Making pollen while the sun shines: Loyal readers, I’ll be taking the next week off for some serious staycationing, enjoying the variable Seattle weather, playing with the kids, and generally relaxing. I hope you are all doing the same, wherever in the world you are.
Please withhold all serious and interesting wireless news until after Labor Day, ‘kay?
This is a big day for Aircell, which spent tens of millions to acquire the exclusive spectrum license that allows them to shoot Mbps to and from planes. My big question will be whether coverage remains seamless across an entire flight—how often one has to reconnect their VPN would be a big issue. If Aircell has architected the network correctly, passengers should never be reassigned an IP address, and connections shouldn’t be dropped even if there’s a hiccup in air-to-ground communication.
I’ve covered in-flight broadband for several years, and I’ve been wondering lately whether we’d be waiting until 2009 to see real production service. American is calling this a 3-to-6 month pilot to see what their passengers think. Just yesterday, I wrote up veteran travel writer Joe Brancatelli’s frustration with the lack of information and some misinformation about in-flight broadband.
You can read more background on American’s plans and Aircell’s technology in a post I wrote for BoingBoing on 24-June-2008.
That’s ASCII, not hex: An article on wardriving raises security hackles by repeating some slightly overheated statements about Wi-Fi security. The article opens with a 63-character ASCII WPA passphrase, which is later described as “hex.” (ASCII passphrases in WPA can be up to 63 “printable” characters - ASCII 32 to 127 - while a hex version of a 256-bit TKIP or AES password is 64 hexadecimal digits long.) The article tries to conflate Wi-Fi attacks that led to the largest set of breaches in retail credit-card systems and wardriving, a hobbyist activity that’s never been looked on very favorably by law enforcement. The sense of ennui of wardriving pioneers is pretty clear; when Wi-Fi is everywhere and generally secured, it’s far less interesting. The wardriver in the article convinced the reporter that a maximum-length WPA passphrase stored on a USB drive for automatic use was the best way to go. But, really, 20 characters containing letters and punctuation and no words found in a dictionary along with changing your network’s SSID (network name) provides all the security you’ll ever need for a home or small business. (If you need more, deploy WPA/WPA2 Personal.)
Green Wi-Fi’s Senegal efforts hit snags: The folks at Green Wi-Fi are well motivated, and they’re running up against all forms of security theater and bureaucracy both here and in Senegal, where they have an active project. The San Francisco Chronicle notes the group’s effort to build solar-powered, self-sustaining Internet access via mesh networked nodes. Getting devices out of the country, clearing customs in Senegal, and hooking up their solar system all hit problems they’re working through. As with the One Laptop Per Child program, I see a “build it and they will come” mentality in Green Wi-Fi’s mission statement: the notion that providing computing power and Internet access will result in good things, rather than an effort to figure out what good things need to be achieved, and whether computers and the Internet will assist.
He’s not very positive about it, because his research shows a mismatch between claims and work. He writes that an unnamed American airline executive is frustrated by the delay in launching the 3-to-6 month pilot on their trans-continental fleet; that Aircell hasn’t submitted paperwork for Virgin’s Airbus models for certification; and that the FAA just received a request to certify Delta’s MD-80 craft, which makes a launch with 75 planes this year on that airline less likely.
Competitor Row 44 doesn’t fare better in his analysis, as they promised spring and summer 2008 tests that still haven’t happened, with Southwest and Alaska Airlines.
I’m a little more positive about the future of in-flight broadband. There’s no particular conspiracy. It’s hard to make it work. Development and testing is tricky due to FAA limits, and getting in-flight handoffs to work for seamless service at 35,000 feet is far more difficult than, say, cellular handoffs in a moving car at 100 feet above sea level. My suspicion is that tuning the service to be entirely reliable at launch is what’s taking so long.
Brancatelli blames the high price of Connexion on its failure, but I don’t think the $27 fee for long-haul flights deterred users. Lufthansa, which deployed all its long-haul fleet, apparently had very good usage. Most other airlines had few craft equipped, which didn’t allow business travelers, able to expense several hours of work for a $27 fee, the reliability of having on-board Internet when they needed it. Connexion also had many reports of spotty service in certain areas.
Connexion’s failure came from deploying technology that was old when it was deployed, which weighed too much, and which was too expensive to install. Connexion’s revenue and expenses were forecast based on having several hundred aircraft with Connexion service—recall that it was supposed to be a domestic U.S. service, too. In the end they had about 100, I believe.
Brancatelli is also modest when he says Boeing “lost” $300m. That’s part of what they wrote down. My sources say they spent more than a billion in R&D, transponder leases, ground station operation, airline incentives, and payoffs at the end.
HP buys Colubris: Colubris was an early wireless LAN company, making sophisticated hardware for the enterprise, but I’ve seen its market and products shift across many markets over several years, including hotspot offerings. I’d lost track of them in recent years, although this story says that the firm refocused on service providers rather than corporations. HP will integrate Colubris into ProCurve, which will compete more effectively against Cisco. A few years ago, there were beaucoup WLAN switch operators, each with somewhat different approaches and offerings. Airespace was bought by Cisco, Trapeze more recently by Belden, and Aruba went public.
Cincinnati Metro service has Wi-Fi on 20 buses: The free service supplied by AT&T in an ads-for-access deal with the authority was placed after a couple years of testing on a relatively long commuter run. The authority spends $15,000 per bus to setup a connection, which seems rather pricey. Other authorities are paying in the low thousands, from what I’ve seen, so I’m not sure what their particular case is.
The Canadian branch of the coffee giant has secured a free Wi-Fi deal for customers: Just as Starbucks American stores are offering limited but free Wi-Fi in about 8,000 stores for its customers through a partnership with provider AT&T, Starbucks’s northern brethren are opening its 650 company-operated locations that have Bell hotspots to free use by customers. Terms appear the same as in the states: 2 hours of free use per day with the regular use of a Starbucks Card.
And, as with the AT&T deal, Bell’s Internet customers get unlimited access in Starbucks’s stores. The deal starts up immediately, as Bell is the current operator. AT&T is transitioning to running Starbucks in the U.S., taking over by the end of 2008 from T-Mobile.
Nikon announces new Wi-Fi camera with Wayport hotspot link, WPS: The S610c with Wi-Fi inside, shipping in September for $330 (MSRP), supports Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) for single button connections to home networks, and a two year subscription to Wayport’s hotspot network for uploading photos. This is nearly 10,000 McDonald’s and 1,000 hotels, and doesn’t include the Starbucks locations Wayport is building out for AT&T. The camera has a 10-megapixel sensor, 3.6x zoom lens, and 3-inch LCD screen, as well as vibration reduction, and up to an effective 3200 ISO.
Oddly, Nikon also announced the $500 P6000 with a built-in GPS receiver, 13.5 MP sensor, 4x zoom, and effective 6400 ISO—and a built-in Ethernet jack. Which is a very weird choice. I know Wi-Fi adds cost and reduces battery life-span, but I would think that GPS plus Wi-Fi would allow assisted GPS for faster coordinated lookups (if the Wi-Fi tapped into Skyhook’s system and cached some location information), as well as offering automated uploads, and Wi-Fi positioning when GPS signals couldn’t be reached.
Seems like a missed ship here.
Eye-Fi raises $11m in second funding round: I don’t cover companies’ financial dealings often, but Eye-Fi is always worth highlighting, as they appear to be the only smart entrant in the entire universe of cameras-with-Wi-Fi, and they’re not even a camera maker. Camera makers have typically limited or straitjacked the onboard Wi-Fi. Eye-Fi’s now three models of SD cards with Wi-Fi built in have a pretty wide range of controls and abilities. I tested out the Eye-Fi Explore recently, which pairs Wi-Fi GPS-like positioning from Skyhook with Wayport hotspot access, and the review appears in Saturday’s Seattle Times. Eye-Fi’s biggest challenge is better camera integration, so that cameras can handle power management in discussion with the card; camera makers have to not feel threatened by Eye-Fi’s smart technology, though.
Delta’s competitors with broadband interest, like Alaska, Southwest, and American, each have a different plan of attack. Alaska will test service soon with Row 44, which uses Ku-band satellite access, albeit with higher speeds and far lower costs, the company says, than Boeing’s doomed Connexion service. Row 44 touts their over-water ability, critical for Alaska, which flies plenty of routes to the great northern state and to Mexico. A test is what’s scheduled; not deployment.
Southwest did some deal with Row 44, but nothing further has been forthcoming. Summer’s almost over, and we haven’t heard more about the “four aircraft” mentioned in the linked press release.
American has the most fully formed plan, but they, too, are testing Aircell’s service, and will shortly launch service on 15 trans-continental 767-200s, flying largely routes among SFO, LAX, JFK, and Miami. The company said in the past that they would decide on fleet deployment after the pilot stage.
I shouldn’t forget Virgin America, which planned Internet access as part of a set of already-deployed in-flight networked services, but they have under a couple dozen planes at the moment, so they’re not a real competitor except on a few routes. Their launch date hasn’t been set. Update: Stacey Higginbotham over at GigaOm got the detail from Virgin that Wi-Fi is in place for crew on a few planes now, and will be turned on for passengers by year’s end. The full flight will be unwired by Mar. 2009, she writes.
Delta’s announcement makes it clear that air-Fi is coming soon, and will likely change how business travelers plan trips. If you can get productive work done during a flight, that changes the financial equation of the trip’s cost, and your time out of the office. Pair in-flight Wi-Fi with a cell data card, and you may curse the fact that you’re always connected.
Sierra Wireless buys Junxion: Sierra is one of the leading makers of mobile broadband adapters, like ExpressCards and USB modems; Junxion is the leading business-focused mobile broadband bridge maker. Junxion has plenty of competitors on the low end, where products are being sold to small business or individuals, but I’m not aware of another firm whose products have the feature list for centralized IT management and deployment. They bundle the cost of this central management into the products, which can accept any kind of PC Card. Well, perhaps not any kind in the future, though Sierra Wireless is likely to have little interest in making Junxion’s box less compatible with rivals. But they’ll certainly be a lot of good synergy in developing new hardware for the same market that’s cheaper or has a different set of features. How about four adapters in one box that can bond connections together for specialized markets, like railroad Wi-Fi?
iPhone tethering application up, down, up, down: The NetShare connection-sharing application from NullRiver has made a couple of appearances on Apple’s App Store, the only authorized place from which owners of iPod touch and iPhone devices can purchase software for uncracked equipment. NetShare appears to violate the terms of service for AT&T, although this wouldn’t be the case with all carriers worldwide, by bridging 2.5G and 3G network traffic via the Wi-Fi connection on the iPhone. A laptop or desktop needs special configuration to connect to the iPhone, but various reports show it works fine. AT&T offers tethering with other smartphones - but not the iPhone - for typically about $20 more per month, comparable to a national hotspot aggregated subscription.
Speaking of AT&T, they like WiMax as a wire alternative: AT&T is bullish on WiMax, but the fixed kind used to replace wires in places they have no cable.
Springfield, Mich., puts in its first antennas for a city-wide network: The network is being built with a $750,000 grant from a state development corporation to extend access and improve the business climate. Access will cost $10 per month for residents after an initial free period while the service powers up.
The HANG UP Act (Halting Airplane Noise to Give Us Peace, cute) will make the regulatory actions statutory. Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio has been pushing such a move to prevent airlines from moving forward on such services despite the overwhelming distaste by American travelers. In Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, there appears to be less concern, and we’ll see how it works out when calling starts to become widely available on RyanAir and other airlines by year’s end.
AirCell’s near-term launch with American Airlines of its GoGo Internet service will use various measures, including crew involvement, to prevent in-flight VoIP.
To enable in-flight calling, OnAir and others place a low-power picocell in an aircraft which handles all the frequencies that could be used by mobile phones. The phones associate with the picocell, keeping their power output low. The picocell could be used to prevent calls entirely, too.
Atom Feed (xml)