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The firm that promised mobile everything for a low, low price but owned no network has disappeared: My friend Nancy Gohring at IDG News Service wrote a series of articles in mid-2009 about Zer01, a firm that said it was not a mobile virtual network operator, but somehow had access to a national network on which it would offer unlimited calling, mobile broadband, texting, and other features at a rate far below what operators charge. Unlimited mobile data seemed particularly impossible, given carriers cap at 5 GB for laptop use, and only a handful have specific unlimited smartphone (no tethering) data plans.
Nancy writes today that Zer01's Web site has gone dark, referring users to Google; its press spokesperson, Ron Dresner, didn't return calls and his Web site no longer lists Zer01 as a client; and Zer01 doesn't appear to be involved in the upcoming CTIA trade show.
I reiterate to anyone who doesn't know but will listen: all these deals that seem too good to be true are invariably too good to be true.
Meanwhile, the mainstream carriers now offer unlimited calling and texting plans that, for heavy users, are relatively inexpensive compared to previous plans that used pools of minutes and messages.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:03 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness | 2 Comments
Jennifer calls Leo Laporte's Tech Guy radio show to complain her "linksys" has disappeared: She starts by explaining that her "linksys" has gone away, and she bought a USB wireless extender, but it still doesn't show up. Leo asks, wait, do you have a wireless router? No, she's been using this other network.
Leo explains to her that she's stealing, and exposes herself to tremendous risk by being on an open network. "When you see an access point named linksys, it's usually because the person who set it up is kind of clueless," he notes.
I like Leo not compromising on the ethics, while offering security advice, and suggesting she get her own connection.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:47 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness | No Comments
Verizon's limited, irritating Wi-Fi access for broadband subscribers now extends to mobile broadband customers, too: Old! Unimproved! But extended! Verizon's Windows-only, laptop/netbook-only free Wi-Fi access, enabled via a subset of Boingo Wireless's network, has been extended to its mobile broadband subscribers. That's laptop adapter/card 3G users--not smartphone users, who still don't get free Wi-Fi.
Not only do you have to use Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or 7, but you have to run Verizon's VZAccess Manager, and manually select a network when one is available. No manual login, no Mac OS X support, no shoes, no service.
I wrote about the limits of Verizon's deal back on 28 July 2009 in "Verizon Limits Free Wi-Fi to Laptops." Verizon is only offering access to "thousands" of hotspots nationwide.
This is in contrast to AT&T's deal, which now encompasses 27m subscribers to DSL, fiber, or business services, as well as all the laptop 3G users, and all iPhone, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile smartphones with Wi-Fi built in. Smartphone subscribers can only use the free service from the smartphone, which is an automatic connection on the iPhone and some other models. Non-smartphone subscribers can log in with a user name and password from any device; no special software required. And AT&T gives access to its 20,000-strong hotspot network. (That's less of an issue come January when the 11,000 McDonald's stores in that network go free.)
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 8:57 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness, Free, Hot Spot | No Comments | No TrackBacks
A pub in the UK that's part of The Cloud's network has been hit with £8,000 illegal download fine: ZDNet UK reports on some fragmentary information that a UK pub was hit with a fine in a civil case this last summer of £8,000 due to copyrighted material that was pirated over the pub's Wi-Fi network. The pieces don't entirely add up: it was a civil, not a criminal prosecution; UK law, like the US, seemingly should be exempt as a provider of service; and we don't know which pub nor what content. If the pub itself were downloading movies and making them available, then the fine would make some sort of sense.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:33 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness, International, Legal | No Comments
Coshocton County, Ohio, shutters a hotzone because of a movie download: The local paper reports that Sony Pictures notified OneCommunity, which operates the county's one-block hotzone, that a movie was downloaded "illegally." The article doesn't provide enough details to know whether this was via BitTorrent, a pirate movie site, or other means. It's possible it was a perfectly legal download that Sony doesn't like, too, such as a transfer of a movie for personal use or a legal movie download that was mischaracterized.
In any case, it doesn't seem that Sony nor the MPAA (which is mentioned in the article but didn't apparently contact the county at all) asked for the network to be shut down. Further, there's no legal basis on which to close down a network because of illegal use. The common-carrier and other ISP laws protect such operations, even though if Sony had filed suit the ISP might have had to produce certain logs and other connection records.
My friend Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing went with the knee-jerk headline: "MPAA Shuts Down Entire Town's Muni WiFi over a Single Download," when it wasn't a whole town, the MPAA wasn't apparently involved, and the shutdown was by the county, which didn't have to do so. The MPAA told MediaPost that it "didn't ask for the network to be shuttered."
What's likely here is that the county overreacted, and decided to limit any potential liability immediately, even though no sanctions or actions were apparently threatened by Sony (or the MPAA). In similar cases, private and governmental bodies have simply said, "Whatever" or turned to groups like the EFF for support.
Update: The network was brought back up on Friday. Sony received a number of complaints about its actions, despite not actually having asked the county to turn its network off. Sony reportedly emailed the county, and must have said it wouldn't pursue any action, which led to the county turning the network back on.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:28 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness, Hot Spot, Legal, Municipal | No Comments
It was earlier rumored that any iPhone releases in China would lack Wi-Fi; that's turned out to be true: I wrote back on 15 July 2009, in addressing what was a rumor at the time, why Apple couldn't release a Wi-Fi-enabled iPhone in China, because Apple would have to include WAPI, a proprietary government-backed non-disclosed Wi-Fi security spec. To use WAPI, non-Chinese firms have to partner with one of several in-country companies that are controlled by the military or government or both.
The AP notes, "Unicom's iPhones lack WiFi because it was temporarily banned by Beijing, which was promoting a rival Chinese system, according to BDA. The ban was relaxed in May after manufacturing had begun." That's incorrect. Wi-Fi wasn't banned, rather devices that used Wi-Fi with the internationally supported IEEE security standards that China doesn't like.
I have long maintained that China developed WAPI for two reasons: first, to provide an obvious back channel into encrypted communications that would allow the government to monitor as it desired; second, to provide access to foreign intellectual property by requiring companies to work with a local partner.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 11:29 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cellular, Cluelessness, International, Security | No Comments
The fine print is now available on Verizon's free Wi-Fi deal for its broadband customers: Only laptop Windows XP/Vista (32-bit only) users need apply. Which seems insane to me, but it's also in line with Verizon's remarkable micro-management of its users and usage. The "how to get it" page explaining how to obtain free Wi-Fi notes, "Verizon Wi-Fi is not available for PDAs, phones, desktop PCs or Macs."
I can reason that the PDA and phone issue is that the company hasn't figured out which smartphones and others to add the service to and whether to charge for it. AT&T offers iPhone and some BlackBerry owners free Wi-Fi on its home network of 20,000 hotspots (mostly McDonald's and Starbucks locations); Verizon, however, operates no Wi-Fi network, so additional users mean additional costs. Smartphone users are extremely heavy Wi-Fi data consumers, and if Verizon's deal with Boingo isn't flat-rate per user, then that might explain the hesitation.
The limit to laptops is sort of ridiculous. Desktop PC owners won't easily be able to access laptops, and you have to do be a broadband Verizon customer already, so it's not like you'd be using a Wi-Fi hotspot as your primary Internet connection, would you? There's a story here that's not being told.
The lack of Mac support is simply absurd. Boingo supports Windows and Mac OS X, and Verizon has long had excellent software and tech support for its 3G hardware for Mac OS X.
But wait! There's more. As I noted in a revised version of the story yesterday, IDG News Service noted and a spot check reveals that Verizon isn't offering McDonald's stores, which Boingo resells from AT&T's network. The reason there might be that the McDonald's contract is organized differently. Wayport signed up McD years ago, and structured its arrangement to offer flat-rate resale fees per user in a network, instead of session fees. With that ostensibly still in place even after AT&T's acquisition of Wayport, Verizon might not want to pay the associated fees to offer McDonald's access. This plus Verizon's awful hotspot finder rips some of the heart out of the ubiquity of Boingo's U.S. network.
Finally, Verizon limits this free offer to higher-tiered DSL and fiber (FiOS) subscribers. Existing 3 Mbps DSL or faster and 20 Mbps FiOS or faster customers are the only ones who qualify. Further, only new FiOS customers who buy 25 Mbps or faster connections will qualify.
This is all shooting itself in the foot; penny wise, pound foolish. If you're going to make an extra add-on attractive, you can't dangle a bright shiny ball at all your customers, and then snatch it away from what's likely 25 to 40 percent of them, based on market research.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:46 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness, Free | 1 Comment
Report from IPI not surprisingly gets its facts all wrong: It's been a long, long time since I had to apply the "sock puppet" tag to a post, but it's been a while since telecom-funded thinktanks that don't disclose their funding have written reports that allege to explain why municipal ownership of telecom services are always mismanaged. I came to be a fan of public/private operations, in which cities and towns figured out their needs, and worked with private contractors who would own and operate networks that would serve many purposes (public, academic, digital divide, public safety, and municipal). Networks built along these lines have been completed and get good marks; those that were built entirely by municipalities or for entirely public access purposes seem to have faded away, except for a few restricted to relatively small towns.
The latest report, by Barry Aarons, is called "We Told You So! Continue to Say 'No' to Municipal Broadband Networks." I suppose his next report will be title, "Cars Are So Much Better Than Horses," and "DC Power: Work of Satan."
In any case, Aarons, formerly associated with major telecoms and who works as industry consultant, appears to be trying to forestall putting stimulus broadband dollars into municipal hands. I tend to agree: I'd rather see non-profits and local telecom groups use existing expertise and knowledge of underserved audiences to built out infrastructure. Cities, towns, and counties likely have a role in establishing and leasing rights of way and facilitating access for others putting services in.
However, I have to take issue with the facts. There are essentially no municipal Wi-Fi networks of the type that Aarons wants to use as a strawman. Over and over, this report cites private efforts, and misstates facts.
Page 1: "For example, in Tempe, Arizona there were three times as many antennas required at a cost of over $1 million or twice the original cost." True, but that network was built by what became Kite Networks, and which wasn't well designed. The city didn't buy any services from the network, but was supposed to receive free roaming accounts in exchange for the quasi-franchise.
Page 2: "And now that analog television broadcasting has been eliminated it is likely that portions of that spectrum may become available for expanded wireless competition." That spectrum was already auctioned off for $20 billion to AT&T, Verizon, and others.
"...some communities’ municipal wireless projects are, in fact, alive and well. And there still appears to be an appetite for such programs as evidenced by the estimated $900 million invested to this point." Invested, almost entirely, by private entities.
On Philadelphia: "...city officials thought they could get existing companies to let them use refurbished gear and could build the entire project with 'non-city' financial resources." In the very early stages of the plan, there was no mention of refurbished gear; "non-city" would mean that it wouldn't be paid for by the city?
Subsequent paragraphs cite the failure of the Philadelphia network, but that was built entirely with private dollars. The city put in some funds for initial studies and such, but the money spent on the network was from EarthLink. Further, Aarons writes that EarthLink "closed down this project on June 12, 2008." EarthLink exited the effort, but the network is still running, with a private firm having assumed the assets and operation.
Page 3: "Philadelphia’s experience was considered the flagship of government projects covering huge amounts of area with a system that was considered in 2005 to be the cutting edge." Well...no. It was the flagship of privately funded metro-scale networks that cities requested would be built with no public money, ownership, nor control. And because the network started being built in 2006, it's not that odd that it used 2005 technology.
On Portland: "And then there is Portland, Oregon, a system that crashed and burned from the start. The city hired a start up company to construct and install its municipal Wi-Fi system." Bzzzt! Sorry! MetroFi paid all its own costs. The city spent a tiny, tiny sum in services, never contracting for its offerings, even. (Had it, Portland would have been using MetroFi as a service provider, much like a telecom.)
"So MetroFi is in default and millions of dollars are yet to be spent to finish a system that is at best 20 to 30 percent completed. The probability is that the project will not be completed at all." Did Aarons write this report in mid-2008? The footnotes aren't from any later than May 2008. The network will never be finished and no one is interested in that.
"So what in Portland went wrong? MetroFi found that municipal government ultimately was unwilling to provide the subsidy that would be necessary to support the system." Uh...wait...so...doesn't that indicate that a privately funded network that attempted and failed to seek public service contracts can't succeed?
On Ashland, Ore.: Ashland isn't Wi-Fi. And it's only mentioned here because it's an ongoing strawman for thinktanks. Note that the figures here date back to 2001: "Begun in 2000....after only one year." Aarons may be using a 2001 report, that I found largely inaccurate, to pull this example in.
On Lompoc, Calif.: This small-town network had a lot of problems, and, in fact, was the poster child of bad network planning and spending. However, it's a) small time and b) nearly sui generis. Only Saint Paul Park, Minn., a similarly small town, had an equally bad blowout after spending city money for a municipally owned network. I don't know of a similar third example in which public funds were used. (Hey, see this is how you write something that accepts contrary examples to one's thesis! What a concept.)
Page 4: On Orlando, Flor.: I don't know anybody who ever cited Orlando, which Aarons note had a short-lived and very inexpensive hotzone in 2004 to 2005.
I can't make heads or tails of this report follow-up. If you read this accurately, fixing Aarons's errors, he's saying that private companies attempting to build large-scale Wi-Fi networks all fail. In the intro, he writes, "We noted in particular that the expense to the cities and counties would likely make these government owned projects expensive failures." Yet the only example that involved significant city dollars is Lompoc; the rest were private efforts, with private risks (and losses).
Of course, Aarons doesn't point to San Francisco, where a private company, Meraki, is building a ground-up Wi-Fi network; to Minneapolis, where a private firm contracted for city services and built a network at its own expense that appears to have enough customers to make a go of it; at Cablevision's huge system, funded by private dollars for its own customers; and so forth.
I don't quite know how or why this "report" came into being, but it's specious from beginning to end. I would have enjoyed seeing a report that attempted to explain from the regulatory and competitive angle why EarthLink, MetroFi, and Kite failed in their efforts (among those of others), as it might teach something to future businesses launching efforts.
In a bit of not quite irony, Aarons praises WiMax in passing. But Clearwire's WiMax service (and all the independent WiMax companies that might come into being for niche markets) has the same constraints and properties as the private firms that failed to make Wi-Fi work on a large scale. WiMax has superior technical characteristics, but it's still a metro-scale network of a type that hasn't been built before.
With WiMax, however, cities didn't issue RFPs. Perhaps, in the ideological world in which these reports are written, that makes all the difference.
Aarons is like a cold warrior, long after the Soviet Union fell. (Perhaps a bad example given the current leadership in Russia.) Long ago, cities and private firms seemed to have mostly decided that cities won't build wireless networks. The battle was lost with private funds.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:49 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness, Municipal, Sock Puppets | 5 Comments
So claims a Verizon spokesperson: In an article in the New Jersey Star-Ledger, Comcast's possible plans to follow Cablevision's lead in pairing Wi-Fi with cable broadband are examined. But you have to read the last paragraph first to get the full impact. Verizon thinks it's a marketing stunt for Cablevision to spend $300m to cover the tri-state area of its franchises with Wi-Fi.
Let's start on the telco side. DSL from the central office into people's homes is dead, more or less, despite tens of millions of deployed lines. It's last century's technology. AT&T and Verizon have put their future into rolling out two different methods of fiber: AT&T prefers fiber to the node (FTTN), where they use very high speed DSL from a neighborhood termination point. DSL works extremely well over very short distances. Verizon has chosen the more expensive option of bringing fiber directly to the home (FTTH).
Read the rest of "Cablevision's Wi-Fi a Stunt?"
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 12:19 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness, Future, Home, Hot Spot
Veteran tech political reporter Declan McCullagh determines Internet Safety Act would apply to everyone who runs a Wi-Fi network: The law imposes unheralded requirements for keeping records on who accesses a given network, something that governments want to track criminals (often citing child-pornography downloaders) regardless of the cost to individuals and businesses in dollars, sense, time, and privacy. Odd how the Republicans back this so strongly; it's the law-and-order thing. But Dems are behind a similar version of the bill.
The act would requires two years worth of data being stored for anyone providing "an electronic communication service or remote computing service." McCullagh's analysis is that this applies to basically every kind of network everywhere run for any purpose by anyone.
He writes:
That sweeps in not just public Wi-Fi access points, but password-protected ones too, and applies to individuals, small businesses, large corporations, libraries, schools, universities, and even government agencies. Voice over IP services may be covered too.
It's unclear what this could possibly mean for home users and casual network operators like cafes. I'm sure larger firms, like Wayport (now an AT&T division), already had data-retention policies and have had to work with law enforcement in the past. But what would I, with my home network, have to do?
Some home Wi-Fi routers do keep internal logs by default, and would record the MAC addresses and timestamps of when access occurred. How about, however, if yours doesn't? Or it keeps one month of data and then dumps it?
I don't think this law's scope was well thought out, clearly, and one hopes that ISPs, consumer groups, and Wi-Fi gateway makers band together to force some sense into it.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:43 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness, Regulation
Starbucks, AT&T biff day one of the card loyalty program: After several hours of occasional attempts to register my Starbucks Card (actually, two) with the company for free Wi-Fi and other rewards, seeing "Service Unavailable," long delays, errors, and a general failure to accept my card--now there's a message. "Due to overwhelming interest in Card Rewards we are currently experiencing difficulty accessing Starbucks Cards accounts. We are working to fix the problem and ask that you please try again later."
(Update: A Starbucks spokesperson called me in the late afternoon to let me know the site was back up and running. They had an excess of interest, shall we say. I checked: the site is working and I was able to register quickly and without a hitch.)
The Card Rewards program allows anyone with a Starbucks Card to register it with Starbucks for freebies, including Wi-Fi. There's an interesting choice (when it worked) where you can select whether to have freebies like free exotic milk options or brewed coffee refills by themselves or with Wi-Fi on top. If you choose Wi-Fi, you're redirected to SBC servers (for nostalgia's sake), at which point everything seems to fall apart.
Trying two separate cards, I was unable to set up an account and get the cards to take. The errors weren't clearly spelled out. Clearly, the system was neither designed to handle demand, nor designed to fail gracefully, blocking users until capacity was available.
For loyal Starbucks patrons, this doesn't come across very well at all.
[Photo by Matt Davis. Used under Creative Commons license.]
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:34 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness, Free, Hot Spot | 4 Comments
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
This child-porn-over-Wi-Fi story baffles me from two fronts: From Minnesota, a person (I use the term lightly) in a town north of Saint Paul and east of Minneapolis decided to use free Wi-Fi at a Dunn Brothers coffeeshop to view child pornography. He apparently sat or crouched in an alley or hallway between the cafe and another business.
Here's what mystifies me. First, someone from the business he's crouching near spots him viewing the porn, and instead of calling 911, reports him to the cafe's manager. Then, the cafe manager shoos the guy away instead of calling the police. Only when the man returns three weeks later does the manager call police.
If you ever see someone viewing images of clearly underage individuals engaged in sexual acts or having those acts performed on them, you call the police. There are times when it's unclear whether the images are against the rules of an orderly society in which we protect its weakest members, but I believe with most of this category of pornography, there is a bright line. There's not much subtle child porn, from the reports issued by the police.
The broader issue of whether one should ever look at images of consenting, legal age participants in naked gymnastics in public places is also pretty clear (no).
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:36 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness, Legal | 1 Comment
Schneier on leaving his Wi-Fi network open: Bruce Schneier is a security savant, and I usually admire his writing. In this case, he wrote something quite stupid for Wired. He explains that he leaves his Wi-Fi at home unsecured and wide open. He walks through technical and legal and practical reasons why closing the network isn't of interest to him. But he only mentions the most important bit in passing: ". If I configure my computer to be secure regardless of the network it's on, then it simply doesn't matter. And if my computer isn't secure on a public network, securing my own network isn't going to reduce my risk very much."
Right.
And how, Mr Security Guru, might I do that? Readers taking his advice without knowing that he's set up encryption for his computer's data across the open network--which is what I assume he's done--would be exposing themselves to risk. He's also wrong about risk profiles. The risk profile at a Wi-Fi hotspot is smaller because of the time dimension (how long someone might attack your computer) and the population dimension (how many people might attack your computer over time).
I don't advise opening your home network because securing your desktop computers and even laptops is so much of a hassle most of the time, that simply disabling local network access--over which more attacks can be launched because many firewalls consider the local network a trusted network and lower their defenses--is the lowest-hanging fruit for average users' protection.
Also, Schneier's discussion with "several lawyers" led to his summary that if someone misused your network, you might wind up plea bargaining over child porn suits or paying the RIAA thousands of dollars to settle, even if you're not at fault. But his conclusion: "I remain unconvinced of this threat, though." I do not.
Finally, Schneier dismisses concerns over ISPs who don't allow their networks to be shared. (Note that although he mentions Fon, he doesn't note their Roadrunner cable deal, which provides their private/public router service to a much larger potential audience with legal sharing ability.) Schneier writes, "But despite the occasional cease-and-desist letter and providers getting pissy at people who exceed some secret bandwidth limit, this isn't a big risk either. The worst that will happen to you is that you'll have to find a new ISP." He is unaware of the near-monopoly in many parts of the US, even in cities where a duopoly exists. In many cases, a cable firm that drops you can't be replaced by any other broadband provider.
Open networks constructed properly with good security are a great addition to the arsenal of access. Implicitly advising everyone to open their APs--not so good.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:13 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness, Security | 4 Comments
Sophos certainly did a great PR job: Dozens of articles have appeared in the last few days trumpeting Sophos's survey conducted for The Times of London. They found that 54 percent of those asked admitted that they've used someone else's Wi-Fi connection without their permission. What's strange about this is two things: The Times characterizes the question asked incorrectly and doesn't note the sample size. On Sophos's site, they provide both the precise question asked and the sample size, which was a meager 560 people.
The Times wrote, "It discovered that 54 per cent of computer users have secretly used someone else’s wireless broadband connection without paying for it." But the question asked according to Sophos was, "Have you ever used someone else's Wi-Fi connection without their permission?"
There's a vast difference, as I have written about for years. The question doesn't encompass whether someone hacked a network to use it--unlikely that very many people would do that at all--so we're talking about people accessing networks that aren't protected with some form of encryption. Some of these networks are open on purpose; many not. It's a very imprecise question, and worse in the Times's inaccurate restatement. We don't know that anyone stole access who answered this question; the Times assumes they did.
With this small a survey size, and no information provided on demographics, this reveals essentially nothing about people's behaviors. In the UK, accessing a network without permission is illegal; the Times notes just 11 people have been arrested for such actions. I'd like to see a sample size of 20,000 regular users of the Internet outside their homes. I expect the number is much higher than 54 percent. But it still doesn't really tell us much except that it's easy to use Wi-Fi when a network is intentionally or unintentionally left unprotected against access.
A Sophos manager has this rather specious soundbite, too: "Stealing Wi-Fi internet access may feel like a victimless crime, but it deprives ISPs of revenue."
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:33 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness, Legal, Security
After Verizon's recent settlement with New York State over its BroadbandAccess service's limits, I've been watching its terms of service (TOS) change: I've written about Verizon Wireless's TOS for cell data for a few years, because it's the most restrictive and most ridiculous in the industry. No longer. Partly as a result of the settlement with Andrew Cuomo's office in New York, and I think partly due to the competitive nature of services that don't impose the same limits, the TOS has morphed into something that offers relatively decent disclosure and full limits.
I used the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive to examine previous TOS's to compare. Back in January, the TOS had the terms I have poked fun at for years: unlimited service can only be used for Internet browser, email, and intranet access. Explicitly prohibited uses include running servers; continuous uploading or streaming of audio, video, or game content; and using the service in place of a dedicated line, like a DSL connection. Peer-to-peer uses were banned, too.
This TOS has the incorrect example that someone would use "more than 5 GBs in a month" if they used the service continuously for 10 hours a day, seven days a week. Actually, that would be more like 50 GB. Using the service at full capacity for an hour a day would hit 5 GB, so it's a very low limit. This TOS had the egregiously offensive line, "Anyone using more than 5 GB per line in a given month is presumed to be using the service in a manner prohibited above," which is part of what got them in trouble in New York.
(I had thought that Verizon barred VoIP, but a check with the company confirmed that that restriction was dropped by 2006.)
These TOS terms didn't change through August, when the Wayback Machine loses track, but they did change after the New York settlement. When I wrote about the New York settlement on 23-Oct-2007, the bad calculation was still in place. Two weeks late, on 05-Nov-2007, language about throttling appeared. When I checked a few days ago, it had changed even further: the bad calculation was gone as was a threat of cancellation. Gone, too, is the restriction about streaming, uploading, or downloading. They still treat the line as not a fixed broadband replacement, and they added descriptions of disruptive network activities that aren't allowed, even though one would expect that those would already be a problem.
In terms of excessive use, they simply state now that using more 5 GB per billing period (which lasts a month) could result in them throttling your maximum download speed to 200 Kbps. They also provide reporting of your current usage, so you can see where you're at.
Now, as a consumer, you can read this and decided whether paying $60 to $80 per month for unlimited service is what you need. Sprint Nextel and AT&T both have less restrictive language, and apparently a lower level of enforcement. T-Mobile, with its 2.5G EDGE network, has generated no complaints I'm aware of from customers accused of misuse of the 100 to 200 Kbps unlimited service.
Part of my interest with mobile WiMax is whether restrictions are lifted on even more categories of use. Clearwire intends their service to be used as a wired broadband replacement--that's been their model all along. If WiMax costs the same, has faster speeds (as I found in my testing this last week with the Clearwire PC Card), and fewer restrictions than cell data, there's an audience that might make an informed decision about which network to choose.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:14 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cellular, Cluelessness, Legal
Haw haw: Verizon Wireless agrees that advertising what I have called its "unmetered" cell data plans as "unlimited" is not the right term, and will change it due to action by the New York State Attorney General's office. The company will refund $1m to customers and pay $150,000 in penalties and costs to the state. They didn't admit any wrongdoing. The investigation found that 13,000 people nationally had their accounts canceled between 2004 and April 2007 for excessive use. In April, Verizon agreed to stop canceling accounts, and allow "common Internet uses."
I've been writing about this issue for years and years. Read this BoingBoing post in which I chimed in back Nov. 2005, for one instance. A service advertised as unlimited, but which is actually limited, is not unlimited. NY AG Andrew Cuomo said in the press release, "When consumers are promised an ‘unlimited’ service, they do not expect the promise to be broken by hidden limitations."
Their revised terms of service spell more out about what a reasonable limit is, including actual numbers, as well as providing examples of what they allow and don't allow. The word unlimited has disappeared.
But they do the math wrong, as I've noted before. They note, "A person engaged in prohibited uses continuously for one hour could typically use 100 to 200 MB, or, if engaged in prohibited uses for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, could use more than 5 GB in a month." No. That's one hour a day, seven days a week--not 10 hours a day--to reach 5 GB. 10 hours a day would hit 50 GB. Technically, "more than 5 GB" is accurate, but it's about as accurate "unlimited" was in the past.
Update, 05-Nov-07: Verizon updated its TOS again to note that if you exceed 5 GB per month, they could throttle you to 200 Kbps. They could still cancel your account but at least they're spelling out penalties, and providing the potential of continuous service even if they have a bone to pick with you.
Getting closer to actually serving the customer. They better watch out: they might actually do something in our best interests.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:54 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cellular, Cluelessness, Legal
Update: 2008-09-24: It has come to my attention that links to this post are attempting to paint me, after the fact, as being wrong about everything because I said Starbucks wouldn't offer free Wi-Fi in 2008. This requires me to set the record straight.
In the post below, I spell out why Mike Elgan was incorrect about Starbucks planning to give Wi-Fi away for free. I stand by that logic. What happened, rather, is that Starbucks switched its provider from T-Mobile to AT&T, and both firms are giving away service--but not quite at no cost.
AT&T is offering free Wi-Fi to all its DSL subscribers and fiber-optic customers. They receive monthly fees from those users, and turned on the Starbucks tap (along with 10,000 McDonald's locations they purchase access to from their services partner Wayport) as a way to reduce churn. It's a marketing expense, and not very expensive. It's not free--it's free to AT&T high-speed subscribers. Starbucks isn't paying for that "free" service.
Likewise, Starbucks isn't giving away access; they're rewarding loyalty. Again, it's a marketing expense. You have to make a purchase every 30 days on a Starbucks Card to obtain two continuous hours of access each day for the following 30 days. That's a bonus, but it's not precisely free.
In both cases, the companies get a windfall from providing a service at no extra charge. Elgan and others were speculating that Starbucks would go entirely free: no purchases, no loyalty, no cost. Didn't happen.
As I note in the conclusion below, Starbucks would have had to pay millions to T-Mobile to offer a no-cost network; instead, the deal with AT&T is clearly more favorable. Starbucks may have negotiated some or no payment for its own loyalty program, but over 12m AT&T subscribers were brought onboard by that firm, which certainly was a motivating factor for Starbucks to change over.
I don't mean to be picky, but free Wi-Fi at Starbucks? Ha. It. Didn't Happen.
Mike Elgan, who, please note, I like and have worked for and with in the past, so don't take this wrong, is bloody foolishly wrong: Elgan predicts that Starbucks will drop its fees for access in the next year. Ain't. Gunna. Happen.
Let's get to facts about who operates this network first. Elgan says that Starbucks offers Wi-Fi along with partners T-Mobile and HP. Now, I don't know how HP wound up getting its name inserted in there--Compaq had a multi-year supplier deal with Starbucks that HP acquired in the merger--but T-Mobile is the Wi-Fi provider; Starbucks is its customer, perhaps branded as a "partner," because Starbucks remains the single largest tenant on the T-Mobile USA HotSpot network, and a significant customer in Europe, too.
Elgan says we get free Wi-Fi of a sort already: with the right gear, you can buy songs from Apple via iTunes over a Starbucks-located T-Mobile hotspot. Right. And I can drink my own coffee in Starbucks, too, as long as I purchase it from them. Not really the same as free Wi-Fi when it's simply an alternate retail delivery channel for digital media--not Internet access.
The reason that Elgan thinks that Starbucks might go free is because of McDonald's: the two giant chains now compete in some categories, with McDonald's providing pretty good coffee and Starbucks offering things that resemble upscale Egg McMuffins.
Here's where things go off the rails. Elgan writes that with UK McDonald's offering free Wi-Fi over the coming months, that the quick-service restaurant franchiser and owner will "gradually roll out Wi-Fi at restaurants in other countries--including in the U.S." Mike, sorry to tell you this: McDonald's has Wi-Fi at over 8,000 locations in the U.S., with Wayport providing the service. McDonald's uses it for internal purposes, AT&T resells it for $0 to $2 to its DSL customers as part of AT&T WiFi, Nintendo DS users access it for free (since 2005), and so on. (McDonald's has over 15,000 restaurants unwired worldwide.)
This rollout started in 2004 after a heated competition among Cometa, Toshiba, and Wayport. Wayport won. Toshiba exited the business. Cometa shut down. Man, I wrote a lot about that back then. How soon we forget.
Also important to recall that McDonald's is organized into national divisions, and it's unlikely that a directive would spread worldwide for something like Wi-Fi access, which intersects with culture and technology in each country. Ditto, T-Mobile, which has a separate U.S. organization, and sells hotspot access on a separate basis in the U.S. from its European operations. (There's a roaming deal that's purely on a metered basis between T-Mobile's European and U.S. Wi-Fi customers.) In the UK, hourly charges for Wi-Fi are ridiculously high (several pounds an hour isn't unheard of), and there's a countervailing movement to bring more free Wi-Fi to the front, as well as inexpensive unlimited plans; thus, McDonald's UK hopping on that trend.
I have never had a conversation with T-Mobile about its hotspot network in which it wasn't made clear that they were perfectly happy, if not occasionally ecstatic, about the usage, its growth, and the resultant effect on their segment of the corporate bottomline, even though I've never been told dollar figures. Occasionally, T-Mobile releases usage numbers, and they're awfully good. That's partly because T-Mobile's network is designed to reduce churn and retain customers. Customers who pay the $30 per month as voice subscribers for unlimited EDGE and unlimited Wi-Fi must be fairly happy--and they're not paying $6/hour to use a Starbucks Wi-Fi network, either.
If Starbucks went free, T-Mobile would lose a large portion of its customers paying it for unlimited Wi-Fi. And their churn would increase. And they'd lose the portion of walk-up dollars, which is probably a decent amount in the several airports they cover. Thus Starbucks would need to pay T-Mobile a fairly significant amount of money, perhaps tens of millions of dollars a year, if that money could begin to cover long-term customer retention on top of real revenue.
So. Ain't. Gunna. Happen.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:58 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness, Hot Spot
Meraki has changed its pricing and feature model for its mesh networking system, angering early users: Exiting its beta, Meraki has changed its pricing and service model, while requiring the display of advertising and a piece of the action for handling billing. This abrupt change, announced quietly last week, has resulted in a nascent networker revolt. It may be that early infrastructure builders abandon Meraki because to continue expanding networks, their cost structure has gone way up while control has gone way down.
The two basic nodes that Meraki sells, Indoor and Outdoor, were priced at $50 and $100 during the beta. The beta flag is gone from their site, and while you can still buy the nodes at that price, many features formerly included raise the price to $150 for Indoor and $200 for Outdoor. These prices move them into the range of what used to be much higher-priced metro-scale hardware.
Meraki's system works by having little intelligence built into nodes instead relying on an Internet-hosted administrative system to handle the heavy lifting. Adding nodes requires just some configuration via a Web site. Each node auto-discovers existing networks allowing their addition. Each gateway to the Internet added to a Meraki network increases the bandwidth pool.
The change puts tiers into effect. The Standard edition with the cheaper pricing doesn't allow billing nor user authentication, nor does it offer a custom splash page (a logo is all). Even the network name gets Meraki branding on it ("Free the Net" precedes a local name). Standard does offer a private WPA-protected network for the owners, but without any granular access control. This means that a group that wants to change small amounts for access or control access by user cannot use the entry-level version. According to the forums, this includes a lot of early networks. Standard networks also can't "whitelist" more than a handful of devices, which means that devices that lack the ability to display a Web page for authentication purposes can't even access the network. So no Xboxes, VoIP phones, and so on.
The Pro edition bypasses these limitations, essentially adding a $100 per node license for advanced control and the ability to bill. However, because several of the Pro features were previously in the only version Meraki sold during its beta, many networks had build their business model, their pitch to cities and communities and businesses, and their financing on $50 and $100 nodes. The Pro version ups the ante while taking away some of what these network builders need, according to the forums. (A Carrier class version, with no pricing disclosed, allows a tie-in with existing user authentication system, and allows more of a private-label version.)
So-called Legacy networks, ones that were built before this last week, can continue to run as they do or be upgraded to Pro status at no extra cost. But once upgraded, all the Pro limitations are in effect. Any new nodes added to a Legacy network must be Pro nodes, too; there's no option to add Standard nodes. This is part of what's causing ire on the Meraki forums. (One of these networks, Kokua Wireless, was praised in an editorial in today's Honolulu Star Tribune; someone from the network noted on Meraki's forums, "It'll be hard to build a business even @ the Pro level knowing Meraki can make such drastic changes." One network operator has already flashed his Merakis with alternate firmware.) Update: Meraki says it's been talking to all the operators and groups that have problems with their new model; I'll have more details Monday.
In this formal release, Meraki now displays advertising on every page using what they variously call Community Messaging, Community Messaging & Advertising Platform, and Messaging Platform. It's often euphemistic. In effect, Google ads--Google is a Meraki investor--will appear on every page in a special toolbar that requires no installation. Which means that it's inserted using some technique--probably frames--that might cause other problems, too. Network operators can insert localized messages, but to a limited extent. There's no option for Standard and Pro users to disable advertising or the messaging bar. There's no disclosure on what revenue, if any, Meraki splits with the network operator. If Meraki handles billing for Pro users, they keep 20 percent of gross revenue.
I had to check the Web site after being alerted to this change, assuming that senior management--largely a bunch of MIT grad students who turned RoofNet into this clever commercial offering--had been fired or shuffled, and a new carrier-oriented CEO was hired. As far as the site shows, it's the same gang. Which surprises me, given how open the group was about communicating, and how interested in community building. This is a huge stumble, when the community tells me that they were unaware of the changes to come until the Web site started to have new information on it.
At $150 and $200 for managed nodes, Meraki has now lost some of its edge against companies like Tropos Networks, the most likely comparison. While Tropos, Cisco, BelAir, Motorola, Strix, and SkyPilot typically charge $2,000 to $5,000 for their nodes, with the more expensive ones including 5 GHz backhaul radios, those prices are heavily discounted, several sources have told me recently. Tropos nodes can cost EarthLink, its biggest customer, under $1,000, I have it from multiple parties outside the service provider.
While $1,000 is clearly five times $200 for a similar outdoor piece of gear, that belies several factors. Tropos is using enormously high-powered radios, capable of producing up to the maximum legal signal strength in 2.4 GHz. Tropos has a sophisticated back-end that allows integration with many popular management and authentication systems. Using Tropos or other vendors' network gear is substantially less trivial than building one from Meraki pieces, but with enormously larger coverage areas relative to cost now, Meraki has moved itself towards that equipment range without bringing the robustness needed.
The system and hardware has gotten rave reviews for the simplicity in building a network in bits and pieces. But the good will may have just flown out the window. I have just sent a query off to Meraki's PR firm, but it being Sunday morning, I don't expect to update this post until Monday.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:58 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cluelessness, Community Networking, Mesh | 7 Comments
Unlimited means unlimited, except in the cell world: Apple signed on to the embarrassing doublespeak of the cellular telephone industry yesterday in its launch with UK cell carrier O2 of the iPhone in Britain. O2 added Wi-Fi to the mix via The Cloud's 7,500 locations as part of the included price in any of three reported plans for service, which start at £35 for 200 minutes of calls and 200 SMS messages. The data plans for EDGE and Wi-Fi are "unlimited" not unlimited. The footnote on O2's information page says that unlimited "fair usage" is included. But that's just garbage.
Just like Verizon's definition of "unlimited BroadbandAccess" meaning "about 5 GB a month regardless of your use, and we'll pretend you're using it illegitimately if you exceed that amount even if you're using it for purposes we define," O2 is playing games. It's not unlimited. It's a limited, unmetered service. You are not paying per byte, but they have a number in their systems, which the company head defined at a press event yesterday as "no more than 1,400 Web page downloads" per day.
Examining O2's site, I can find no specific mention as to what fair usage constitutes for an iPhone. The BlackBerry plan includes just 75 MB per month as part of unlimited fair usage. A special "1024" plan includes 1 GB per month in that definition
The lack of a definition, and the weasel-like nature of redefining a perfectly straightforward word to create market confusion and deception, in which customers are incapable of knowing what's meant even after they sign up for service, is despicable.
Apple should know better.
I would like to call for a set of consumer complaints against the misuse of this term. Any time you see the word "unlimited" used with a proviso or asterisk, write your national regulator or advertising standards board and complain. There's misuse of unlimited privileges, which I can understand: someone using a service in contravention of reasonable terms. But that's not what cell companies mean. They mean, whatever you're doing, however reasonable, we set the limit in unlimited.
Bah.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:52 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Cellular, Cluelessness, Culture | 15 Comments