Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Wee-Fi: Boingo Expands to Dulles, Reagan; HP Buys Colubris

Boingo Wireless’s airport wireless division brings service to Washington’s two airports: Dulles and Reagan (National) offer Wi-Fi under the regular terms. These airports carry 24m and 18m passengers, respectively, each year. It’s $5/hr, $8/24 hours, and $22/month (no contract commitment) for US access, and $39/mo for worldwide access (no contract commitment). The company isn’t the exclusive operator, but appears as one of three Wi-Fi network choices when you’re in the airport.

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.




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