Wee-Fi: Broadcom, Skyhook; GSM Mobile BroadBranding; Bandwidth Caps; Dead-Fi Zones

Broadcom adds Skyhook positioning to portfolio: Broadcom already has a variety of tools for allowing its chips to determine position quickly, including a ground-based system that tracks GPS satellite positions and uses this to feed out data over cell and other networks to provide assisted GPS, where a GPS receiver doesn’t have to find satellites, just lock onto signals where it’s told the satellites are located. Adding Skyhook means that Wi-Fi can be used as another variable in quickly providing a fix on coordinates, especially in locales where GPS signals penetrate weakly, such as urban canyons.

GSM Association creates laptop brand for mobile broadband: The GSMA will offer a Mobile Broadband sticker for laptops that includes cell chips and software that allow an immediate network connection. Sixteen firms have signed on, including Dell, Lenovo, Qualcomm, and Microsoft. I’ve been of the mind for some time that buying a laptop with a cellular modem built in is a waste of money, as you are typically committed to that vendor and technology for the life of the laptop, even if speeds improve or you don’t like the service. Buying a USB dongle, ExpressCard, or PC Card allows greater portability of the service among computers, and more flexibility for upgrade. Further, with a given cell carrier, you can get a subsidized adapter; despite how they try to hide it in pricing, a laptop with a cell modem essentially costs the same as the laptop without plus the full multi-hundred-dollar true cost of the modem.

GigaOm on bandwidth caps: A must-read on how carriers and service providers are making a poor choice and risking alienating their customers in mass numbers by imposing short-sighted caps on bandwidth use that affect far from the heaviest users of these networks. “Today, it targets heavy users, while tomorrow it will affect all users,” concludes the paper, written by Muayyad Al-Chalabi, an analyst and former Bell Labs researcher.

Rice University, HP work on dead zone prediction: Researchers have determined that they can make a small number of measurements and predict real-world performance of outdoor Wi-Fi to a decent degree. I’ve read the paper, and while it’s awfully technical, there are valuable techniques likely to be incorporated into future planning and simulation products.

The Dead Raise for Obama
(E! Online)
Sprint May Launch WiMax in Baltimore 6-October

Study Shows Symptoms Real, Wrong Case for Electrosensitives

This is a study I’ve been waiting for since the University of Essex research was released last year: New research using MRIs from the University of Regensburg, Germany, indicates that electrosensitives are suffering both cognitive and neurobiological reactions—but not to the presence or absence of electromagnetic signals that these suffers believe are causing their symptoms. (The link is to an Economist summary; the abstract is all I can find online so far of the actual study.)

Back on 25-July-2007, I wrote about the cross-disciplinary, tightly controlled study of electrosensitivity carried out by an Essex (UK) team with government and industry funding. The study was yet another in dozens that showed that self-identified electrosensitive sufferers performed no better at chance in determining whether a signal was present or absent. The control group did no better than chance, either.

But the revelation that, with appropriate biological monitoring, the electrosensitive group experienced severe and measurable symptoms whether or not a signal was present indicated to me that there was a correlation problem in how electrosensitives view themselves.

These suffers are either coddled those who pander to them to sell them stuff or those that are interested in faux science, in which controlled repeatable peer-evaluated tests aren’t part of their worldview; or, they’re ridiculed by people who dismiss their symptoms as fake or overblown.

The Regensburg study would say to me that electrosensitives need to be renamed: they’re sensitive to something; it may even be psychosomatic; but the effects are profound, real, measurable, and (again shown in this study) not tied to whether a signal believed to cause harm is present. The abstract concludes: “These results demonstrate significant cognitive and neurobiological alterations pointing to a higher genuine individual vulnerability of electromagnetic hypersensitive patients.” But not vulnerable to EMF, the study found. (60% of suffers but only 40% of the control group had a reaction when “sham” EMF was used.)

I have long argued that the massive amount of “electrosmog” (to use the panderers’ term) means that those who claims electrosensitivity would be incapable of living in an urban area. Not just Wi-Fi, cellular, and cordless phones, but vastly many more kinds of focused EMF transmissions are constantly bombarding them. They’d be in constant agony if not in the remote wilderness. These studies seem to reinforce the fact that there is a disease, perhaps self-caused and perhaps not, that needs to be studied and treated separately from EMF—much like tinnitus.

Hootie frontman Rucker a hit with country radio
(AP)
Wee-Fi: Meraki Modifies, Drops Standard; Tempe’s Phoenix?; Remote Wake, Wi-Fi Need Not Apply
Wee-Fi: Indian Terror over Wi-Fi; Fastest Wireless; Health Fears; Wi-Fi Tub; and More
Aerosmith’s Tyler sues over blog impersonations
(Reuters)

Trapeze Gear Used for Different Sort of City-Wide Hotspot Network

Trapeze Networks usually announces enterprise products and deployments, but not so with today’s Chinese network rollout: Partnered with Commnet in China, the two firms will deploy 3,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in Hangzhou, a city of 6.5m. But rather than focus on a ubiuqitous network, it’s clear from what’s not stated in the press release that this is an efficient deployment of service where it’s needed.

The city has six urban districts that total 260 sq mi and nearly 2m people’ 3,000 nodes couldn’t possibly offer total coverage even if just those areas (rather than “eight metropolitan districts”) were what was to be covered. But that’s not really what’s needed.

The network will be built over the next 15 months.

MTV Laying TRL to Rest
(E! Online)
Minneapolis Network Reports 10,000 Users
Meraki Extends SF, Gives Shine to Newsom

Metro Round-Up: No GO; Riverside, Calif., Proceeds; Illinois Bus-Fi

Go? No: Go Networks, a metro-scale Wi-Fi equipment maker acquired in Jan. 2007 by NextWave, is being shut down. Go announced their technology on 3-April-2006 at the height of interest in the municipal Wi-Fi market, at which point they thought their beamforming, MIMO gear would take hold. They believed they could provide superior coverage at far lower cost, especially when factoring in the need for fewer utility poles. As far as I can tell, they never had a huge win, and then the easy market evaporated.

It’s amazing to me that the four independent metro-scale firms have survived this long; all are privately held, and so we know only what’s publicly announced about their well being. BelAir has scored the Minneapolis and Cablevision networks, and thus perhaps has its future assured. Trapeze appears to have developed alternative markets. For Strix and SkyPilot, the future must be uncertain, although I must stress that I have no particular knowledge of either companies’ financial or sales situation. SkyPilot’s only big win was with MetroFi, which is now gone missing; Strix has some international deployments that are perhaps what drives the firm, but domestically they were paired with now-dead Kite.

Along those lines, Riverside’s network deployment has stalled, but is resuming buildout: AT&T had partnered with MetroFi to build Riverside, Calif.’s metro-scale network, and it’s taken a while to build. The article doesn’t mention MetroFi, but says “the original contractor has gone outt of business,” and AT&T has hired a new firm. The network should be largely complete by the end of 2008. AT&T said that they had 17,600 unique sessions (not users) in August.

Illinois bus system adds Wi-Fi on express buses: The Madison Country Transit system put Internet service on 40 express buses. Service is free, but filtered.

Portland’s MetroFi Nodes Still Hanging on
Wee-Fi: Wi-Fi Robot Attack; Silicon Valley Plan Proceeds
MTV Laying TRL to Rest
(E! Online)

In-Flight Providers Lobby against US Call Ban

In-flight call providers form lobbying group to dissuade formal ban on in-flight calling: FlightGlobal reports that OnAir and Aeromobile have formed the Passenger Communications Coalition—Peacekeeper missiles, anyone?—to prevent the Hang-Up Act that would provide a formal, instead of regulatory and procedural ban on placing phone calls in flight. OnAir’s CEO makes the specious remark that this would be “putting the US behind the rest of the world.”

Hardly. Americans aren’t used to paying $2.50 per minute in the air that used to be a typical ground roaming rate until EU regulators pushed hard. US flyers would (surveys show) prefer the broadband that American, Delta, and Virgin are in various stages of commitment to.

In any case, how would having a total ban on in-flight talking that affected all over-US flights make us less competitive? Oh, yeah, we’d miss that one call that doomed our business while our European competitor was chatting away.

Clarity on Qantas’ Plans: OnAir and Aeromobile
Air Canada Goes GoGo
Kanye Busted for Airport Bust-Up
(E! Online)

Wee-Fi: Bidding for Wireless Service; BT Disperses Cloud

Google plays bridge with wireless contracts in patent: Bidding on contracts isn’t just for companies answering proposals or contract bridge players. Google has filed for a patent in which a wireless device could put its need for a connection out for automated and instant bid among operators with service operating in proximity. The cell phone owner or even laptop Wi-Fi user could review bids and accept whaich they prefer. It’s an interesting idea, as even without ubiquity, there’s plenty of overlap. In parts of Seattle by 2010, there could be several wireless services for voice and high-speed data—there are already four (the 3G carriers plus Clearwire).

BT OpenZone to sever The Cloud roaming: OpenZone customers will lose access on 2-Oct-2008 to the thousands of locations in The Cloud’s network. This reduces OpenZone to 3,000 hotspots in the UK. The Cloud partners with many other hotspot operators.

The Dead Raise for Obama
(E! Online)
Minneapolis Network Reports 10,000 Users
Wee-Fi: Boingo Expands to Dulles, Reagan; HP Buys Colubris

Wee-Fi: Wi-Fi Robot Attack; Silicon Valley Plan Proceeds

The Spykee is a $300 Wi-Fi Skype robot: Lots of strange coolness here. I don’t know how I missed hearing about this before, but apparently an actual customer got his hands on the thing and recorded a video. It’s cute. You can access its video through control software or a remote Skype video connection. It’s got a speaker and microphone, and can be used for VoIP calls. The control software allows it to move around, play sound effects, and produce music. Like the computer in Superman III (or a Roomba), it craves power, and knows to return to its charger.

The name reveals some of its creepy appeal: Spykee = Spy Camera. I suppose the nanny you’re trying to make sure isn’t shaking your baby might be freaked out when it suddenly starts emitting Star Wars music, or such like. Made by Meccano under the Erector brand, its control software is Mac and Windows compatible.

I, for one, welcome our new Spykee overlords—on 15-Oct-2008 when it starts to ship generally.

Silicon Valley project finally gets underway: It’s a still a pilot, small, with no promised outcome. And after all this time, a switch of partners, and new parameters, they’ve still mounted just 20 of 28 access points.

Madonna’s Striptease Tribute to Britney Spears
(E! Online)
Slacker Releases G2 Wi-Fi Music Player
Zune Swoon: Listen to FM, Tag, Download