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MetroFi will sell its networks, but plans to shutter if there are no buyers: Ah, folks, the trifecta has arrived, and I'm nothing but sad about it. MetroFi's chief Chuck Haas emailed me this evening with the news that his firm has decided that they will sell their networks in nine cities, including their first cities in the Bay Area (Cupertino, Santa Clara, and Sunnyvale), and their largest muni deployment in Portland, Ore. If no buyers emerge--including the cities in question--Haas said that MetroFi would have a shutdown plan for gradually unlighting the networks. MetroFi was one of the three most prominent pure play metro-scale Wi-Fi firms, if you count EarthLink's municipal wireless division as a separate operation, and Kite...
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IDG News Service reports that Philadelphia won't pursue further efforts to keep the EarthLink network up and running: The last paragraph is quite classic: Without going into details, city spokesman [Douglas] Oliver said there clearly were maintenance and upgrading challenges that came with the free infrastructure. "How many times has someone not taken $17 million worth of something without there being a pretty good reason?" he said.... Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission. 
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Thalys has launched Internet service on high-speed train routes between Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Cologne: The service hit glitches in its big press rollout, but glitches shouldn't be mistaken for actual performance. The satellite-backed service pulls down 2 Mbps of ruinously expensive backhaul, compressed to provide speeds that feel like 4 Mbps. (Read: faster for email, TIFF images, certain PowerPoint presentations, and Web pages with gzip disabled; normal rate for JPEGs, GIFs, compressed Web pages, and PDFs.) The service will cost first-class passengers not a thing, but coach will pay €6.50 (US$10) per hour or €13 (US$20) for an entire trip. The train operator is initially equipping 7 trains, but will complete work on all 26 trains by October. Trip...
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Why don't service providers tell you what it costs? In this mobile post, I inveigh against the practice of hiding one's prices coyly, like the menu at an expensive restaurant.... Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission. 
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iPass announces roaming deal with Aircell Gogo in-flight network: Gogo isn't yet aloft, though it's well into testing, but iPass has a contract in hand to allow its subscribers broadband access. The press release sidesteps cost, but an iPass spokesperson clarified for me that while pricing hasn't yet been set, iPass expects to charge no additional fees for access to Gogo on top of its fixed monthly Wi-Fi service plan charges. Given that Aircell has spoken about fees of about $10 to $12 for cross-country flights, I can't quite believe iPass can include unlimited service, but we'll see how it shakes out. Riverside network should launch soon: I recall a ribbon (or cable) cutting ceremony for AT&T's MetroFi-built Riverside, Calif.,...
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It's the end of the cycle, folks: The first shall be last and the last shall, apparently, be first to sue. The Philadelphia Wi-Fi network will be shuttered under plans by EarthLink that they announced via press release today. The company plans to pull all its gear from the poles starting 12-June-2008. The company's press release said it offered to give the network at no cost to an unnamed non-profit, as well as to the city, but claimed that "unresolved issues" led to the effort falling apart. EarthLink offered cash and more equipment, as well, in undisclosed quantities. Wireless Philadelphia, the non-profit in charge of managing the network provider and administering digital divide programs, was apparently not the non-profit mentioned.
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Cell phones interfere with brain waves? I often write about studies that show no connection between electromagnetic radiation and health, so it's only fair I highlight credible ones that suggest a connection. In what appears to be two well-conducted and well-controlled studies, cell phones appeared to affect alpha waves (related to one's focus on external v. internal stimulus and sleep), and delta waves (related to deep sleep). While no particular health result was measured, both studies, Scientific American explains, demonstrate a connection between EMF and mental behavior. Zipit gives away text messaging for a year, changes prices, options: The Zipit Wireless Messenger 2 (Z2) was introduced in Dec. 2007 with a number of interesting features for a messaging appliance targeted...
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The folks who brought us simple Wi-Fi for digital cameras add locations, modify pricing: Eye-Fi developed a supremely simple 2 GB Secure Digital card that can work with any digital camera and transfer photos over known Wi-Fi networks with no effort. Now they've split their original $99 product offering into three items differentiated by features: Eye-Fi Explore, with Wi-Fi-based geotagging ($129); Eye-Fi Share, for uploading to photo-sharing systems ($99); and Eye-Fi Home, which is a cable-replacement service ($79). The Eye-Fi Explore will be available starting 9-June-2008. The Eye-Fi Explore product relies on Skyhook Wireless's system of analyzing the signal strength of nearby Wi-Fi networks to extrapolate latitude and longitude. Eye-Fi ties that into their system to stamp images with locations.
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Azulstar once pinned its fortunes on city-wide Wi-Fi, but now looks to a special licensed spectrum band to make WiMax work where Wi-Fi failed: Azulstar has been the also-ran in Wi-Fi for some years, I'll just state bluntly and upfront. They built a network in Grand Haven, Mich., in 2003 that's one of--if not the--longest running metro-scale Wi-Fi networks in the world designed for public access. The mayor of Grand Haven since 2003, Roger Bergman, told me, "I got on board personally right away, and I am still on." Azulstar soon answered several RFPs and partnered up with major firms to bring Wi-Fi to Rio Rancho, N.M., Winston-Salem, N.C., Sacramento, Calif., and most notably Silicon Valley--a set of dozens of...
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Cablevision will offer free Wi-Fi to its customers across a swath of New York: The company will spend an astounding $350m over two years--roughly $100 per customer--to put in service that they peg at offering 1.5 Mbps downstream rates. Broadband subscribers to their Optimum Online broadband service, which has rates of 15/2 and 30/5 Mbps. Others will pay for access. The company has 3.1m cable customers in New York. This is the first large-scale Wi-Fi network announced that had no public/private component to it. While Verizon once said they'd blanket New York City with payphone-based Wi-Fi nodes, that never materialized, and it was unclear how seamless the coverage would ever be. This is a full-blown metro-scale network that's not beholden...
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It's on, it's off, it's on again: Access to AT&T hotspots is back on again, at least in the fine print, as the company now includes the statement that all iPhone plans in the U.S. include "access to AT&T's more than 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, including Starbucks." (Click the Plans tab at top to see that text.) AT&T appeared to have flipped a switch several days ago on its "attwifi" SSID that has appeared alongside T-Mobile's during this several-month transition at Starbucks from one operator to another. iPhone users were presented with a custom login screen that prompted them for their phone number to obtain free access. That gateway page disappeared a few days. I haven't tested if it's back, but...
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Long Island unwirer E-Path loses local contract: The small Florida firm that signed up to build out Wi-Fi across two counties in Long Island--and hasn't seemingly raised funding yet to build even the pilot stage--has had its contract to build Delray Beach, Flor.'s network terminated. "This has been an unfortunate waste of staff time," one city commissioner is quoted as saying, even as the city now turns to figure out how to find another contractor. E-Path had previously seen its Trenton, NJ, deal terminated when that city couldn't agree to purchase services on the network that would be built.... Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or...
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Metro Philadelphia is reporting that the city's Wi-Fi network may halt operations as soon as tomorrow, 08-May-2008: The site reports that EarthLink stopped accepting new customers last week, and told Philadelphia that without a plan by the city to assume control of the network by tomorrow, it would start dismantling the network, after a previous deadline set for last Wednesday passed. EarthLink owes the city a $1m payment on May 23, the site reports.... Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.  ...
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The New York Times thoughtfully examines the growth of free or fee in one hotspot: The article looks at how venues are now having the best of both worlds, providing free Wi-Fi or Internet access in exchange for loyalty or viewing ads, while also offering a pay option for those who choose to avoid advertising or exceed the free offer's limits. Starbucks is a notable example, given that Starbucks Card users (who buy something with the card or charge it monthly) get two consecutive hours of free use every day in AT&T managed locations. The hotel market is murkier; the writer missing mentioning Wyndham's switchover to free Internet access when you join their no-cost loyalty program, mentioning the smaller Omni...
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Sprint seemed awfully clever when it navigated a public safety deal and gained new spectrum as part of its acquisition of Nextel: That's all unraveling now. The FCC and the courts are saying that a 26-June-2008 deadline for vacating its 800 MHz holdings in favor of public safety groups would hold even if the new users weren't on the band. The delays for new users getting on the band are reportedly Sprint's, given that it had the responsibility for this migration. Nextel had splintered holdings in the 800 MHz band that were difficult to administer, and caused verifiable interference with (and vice versa) splintered public safety spectrum in that band. Sprint agreed to pay the estimated multi-billion-dollar cost of getting...
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