforts to unwire housing projects seems to have narrowed in scope. The headline on the story in the Houston Chronicle, in which yours truly is quoted, is perfect: “Houston’s Plan for Wi-Fi Bubbles Has Burst.” The city now plans to use Wi-Fi only to connect up community centers rather than bring service to residents. As far as I and the reporter I spoke to for this story could figure out, the networks will be running as password-protected clouds that only computers in central locations will be able to access. I have no idea why anyone would think this is a good idea. Bringing Internet access to libraries, schools, and community centers is a perfectly marvelous idea, but in low-income neighborhoods, the notion of putting free or affordable Internet access in the home, paired with programs to offer inexpensive or free refurbished computers along with training, is to deal with the commensurate problem that kids can work from their homes instead of being out on the mean streets. In many neighborhoods that are both poor and high crime, parents keep their children in to avoid trouble. Thus, community centers aren’t the logical way to ensure greater access and bridge the digital divide. These efforts should be trying to bring access parity across income levels to match the ecumenical availability of information to rich and poor.

Freakonomics notices funny network names: A Dutch cafe using a service from a company called They displays messages via network names (SSIDs) that remind freeloaders to buy something: BuyAnotherCupYouCheapskate. I confess to finding this story amusing, but not above the threshold to share, until the New York Times’s Freakonomics blog picked it up. That’s partly because even though the cafe is in the Netherlands, all the messages are in English. Are Brits and Americans the only freeloaders. They, the company, not an inchoate group of people, told me that they use a technique to change the text display name of the SSID, while the underlying network identifier remains the same. This keeps customers from being booted off even as messages are dynamically rotated.

Wee-Fi: Boingo Ups Count, Nationals-Fi, Free AU Mickey D-Fi
Busta Banned in the U.K.?
(E! Online)

WEP More Broken, Too

WEP in 24,000 packets: I forgot to mention in all the hubbub about the WPA flaw discovered by two German researchers last week that they also combined a variety of WEP-cracking techniques to reduce the number of packets necessary to extract a key. The fellows from two technical universities examined and improved previously known algorithms and code for extracting a WEP key, and optimized the process.

Erik Tews and Martin Beck’s paper, Practical Attacks against WEP and WPA (now available for download), walks through how they re-examined and combined processing attacks. But the takeaway is that WEP, already known to be very broken is, well, very very very broken. Previous attacks, per their analysis, required from 32,000 to 40,000 packets to be processed to gain a 50-percent likelihood of key recovery. They moved that down to about 24,000.

WEP is still widely used in certain quarters, by home users who don’t care about security but simply are setting up a no trespassing sign (which is enforceable by law in many states and countries now); by those who know no better; and by retailers who use systems that are either expensive to upgrade or must be replaced to stop using WEP.

Retailers who accept credit cards may not deploy new systems with WEP starting 1-April-2009, and must discontinue all use of WEP by 30-June-2010 according to new guidelines set by the credit industry giants.

New Credit Card Processing Rules Kill off WEP (in 2009)
Brit’s Back: “Womanizer” Tops Charts, Record Books
(E! Online)

Wee-Fi: 3.65 GHz Webinar, Meru's Virtual Wi-Fi Ports

The open-license 3.65 GHz band could be a great opportunity for startups: The band is available in a good hunk of the U.S. under a licensing regime that allows anyone to obtain a license, and providers in the same geographic areas have to work to coordinate among themselves. Redline Communications and the extremely sharp Monica Paolini of Senza Fili Consulting are offering a free 45-minute Webinar (Web-based seminar) on 12-November at 11 am PST/2 pm EST on the topic. Redline is one of several firms offering 3.65 GHz gear.

Meru further virtualizes virtual SSIDs: This might seem a little technical, but it’s fascinating. Enterprise Wi-Fi maker Meru says they’ve developed virtual ports, that allows each Wi-Fi connection to act as if there’s a separate AP controlling it. This has been used for quite a while to create virtual SSIDs: unique network names fed by a single access point. Meru says their approach centralizes the virtual SSIDs (which use BSSIDs, the underlying network address for a Wi-Fi access point), allowing roaming without the adapter appearing to change its network association. That goes one level beyond current roaming. The connection is essentially virtualized to be independent of the access point. With a unique per-user virtual WLAN, Meru says that they can optimize a connection, including throttling and provisioning to provide guaranteed bandwidth and priority.

Wee-Fi: Boingo Ups Count, Nationals-Fi, Free AU Mickey D-Fi
Delta museum is a tribute to bluesman B.B. King
(AP)
Fon Raises Alien Price to 5 Dollars, Euros