Airborne Internet Nears in Canada

Canada's licenseholder for air-to-ground in-flight Internet has set mid-2011 launch date: The service was supposed to be ready in late 2010, but SkySurf Canada Communications is now targeting mid-2011. Because of Canadian spectrum rules, US provider Aircell, which operates its Gogo Inflight Internet service on over 1,000 aircraft while they pass over the continental US and Alaska, couldn't bid on Canadian service. Instead, it's partnered with SkySurf.

JetBlue Sets Mid-2012 for In-Flight Internet

Boingo and T-Mobile Expand Roaming Deal

T-Mobile customers get substantially improved airport access, plus ferries: A new agreement between Boingo Wireless and T-Mobile gives T-Mobile's subscribers a lot more access in transit. T-Mobile adds 53 Boingo Wireless airport locations; Boingo is the largest North American Wi-Fi airport operator.

T-Mobile users can now also surf on the Washington State Ferry system at no additional cost. For the tens of thousands of daily ferry commuters--WSF handles over 50 percent of the country's daily ferry trips--T-Mobile just became a lot more attractive.

Boingo gets a little bit in exchange: its subscribers can use T-Mobile's airline club lounge and hotel locations. T-Mobile–operated airports were previously included in roaming.

T-Mobile’s Throttled Limit Didn’t Change from 5 GB

Verizon's Handoff Delays Show Signs of Early Release

Carrier-grade operations are supposed to be carrier grade: In its enthusiasm to have LTE operating in multiple markets before year's end, Verizon Wireless let a few gears slip. That's unfortunate, because now they've set the expectation that the service isn't ready for prime time as a result. Reports of performance have been quite excellent on an unloaded network.

The problem? Computerworld reports that a handoff from 3G to LTE can take up to two minutes. A spokesperson told the reporter, "Hand-offs can take up to a couple minutes, but that was expected and a fix is in the works."

If it simply were an inherent problem, that's one thing. But it's clear this can be fixed in software, and is considered a bug. That makes it far less acceptable. In the olden days, products weren't shipped broadly until bugs that would frustrate your early adopting, high-paying customers were worked out. Bragging rights were more important here.

LTE Is About Capacity, Coverage, and Latency, Not Just Bandwidth

Numbers Guy Digs into Wi-Fi Kills Tree Reports

Carl Bialik, the Wall Street Journal's Numbers Guy columnist, talks to the sources behind the incendiary Wi-Fi radiation kills trees reports: Thank you, Carl, for finding the sources, and revealing how nuts some of the information is. I was troubled that a single report could ricochet around the world with no real statistically valid or peer-reviewed published information behind it. But it's even worse than that.

Niek van 't Wout, the green space chief in the Dutch city of Alphen aan den Rijn, checked out a small number of the town's trees, found "abnormalities" in 70 percent, and van 't Wout extrapolated this with no additional research to all of Europe. There appear to have been no lab tests or pathology, or an attempt to determine the cause, nor to survey more broadly even in the city. Bialik dug up a published email by van 't Wout in which he speculated in 2007 that electromagnetic fields were responsible before having a single shred of evidence.

The study of trees in a controlled environment was also commissioned by the city and independent of the tree survey. The testing regime hasn't been released (under what conditions were plants and trees kept), nor does there appear to have been any controls—trees and plants in the same environment with shielding to block EMF. The exposed vegetative material had six Wi-Fi access points running nearby, which is not the proximity of exposure nearly any trees would receive. As with all EMF, signal strength decrease with the inverse square of the distance from the transmitter with a standard omnidirectional antenna; the formula is a bit different for a directional antenna, but then there's less exposure in the vicinity, too. (I wrote a critique of what was revealed of the study for BoingBoing.)

Bialik has one paragraph I'll quibble with:

His town did fund an experiment seeking to investigate whether Wi-Fi signals might harm trees. The experiment used Wi-Fi routers not because these were suspected as the major culprits — cellphone network signals generally are stronger — but because experimenters aren’t allowed to use cellular network transmitters, and besides it is difficult to find an environment without any cellular wireless signal as a control. It also isn’t clear why trees would be suffering only recently, while cellphone networks have existed for decades.

This must have been stated by van 't Wout or another interview subjectd, as it's all wrong. First, Wi-Fi access points would be further away and at vastly lower power than cellular base stations, and thus vastly less likely to be the "culprit." Second, researchers may test cellular signals in Europe. I have read dozens of studies in which cell transmitters are used in clinical settings in Sweden, Britain, Germany, and elsewhere. I'm sure there's red tape, and it may simply have been cost prohibitive.

Finally, you can find an environment without EMF: a shielded room. Since the plants were being tested indoors, two rooms could have shielded: one for controls, and one for exposure only from signals within the room. Again, the expense may have been too high.

This seems quite clearly that there was an agenda at work and little science involved.

Verizon Wireless Releases 3G Femtocell

D.C. Airports Drop Wi-Fi Fees in Spring

Washington Dulles and Reagan National will drop fees for Wi-Fi access in the spring: Contractual details remain to be worked out, this report says in the Washington Examiner. Dulles and National add to the growing list of major US airports that have dropped fees, starting with Denver as the largest.

SFO Gets Free Wi-Fi Early

LTE Is About Capacity, Coverage, and Latency, Not Just Bandwidth

AT&T's CTO has a blog post indirectly critiquing Verizon Wireless's early LTE launch: I pretty much agree entirely with this John Donovan post. Verizon's commitment to CDMA left it without a reasonable path to future higher speeds in 3G because Qualcomm's EVDO path wasn't compelling enough, and Verizon clearly wanted the worldwide advantage of converging on GSM.

That leaves Verizon stuck at about 3 Mbps downstream with EVDO Rev. A. Verizon Wireless clearly and testably has the most robust and most thorough 2G and 3G network coverage in the US. That's still an advantage and will remain one on the voice side and for a large number of users for whom consistency is more important than speed.

But its early launch of LTE is driven by a need to have a higher speed number to push to businesses and consumers while AT&T and T-Mobile complete rolling out HSPA 7.2 and HSPA+ (21 Mbps), respectively. These evolutionary 3G HSPA flavors provide most of the advantage of first-generation LTE, including somewhat reduced latency, while preserving full backwards compatibility all the way down to GSM rates.

AT&T CTO is pushing the message that moving from LTE speeds to EVDO Rev. A rates will be jarring to customers in terms of what's possible. I agree. The difference is so huge that they are effectively different networks—this is a similar problem Clearwire and Sprint have with 3G/4G converged service plans.

However, Donovan doesn't mention the three other advantages of LTE: capacity, coverage, and latency. Higher bandwidth doesn't just mean that everyone gets greater speed; rather, it means that there's more potential to serve simultaneous users at greater speeds. That's often just as important as peak data rates. Coverage is a factor, because the 700 MHz networks can reach further and penetrate indoors better than 850, 1700, 1900, and 2100 MHz networks.

And latency is huge: lower latency makes networks appear faster because the time for each initial connection for every transaction is reduced. LTE promises very low latency, and HSPA delivers a decent part of that. Reduced latency equates to better video streaming, crisper phone calls, and more responsive Web browsing.

AT&T will benefit from the coverage and capacity issues, based on customer complaints, more than Verizon. But an early LTE deployment focused on speed doesn't provide the full picture of LTE's potential, and it hides the gap Verizon will have for at least three years, if not longer, between current 3G speeds and its LTE promise.

Update: Clearwire's chief commercial office weighs in with a swipe on Verizon's LTE pricing.

Verizon Wireless LTE Launches 5 December

Minneapolis Network Profitable But City Uses Fraction of Paid Services

The Minneapolis city-wide Wi-Fi network is the only successful example of its kind for that scale of network: The next largest networks are far smaller or represent just part of a city. Even better, the Star Tribune reports that US Internet's operations are profitable four years into operation with 20,000 customers. The paper reports a $1.2m annual profit.

But why is it profitable? Because the city of Minneapolis agreed to pay $12.5m over ten years for services—services the city is hardly taking advantage of yet, even though departments are billed internally for them as part of their budgets. The city also prepaid some of these funds. This meant US Internet never ran out of necessary capital, as all its competitors more or less did, but the firm also didn't make new technology choices. It started with BelAir Networks gear, and it continues to use that vendor's equipment.

The failure to use prepaid services sounds much worse than it is. Having a viable additional broadband choice for service in a duopoly market, as well as one that's far cheaper than 3G cell for roaming within the city, has likely saved citizens millions of dollars over four years. Wherever there's the least broadband competition, cable and telephone companies drop prices, often better services, or have extended "introductory" offers you can renew by threatening to switch. It's hard to threaten if there's no second or third choice.

US Internet also pays into a fund to bridge the digital divide ($563K so far), and provides free Wi-Fi at 44 community centers.

As is usual with such efforts, the applications have followed the installation, and it's likely first-generation pilot projects didn't take off between early deployments of technology that wasn't ready and the economic collapse, which put some companies out of business or into retrenchment.

The city is starting to gear up, and within the 10-year contract, unused fees paid in previous years can be rolled over.

Aircell Unwires 1,000th Plane

Verizon Wireless LTE Launches 5 December

The 5–12 Mbps downstream 4G service will launch 5 December 2010 in 38 US markets and 60 airports: Verizon is still engaged in ridiculous pricing. The service will cost $50 per month for 5 GB or $80 per month for 10 GB of data transfer. Given that the cost per bit should be enormously cheaper for Verizon Wireless, and that they should be pricing this competitively with wired broadband carriers in the same market, that's absurd.

Clearwire's hybrid Sprint 3G/Clear 4G pricing makes much more sense. Unlimited usage on 4G Clear network, and same 5 GB limit on Sprint's home 3G EVDO network.

Carriers and ISPs continue to try to retain same limits even as services bump up faster. Comcast has the same 250 GB monthly usage cap on its cable service, whether you're at 15 Mbps or 100 Mbps.

LTE is required to serve next-generation mobile devices with streaming media, low latency, and heavy interactive use straining under CDMA 3G speeds today, although AT&T and T-Mobile move into faster HSPA rates alleviates that in part. But LTE will also become an alternative in some markets to fixed broadband, if Verizon offers sensible pricing.

You can check on which markets are covered at Verizon Wireless's 4G coverage map. I'm hoping to get review gear to test, as Seattle is a launch market.

Verizon Wireless Releases 3G Femtocell

Senators Want Free Wi-Fi in All Federal Buildings

I've read the bill and I still don't understand this: I don't quite understand why senators Snowe and Warner find it necessary to allot money ($15m) and force installation of Wi-Fi networks in federal buildings, starting with facilities run by the General Services Administration (GSA). The bill talks about offloading use from cell networks to Wi-Fi, but Warner's statement about the benefits is sort of insane:

"By starting with the nearly 9,000 federal buildings owned or operated by the General Services Administration, we will be able to provide appreciable improvement in wireless coverage for consumers while also reducing some of the pressure on existing wireless broadband networks."

The bill doesn't call for any free access, only neutral host systems typical for the cellular industry in which one firm operates a base station in an airport or other publicly accessible buildings, and charges a cost-recovery rate to other operators.

I wonder if carriers and providers have been unable to install Wi-Fi networks in federal buildings, and this is an override to GSA policies? There's clearly a constituency here that I'm missing.

SFO Gets Free Wi-Fi Early

Delta Expands WI-Fi to Regional Jets

This is a big shift in in-flight Wi-Fi: Delta is taking a big move in expanding its already extensive Wi-Fi coverage. Delta committed to full mainline fleet coverage—these are the larger planes that carry more passengers and typically fly longer routes—but regional jets seemed less likely. Shorter routes with smaller numbers of passengers would make it seem quite difficult to get a return on the investment.

Nonetheless, Delta has plans to put Gogo Inflight Internet on 223 of the Delta Connection subsidiary and partner aircraft. The planes have between about 65 and 76 seats, according to Delta's press release. More critically, all the planes have first-class sections, and the commitment appears to be put Wi-Fi service on all routes with first-class service.

It's possible that the investment is relatively low compared to the customer loyalty it may engender. Those who want continuous Internet access across a route, and who are more likely to buy or upgrade into first class may be so valuable that the amount realized in additional seats purchased and higher fares (as regional service is often not as competitive as national routes) is where the revenue comes from to balance the accounts.

Delta currently has over 700 mainline aircraft in operation, and 549 of those have Internet service installed. The regional jets will receive Internet service during 2011.

Aircell Unwires 1,000th Plane

Lufthansa Brings Back In-Flight Internet

Lufthansa announces new Wi-Fi in the sky service, FlyNet: Lufthansa was the biggest adopter of Connexion by Boeing in the early part of last decade, and wanted to reach an accommodation to keep it running when Boeing shut it down. The airline has been looking for the right partner to bring service back ever since, and Panasonic Avionics has come through. Panasonic started talking about relaunching a Connexion-like Ku-band satellite service in September 2006, even before Boeing down in-flight service (see "Panasonic May Relaunch Connexion," 19 September 2006).

Although the exact plane count isn't set, Lufthansa said it will equip almost all of its intercontinental craft, having service in place on all such planes by the end of 2011. It's possible that Boeing's Connexion retrofitting may make it cheaper to put in Panasonic's gear, too. The service starts with Internet access via Wi-Fi, although GSM/GPRS access (via an onboard picocell) will be added "in the future."

The pricing is quite aggressive. €19.95 or 7,000 Lufthansa air miles get you 24 hours of unlimited access across any equipped Lufthansa flight and in the airline's lounges. The hourly price is €10.95, which seems crazily high, but they want to push you to pay the 24-hour rate as a sweet spot. Lufthansa's long-haul flights can range from five hours to well over a dozen.

Service will be free until 31 January 2011, but the press release doesn't say when the first Flugzeug with restored access will take off.

(I wanted to write the headline: "Drahtlose Internet und Lufthansa Wiedervereinigen!" but I realized only five readers would get the joke.)

JetBlue Sets Mid-2012 for In-Flight Internet