Heartbreak of Heartland, Again

Dana Spiegel posts an exchange with a writer at the Heartland Institute, wherein the writer starts with a bias and then stoops to insults: Oh, lordy, our friends at the industry-funded (but-we-won't-disclose-who) Heartland Institute are trying to explain how evil municipally funded free Wi-Fi is again. I thought I was back in 2005, again.

Given that Miami Beach and St. Cloud, Flor., are now just about the only free city-wide Wi-Fi funded by a city in the US, I don't see the urgency in Heartland trying to explain why it's an evil entitlement.

The Heartland "reporter" (hrmph) tells Dana Spiegel that in St. Cloud "the City Council tried to shut down their free WiFi service because of the expense but stopped that initiative after residents who could not pay for their own Internet access protested loudly. In that vein, do you foresee municipal WiFi networks like Miami Beach’s at all becoming another entitlement program for Americans?"

That's some myopia you've got there! St. Cloud residents of all stripes, not just those who "could not pay" for Internet service--that's bought-and-paid-for thinktank code for "poor and probably African American because they're poor"--were interested in keeping the service alive. The city council and mayor responded to the outpouring of interest, and funded the network further as a result.

We last tangled with the Heartland Institute in depth in 2005. I wrote a piece called "Sock Puppets of Industry" (1 February 2005) that spelled out undisclosed funding and other conflicts in a report issued on municipal broadband that was riddled with errors.

The Heartland Institute continues to claim that it is "not affiliated with any political part, business, or foundation," which continues to beggar my imagination as a statement. The institute has concocted ever more elaborate explanations as to why it doesn't disclose donors, which are known to include major firms in industries about which the institute produces anti-regulation reports. Corporations and foundations provide 89 percent of funding (per the institute's 2009 report), with corporations making up 13 to 16 percent. The foundations are the usual suspects that push money to thinktanks to create research and reports that allows affiliated companies and institutions to cite data as independent of the funders.

All you need to know about Heartland may be encompassed in the Sock Puppets post, in which I note that (at the time) Heartland had a Philip Morris executive on its board, even as it wrote reports and a book denying peer-reviewed scientific and economic analysis of the societal costs of smoking. In the comments, Heartland's head denied that such an executive was on the board, despite the fact that the Web site listed that executive and his affiliation.

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Did TSA Just Peal the Death Knell of In-Flight Internet?

Temporary TSA rules in the wake of attempted detonation of something during Detroit landing mean no electronics during last hour of flight: The rules in place right now prohibit anything in your lap, standing up, using the restroom, and any access to your carry-on baggage. Carry-on limits have already been tightened as well, further than the existing tiny ones. The last-hour limits sound similar but more restrictive than the rules when flying into Reagan National in D.C.

This rules don't yet appear to apply during the first part of a flight, but it's typically at least 20 minutes after takeoff until the 10,000-foot limit has been passed, and later when the fasten seatbelt light is turned off.

For in-flight Internet providers Aircell and Row 44, this could be devastating if the rules remain in place. For flights up to 3 hours, which I believe are at least half of U.S. domestic mainline (non-regional jet) flights because of the hub system, that leaves precious little time to use any electronics, and makes it unlikely someone will pay the $10 rate for those flights. For longer flights, the $13 rate Aircell levies may be more reasonable, but travelers will now be mentally removing 90 or more minutes from the useful time they have.

If these rules remain in place, I will be curious how quickly Aircell and its partner airlines change pricing, and whether in-fight Internet upgrades to planes continue at the pace they were at.

Connexion by Boeing had a lot of factors against it, but one of the key ones was new rules and a drop in airline revenue following 9/11.

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Ford Adds BYO Mobile Broadband to Car Entertainment System

Ford offers a remarkable option to add Internet access to an auto: Unlike automakers who have signed up to build in the Autonet Mobile system, a Wi-Fi gateway with a built-in cell modem, Ford is opting for a bit of openness. Car owners with the next generation of Ford Sync (by Microsoft) coming next year can plug in their own USB broadband modems into a slot near the gear shift to enable Internet access over Wi-Fi to passengers. USB modems are offered by all carriers, including Virgin Mobile's currently unique pay-as-you-go plan.

Ford should also be praised for not just offering, but requiring WPA2 Personal security. You might want to share access with others, but not after you see your first cell data bill with overage charges on it.

By allowing a USB adapter, Ford lets a car owner who already has a 3G subscription plug in instead of adding yet another subscription fee on top.

Sync costs $395 as an optional add on, although it's included in certain high-end Ford and Mercury models. The system is designed to allow integrated use of cellular phones and digital media players, as well as provide emergency service and send car system status reports. Next year, turn-by-turn navigation will be added (three years at no cost).

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Weekly Wi-Fi Minute for 17 December

Running through last week's top stories: Verizon extends free Wi-Fi at thousands of US hotspots to 3G laptop/adapter users (Windows only, thanks), Continental signs up for 21 planes with Aircell, and McDonald's ups the ante in its competition with Starbucks by unleashing free Wi-Fi starting mid-January in the United States.

Use the player below to listen in a browser, or you can download an MP3 or AAC file.

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Wee-Fi: Connectify 1.0, Cleveland Free-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy

Connectify releases Windows 7 PAN enabler: Connectify has pushed out the 1.0 release (free!) of its software that turns on a hidden feature in Windows 7--never completed with the proper user interface--to allow a single Wi-Fi connection to accept local connections while itself connected to a Wi-Fi network (infrastructure style). This avoids the trouble of ad hoc networking, while allowing robust WPA2 security.

Cleveland considers 4 1/2 sq mi free network: What's most interesting about this plan may be the proposed cost: $600,000 to build. In the olden days, it was a few hundred thousand dollars per square mile, as I recollect, even though it was often billed as "$100K," but that didn't include the modern density that's understood to be needed, and the real bill for the back end. Cleveland has other areas with free service through the One Community effort that sprang out of initiatives at Case Western University.

Bluetooth's low-energy mode announced: As part of Bluetooth 4.0 (even though 3.0 is just starting to ship now), the low-energy mode will provide networking for sensors that can't carry huge or rechargeable battery packs. This will be useful in healthcare, alarm monitoring, fitness, and other categories. The ZigBee standard was supposed to eat up this kind of usage, being a low-power, low-bandwidth technology, but Bluetooth wants to sweep this use inside its existing ecosystem. The data rate will be 1 Mbps.

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Jaunted Rounds Up In-Flight Access

Jaunted tells you which, what, how much: The always fun travel site Jaunted has done a superb job documenting which U.S. airlines have service, what you pay on each, and a good summary of which planes in the fleet are enabled.

The site separately summarized this information even further into a chart. If you're trying to get Internet access while flying, bookmark that page.

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Continental Picks Aircell for In-Flight Internet

Continental Airlines opts for in-flight Internet, and chooses Aircell's Gogo service: The initial commitment is to put the service on 21 Boeing 757-300s, a fleet that serves cross-country routes, and seems like a good test deployment. Aircell never discusses its financial arrangements with carriers; it's possible that the firm is subsidizing a pilot installation in order to prime getting Continental's mainline fleet equipped. There's just no way to know.

With a deal signed with US Airways, but no plan released for deployment, Aircell has locked up all the major US airlines plus Air Canada, with competitor Row 44 having signed just Southwest and Alaska. Those deployments are apparently on hold until Row 44 raises sufficient capital to proceed.

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