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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 to any political interest, and which can likely use mounting rights already available to Cablevision. (In the past, I’ve said this, and folks have said that franchising agreements would exclude additional mounted equipment of this kind. Years later, I have to say I’ve never found anything to support that opinion, but welcome more documented information in the comments.)
The idea is for Wi-Fi to act as a mobile broadband component for Cablevision, to dilute the impact of the Sprint/Clearwire deal announced yesterday. While cable companies rarely compete in a given territory, the Sprint/Clearwire joint venture will make it easier for a customer to get home and mobile broadband and voice from one company, and then turn to another firm for video. This buys Cablevision a quadruple play (voice, video, data, mobile broadband) with a future quintuple play by adding (as they say they will) voice over Wi-Fi service.
Sources indicate that BelAir equipment will be used, which makes sense given BelAir’s release nearly three years ago of a cable-plant compatible Wi-Fi node designed essentially for precisely this contingency. This is a nice win for BelAir, which will likely be selling somewhere north of 15,000 nodes based on the coverage area and service described. BelAir gear also powers Minneapolis, the only successfully completed big-city Wi-Fi network in North America.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:21 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Financial, Free, Hot Spot, Metro-Scale Networks | Comments (1)
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 at least AT&T has, at long last, made the connection that its iPhone customers might enjoy the same free access to hotspots as its 7m fiber and qualifying DSL customers.
Update: And….that information is now gone, Computerworld reports. It’ll be back.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:39 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Free, Hot Spot | Comments (0)
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.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:06 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (0)
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.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:33 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Municipal | Comments (0)
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 chain’s similar move. The article also notes a few free airports, but doesn’t get the picture there, that airport costs and captivity are so high, it’s unlikely that premium airports will switch to ad-support, even with the example of Denver and Las Vegas in hand.
The Cloud partners with Devicescape for no-configuration connections: The Cloud will use their software and service to allow its users to connect to its hotspots and those of its roaming partners. There are 10,500 locations in The Cloud’s own network. Devicescape’s software is available for computer operating systems, as well as several mobile platforms. While Devicescape’s software works across many networks without their direct promotion, the distribution of their package by the Cloud gives Devicescape more leverage with equipment makers, and makes use of The Cloud much easier for that network’s customers, increasing retention and ostensibly signups.
Ruckus alleges patent infringement by partner NetGear: Ruckus Wireless did license its patents to NetGear for two models of the WPN824 router released by NetGear, but alleges in its lawsuit that NetGear released a subsequent model that wasn’t covered by the deal. I rarely mention legal matters, but this is a unique case: hardware is involved and an existing partnership. The outcome could be expensive for NetGear if it’s found to infringe, because this model (I don’t know about the particular version) was one of the best-selling Draft N routers.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:13 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (0)
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 new equipment to public safety agencies in exchange for a hunk of spectrum that they wouldn’t have to buy at auction from the FCC. The cost for a whole set of swaps, migrations, and givebacks was $4.8b, but there was technically no limit on how much Sprint would have to pay for public safety migration—as much as it cost is the true limit.
Last August, the Wall Street Journal did a lengthy update of the 2005 deal, explaining that the effort was vastly behind schedule, and was vastly underbudgeted, too. One county in Pennsylvania estimated that its costs could run $18.5m to $150m, with the low number far above Sprint’s own estimates.
It would be seemingly unfair to allow Sprint’s delays in moving fire, police, and first responders off the band to also delay Sprint’s requirement in vacating the band. We’ll see how the FCC chooses to respond. It could cost Sprint billions and further accelerate the loss of Nextel customers, because Sprint would lose a number of active iDEN sites.
They have no one to blame but themselves. Sprint’s management has blundered through this merger for years. They kept separate Kansas and Virginia headquarters, failed to produce high-quality dual-network devices, gave few incentives for Nextel customers to move to Sprint’s dominant CDMA network, bled employees, and botched this migration.
Now Sprint did have the problem of needing to help move incumbents in the 1.9 GHz spectrum it received and the 800 MHz spectrum it was giving up. The articles on this court decision don’t note whether Sprint’s 1.9 GHz network is free and clear, nor whether Sprint had been working for the last three years to get its Nextel users to get dual-band handsets that would work with the new frequency.
With the WiMax plan also on the table, Sprint was basically committed to building or rebuilding and supporting four network architectures: CDMA (for 2G), EVDO (for 3G), WiMax (for 4G), and iDEN (for 2G).
Sprint is in the position where it may variously be sold (to Deutsche Telekom to merge with its T-Mobile USA division, which would add both GSM and UMTS/HSPA to the mix!), sell off its Nextel division (to a public safety venture headed by Cyren Call), and/or spin off its WiMax division or form a broad venture with Clearwire to build and market it.
Update: Oh, yeah, and Qwest walks away from Sprint partnership, switching to Verizon Wireless as its partner. Qwest spun off its cell division years ago, and has no overlap in its wireline territory with Verizon.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:25 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cellular, Cluelessness, Financial | Comments (0)
Broadband over powerline (BPL) is always next year’s technology; now it’s never. Is never soon enough for you? For about the last 13 years, BPL was the going to be the third pipe into the home, supplementing the two incumbent wireline offerings of DSL and cable, which had developed into monopoly or duopoly controls most places in the world. Two years ago, with favorable FCC and upcoming EC decisions on BPL either released or about to happen, BPL seemed about to come into its own. I wrote a positive piece for The Economist based in large part on an enormous deployment that was contracted and underway in Texas, and a contract that had just been signed in France. These two events seemed like they would catalyze BPL.
About 18 months later, the Current Communicatins and TXU (now Oncor) Electric Delivery deal, which was expected to pass 2m homes by the end of 2008, is over, with Oncor purchasing the telecommunications network for $90m a few days ago. Oncor will use just the smart grid features that allow dramatically improved network monitoring—which is a well-understood aspect of data over powerlines, dating to much slower and primitive networks. The Dallas Morning News reports that just 64,000 homes were wired for BPL so far, and that Oncor will not offer Internet access. Oncor had agreed in 2006 to pay $150m for smart-grid features.
Google was a Current investor, which gave more credence to their plans in 2006. The company had already rolled out some smaller markets, overcome equipment problems, and had a positive relationship with the ARRL, the amateur radio society, in resolving interference issues. Hams have been the biggest complaintants with the FCC over BPL because hams are primary and secondary licensed users in the bands they use, while BPL is an unlicensed use.
The French deployment by SIPPEREC, a utility that manages power for the suburbs of Paris, stated that 1.5m homes would eventually be passed with BPL service, but no information has been released since Feb. 2007 about the project, which makes it likely that it simply didn’t happen.
Even when I was researching the Economist piece, I was troubled by the many European deployments that were announced, went into trials, and then disappeared without a trace. Still, there were some active projects in Spain, Switzerland, and Ireland, and the rollouts in France and Texas seemed both committed (contracts were signed) and imminent. But the laws of physics always win, and I can only think that BPL equipment from whatever vendor simply cannot deliver results that work within budget and reliably enough to make network deployment for broadband make any sense.
The FCC’s 2006 order that overruled a number of ARRL objectives stated, essentially, that interference was okay even with licensed purposes as long as it was within tightly controlled parameters. Part of the “BPL is dead” argument I make today stems from an appeals court decision in late April which affirms the FCC licensed/unlicensed approach, but which requires the agency to re-evaluate its information about interference. The FCC failed to disclose fully information from studies it relied on in setting rules, which violated public process. The ARRL wrote up the appeals decision on their site, and notes that a study in the UK that was fully released showed a much lower threshold would be needed.
The agency’s need to redo some of its work, a potential shift of power to Democrats on the commission starting 20-Jan-2009, and the fact that other work shows the rules were established incorrectly could result in restrictions on BPL that make it even less likely to be rolled out. [Initial links via DSL Reports]
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:59 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Power Line | Comments (0)
Boingo offers ads-for-access for iPhone, iPod touch users in 28 airports: If you’re traveling in the US, Canada, or the UK through one of the 28 airports operated by Boingo’s Concourse division, you can trade 15 seconds of your life for 15 minutes of free Wi-Fi. The company has tested this previously, and has now rolled the deal out.
The service is enabled by JiWire, which has gradually transitioned itself from a site that developed a hotspot directory supplemented by editorial coverage and how-to’s on wireless data, to one that’s now hotspot directory plus hotspot advertising. The transition is interesting, as it reflects what I’ve seen on Wi-Fi Networking News: Wi-Fi is easier to use, as is cell data; costs for equipment is lower or you don’t need to make a choice about equipment; and usage is up so far at hotspots that there’s an audience there for commercial-based access.
MetroFi has famously declared free access to metro-scale services paid for by advertising to be unworkable; that may be so, given that they were the biggest proponent of it for a few years, and no other company followed them into that approach. However, metro-scale ad-supported Wi-Fi, in which residential and roaming users alike looked at banners and commercials in exchange for servcie is a far cry from the focused hotspot advertising market.
Hotspot ads involve a very open exchange between surfer and service, and JiWire pushes the watch-for-access model quite heavily. What’s saving a few bucks worth to you? 15 seconds? 30 seconds? If so, we have a deal for you, they say, that also works for the advertiser and the service provider (and JiWire). It’s not subtle; you have to watch the ad to gain access. But it seems like a reasonable exchange, with two hours’ access up to a full day running $4 to $12 in the U.S. at paid locations. (Of course, I subscribe to Boingo Wireless’s roaming service now, so I can bypass the ads in favor of paying $22 per month for unlimited usage, too. That’s part of that tradeoff.)
(Disclosure: I own a very small number of share in JiWire as part of my early working relationship with them.)
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 12:04 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Hot Spot, Hot Spot Advertising | Comments (0)
Colorado communities consider whether to move forward with vendor: 10 communities put together a joint RFP to allow a single firm to work across the entire area outside Denver. However, C-Com reportedly has not been able to obtain the funding necessary to the build the network. Despite the communities working together, they did not offer anchor tenancy or any service purchase guarantees. This makes the proposal unworkable in today’s climate, and it’s astounding that any firm would agree to such terms, even last year. E-Path is going through similar difficulties in Long Island, New York. Due diligence by investors will lead to sites like mine and Muniwireless.com, which will tell hundreds of stories about how networks that lack municipal service commitments appear to be unworkable and unsustainable.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:31 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Municipal | Comments (0)
It’s not confirmed by the telecom giant, but several people have been able to replicate it: If you own an iPhone, you can log in at an AT&T hotspot or a Starbucks through their AT&T portal link (upper right corner of the T-Mobile screen, and soon to be a unique SSID), enter your phone number, and have free access. This is nifty, and not unexpected. AT&T is providing free service to 7 million DSL and fiber customers and 5 million remote business access customers. Adding a couple million iPhone users as an additional tie for continued loyalty is a no brainer.
Stories with pictures at MacRumors and Ars Technica. I’ll test this out with my neighborhood Starbucks tomorrow. [Link via Fabio Zambelli]
Update: Well, that didn’t last. It was clearly a test, only a test, and AT&T has pulled the plug for the moment. I suspected that with no announcements, and a national network, they might simply have flipped a switch not understanding how rabid we are all.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 8:46 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Free, Hot Spot | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
A Miami Beach reader noted my Florida links yesterday, and wondered why that city’s $5m IBM network isn’t live: The network contracted was awarded in 2006, completed 6 months ago, and the reader can get great signal strength. But no Internet feed. Anyone in Miami Beach know?
The brilliant xkcd comic takes it to the next step: Wireless zero config? Try overzealous wireless config. 
Microwave oven may have disrupted reader’s Wi-Fi: Rob Pegoraro over at the Washington Post notes that a friend of his discovered through the process of elimination that his microwave oven was acting as a big interferer with his Wi-Fi network. The oven in question eventually started smoking and burned itself out, and its removal resulted in the network working fine. All microwave ovens produce low-intensity 2.4 GHz radio waves when in use; they don’t leak the high-intensity signals that are reflected to agitate water molecules and heat food. But Wi-Fi uses such low signal strength to encode data that microwave ovens can be enough of an interferer to slow networks down. They won’t cook you though, unless you crawl inside and close the door.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:02 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (1)
Ten thousand is an arbitrary place to put a stick in the sand, but significant nonetheless: The milestone of 10,000 McDonald’s wired up—a few hundred have back access only, due to being stores within WalMart centers—is a vindication of Wayport’s long-term strategy, dating back to 2004. Wayport switched at that point from a slightly more public-faced, public-access company to one that understood that back-office operations could be just as valuable, if less sexy, than front-facing consumer networks. Dan Lowden, Wayport’s long-time marketing and business development chief, said yesterday, “In a lot of these venues, the back office comes first. The Wi-Fi public access for some is a big priority, but for others it’s a nice to have, great thing to have, but the priority is the back office.”
Although several other quick-service restaurants like McDonald’s lack any comprehensive Wi-Fi plan—Burger King, Wendy’s, and Subway to name three of the largest—Wayport is locked out of working with direct competitors. This opens the potential for another firm to handle a several-thousand-location network. Wayport has worked with both McDonald’s corporate-owned stores (about 2/3rds of stores in the U.S.), as well as reaching out to franchisees, who Lowden noted pay a predetermined flat rate for the service via McDonald’s. “It’s made them incredibly efficient to be able to offer this to their franchisees at one price, instead of variable pricing,” he noted. Wayport acts as the layer between various telecom providers, applications and services, and the stores.
Wayport provides several kinds of back-office services, although credit-card processing was the first thing htey rolled out. They’ve extended to remote video feeds for security, Redbox DVD rental systems that are found in some McDonald’s, and kiosks used for job applications. Lowden said Wayport offers things as straightforward but critical as a dial-up fail-safe when a broadband connection drops.
Wayport also manages AT&T’s hotspot network, which puts them in the unwiring seat for the 7,000-odd Starbucks stores that will converted from T-Mobile to AT&T service during 2008. Wayport was once the clear leader in the hotspot builder market, with T-Mobile in the second position. Now, Wayport will be operating through a direct contract or management agreement over 18,000 hotspots in the U.S.; T-Mobile will likely be the second biggest with a couple thousand locations (Borders and FedEx/Kinko’s tops among them). The No. 3 player is hard to figure. Panera?
I’ve been predicting for some time that media on the edge—music, videos, movies, and games stored on servers on the local Wi-Fi network—will be the next big development in venue-oriented Wi-Fi, with Starbucks likely far in the lead. Lowden wouldn’t comment on any specific plans in the works, of course, but said generally, “Storing and caching all that content on the edge…hasn’t been leveraged in the past, but it will be in the future to create a very unique experience.” At Barnes & Noble, Wayport caches some multimedia data that’s available to customers in the stores.
The advantage for in-store media storage is that you can leverage the speed of the local network, and add additional access points to distribute network load. The choke point is no longer the Internet connection, but local network speed. I expect—though Wayport, AT&T, and Starbucks haven’t said it—that Starbucks infrastructure will be all 802.11n for this reason, likely with both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz support for the best throughput in the higher-frequency band for media transactions. (In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could only buy movies via 5 GHz.)
Lowden also noted that the proliferation of mobile devices with Wi-Fi built in have led to them reaching out to venues that wouldn’t have made sense for them to work with previously, and for unlikely candidates to reach out to them, too. Wayport is now working with a number of healthcare facilities that, while they have their own network infrastructure, wanted to outsource public access Wi-Fi (whether they choose to charge or underwrite it), and certain applications that they’re not as experienced with running themselves.
A little history: In 2001 and again in 2004, the heat seemed to be on the public side of Wi-Fi: lots of money to be made, ostensibly, lots of partnerships and venues to be built, and an overcrowded supply of infrastructure builders. The year before, Wayport looked to be an also-ran in the hotspot provider business.
Despite being one of the earliest firms to put Ethernet and then Wi-Fi into hotels, and build out hotspots in airports; and despite their survival of the first hotspot meltdown in 2001 during the dotcom crash and brief venture capital shortage; and despite their early entrance into allowing wholesale pricing for hotspot aggregators; the firm seemed about to be eclipsed by apparently deep-pocketed Cometa (with AT&T, IBM, and Intel in various capital and support roles), Toshiba’s mom-and-pop focused turnkey system, and T-Mobile, which had the Starbucks contract. What a difference a year makes.
Cometa, Toshiba, and Wayport contended for the contract to build out back-office and public-access service at McDonald’s in the U.S., and Wayport won. Within a few weeks, Toshiba passed its few hundred locations to Cometa, which shut its doors in May 2004. Wayport, meanwhile, had cooked up a strategy for McDonald’s that it announced later that month.
Their approach involved a fixed-rate charged for unlimited access by retail network partners for all the locations in their pool. This meant that partners had a fixed cost, instead of a per-session cost, and Wayport could obtain specific revenue even before usage by a partner ramped up. Wayport hasn’t discussed the details of this arrangement in depth since, but has partnered with Sony with its Mylo, Nintendo with its DS game player, and ZipIt with its wireless messaging appliance.
The McDonald’s deal also apparently gave Wayport a way to extend its work with SBC-later-AT&T; Wayport had earlier in 2004 became the managed-services contractor for SBC to build out The UPS Store/Mailboxes Etc. nationwide. (UPS dropped AT&T as its partner in mid-2007, although that didn’t appear to have anything to do with Wayport’s role.)
AT&T through Wayport developed its large resold/managed footprint that incorporated resale of Wayport’s McDonald’s locations with the UPS Store and a few hundred other managed locations, including a handful of airports. The Cingular acquisition of AT&T Wireless put more airports in SBC’s hands, too. (SBC was once the 60 percent majority owner of Cingular; when SBC and BellSouth, the other owner, merged that put the newly rebranded AT&T in charge of Cingular which it relabeled as AT&T. Confusing, huh?)
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:25 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Aggregators, Financial, Hot Spot | Comments (0)
Out-of-sight, out-of-mesh: PacketHop announces first 802.11s mesh standard products based on the likely-to-be-approved current draft. The mesh standard is about endpoints, and I’d entirely lost track of it; it has nothing to do with how metro-scale devices mesh way up on poles. 802.11s mesh should allow end-point devices to form their own loose associations, which could improve throughput and range across parts of a network. Latency increases when you have a mesh network, because devices require more hops to reach a gateway, but depending on how smart meshes are about tokens and limiting power, they can exchange data at higher speeds among themselves without a central chokepoint. PacketHop, acquired by SRI International, is offering their technology as something hardware makers can integrate, rather than as a set of chips or a reference product.
Stalled-Fi in Florida: The Sun Sentinal newspaper looks at stalled, dropped efforts at city-wide Wi-Fi in Palm Beach County. Boynton Beach had a network early on, in 2005, but the city dropped the operator in March 31 due to complaints over maintenance. Delray Beach (E-Path) and West Palm Beach haven’t advanced.
Minneapolis Wi-Fi requires booster for best use: This isn’t an enormous surprise, or anything, and one of the consultants on the Minneapolis project said that USI Wireless starts with the notion that a booster is needed, which is highly sensible. Reporter Steve Alexander found service was highly variable outdoors with a standard laptop Wi-Fi adapter. The company sells boosters: a $160 high-gain laptop card and an $80 ($5/mo rental) home bridge. Alexander didn’t re-test problem areas with the high-gain card. You can see the map of Alexander’s test locations.
Orange Line in Los Angeles can’t attract Wi-Fi operator: A spokesperson suggested riders should take advantage of “existing satellite” providers, where I think he’ll be red-faced to know he should have said cellular. Or the reporter misheard. Say satellite and cellular each ten times fast. Now drink a glass of water.
Scarborough (Yorkshire Coast, UK) offers free Wi-Fi: 5.5m visitors pass through this coastal town each year, and a local business association has decided to unleash free Wi-Fi. The service will be pointed outwards for boats in the harbor, as well as inland.
Free Wi-Fi float in Sebastopol parade: The Apple Blossom Festival Parade last Saturday included “a fluorescent and sparkle-clad crew that shouted, ‘Free Wi-Fi.’ ” The parade was led by a 1906 San Francisco Earthquake survivor.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:09 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (0)
The Big Easy gets a big loss with EarthLink’s pullout: InformationWeek reports that EarthLink attempted to sell the network, get the city to buy it, and then to simply give the network (and its obligations) away, but had no takers on any front.
EarthLink announced its most recent quarter’s earnings a few days ago, and they managed to turn a GAAP profit, while staunching the bleeding of so many businesses that had no short-term and seemingly little medium-term potential for net revenue. The company dramatically slashed its marketing, which they found only caused subscribers to join and quit. While revenue dropped from $290m to $235m year over year in Q1, operating costs and expenses were cut from $321m to $198m, with the most noticeable drop in sales and marketing ($99m to $31m) and operations and customer support ($60m to $39m). They recorded $58m in earnings versus a year ago’s $22m loss.
Employees dropped from 2,108 to 922 during the period, while subscribers dropped from 5.7m to 3.6m. But it’s worth noting that the biggest drop happened last year already: the 31-Dec-2007 subscriber count was 3.9m. They’re making slightly more money from each of those remaining customers, and have slightly lower churn. Their municipal write-off is lower, too, as they’ve taken most of the expense, and have offloaded more and more of their future obligations.
The company still has the same problem that it had before it started unwinding its services beyond dial-up and broadband: None of its markets are expanding, and it has increasingly poor access to reasonably priced broadband to resell to customers, as no cable or DSL providers are obligated to provide true wholesale rates.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:52 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Financial, Municipal | Comments (0)
Although a San Antonio PR guy spotted the AT&T trucks at a Starbucks last week, this press release makes it official: AT&T and Starbucks co-announced today that San Antonio—AT&T’s corporate HQ town—is the first city to be unwired with AT&T’s flavor of Wi-Fi in Starbucks stores. Other markets will follow this year, although, as before, there’s no list of markets nor a time table beyond the notion that “it will continue through 2008.”
The companies also said that AT&T high-speed DSL and fiber customers will gain free access at 7,000 Starbucks starting May 1, but as other eagle-eyed readers have noted, that option is already available on any T-Mobile login page that anyone’s written me about or I’ve seen. The difference will be that a separate SSID called ATTWiFi will be available as an option for network selection, presenting a different gateway page.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:02 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Hot Spot | Comments (0)
Starbucks entertainment senior VP “left” the company today; its CTO subsumes the entertainment function: If you were wondering if Starbucks might provide even clearer signals about its future plans regarding in-store entertainment and its deal with AT&T to take over providing Wi-Fi services and back-end operations, today’s brief announcement speaks volumes. Chris Bruzzo, the company’s chief technology office, will add the entertainment group’s functions to his current purview. This doesn’t surprise me after speaking with Bruzzo two months when the AT&T deal was announced. (A few details from that talk.)
When I talked to Bruzzo, he was clearly focused on how to improve the culture of the stores, with technology being one tool. He talked about connectivity being “a core part of the Starbucks experience” (that’s Experience with a [tm]), and that he wanted Starbucks customers to be able to “tell stories” about coffee, music, and other things. That implies a kind of online medium for discussion and interaction that doesn’t yet exist, but that is more likely to happen with Bruzzo’s expanded role.
Bruzzo had already tipped me to the fact that Starbucks has caching media servers in its stores; that’s how the Starbucks iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store combination technology works with iTunes, the iPhone, and the iPod touch in the several markets in which that’s offered. (Those plans never advanced much after the initial launch, by the way: Seattle, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay Area got service, but Chicago and Los Angeles are still listed as “coming soon,” and other metropolitan areas are now “by the end of 2008,” which would tie in neatly with Starbucks’ other plans.)
With caching servers, content is pushed to the edge. Retrieving a 2 GB movie from iTunes thus becomes a matter of a few minutes to a laptop (or even faster if 802.11n networks are being deployed by AT&T), rather than 30 to 120 minutes over a typical home broadband connection. Stop in to Starbucks and fill up—with media. Neat, huh?
Back in February, Bruzzo described how the company has a unique relationship with its customers, who are already bringing their digital lifestyle into the stores, allowing hyper-local conversations to take place. “Starbucks is uniquely positioned to provide that kind of very local opportunity. It’s what we do. The beginning of that is what we do today when we curate music, and books.” The new AT&T relationship, he said, “gives us a landscape to continue to experiemnt with those kinds of things even at a local level.”
As for the kinds of devices used, “We shouldn’t be limited in our thoughts about connected devices to just communications devices; they should be PSPs [PlayStation Portables] and cameras.” I expect that we will see a lot of change, much of workshopped in Seattle-area stores, in the digital side of Starbucks this year.
I will also repeat my expectation that the launch of a 3G iPhone will involve a Starbucks tie-in, and that the date for the first Starbucks AT&T markets to go live with AT&T in charge will coincide with the release of the 3G iPhone. The timing is too close to be coincidental. (Rumors today are that the 3G iPhone will be announced at the June 9 developers conference that Apple runs. I’ll be at that event’s keynote.)
Bruzzo has been with the company for not much over a year, coming off a few years as head of communications (talking, not technology) at Amazon. In January 2008, he was boosted to chief technology and chief information officer, as well as being appointed a vice president. That’s a pretty fast rise; he must have, you know, a few good ideas. He’s behind My Starbucks Idea, the site the company is using to let its customers give it free, valuable advice. One of the fascinating, Cluetrained elements of that site is the transparency: ideas that are submitted can be viewed by other visitors to the site, and voted upon. Suggestion boxes are usually locked tight, whether in the real world or on the Net. Some posts have thousands of votes and hundreds of comments.
Today’s announcement also included a note that Starbucks is selling its Hear Music division to its partner in the venture, Concord Music Group. Hear signed Paul McCartney among other musicians; Starbucks will keep working with Concord, so this might not be quite as big a change in direction as a change in its internal focus. This is yet another move of many by company head Howard Schultz, who took charge of the firm again, and started getting rid of top executives, reorganizing divisions, and making announcements about massive changes in the stores, notably replacing its barista-hiding super-automated coffeemakers with shorter, more controllable systems, and tearing out the stinking breakfast sandwich ovens.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:01 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Hot Spot, Media | Comments (0)
Artist’s project sweeps Wi-Fi into watching your neighbor: The Register reports on an art project in Brooklyn where Emery Martin heads a conceptual group that advocates volunteers to monitor open Wi-Fi networks to make terrorists aren’t planning attacks on “your own home network.” He provides technical details for connecting to and dumping all the traffic passing over open access points. It’s a send-up of the government’s warrantless monitoring of data communications, really.
My hometown of Eugene, Ore., expands Wi-Fi: The City of Eugene, where I lived during my formative teenage years, has expanded its free Wi-Fi access to five locations, including three pools and five community centers. It’s also available at airport, public library, local arts center, city hall, and elsewhere.
Milpitas votes to take over EarthLink’s network assets: The city will assume control of the assets, sell some equipment to raise replacement cost funds, and shut down public access, as previously expected. Their yearly costs for operation, most electricity, are estimated at $10,000 to $12,000 for the compact network.
Xirrus releases Windows XP version of monitoring widget: The free Yahoo widget shows current Wi-Fi area status in a kind of radar sweeping method, and provides a popup with full details about all nearby networks and their access points. The widget was previously release as a Vista gadget. (Gads, I can’t believe I just had to write that sentence. I suppose next, it will be a Windows Me gee-gaw, and then a Windows 98 jimcrack, and then, finally, a Windows 95 tchotchke.)
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:54 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (0)
BT opens up its hotspot network, while maintaining control: Can BT, by controlling the hardware and network infrastructure, let businesses effectively become new hotspots in its OpenZone network? I discuss this and more in this mobile post.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 12:18 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Hot Spot | Comments (0)
BT will upgrade its business customers broadband modem firmware to allow public hotspot service: This is a very, very interesting move on the part of the UK’s giant telecom provider. The company will upgrade the firmware for its BT Business Total Broadband customers, which number 170,000. By flipping a switch, the business’s modem will create an outpost of BT OpenZone, using a separate SSID, and a “secure Internet channel,” as the press release describes it, which means a VLAN or similarly segregated connection that prevents access to the business’s internal network.
The notion is that visitors can gain Internet access by using an existing OpenZone subscription, paying a fee (the business can sell vouchers), or being a member of a roaming network. The business customers receive 50 to 500 minutes of use on OpenZone each month themselves, based on their BT contract for broadband.
This business hotspot option extends a previous relationship for residential users with Fon that allows BT home users to flip a switch and become a Fonero.
These kinds of organic extensions of networks have very little impact on the party that’s sharing their broadband, because there’s almost no work involved. But if enough people opt in, it can have a large impact on the amount of hotspot service that’s available. While I have critiqued Fon for its backside-utility quotient—how readily one can get work done or even make a phone call at many Foneros’ locations—the BT business plan assures that hotspots will be in places where people work and gather.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:51 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Hot Spot | Comments (0)
John Cox exhaustively examines what works (and doesn’t) with municipal Wi-Fi for Network World: This article thoroughly goes over what failed in rolling out city-wide Wi-Fi, and what kinds of networks seem to be playing out successfully so far. There’s not enough history with nearly any of the “successful” networks out there, but building networks designed primarily for municipal or public safety purposes seems to produce revenue savings and an increase in specific results. You have to love the lead, too: “Municipal Wi-Fi is dead.” Followed by a good summary of how the “classic” flavor is all washed up.
Portland, Ore., considers its options with MetroFi’s stalled network: The city of Portland alerted MetroFi in February that it considers the company “in default of contract,” according to the (Portland) Oregonian. MetroFi told the paper that his firm won’t be finishing the network without “financial support from the city and left open the possibility MetroFi will shut off the entire system.” CEO Chuck Haas also seems to have sworn off ad-supported Wi-Fi, something the company switched to years ago, deciding there’s truly not enough revenue there to turn a profit. Local group Personal Telco may move into a more leading role, given their steady work while MetroFi fiddled with their business model.
The Oregonian’s blog cites some items from the 6 Feb. 2008 letter sent by Portland to MetroFi, noting a lack of ongoing communication and maintenance, as well as a failure to provide information about its advertising partner MSN’s privacy practices.
Washington State Ferry Wi-Fi adjusts pricing: Ferry-Fi operator Parsons now offers 2-hour sessions for $3.95, and pre-paid packages of up to 20 sessions for $29.95 (about $1.50 per session). Monthly service remains $30 per month, but Parsons roams with Boingo and iPass at no extra charge.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 4:33 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Wee-Fi | Comments (0)