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March 31, 2008

Wee-Fi: Topless Meetings; Projects-Fi; Boston Launch; Rural-Fi; Chrysler-Fi; Wi-Fi Chip-Fi

By Glenn Fleishman

No laptops allowed: So-called topless (nice sexy term for “laptop-less”) meetings are coming into vogue? It’s hard to tell if it’s a trend, but to judge by conferences I’ve attended, no one pays attention to anything any more. Banning laptops might be an advantage to promoting shorter meetings—people will be jonesing so hard for their ‘top that they’ll cut to the chase.

Internet Archive offers fiber-based service to public housing project: Forget Wi-Fi. How about 100 Mbps to each apartment in a 260-unit project (Valencia Gardens)? That’s Brewster Kahle, Internet pioneer and all-around good guy, written large. His efforts intend to put high-speed service into 2,500 units, mostly by the end of the year. The project ties into city-owned fiber, and is routed through the archive’s high-speed NOC. With this project and the Meraki Free the Net mesh effort, San Francisco could move out of the status of a developing nation in terms of widespread broadband access.

Boston Wi-Fi project launches: The first pilot project under the direction of Openairboston launched today, with a square mile in Roxbury and Dorchester, passing about 8,000 homes. Service is free for 30 days, then $10 per month thereafter.

Open Range Communications gets $267m loan for rural broadband: The funds are intended to push service into an extraordinary 518 rural areas across 17 states. They’ve raised $100m privately, too, GigaOm reports. They won’t deploy just one set of technology, but will sublet spectrum and use a satellite range for ground service, Om Malik writes.

Chrysler will put Wi-Fi into cars: Bloomberg News reports that Chrysler intends later this year to offer dealer-installed cellular Internet links in cars. The Chrysler chief for this effort misuses the term Wi-Fi, though, as it’s cell data with car drivers required to obtain a cell subscription. The service will move to factory-installed after 2008. There’s not much detail on what drivers and passengers will be able to use the service for in this brief article.

Wi-Fi chip shipments dectupled in five years; revenue quintupled: ABI Research notes that 440m Wi-Fi chipsets will ship in 2008, 10 times greater than in 2003. However, revenue is just 5 times higher, which shows how even with more advanced chips in the mix, the race to the bottom continues. Broadcom was the leading vendor in ABI’s analysis.

Posted by Glennf at March 31, 2008 3:53 PM

Categories: Wee-Fi

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