Wee-Fi: Green Wi-Fi, Gogo Mobile Price, Ruckus Enterprise, Apple Firmware Update

Green Wi-Fi gets Voice of America write-up: The folks at Green Wi-Fi are leveraging solar power as a way to bring networking to the developed world. With little or no electrical infrastructure, the wider world of the Internet was unavailable to rural schools. Baikie set out to make a system that was appropriate to the infrastructure as well as affordable. A Sun Microsystems engineer, Baikie helped develop a system that's smart enough to save energy by powering down at night when there are no users. Voice of America discusses Green Wi-Fi's projects in Senegal and Panama, as well as future efforts.

Gogo quietly offers mobile pricing option for in-flight Internet: Aircell's Gogo Internet service on Delta, Virgin America, and American airlines has quietly released an $8-per-flight mobile option, a discount off its $10-$13 (under 3 hours/over 3 hours) pricing model. The soft launch lets people with iPhones, Blackberrys, and other mobile hardware get a cheaper connection, justified because such users typically consume much less data than a laptop toter.

Ruckus Wireless releases enterprise-oriented 802.11n gear: ZoneFlex enterprise is part of Ruckus's move into corporate headquarters. The company started with MIMO devices for the home, expanded into IPTV, hotzones, and small businesses. This latest release includes a simultaneous dual-band 802.11n access point, an upscaled WLAN controller, and enterprise policy management including elements such as virtual LANs and virtual SSIDs. Ruckus gear uses mesh networking, which always functions better with multiple radios to avoid duplicating traffic over the same channels. Ruckus has a bit of secret sauce, la Meraki, that segments same-channel mesh into dynamic clusters without breaking client Wi-Fi access.

Apple ships firmware updates for older 802.11n base stations: Apple last week released updated firmware, with security and bug fixes, to enable remote file-sharing and configuration for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) users. This feature, the only backward-compatible item that's part of the company's new 802.11n base station models, allows a MobileMe subscriber to use Back to My Mac to access hard drives and base station configuration when using a computer with the same MobileMe credentials. The software can be downloaded through this link, or via Check for Updates in the AirPort Utility menu with that program launched and a base station selected.

Wee-Fi: Option’s GlobeSurfer III, Amtrak Un-unplugged, Forbes’s Yawn
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Madonna & Jesus’ Last (Night’s) Supper
(E! Online)

Cablevision's Wi-Fi a Stunt?

So claims a Verizon spokesperson: In an article in the New Jersey Star-Ledger, Comcast's possible plans to follow Cablevision's lead in pairing Wi-Fi with cable broadband are examined. But you have to read the last paragraph first to get the full impact. Verizon thinks it's a marketing stunt for Cablevision to spend $300m to cover the tri-state area of its franchises with Wi-Fi.

Let's start on the telco side. DSL from the central office into people's homes is dead, more or less, despite tens of millions of deployed lines. It's last century's technology. AT&T and Verizon have put their future into rolling out two different methods of fiber: AT&T prefers fiber to the node (FTTN), where they use very high speed DSL from a neighborhood termination point. DSL works extremely well over very short distances. Verizon has chosen the more expensive option of bringing fiber directly to the home (FTTH).

Comcast in Wi-Fi Trials

Meraki Goes All In: 802.11n Triple Radio Outdoor Node

Meraki has decided they're a grown-up company, after all: Meraki started out as the little guy, with tiny $50 nodes that would self-organize into a mesh Wi-Fi network. Even as the company grew out of its origins, it still focused largely on indoor applications, where outdoor uses were an adjunct. Their new MR58, a 5 GHz triple-radio 802.11n ruggedized weatherproof outdoor node changes that entirely.

The $1,499 (list) unit, which meshes with all the existing gear and includes the license for Meraki's required software-as-a-service hosted management system, can go omnidirectional or directional on each of the three radios as separate systems. The company sees the unit as being a way to link locations (they claim 1 to 20 km with appropriate directional antennas), and provide front-end access in public places.

The company sells into several markets, including hotels and motels, apartment buildings, academic campuses, and hotzones. It doesn't emphasize corporate customers, although Meraki added WPA2 Enterprise authentication in a recent back-end update.

The gear Meraki is selling could be used for cities--the company has some such installations in towns--but the design is intended to extend Meraki's existing ecosystem from tiny indoor wall warts up to outdoor AC and solar-powered single-radio models.

The MR58 is 802.1af Power over Ethernet compliant, sucking down 8 watts at most, the firm's founder told me. This means a single Ethernet run to a roof can power the MR58; no AC outlets required.

You can get the full scoop in my coverage at Ars Technica.

Meraki Goes All In: 802.11n Triple Radio Outdoor Node
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High-Fi News: Alaska Airlines Launches Trial; Noonan Takes Flight of Wi-Fi Optimism

Alaska Airlines finally announced its test launch of Row 44's satellite-backed in-flight Internet service: Alaska's routes take them mostly over water to Alaska or Mexico from its Seattle hub, and thus Aircell's solution is a bad fit. The airline and Row 44 have been talking about trials for quite some time. Today marks the first live launch of a plane, apparently a single 737-700, which will fly from Seattle to San Jose today. This plane will fly for 60 days while they test the offering.

If "successful," and the press release doesn't define what success means, a schedule will be set for installing service across its fleet. Pricing hasn't yet been set; it will be free on this aircraft during the trial.

Row 44 is using satellites, the same Ku band type that Connexion by Boeing employed, but the company has claimed in the past that its combination of advanced antennas and secret sauce lets it extract massively higher data rates than Connexion while keeping the costs at a level that profit can be earned.

Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal opinion writer, finds inspiration in in-flight Wi-Fi: Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Reagan, had a brief exhilaration in sending and receiving email on an American Airlines flight because it reminded her of a better time in America's past in which innovation and was all around. "If you were paying attention, if you understood you were witnessing something great, the invention of a new age, the computer age, it caught at your throat." Despite the collapse, the uncertainty, and the change around us, Noonan is optimistic. She believes that the future is in change at local levels, from the bottom up. "No one trusts big anymore. In the future everything will be local."

High-Fi News: Alaska Airlines Launches Trial; Noonan Takes Flight of Wi-Fi Optimism
Southwest Starts In-Flight Trial Monday
Spector retrial enters key act as defense begins
(AP)

New Threaded, Federated Comments

With the new publishing platform, it's easier to comment using any of your credentials: Wi-Fi Networking News is now using the Movable Type 4 platform, the only point of which might be interesting is that you can sign in to leave comments using existing accounts at other services beyond TypePad (formerly TypeKey). I've enabled commenting via Open ID, a cross-system standard, as well as LiveJournal and Vox (services owned by Movable Type and TypePad's parent firm, Six Apart). You can also comment anonymously using an email-confirmation step.

Movable Type 4 also supports comment threading, where you can click a Reply button to respond to someone's comment.

Feel free to try this out on this post.

Simmons happy to pay $40,000 a month for kids
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Migration of Hosting Platform

Migration of Hosting Platform

A minor administrative update: Today, I migrated Wi-Fi Networking News from the Movable Type 3.3 to Movable Type 4.2 platform. This is an administrative issue, bringing the site into 2009, and making elements of the site consistent. You'll notice that permanent URLs have changed their appearance, showing a slug, or a shortened version of the headline, rather than a number. Old URLs for individual entries will continue to work, redirected to their modern equivalent. Some old links may fail, and please feel free to contact me about them.

Madonna & Jesus’ Last (Night’s) Supper
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New Threaded, Federated Comments
Jewel says injury won’t keep her from ‘Dancing’
(AP)

In-Flight Plans Start to Take Off

Skeptics wondered whether in-flight Internet would just be blue-sky thinking: I’m more in the optimistic camp—the plane is half-full, as it were—than skeptic, but I’ve wondered since December whether plans to get the Internet aloft were stalling. According to the key companies involved, delays have occurred, but all engines are on full throttle. Now I’ll spare you more aircraft “jokes.”

In preparation for a longer article on in-flight Internet, I’ve spoken to several firms recently, including Aircell and Row 44. Let me share a few choice tidbits of interest to those of us following this market closely.

American Airlines is moving ahead on expansion. No details are available.Alaska Airlines has a 60-day test, but the firm’s VP of marketing made it clear that the test is just a check on passenger interest, usage, and production readiness. The company is ready to go fleetwide, and assumes a positive pilot.Aircell will fully equip not just Virgin America and Delta by 3rd quarter 2009, but another airline as well.Aircell can’t give out figures but usage is significant, number continuously growing, repeat customers about half of users.Row 44 has seen half the people on one test flight with free Internet use the Wi-Fi service. 20 percent is more common—for a test, unannounced service.Subscription pricing for Aircell is coming in the spring.With LTE cell data on the horizon, Aircell has its next-generation downlink planned, expecting 10s of Mbps.Plans are moving ahead for a Canadian air-to-ground service by 2010, with Aircell’s regulatory and partnership deals proceeding. Air Canada already plans to use Aircell on U.S. legs, with service in place this year.Row 44 has European and trans-Atlantic expansion plans.

Aircell’s executive vice president of airlines John Happ told me yesterday that the delay in Delta’s rollout was partly coordination. Delta had originally planned to handle the Aircell Gogo service installation itself, but opted to hand that role to Aircell. Aircell has two intsallation lines putting its service in planes with an overnight turnaround, and will have two more lines in operation between this Sunday and the next few weeks.

Both Happ and Jack Blumenstein, Aircell’s CEO, said that the target of during third quarter of 2009 for the full widebody fleet rollout of Delta remains on track. “We’ll move on to, and toward later on in the year” with a firmer schedule about the Northwest mainline fleet, Blumenstein said.

While Delta and Aircell had planned to have more planes in the air sooner—75 by the end of 2008 at one point—this revised scheduled reflects the change in Aircell’s installation role.

Virgin America’s rollout continues apace, and Blumenstein said, surprisingly, that by third quarter, “We’ll have at least one other airline fully deployed over that same time frame.”

Aircell plans to start offering a proliferation of pricing plans soon, with overnight discounts, special event discounts, subscriptions, run-of-airline daypasses, and other bundles for regular or frequent users.

From Row 44’s CEO, John Guidon, I learned that the company is poised for a fairly big expansion. Alaska Airlines was a natural customer because a lot of its routes are overseas and mountains, as well to, well, Alaska, which is remote.

Row 44’s system can push about 4 Mbps of real network access to a plane, with a larger amount of streaming traffic.

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United joins in-flight Internet bandwagon