Schumer Wants Wi-Fi on LIRR

Sen. Charles Schumer is pushing the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) to get Internet service on board: Unfortunately, the numbers thrown out ($1,000 per train car) are nothing like the cost unless each train car simply had a cell gateway stapled on top. That cost would exclude installation, maintenance, bandwidth, and network operations. The railroad will issue an RFP later this year.

Also, in this Newsday piece and elsewhere, Sen. Schumer seems to think that there are similar and inexpensive systems running all over the U.S. There are now a number of production systems in the U.S. (and elsewhere) on trains, but there isn't anything running on the scale of LIRR. The closest is the MTBA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority), which is either in the process of or finished with a rollout across 13 commuter lines after a successful test on a Worcester line.

Other rail-Fi projects are much smaller in scale, often involving (as in Utah and elsewhere) new projects that were designed from the start to have Internet service in stations and on board.

In the Bay Area, the BART system has a contractor in place (Wi-Fi Rail) which is ostensibly in the process of setting up systemwide Internet access as we speak. If Wi0Fi Rail is successful as it rolls out in the Bay Area, it's likely that the company's approach will be useful in other metro areas that are otherwise quite expensive to get backhaul and signals through.

Canadian Spectrum for In-Flight Internet Awarded

Two weeks ago, Canadian regulators accepted a winning C$5.1m bid from SkySurf Canada for air-ground spectrum for in-flight broadband: The Canadian firm bid a whopping C$3m above the second bidder, and only two firm ultimately submitted bids. SkySurf won 4 MHz of spectrum. The FCC awarded similar frequency back in June 2006 to Aircell (3 MHz) and JetBlue's LiveTV division (1 MHz) for $31m and $7m, respectively. The U.S. and Canadian bands are aligned.

In talking early this year with Aircell's CEO, the firm planned to create a partnership with the winning bidder. "Anybody who gets that license is doing so on the basis of forming a relationship with us where they operate the physical network in Canada," Jack Blumenstein said back in February. Blumenstein said that the rollout in Canada would likely be in 2010. He also noted that only 20 base stations would be required to serve all of content, because Aircell already had a number of near-border locations that could be turned north.

The bid price seems rather high, but that's clearly in expectation of the winner being part of a cross-border monopoly on this particular service by dint of owning the license. While Canada has a smaller population, there are plenty of aircraft crossing the country and traveling back and forth to the U.S.

Eye-Fi Adds Pro Card with RAW Uploads, Ad Hoc Transfer

Eye-Fi has added a fifth member to its product matrix, the Pro which supports RAW format uploads, direct computer transfer: Eye-Fi's list of options is getting a little longer than makes sense for a simple product, but the distinction between Pro and the others is clear. If you need to upload anything but JPEGs, you need the Pro card (street $150, 4 GB, SDHD). Maybe professionals and plenty of amateur photographers prefer the loosely-defined RAW format (not a standard) in which the quirks of the image sensors aren't smoothed out. This allows better post-capture correction.

An additional feature found only in Pro is allowing transfers using the Wi-Fi ad hoc mode. All Wi-Fi base stations and some software found in operating systems or added on use infrastructure mode, which hub and spoke. Each station (a spoke) communicates via a coordinating access point (the hub). In ad hoc mode, however, all devices are equal players and there's no central coordinating point. (Ad hoc mode is also responsible for the ubiquitous Free WiFi networks you see at airports, because if you're not connected to a network and ever used an ad hoc network, you broadcast the ad hoc names under Windows XP and some other OS's.)

Ad hoc mode is useful for photographers, because it means they can transfer images directly to a laptop or computer they have with them without having to also have a gateway. Mac OS X offers both a software base station mode and ad hoc networking, but Windows only has ad hoc built in for direct transfers. One year of hotspot access is included at Wayport operated locations. (Eye-Fi says 10,000 hotspots, but given Wayport has merged into AT&T, does that mean that the 7,000 Starbucks and thousands of others are excluded?)

Eye-Fi also updated all its models to support Selective Transfer. With this new mode, any image marked as protected or locked (depending on camera firmware options) will be uploaded, while all other images will not. That's a clever way around the fact that only one high-end digital camera so far talks directly to the Eye-Fi card. I was really expecting at least one camera maker to integrate Eye-Fi as an offering, using the firmware as a way to enable more features. Ah, well; camera makers aren't known for understanding what users want out of image transferring over Wi-Fi.

Selective Transfer is available through a firmware update via the Eye-Fi Manager. Connect your Eye-Fi card via a USB card reader and run the update to get the new feature.

Eye-Fi has defined its featureset as seven items, all of which are part of Pro: JPEG uploads, online sharing, video uploads, geotagging, hotspot access, ad hoc transfers, and RAW uploads. As you move down through the matrix, fewer features are found, but the cards cost less, too. Cards start at $50 for transfers only to a networked computer (not via ad hoc) with the 2 GB Home model. You can upgrade cards that lack webshare, hotspot access, and geotagging for $10, $15, and $15 per year, respectively.

I Don't Think You're Pronouncing It Right

A bit of humor for the weekend: This Pearls before Swine strip made me cackle this morning. I don't know if it will hit everyone's funny bone the same way, but the punchline will reveal why I'm linking to it.

Latest Version of Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Network

Take Control Books has just released version 1.5 of my Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Network ebook: This release covers the simultaneous dual-band AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule, re-organizes the discussion of how to set up Wireless Distribution System (WDS) in the new and old methods, and has a new take on choosing bands and channels when you can have your cake (5 GHz) and eat it, too (2.4 GHz).

Readers of Wi-Fi Networking News can save $5 off the $15 cover price by using coupon code CPN007281031WNN at checkout. There are other bundle deals available as well.

Qualcomm Intros 600 Mbps 802.11n

Qualcomm says it has 600 Mbps 802.11n 4x4 solution: The cellular and GPS chipmaking giant finally releases new Wi-Fi gear, blowing the roof off with a 600 Mpbs (raw), 4-radio, dual-band, 4x4 antenna array--the N-Stream Wireless LAN WCN1320. The chip will sample this month, allowing manufacturing partners to start designing products around it. A production date isn't announced.

Ever since the grand compromise was made that allowed Task Group N in the IEEE 802.11 Working Group to move forward, the option of having four radios and a 4x4 antenna array for a raw data rate of about 600 Mbps has existed. However, the cost of such a device would be so high that until 2-radio (raw 300 Mbps) 802.11n was in wide use--especially in enterprises--the 4-radio flavor didn't seem to be something the market would demand and pay a huge premium for.

1 1/2 to 2 1/2 years into the N revolution, depending on how you count, the time must be ripe. Qualcomm is advertising this product as a way to carry multiple HD streams across a house. The chip integrates an application processor, which allows a set-top box or other equipment maker to offload some processing to the chip instead of adding an additional burden.

Qualcomm acquired the pioneering MIMO Wi-Fi firm Airgo a couple of years ago, and this is the first standalone Wi-Fi product that's emerged from the firm since then.

The company isn't the first to announce a 4-radio 802.11n solution. The startup firm Quantenna announced a 4-radio, 4x4 antenna chip that it could configure in a pair for what they say would be an aggregate of 1 Gbps across 2.4 and 5 GHz. As far as I can tell, Quantenna is sampling, but no products are yet shipping.

Skyhook Wireless Handles 250M Requests per Day

The Wi-Fi positioning firm Skyhook Wireless gets a nice snapshot in the New York Times: I've been following and talking to Skyhook for many years, and the Times nailed the salient points quite well in a non-technical and useful way. The interesting figure is that Skyhook says it handles 250m requests per day for positioning data. There's a terrific video embedded in the article that shows a heatmap of location requests in Manhattan over a 24-hour period.

Most of the requests come from iPhones, Skyhook says. Apple has sold approaching 20m iPhones worldwide, and that means it's likely that the average iPhone users is pushing out several requests a day. I know I do! The iPod touch can also tap into Skyhook's system, but because the touch lacks a second channel to request information it must be connected to a Wi-Fi network in order to retrieve positioning data.