Wi-Fi Networking News

Buffalo Allowed to Sell Wireless in U.S.

Buffalo Technology has had an injunction lifted in its ongoing patent litigation with Australia's CSIRO technology agency: Buffalo was unable to sell Wi-Fi equipment in the U.S. since a permanent injunction was put in place in June 2007 following their 2006 loss in a lawsuit. CSIRO has a patent that they argue covers aspects of OFDM in 802.11a/g. CSIRO sued Buffalo after the Japanese equipment maker declined to pay royalties. The injunction prevented Buffalo from selling gear that it offers in Japan and elsewhere in the world during the huge expansion of Draft N sales. This likely caused tens of millions of dollars of lost revenue, if not more. Buffalo was formerly mentioned in a single breath with D-Link, Linksys, and NetGear. (Linksys, as a division of Cisco, already pays CSIRO license fees: Cisco agreed to honor CSIRO's patent assertion because of a purchase of an Australian firm a few years ago.) Buffalo can now sell Wi-Fi gear in the U.S. due to winning a narrow appeal in October that sent the case back to a lower court to resolve an issue. The company could still be liable for damages and other fees if the lower court finds for CSIRO and higher courts agree. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing allows a single Wi-Fi channel to be subdivided into a smaller number of channels, improving performance in reflective environments and adding robustness against interference. It's also used in WiMax, LTE, and other standards. This could mean CSIRO would pursue makers of other technology eventually as well. CSIRO has never given any sign of asking for predatory royalty rates, but several firms have countersued, including Intel, Dell, and Microsoft. Those cases are still in litigation, as far as I can tell....Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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The New Clearwire Taking Orders in Portland, Ore.

It's no secret that Portland had WiMax service: It's just that you couldn't buy it. Intel has been WiMax with Clearwire for many months--it may be nearly 18 months now, if I recall correctly. Intel employees have been walking around the city and their campus in Beaverton with WiMax cards in their laptops, and not allowed to talk about it. Thus, it's no surprise that the first market for Clear, the new brand for the combined Clearwire/Sprint Xohm operations, is Portland. I just qualified an address there of a friend, and find that the service can be ordered for the home with prices from $20/mo for 768 Kbps/128 Kbps to $40/mo for 6 Mbps/512 Kbps. Mobile prices are all rated for 4 Mbps/384 Kbps with monthly data limits: $30/mo for 200 MB, $40/mo for 2 GB, $50/mo for unlimited. There's also a $35 activation fee, and a modem fee: $175 or $5 per month. This is far higher than Sprint's subsidized $50 modem deal with Xohm. Expect that to be harmonized. Note that Clearwire suggests you read their Terms of Service for more details. As far as I can tell, unlimited isn't footnoted with a 5 GB or other limit. They will still obviously check for abuse, and the low upstream rates make it both difficult to run services and painfully clear if you are. The upstream speeds are still far too slow. WiMax can be configured to allow relatively symmetric upstream rates, and I expect we'll see more of that as an option as Clearwire learns usage patterns. The ordering process doesn't suggest that you have to wait, while Clearwire was saying yesterday that Portland service would be available in 2009. This might be noted when you consummate the order....Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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Actual Numbers on Paid Airport Wi-Fi Usage

I've been trying for years to get real numbers about paid airport sessions and usage from Wi-Fi providers: Then the Miami-Dade airport authority just goes and reveals them all. Cool. A local paper reports that the the authority expects to net $700,000 instead of $900,000 as its share of service. The article says that the airport saw 12,500 sessions in September and 14,000 sessions in October, including pay-as-you-go users and roaming customers of Boingo, iPass, and T-Mobile. The airport adjusted the price for service from $5 per hour and $10 per day to $7 per day and $20 per month during the summer, which accounted for some of the reduction in revenue, along with a drop in air travel. We can run some numbers here, of course, as I'm having trouble with the math. If the airport is netting $700,000 on perhaps 200,000 sessions for the year (assuming that there was higher usage when travel was heavier, coupled with an increase late in the year), then their take is $3.50 per session net. It's possible the reporter was mistaken, and this is gross revenue. At $7 per day or $20 per month for half the year, that would mean that the majority of sessions were pay-as-you-go; a $20 per month user could represent 10 or 20 sessions. If you assume an average of $5 per session for pay-as-you-go (by taking into account monthly users and rates across the year), you need about 70 or 80 percent of my estimated sessions count. That would leave 40,000 to 60,000 sessions paid a buck a pop, if that, by Boingo, iPass, and T-Mobile....Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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Wee-Fi: Virgin America Formal Launch, Heathrow Coach-Fi, Laptop Recovery

Virgin America formally launches: Last week, Virgin America offered free Wi-Fi on its single Internet-equipped aircraft, My Other Ride's a Spaceship. Today, the service goes commercial ($10 for flights 3 hours or shorter; $13 for longer flights), and the rollout to other planes begins. Virgin has a special URL--http://wifitracker.virginamerica.com/--that takes you to a tracking page showing which flights in progress have Wi-Fi, but they don't yet tell you how to determine whether a given flight you'll be on will offer the service. With 24 planes and a plan to add service one per week, that shouldn't be a problem for long. Heathrow Airport Coach Link adds Internet service: Icomera, a leading transportation Wi-Fi firm, has added free Wi-Fi to FirstGroup's RailAir coach service that connects Heathrow Airport with Reading in England. RailAir runs every 20 minutes for a 50-minute route. FirstGroup handles 3 million passengers a day across all its routes, which makes it a plum market for future expansion. Awareness Technologies adds Wi-Fi positioning for laptop recovery: Awareness is the latest firm to partner with Skyhook Wireless to use Wi-Fi positioning to its products, in this case Laptop Cop, software designed to aid in recovery. The software starts at $50 for a 1-year license, with discounts for quantity....Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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Eye-Fi Share on Sale for $65 at Amazon

Amazon.com is offering a so-called Black Friday special on Eye-Fi Share: The 2 GB Wi-Fi-enabled Secure Digital card normally runs $90; it's $65 while the sale lasts. Given that Eye-Fi introduced a limited-time-only 4 GB "Anniversary" model that replaced the 2 GB Share version in its current line-up, and that the Anniversary model was $130 list but $100 for Costco members, it's pretty clear that the 2 GB won't re-appear, the 4 GB model will drop in price, and Amazon's acting as a clearance center. The Eye-Fi Share lets you upload pictures over a local network to a designated computer, or upload via a Wi-Fi network for which the Eye-Fi is configured to connect over the Internet to Eye-Fi's servers, and from there to a specified photo-sharing, social-network, or photo-printing service. I'm a fan of the Eye-Fi, although I favor the currently $130 Explore model (see my review), which comes with geotagging (via Skyhook Wireless) and adds a year of included uploading via Wayport locations (now part of AT&T)....Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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Weekend Remembrance of In-Flight Internet Past

I was digging around my basement looking for a USB extender and came across this gem: Anyone remember Tenzing? Anyone? First folks to put Internet access (sort of) on planes? Well, I do. Tenzing was a Seattle company that was later merged into what became OnAir (a Airbus/SITA joint venture). Tenzing's ultimate goal was Internet access via satellite on planes, but they started with a clever workaround. Using Verizon AirFone's narrowband air-to-ground phone service and an onboard proxy server, Tenzing offered email on United and, I believe, Delta for a short period. The service offered subject lines for a small fixed fee (a few dollars a flight) along with the first part of a message, with longer messages being charged by the K. The service didn't catch on fast enough, and then 9/11 hit, which put the domestic airline industry on the skids from which it still hasn't recovered. Tenzing shed workers, and then reorganized its assets into what was transferred to OnAir. This Connectivity Kit that I dug up was a promo to let people test out Tenzing's service. It came with a card good for a short, free Verizon AirFone call; a code for one free Webmail session; and a retractable RJ11 phone cable because this required a modem connection over the local phone network. A CD came with Windows software; Mac users just entered 123-4567 for the dial-up number. Now, what's amusing about this blast from the past? This is precisely the service--sans phone cord--that JetBlue is offering on its single equipped test plane that has Internet access. Back on 8-June-2008, the LiveTV division of JetBlue that won 1 MHz in the U.S. air-to-ground spectrum auctions in 2006 purchased AirFone's ground assets--communication gear on 100 towers. While I don't have direct proof that JetBlue is using the same sort of system as Tenzing, the reported onboard features and speeds make it pretty clear that the company hasn't upgraded equipment on the towers yet, though they plan to do so. Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans; enjoy a few days of peace and quiet, the rest of the world....Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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Interview with Aircell CEO on BoingBoingTV

My interview with Aircell CEO Jack Blumenstein is now available: Through a variety of happy accidents, I wound up interviewing Blumenstein for BoingBoingTV while we were on Virgin America's inaugural Wi-Fi flight/press launch last Saturday. If we appear hurried, we were trying to finish the interview in the remaining window for access as we were getting close to starting an approach for landing at SFO. Aircell's service is ground-to-air, and they're covering only domestic U.S. flights (and Air Canada's flights for their intra-U.S. portions). For this test flight, which left and returned from SFO, the route was carefully plotted to keep the plane over the ocean, but oriented towards ground stations to make a loop that wouldn't interfere with SFO ground traffic but which would provide continuous coverage. The company flew a test in their own smaller craft, and then did a test run with the actual Virgin America flight before the press event....Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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Observations on Gogo Internet from Virgin American Launch Flight

Yesterday was the party flight, today the light of day: For a couple hours on Saturday evening, I was on the hottest flight in the air--well orchestrated by Virgin America to bring together bloggers, press, online celebrities, and a few others, along with a hunk of the staff from Aircell and Virgin America's PR and marketing group. I've uploaded a small set of photos (some a bit abstract due to low lighting). It seemed like a rousing success to me from both the technical and marketing angle. The service received positive reviews from all aboard, including me, Gizmodo, Engadget, and Cnet. (I was surprised to not see more blog entries or news stories given the quantity of press aboard, but many of those stories will likely follow during the work week.) I spoke briefly with Dave Cush, the chief executive of Virgin America. He seems very taken with the idea of having a service that no other airline is offering fleet wide. There's a predictability with fleet wide deployment. American's tentative step has probably resulted in low usage due to travelers simply not being aware of the service or trusting that it's available. Gogo's sign-up process is the only friction in using the service. You must sign up for an account, just like at Amazon or any ecommerce site, and that's irritating although perfectly reasonable. One trick to sidestep this on flight is to sign up in advance. There's no cost, and this allows you to put your credit card number on file. The company has a deal in place with iPass that hasn't turned into anything public yet, but I expect that when that goes live, iPass customers will have the single sign-in they have now, which will bring hundreds of thousands of business travelers into the mix. (This also avoids separate expensing and itemization--and rejection of same--because IT departments can pre-approve certain extra charges via iPass, as I recall.) Although I didn't have to a chance in my conversations with Jack Blumenstein, the chief executive of Aircell, to talk about the future of the service, I did glean that Aircell is interested in LTE as that standard develops. Aircell uses essentially off-the-shelf EVDO Rev. A over their exclusively licensed frequencies. EVDO Rev. A uses 1.25 MHz channels; Aircell has 1.5 MHz in each direction, so it's a neat fit. That gives them a raw rate of 3.1 Mbps over 1.8 Mbps, with actual top performance somewhat lower. (In some tests, people have gotten 2 Mbps downstream on an American Airline flight with Gogo installed.) LTE could potentially double to quadruple that rate when it's commercially available, and there should be 1.25 MHz profiles available, even though LTE will typically be used with 5 MHz to 20 MHz channels. In talks with various folks at Aircell, it's clear that the company is still early into its settling-in period with airlines, and that more baroque and interesting options will be appearing over time. For instance, should the charge for a red-eye flight be the same as a daytime flight? Right now, it is, but the company is interested in dynamic pricing, in which time of day and other factors play in. They're also aware that that their two-tier pricing ($10 for 3 hours and shorter; $13 for longer flights) isn't that appealing for short hops, such as the one I took yesterday from Seattle to San Francisco. Right now, most of system will be built on cross-country or 3- to 4-hour flights, and as more planes come online, all of this will be examined. Aircell staff mentioned in passing yesterday--and FlightGlobal expands on--that there's another airline in the wings beyond the four announced airlines. Aircell told FlightGlobal that a sixth airline is near a decision, too. One staffer told me that the company is also working on planes to integrate satellite Internet at the peripheries of their American profile, so that airlines that fly into and out of the Aircell ground footprint would be able to have some kind of seamless access. I'm looking to get more details about this. Beyond the Wi-Fi, the Virgin America experience is rather marvelous, because you're flying new planes that were designed with 2006/2007 in mind, not 1996/1997. For every seat in first class and between each seat (thus two per row) is a charging/networking setup: power, using a normal North American three-prong jack; USB; and Ethernet. The seatback entertainment system, Red, didn't live up to reports. I used Red on three different planes, and was unimpressed by the system's responsiveness. It's a very "heavy touch" touch screen, and doesn't support gesture. Navigating the TV schedule was baffling. The TV system didn't show more than a couple channels on the two commercial flights I took, showing a technical error screen from Dish TV instead. The selection of music was good, along with the ability to create a playlist, but the sluggish interaction coupled with touch responsiveness made it a chore. Several Red features will require Internet connectivity, and it was interesting that they listed those options (like email and chat) with a "not yet available" label, to pique interest. In every arm rest is a tethered two-sided controller: a keyboard on one side and buttons for the entertainment system on the other. The keyboard makes chat and other features possible, especially as Internet access is rolled out. Virgin America doesn't take cash, which is fascinating and makes a lot of sense. Every Red screen and every controller can handle a credit card swipe. You order drinks and food from the Red system, paying for them with the card. Once Internet access is in place, it looks like you'll be able to set up an account with Virgin, and simply login and charge movies, premium TV shows, food, drink, and even Internet access to that account....Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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Live from Virgin America's Inaugural Wi-Fi Flight

This is a first for yours truly--Wi-Fi from a commercial flight: I'm blogging from somewhere above 10,000 feet on Virgin America's press event flight to kick off its commercial launch of Internet in-flight Internet service. The flight is littered with e-celebrities and a few real ones (a couple of the great ensemble from 30 Rock are here). We're flying over the ocean. And the Gogo Internet service from Aircell seems to be working just fine. I've Twittered, I've IM'd, and I'm about to post this blog entry. (Success! Updated later.) There are about 130-odd people aboard, and I should apparently recognize lots of people, but I am so unhip, as Douglas Adams once wrote, that it's a wonder my bum doesn't fall off. I was able to talk briefly with Dave Cush, the head of Virgin America, who is very keen on having this rolled out, and at some length with Jack Blumenstein, the head of Aircell. (I did a in-flight air-to-ground interview with Blumenstein for BoingBoingTV which I'll link to when my fine friends there have the segment edited and up.) The service works as one might expect: Aircell has had months to troubleshoot problems via the American pilot, and we're flying right around San Francisco, so nothing unpredictable in the middle part of the country. In a quick test using Qwest's bandwidth tester, I was able to get 700 Kbps downstream--while there were 100 other people using the service, too. This wasn't a commercial flight (it was technically a charter), but it was on a regular Virgin America Airbus 320 using Aircell's ground network. Some material was broadcast live from the plane to YouTube Live, which was hosting a simultaneous event on the ground at Fort Mason in San Francisco. This is the first time I've used Internet service on a commercial plane. Back a few years ago, I was on a Connexion by Boeing press flight that used ground stations for the flight instead of the production satellite servers. Virgin isn't the first domestic airline to launch Internet service; American Airlines has a pilot with 15 planes that have been in the air on cross country routes for nearly three months. But Virgin is poised to be the first airline to launch Wi-Fi fleet wide. Delta has made a commitment--and they have several hundred planes in the U.S.--but hasn't gotten its first bird launched with service. Alaska, Southwest, and JetBlue have various plans that seem to have been pushed into 2009. (Photo courtesy Virgin America. I'm the guy in an oatmeal sweater holding a white MacBook up. Disclosure for clarity: I paid my own way to San Francisco for the event.)...Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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DeFi's VoIP Offering: Flat Rate, Worldwide, and Integrated

Startup VoIP provider DeFi makes big claims, but delivers worldwide calling from a smartphone for $40 or $50 per month: DeFi has a very stripped down business model designed to appeal to a specific, but large class of traveler. They make software that's currently available for Nokia S60 phones (E and N series), and later this year for the iPhone, that acts as a kind of VoIP shunt for calling behavior. When you place a call, the software determines whether you're on a Wi-Fi network, and routes the call out that way; if not, it goes to cell. It also routes inbound calls, and can ring your cell phone's number if you're not on a Wi-Fi network and your inbound DeFi number gets a call. For $40 or $50 per month (1 or 3 inbound phone numbers, respectively, in any of about 30 countries), you get 3,000 minutes (they call it "unlimited") of calling to and from 75 countries. This includes cell lines in Europe, typically a huge extra for most VoIP plans. DeFi said they signed deals directly with carriers, which they say most VoIP providers have not. Wi-Fi access works at what they say is "1 million" hotspots, but is really Fon plus several tens of thousands of typical hotel, café, and airport venues. Wi-Fi fees are included for VoIP and data in the monthly subscription. DeFi uses Devicescape behind the scenes to handle no-entry authentication to their Wi-Fi footprint. The integration is the key point DeFi makes about their product, and may be a stumbling block for an iPhone application. The head of DeFi told me that the company wants their service to require no behavioral changes for customers. Of course, users still have to make sure when they're in areas in which a cell call would be expensive that they don't accidentally wander away from a Wi-Fi hotspot. And Apple doesn't currently allow the kind of integration that would be required for call handling and interception, although DeFi said it's having no problems in its development work....]]>Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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SNCF Promises Wi-Fi Service for TGV Est Line by 2010

SNCF in France says they'll install Internet service on their entire TGV Est fleet by 2010: We've seen this promise before, so excuse me if I'm a wee bit dubious about the French train operator SNCF's claim that the service will span all their equipment. Despite Internet access over Wi-Fi being available on several train lines in Europe, including multiple lines in the UK, the biggest announcements always seem to fizzle out. The Dutch train operator was supposed to unwire their fleet a couple years ago and backed away, for instance. SNCF says they'll have for-fee service in 1st and 2nd class areas of TGV Est trains (about 50 of them) by third quarter 2009 in some trains, and full coverage in 2010. These high-speed trains cross borders in all directions. A free portal will be available for information and entertainment access within a train. Fees for access might cost €5 to €10, which is outrageously high, unless you compare it to the very high costs of Wi-Fi across Europe, where you can pay US$30 or more for 24 hours access in some hotels....]]>Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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Virgin Announces Launch Schedule

Virgin America has formally announced their in-flight Internet launch and plans: Virgin put out the news a few weeks ago that they'd have a press event flight on 22-November to show off their in-flight Wi-Fi with GoGo (AirCell's branded service). They're now formally noting that service will start for all flyers on a single aircraft 24-November, and expand to their entire fleet by second quarter 2009. Earlier reports indicated the airline would equip about one plane per week, which probably conforms to overnight maintenance schedules for their fairly new planes. Virgin America goes quite a bit beyond other airlines in the electronic amenity department. They have an advanced seat-back system that includes in-flight chat (currently intra-plane, soon across the fleet as Internet access is added); it's gotten rave reviews. They also have power available at every seat, which is an easy choice to make when you're building planes for today's passengers. I'll be on the press event flight, covering it for a few publications including this fine site, and will try to blog from the air just for the fun of it. If you can blog from the top of mountain, it seems necessary to do so. (Disclosure: I'm paying for all my expense associated with getting to and from the press event.) Virgin America is the only airline worldwide that's committed to putting Internet service on all its planes, although it has a fairly small fleet. (Planespotters has the full list of 27, including their names, such as the BoingBoing-plumed Unicorn Chaser.) For a mainstream media article I'm writing, I'd love to hear the experience of anyone who has used American Airlines' GoGo service, which has been in operational on long-haul 767-200s for the last few months. (Email me at news@wifinetnews.com.)...Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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Dying Services for Those Who Follow Such Things

Are you noticing that hosted services are starting to disappear? Me, too: I haven't launched a new blog in some time, but was motivated to start up ItDied.com recently after receiving about one email a day about a photo gallery, video service, online storage, or other company or division shutting down. It's not related to Wi-Fi, but if you're tracking what's about to go belly up--or worried that a service that stores your data in their cloud is about to disappear--check 'er out....Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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Wee-Fi: News from Meraki, Violet, Qualcomm

Meraki offers wall plug, solar unit, apartment package: Meraki has added two products to its line up. A wall plug ($179) can be screwed into an outlet's center screw hole for theft prevention and stability, perfect for hotels and public venues. The long-awaited solar product is nearly ready, with a 4-December ship date ($749 with no solar panel up to $1,499 with highest-end panel). Meraki switched battery technology to lithium iron-phosphate during the year-long delay, partly due to an increase in cost and shortage in solar panels. Meraki's also got a new bundle: $5,000 for a set of nodes designed to cover an apartment building. Over at Ars Technica, I wrote a long recap of the state of municipal Wi-Fi, noting that Meraki seems to be on the winning side of the equation with its start-small approach. A number of municipal wireless projects (not all Wi-Fi) are getting rave reviews. We may be over the hump: applications (purposes as it were) are now driving network building rather than networks seeking reasons to be. Violet prepares to ship an RFID tag reader, Mir:ror: The new device plugs in via USB to a computer and can read standard RFID tags, as well as new ones offered by the company. Some of Violet's tags look like postage stamps and are adhesive; others, like tiny versions of their Nabaztag/tag bunny. It's weird, but interesting, like all their stuff. Qualcomm brings in Skyhook's Wi-Fi positioning: Qualcomm becomes the latest GPS giant to add Skyhook Wireless's technology to their platform. The gpsOne system, found in 400 million cell phones, will be enhanced in future versions with an option for Skyhook data to assist and integrate with GPS lookups. Qualcomm's sold so many chipsets due to E911 requirements for location finding....Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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Boingo Takes over Washington State Ferries

Boingo adds biggest U.S. ferry system to network: On the heels of acquiring the Opti-Fi set of airport Wi-Fi networks from Parsons and ARINC, Boingo Wireless has purchased Parsons's separate business operating Wi-Fi-based Internet access on the Washington State Ferry (WSF) system. WSF handles 26 million passenger rides per year, which is about half of all U.S. passenger ferry volume. (Just north, British Columbia's ferry system handles slightly more riders.) The announcement is slated for Monday. Boingo already had a roaming relationship in place with Parsons for ferry use, and thus the purchase doesn't affect users of any of Boingo's monthly subscription plans; subscribers still have access folded in to the company's $8 per month handheld/mobile, $22 per month unlimited North America U.S., and $59 per month global (2,000 minutes) plans. While neither Parsons nor Boingo released statistics on use, I ride ferry on a regular (not routine) basis, and have found the Wi-Fi relied and widely used. WSF runs two big routes that serve Seattle metro commuters: from Bainbridge Island, which unloads passenger after a half-hour run in downtown Seattle (right near Pioneer Square), and from Kingston, which brings riders also after a half hour into Edmonds where they catch express buses. Those two routes represent half of all WSF passenger trips. Wi-Fi service is available on the majority of WSF's routes, as well as in terminals and in the car waiting areas. For regular rush hour commuters who drive, they may spend over 2 hours round-trip between waiting and the ferry passage, and far more on bad days. WSF runs on time, however. This may baffle people used to train, bus, and plane schedules, but it's a thing of wonder to watch the ferry workers cast their lines, tie the boats up, and shepherd hundreds of cars and passengers off and on in a matter of minutes, and then return to the bay or sound for the direction or next stop. I'm not saying the system is a miracle, but it's well-tuned. A notable failure, due to initiative-driven cuts in transportation spending, has led to devastating reductions in service to Port Townsend; its regular boats were found to be irreparable. Replacements haven't yet begun to be built for a variety of reasons. Port Townsend occupies a significant role in the history of Internet access on the ferry system, however. A small firm, Mobilisa, located in "PT" (the affectionate name town residents use) was able to secure a Department of Transportation no-bid contract to unwire the boats. The line it tested service on was the Port Townsend-Keystone run, and it's where I first encountered the service, when I visited PT to write a New York Times article about commuter Wi-Fi: "Destination Wi-Fi, by Rail, Bus or Boat," 8-July-2004. (Mobilisa has been adept at using earmarks to obtain contracts, the Seattle Times reported in a detailed article on 29-December-2007.) The service launched for production use in late 2004, and on the Bainbridge route in early 2005. The original contract called for an RFP to be issued, and for Mobilisa to operate the network just briefly--perhaps for a year or so, building out service that another firm would take over. Mobilisa was, I was told, specifically barred from bidding on operating the completed network. Parsons got the contract in late 2006, and slowly extended service to routes that weren't yet covered. At one point, Parsons seemed to be developing a specialty business in building and operating difficult Internet service networks. That line of business is apparently being shed, however, given that only VIA Rail (operated under the Opti-Fi name) apparently remains in its holdings. Boingo's original plan was to never operate any physical infrastructure. But the opportunity arose a few years ago for it to buy Concourse Communications, which already managed several major airports' Wi-Fi (and sometimes cellular) networks, and it leapt in with both feet. Boingo now runs vastly more large-scale commuter and business traveler nodes than the next largest operator in the space worldwide....Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.

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