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Recent Entries

Marriott Throws Down Gauntlet
News for 12/18/2002
MicroVentures Conference Report
Vivato Gets FCC Approval
FCC Approves Vivato Antenna
wireless networking - gaming?
Wi-Fi Discussion Forum
News for 12/13/2002
News for 12/12/2002
The Wi-Fi Boom

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December 2002 Archives

December 20, 2002

Marriott Throws Down Gauntlet

By Glenn Fleishman

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Marriott to add Wi-Fi to 400 hotels: This announcement is one of those seminal moments, not really like Cometa two weeks ago, but rather like Boingo or T-Mobile's 2,000 Starbucks stores (which should have happened around this week, too). Marriott adding Wi-Fi -- and, by the way, not using Wayport, but another firm they have a relationship with -- signals to the rest of the hotel industry that it's time to get serious about Wi-Fi. Likewise, unless Marriott is retrograde and out of step with reality, they will be partnering with some or multiple aggregation firms for access.

The company says that they tested Wi-Fi at several properties, but there are 2,500 Marriotts worldwide. This 400-location rollout is still a test, because their customers will demand uniform availability of any service. You can't offer a service as a guarantee while still requiring that your customers have to call before each trip and confirm the service they require exists.

Other News

Acquisitions and investments: I try to not cover every last financial announcement, but it's notable that Intel is an investor in the STSN firm that's wiring Marriott. Intel Capital also put money into TeleSym, which offers Internet telephony services. Philips bought Systemonics, which causes speculation that the consumer electronics manufacturer will embed Wi-Fi into its devices.

Intel to ship 802.11b, not dual band, in Banias: Contrary to reports a few days ago, Intel has committed to including an 802.11b chipset with its Banias laptop component system, not no wireless at all. The 802.11b chipset will be available in early 2003, while a dual-radio chipset will be offered mid-year.

SonicBlue offers Wi-Fi add-on for DVD player: SonicBlue's GoVido D2730 plays practically every kind of media that fits on a 120 mm disc, and it also can stream MPEG2 via a network, including Wi-Fi with an optional add-on card.

Air2Lan and US Wireless merge: These two wireless ISPs serve regions throughout the south and are merging forces. US Wireless was mentioned in this space just a few days ago; they unwired the Louisville, Kentucky, convention and exhibition center and a nearby hotel, in what they call (and no one has contradicted) the largest contiguous Wi-Fi installation in the country.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:54 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 18, 2002

News for 12/18/2002

By Glenn Fleishman

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Slow news til the new year: I'm off to the in-laws this morning, so expect some slow news days for the next couple of weeks. Traditionally, announcements aren't made, but you never know what story might break.

SF Chronicle anecdotes on consumer Wi-Fi gateways: A quick runthrough of a columnist's efforts to configure several gateways.

Slow and steady...and cheap: On my travels these days, I'm using a new Sony Ericsson T68i cell phone with Bluetooth to make 10 kbps GSM calls. Why so slow? At the connection prices for Wi-Fi, when I need five minutes of a hookup, I'd rather download email tediously (and not pay attention) as part of my minutes plan than paying $7 to $12 for a 24-hour connection. I don't use Cingular's GPRS option as it costs $30 per Mb beyond the first Mb each month for just a few multiples faster than GSM. The hot spot industry has the advantage of speed, but until roaming makes it sensible for me to have a fixed monthly account that works everywhere, they'll be bleeding even my dollars off to the cell operators.

Cheap irony and high winds: The irony is rich about the above item. I'm sitting at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport now, having shelled out my $6.95 (the third time in the last three weeks) to Wayport because Chicago is experiencing high winds and thunderstorms, and thus our flight was delayed 2 1/2 hours. So far. We think we'll get to Bradley field. The irony, of course, is that we took a shuttle and arrived well over two hours before the flight, and the new security personnel are incredibly efficient. We had some breakfast, got to our gate, and I used my neato GSM phone to check email and then was waiting to get on board.

With a few hours to kill now, and some work in progress, I'm reverting to type: $7 to be productive over this period of time is a great deal. Ah, well, as a Mac user, I'm just biding my time until the first quarter release of Boingo's client, at which point I sign up for at least the $25/month service given my upcoming travel schedule, and just hope they keep adding partners.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 6:34 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 17, 2002

MicroVentures Conference Report

By Glenn Fleishman

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Ken Berger is a regular and well-informed correspondent on issues Wi-Fi-related. He's a consultant (LogX Technologies) and an active member of BAWUG (Bay Area Wireless Users Group). He files this report from this month's MicroVentures conference, which is relevant to those of us following Wi-Fi and unlicensed spectrum issues:

Once again, Technologic Partners (affiliated with the authoritative VentureWire newsletters) hosted a cozy Private Equity Conference where investors and entrepreneurs could mingle and gain insight into a technical field of interest. In May, I wrote coverage which appeared on this site for the WirelessVentures conference. This past Monday and Tuesday, the title was MicroVentures, and it focused mainly on the semiconductor industry.

Many are saying that the economy now feels like it's hit bottom. When recoveries come, innovations start at the chip level (semiconductor). Dick Shaffer, the event's producer, and chief of VentureWire, is definitely a guy who follows the money; he hasn't done a microchip conference in ten years, and by picking now to host another, it would seem a signal that he sees now as an inflection point time.

(My logic here is somewhat parallel to Glenn's (this site's humble host) thoughts about the 802.11 Planet conference, also going on this week: Alan Meckler has had an incredible track record of going where the action is (and leaving before the action leaves), and he seems to be betting on that technology by last year starting a legacy of conferences on the 802.11 theme.)

The general mood is much as I reported back in May: there's not a lot of hype or wild partying, and investors and entrepreneurs alike seem very cautious and defensive. Only now, folks are much more experienced at feeling humbled.

Much of the conference revisited Moore's Law. Are we approaching a point beyond which continued acceleration of progress at the chip level will be difficult? Or the reverse: will new techniques such as MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) and nano-techniques such as molecular electronics warp us to a new frontier and accelerate this law? Whether or not people will care as much in the future (is what we have 'good enough' as Sun's Scott McNealy recently said) was also the subject of a few of the investor panels.

Panel on startup opportunities in systems on silicon: Seems to be a widely-held belief these days that for a venture-able company to survive, how much money is needed and how quickly it can arrive at break-even will determine its success or even possibility of being born. A figure was posited to be $45 million maximum in total funding to break even: if your business plan requires more than this amount to start turning a profit, the message here is forget about even starting. I’ve heard other VC’s recently state even lower figures.

Another theme was that of the first mover advantage, yielding some differing viewpoints: Andy Bechtolsheim of Cisco talked about the "myth of the first mover advantage", while Andy Rappaport of August Capital in a previous panel stated his belief that "first mover advantage is huge". Opportunities for startups were pretty much what you'd expect: there's still huge opportunity for innovation in general, and storage and security are rising opportunities.

The next panel covered WLAN and winning in the market for over-the-air digital communications. You must be really innovative, and consistently so, to stay in semiconductors (something I say all the time when meeting with chip companies). Having a startup whose main value prop is making the chip merely faster, cheaper, better may have been fine in days of past when there was room (or at least money to be made) for many players. Today, you had better expect that the incumbents are and will be doing that all the time, and you need to offer something really differentiated.

The good news here is that there is tremendous opportunity for real innovation. For example, currently, a typical 802.11b-enabled PDA will last only a few hours without recharging-- this is unacceptable if people actually plan to use the things frequently, wherever they are.

Another issue discussed was the potential threat of big players deciding to put 802.11 technologies on their motherboards, and Intel’s plans relating to this with its upcoming Banias/Calexico line. Rich Redelfs of Atheros and Greg Raleigh of Airgo both countered that this could be a problem-- a motherboard manufacturer would have serious problems keeping up with all the innovation that is surely coming in WLAN, and this part can literally choke a Pentium with what's going to be happening. Intel also has a long history of getting into initiatives to move into ideas like this one, then getting out not long after.

A particularly relevant example is a brief time where Intel got into the analog modem business and subsequently gave up. Of course, the consequences of burning the battle field and wrecking the pricing structures for the companies left in the field still remain. Most likely will be to have the MAC on the motherboard, but the radio and other parts elsewhere.

While the U.S. got an early lead in Wi-Fi, the Asian markets are growing fast. Atheros currently ships about 70% of their products to Asia, although a lot of that comes back here as components of gear built there. There is lots of interest in China, and in Japan most business people carry laptops.

This conference also brought back the fervid company presentation sessions, held in 10 separate rooms in close reach, each with a company's CEO madly trying to compel his company's overview and including quick (and occasionally brutal) Q&A in the total 20 minutes allotted, strictly enforced.

The second day lunchtime keynote address was by Paul Saffo, Director of the groovy Institute for the Future. Every ten years we get the Next Big Thing-- in the 80's it was chips and PC's, in the 90's it was the internet and also cheap lasers. This decade? Sensors! Per Paul, sensory devices and networks will take off, especially sensors used with biotech models, accelerated by critical uses such as UAV's (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) in Afghanistan. This is prescient, as quite a few of the companies presenting here design chips to enable sensors. RFID, such as for tags in shelf products, will be big, but the real opportunity will be in doing things not possible before…

The next session was innovative for a first try at a familiar forum: a mock pitch session where 4 individual analysts 'pitched' their ideas to a panel of 4 VC's. The main substantive problem here for the VC's to do their critiquing was that the pitch really just advocated a sector, not a company, and VC's will always tell you (at least post-bubble) that they only fund companies, not sectors. Nonetheless, the session revealed some current thinking among the VC community. The four Big Ideas were MEMS, HDTV with an associated chip to coordinate and integrate all home functions, VLSI, and Biometric ID.

The final session picked a top ten list of winners presenting at the show. 802.11 is STILL being proclaimed a big winner because of the incredible growth rate that continues. The question remains whether any particular company can build a critical mass. The panel agreed that it is too late to start an 802.11 chip company (the same was also already declared at WirelessVentures back in May), and that Atheros has a 'meaningful fraction' of the market, and did on CMOS what many said couldn't be done.

Canesta could have won in the 'coolest stuff for a James Bond film' category, and their product line is fairly diverse for such a small company. Their electronic perception technology perceives things in 3D, lending to recognizing your face when you approach your door so you don't need a key, sensing if a truck driver's head slumps if he falls asleep (what happens if it's just a sneeze??), and just as cool, a 'virtual projection keyboard' that projects an image of a keyboard from your PDA onto the desk or table it's on, then watches your hands and knows what keys you typed.

Cavium was chosen as being early to the much-needed security chip market. Imaging sensing and processing is a real need, although much of it is currently in the consumer market and not much investment is happening there, and long-term it will be a commodity. Nucor is making headway in this field, especially in Japan, and the company's management is mostly Japanese.

ChipWrights focuses on low power chips for handheld devices and could be the next Nvidia in graphics controllers. Though they weren’t named to the top ten, I was very impressed with MicroChips's product: a MEMS-based chip that gets preloaded with prescription drugs, then planted in a patient, and the doctor can communicate wirelessly with the chip to fine tune the settings rather than remove it. Also not named, but relevant to Wi-Fi enthusiasts, SyChip will be releasing soon an SD drive mounted 802.11b card for your PDA.

Military and 5 GHz

John Markoff broke the story yesterday in the New York Times that the US military had concerns about the unlicensed use of 5 GHz spectrum because of conflicting radar uses. See yesterday's rundown.

Today, we see an uninformed Slashdot discussion with the word 802.11b in the headline -- guys, 802.11a covers 5 GHz, not 802.11b -- which I won't even link to.

But InfoWorld delivers the goods in this article. The two writers clearly explain why the military is concerned, how current and future technology might and do address the overlap, and how 2.4 GHz/802.11b isn't in the picture.

Other News

Kentucky has largest permanent Wi-Fi hot spot installation?: Folks, after Nigel Ballard's announcement yesterday that Tacoma's convention center and adjacent Sheraton were the largest Northwest hospitality hot spot installation, we get a topper. The Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center and the Kentucky International Convention Center in Louisville represent 1,000,000 square feet of fully Wi-Fi-able area. Doug Keeney, the CEO of US Wireless Online, sent in the information in friendly oneupsmanship. Is Louisville on top? Some airports might have more physical area, but are they fully covered? Bragging rights are up for grabs -- but documentation is required!

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:43 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 16, 2002

Vivato Gets FCC Approval

By Glenn Fleishman

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FCC approves Vivato's antenna/switch system: Vivato received a splash of attention a few weeks ago with the demonstration of their phased-array antenna with what they call a Wi-Fi switch. The combination creates what they describe as individual focused beams of Wi-Fi access that follow devices as they roam. Their technique apparently offers a cost-effective way to light up entire buildings and offer long-haul wireless service.

The one holdup was receiving FCC approval because no devices quite like theirs have been approved for Part 15 unlicensed use. This clears that hurdle, and Vivato has said before that they hoped to have devices in production in the first quarter of 2003.

Vivato could have a disruptive and positive influence on the hot spot market, reducing the cost of setting up larger facilities, like airports or hotels, from millions to tens of thousands of dollars. Additionally, by reducing the overhead in managing a corporate wireless LAN through fewer devices with better coverage, they could hasten the expansion of WLAN deployment.

Military Defensive about Unlicensed Wireless

John Markoff writes about military efforts to restrict unlicensed wireless use: The US military operates radar in the 5 GHz range, the same used by 802.11a, that they're leery of talking much about. The 5 GHz range was considered mostly open space, and colleagues at the 802.11 Planet conference pointed out to me on a few occasions that the middle part of 5 GHz, currently not available for 802.11a, is used for overseas radar by the US, not domestic.

Markoff confirmed for me that the band in question was 5 GHz, even though the article doesn't mention 5 GHz until the middle when he notes that the military is trying to prevent opening the middle of 5 GHz for unlicensed use.

The bill proposed by Boxer et al in the Senate a few days ago requires the FCC to find over 250 MHz below 6 GHZ, and the only likely spot is in the middle of 5 GHz. The military's concern about 5 GHz doesn't scotch 802.11a, but it does raise questions about its future at a time when it seemed assured.

The new 802.11g draft hardware that's about to ship may get closer scrutiny and be seen as more desirable in the short-term until a definitive statement is made on 5 GHz's destiny.

Other News

Excerpts from The Wireless Networking Starter Kit and a direct discount and free shipping from the publisher: We've posted a 60-page excerpt from the book I co-authored on home and small network use of wireless networking. The book is shipping now from several booksellers, and you can also buy directly from the publisher at 30 percent off retail with free UPS ground shipping in the US through this special link. Enter coupon code PE-Y2AK-TIDF at checkout to receive the discount.

Intel delays Wi-Fi integration with Banias: Intel won't have a module containing a dual-band radio chipset for 802.11a and 802.11b when they ship their notebook Banias product in the first half of 2003. The module is now planned for later in the year. There is joy in the chipmaking community today, I'm sure, as companies that sell network adapters directly or via OEMs extend their ability to differentiate their products from an integrated Intel system. [via Alan Reiter]

Warchalking big idea in New York Times review of the year: The New York Times Magazine identified warchalking as one of the big new ideas in 2002, accurately describing its origins, usage, and trends that led to it. [via Oblomovka/Danny O'Brien]

Lisa Phifer explains 802.11 standards (archived Webcast): Josh Garland of SearchNetworking has made available a recent archived Webcast of security and standards expert Lisa Phifer explaining 802.11. I saw Lisa deliver several presentations at 802.11 Planet, and she's has one of clearest methods of explaining complicated technology without missing the details or oversimplifying.

Peter Lewis weighs in on Wi-Fi hot spots: Pete's an industry veteran (and a mentor), and his rational take on Wi-Fi, free of hype and speculation, is pretty dead on. The future of hot spots isn't assured, but cell operators won't contrariwise just be able to charge a metered rate for slow service, either.

Tacoma Convention Center gets unwired: Nigel Ballard of ElevenWireless, one of the usual suspects in the hot spot world, has completed an installation that spans the entire Tacoma Convention Center south of Seattle and the adjacent Sheraton Hotel. Nigel believes this is the largest area served by commercial hot spot service outside of the Seatac area (and possibly inclusive of it).

New Web-based Wi-Fi discussion forum: In conjunction with the launch of my book on wireless networking (see upper left of this page), my co-author and I have launched a discussion forum for Wi-Fi issues, as well as issues from the book. I've been longing to set up a simple threaded forum for quite a while, and finally found the right package and approach. Join us!

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 11:32 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

FCC Approves Vivato Antenna

By Glenn Fleishman

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FCC approves Vivato's antennas: Vivato received a splash of attention a few weeks ago with the demonstration of their phased-array antenna, a device which can essentially create individual focused beams of Wi-Fi access that follow devices as they roam. Their technique apparently offers a cost-effective way to light up entire buildings and offer long-haul wireless service.

The one holdup was receiving FCC approval because no devices quite like theirs have been approved for Part 15 unlicensed use. This clears that hurdle, and Vivato has said before that they hoped to have devices in production in the first quarter of 2003.

Vivato could have a disruptive and positive influence on the hot spot market, reducing the cost of setting up larger facilities, like airports or hotels, from millions to tens of thousands of dollars. Additionally, by reducing the overhead in managing a corporate wireless LAN through fewer devices with better coverage, they could hasten the expansion of WLAN deployment.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:42 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 15, 2002

wireless networking - gaming?

By Glenn Fleishman

I'm curious as to how, or if, you could connect two computers to play games against each other. Like at a LAN party but without wires? Another thing is the two computers are me and my m8 who lives across the road. I have read about a few things that sound like they would work. The distance between us is around 250m.

Any suggestions?

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:22 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 14, 2002

Wi-Fi Discussion Forum

By Glenn Fleishman

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New Web-based Wi-Fi discussion forum: In conjunction with the launch of my book on wireless networking (see upper left of this page), my co-author and I have launched a discussion forum for Wi-Fi issues, as well as issues from the book. I've been longing to set up a simple threaded forum for quite a while, and finally found the right package and approach. Join us!

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:05 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 13, 2002

News for 12/13/2002

By Glenn Fleishman

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Wi-Fi Powers Activate! Shape of a package! Form of a UPS Driver!: UPS merges a Bluetooth "ring" with a Wi-Fi belt attachment to speed package handling and tracking.

Bandwidth by fiat: two senators propose more ad hoc frequency reallocation: I'll sound like some kind of regulatory freak, but this proposal by Senators Allen and Boxer is yet another uncoordinated effort to force the FCC to carry out actions by fiat instead of as an effort by all branches of the government, international bodies, and private interests to figure out the best, optimum reallocation and harmonization. The proposed bill would pull out about 250 Mhz below 6 GHz, which could most easily come from the middle of the U-NII band at 5 GHz. 802.11a works in 5 GHz in three chunks, two at the low end, and one at the high end.

Intel pushes smart wireless ecosystem: Intel's notion is that users can be abstracted out of the decisionmaking process of what wireless network to use, instead having the equipment seamlessly adapt to whatever's available. Sounds like the right approach, once all the pieces for cell are in place. The NetMobile Wireless folks here in Seattle, for instance, can demo seamless continuous VPN access as they move from one wireless network type to another, but they require a fair amount of infrastructure at the home office and on individual devices. [via TechDirt]

English countryside doing it for themselves: This story by Ben Hammersley, written in October for the Guardian (but missed by me), tells of how rural areas in England are prompting entrepreneurial efforts, often involving Wi-Fi, to bring high-speed connections to areas that British Telecom says are too far below their radar. In Wales, a community effort inspired by Dave Hughes is rapidly transforming the picture of connectivity, and the secondary effects are apparently already cropping up. What better way to unite people spread out geographically for common cause than access?

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:15 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 12, 2002

News for 12/12/2002

By Glenn Fleishman

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From far and wide, O Canada, We wardrive on guard for thee: A sort of mixed bag of an article in which the author wardrives with a fellow who runs a wireless networking startup. En route, the writer notes a variety of Wi-Fi information, including the general lack of security. The Mounties tell the journalist they don't have Wi-Fi break-in stats because many victims don't report the incident. This makes it sound like connecting to the network is the same as cracking machines or copying files, of course; most Wi-Fi attacks are merely opportunistic connections.

Business Week's retro Wi-Fi article?: This piece in Business Week reads like something from mid-2001. It's a little too gee-whiz, what's new, but I expect that's because -- despite previous articles in the magazine that were more sophisticated -- they expect their readers don't quite understand the shape of the market. The clearest statement in print about T-Mobile's motives appears near the end of the article: The goal: to hook users on Wi-Fi, then to push them toward 3G. I'd agree with that, but there's another goal the writers miss: the more customers that T-Mobile, the number-six U.S. carrier can sign up because of their Starbucks partnership, the less revenue they have to make off their hot spot connection fees.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:33 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 11, 2002

The Wi-Fi Boom

By Glenn Fleishman

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The New York Times special Wi-Fi package: Thursday's New York Times Circuits section devotes several articles to aspects of Wi-Fi, including two by your humble editor. This five-article chunk is the spiritual heir to my Feburary 2001 cover story in Circuits on public hot spots that, I say without an ego, first introduced the subject of pay-for-access Wi-Fi everywhere to a broad audience. That first article had to explain the technology and its limits as well as paint a picture of what was to come. Interestingly, despite all the bankruptcies and changes in business model, nearly two years later we find several companies continuing to build out public hot spots with more to come, and a very mature and ostensibly moneymaking consumer and business hardware market.

Broad overview of social use and hot spot market: Wi-Fi isn't just for geeks, but is rather employed in hot spots and other venues as a tool for simple continuous high-speed access for an audience that otherwise be missing personal and professional opportunities.

Manhattan's multiplicity of nodes, lack of security, and digital divide: A researcher drove every street in Manhattan and assembled a picture of the distribution of Wi-Fi nodes that also tells the story of a lack of secured points (even with weak WEP), and the divide in computer usage across income ranges and ethnic groups.

Microsoft the winner in setup test with Linksys and NetGear: David Pogue brings his usual good cheer to setting up a wireless access point testing three major brands. Unfortunately, Linksys seems to be the weakest at helping users complete the test comprehensibly, while Microsoft's setup program, well-written manual, and good tech support ease configuration through to completion.

Getting setup and connecting: A basic guide to what to buy, how to set it up, and how to connect to public networks. Some excellent caveats in this article on both the risks of untrusted networks, and some tips for security (firewall) and encryption (VPN). (Glenn Mitsui illustrated the article; he's an old colleague from Seattle for whom I hosted an early Web project in 1995.)

Wireless? You bet. Compatible? Maybe: My take on the alphabet soup story at the 802.11 Planet conference last week. The article well represents my level of concern with the upcoming user confusion and frustration that buying seemingly identical but potentially incompatible gear will engender.

Other News

FCC starts proceedings on opening more unlicensed spectrum:Dewayne Hendricks alerted us to this at the Supernova 2002 conference yesterday that the FCC had finished its initial lookover a few weeks ago, but had decided to start proceedings even before the draft report had been finalized. Dewayne was in D.C. last week, and he said that there's simultaneously a lot of interest in quickly opening more spectrum, while incumbents are also fighting against unlicensed spectrum. The conference made it clear that there's a property camp at the FCC -- licenses = property -- and a more open camp that wants to try different models for maximum market efficiency. One commissioner suggests slowing down, waiting for public comments to come in.

Book, Book, Book

My book is shipping: The Wireless Networking Starter Kit, a book I co-wrote with Adam Engst, has left the printer and is heading out to bookstores. If you pre-order from Amazon.com now, you should have it within a few days. I have copies in hand, and boy does it look wonderful. The book is a friendly, uncomplicated look at understanding, configuring, and expanding Wi-Fi networks, with a focus on intermediate users who have some knowledge they want to supplement. Check out the table of contents and even the index and other details at the book's site. We'll have excerpts up in the next couple of days.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 6:33 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 9, 2002

News for 12/9/2002

By Glenn Fleishman

Is Wi-Fi part of your product strategy? Let Blue Mug handle the details: integration, interop, roaming, power, performance.

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More on Cometa's business plans from Business 2.0: As I wrote yesterday, and even after reading this article, I continue to believe that Cometa is not building out its estimated 50,000 hot spot network on its own dime. I believe they will be seeking infrastructure dollars from any venue they build into.

Peter Kaminski believes this is actually a play to make Intel's capital division -- devoting to $150M to Wi-Fi investments -- and IBM Global Services -- a group that, among many other things, unwires businesses for money -- seem more important than they are. This completely ties into my theory.

InfoWorld reveals more about this whole situation, with Ephraim Schwartz finding out from Cometa that they will not pursue airports, and also finding that the CEO and another executive have differing notions of whether Cometa will support roaming agreements with other networks. Ephraim's article puts their build-out at 20,000 hot spots, although I thought I've seen 50,000 elsewhere.

Another way to look at Cometa is the ultimate vindication of Boingo's model in which branded service providers (top level, customer service/user interaction) buy from aggregators (Boingo, iPass, GRIC), who buy from infrastructure builders who make deals with real-estate owners (stores, hotels, etc.). In fact, on a panel I moderated at 802.11 Planet, the VP of marketing at Wayport confirmed that Wayport sees itself as a company building vendor-neutral hot spots, offering partnership access to any location it builds out. This is now a plus to venues, which want to maximize their revenue possibilities, where perhaps a year or more ago, some venues thought they were leaving money on the table by opening to all comers.

Also, made the connection with the prodding of a fellow journalist a few days ago that Cometa's CEO was also the head of SoftNet, the company behind the short-lived AerZone, which, in Dec. 2000, with contracts signed with SFO, United, and Delta (the former for the airport, the latter for airport waiting areas) shut down operations because of a poor capital climate. They had also purchased Laptop Lanes, from which they spun some locations off to Wayport last year.

I spoke to Rafe Needleman, who wrote the piece linked above, at the Supernova 2002 conference I'm attending today and tomorrow, and he said that he's convinced that Cometa intends to spend their dollars to build out other people's vnues with their infrastructure, but they expect that they'll be selling access to their network to large corporations.

Other News

Wi-Fi year in review: The Seattle Times runs through the major Wi-Fi stories of 2002 in a concise and interesting fashion, hitting the high points and telling the business story behind them.

Intersil and Cambridge Silicon Radio combine Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for smart results: This combined 802.11b/Bluetooth design allows shared information between the two protocols vastly increasing throughput even in the worst cases. Exactly what's needed moving forward with both standards.

Canada puts money where their hot spots are: investments, expansion: The Edmonton Journal reports an investment of Cdn$6 million in a Great North hot spot outfit that will allow Telus cellular customers to have single-bill service for cell and Wi-Fi. Although the article states that several Canadian airports offer free Wi-Fi access, I'm unaware of any. Several I know of have for-fee access.

India to open up rural 2.4 GHz: India, which has already allowed indoor and outdoor unlicensed use of the band in which Wi-Fi operates, is planning to open up long-haul links for rural connectivity. In a country with such scattered population outside of some megalopolises, bringing broadband without wires could help transform political activism, economy, and education. Could.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:19 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 8, 2002

News for 12/8/2002

By Glenn Fleishman

Is Wi-Fi part of your product strategy? Let Blue Mug handle the details: integration, interop, roaming, power, performance.

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Cold, hard hot spot dollars and sense from the New York Times: A veteran business reporter casts a cold eye -- although one in concert with most analysts and observers -- on the current potential of Wi-Fi hot spots to make money. It's clear to me that we're entirely in an experimental stage, and anyone with a business plan to turn a profit within two years on their whole network, not just locations within, should be looked at carefully.

Cometa equals rural electrification? From what I can tell from reading coverage of Cometa's plans -- the partnership of AT&T, IBM, and Intel to build Wi-Fi infrastructure -- they're really not rolling out 50,000 hot spots in 50 metro areas. If you read closely what they've announced, they're just opening for business, hoping that real-estate venues will pay them to build infrastructure for them. It could work: Fortune 5000 firms are unlikely to pick small players to partner with. Airports that have been on the fence might more likely pay millions to Cometa than to a firm only in business a year or two with a few million in billings. The coverage of Cometa has been like the invention of electricity, while I would liken it more to rural electrification. It's not sexy, it might not even be needed, but it'll take a lot of money -- and not money from the users, but from the folks who want to charge people for the juice.

If it's Sunday night, it must be Supernova 2002: Last week, glorious Santa Clara; this week, lovely Palo Alto. For the next two days, I'm at Supernova 2002, a conference about ideas about the intersection of business, policy, and technology. Many buddies will be speaking, and many people I've been dying to meet or hear speak will also be in attendance.

Aggregating heterogenous WLANs: It's not a sexy topic for those of you outside the enterprise, but I've learned quite a bit in the last week about the status of managing large numbers of WLAN access points that aren't made by the same company (i.e,. Cisco or Proxim). More details as time allows, but the bottom line is that WLAN managers don't have to buy $500 to $1000 access points and suffer equipment lock-in to get the benefit of mass aggregated AP management.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 11:33 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 6, 2002

Who's Your Daddy?

By Glenn Fleishman

Is Wi-Fi part of your product strategy? Let Blue Mug handle the details: integration, interop, roaming, power, performance.

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

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News.com talks to the father of Wi-Fi: I'm embarassed to say I'd never heard of Vic Hayes, who is a well-spoken and interesting technologist, with modest but exciting ideas. The interview doesn't cover much new ground, but the insight makes it worth reading.

Other News

New York Times on Cometa: Some additional details about the AT&T, IBM, and Intel venture to build out infrastructure as a contractor.

A very few photos of mine from 802.11 Planet: I always mean to take more pictures, but here's a tiny taste of the flavor of the conference, including some folks I met for the first time.

Alan Reiter clarifies his quote in the NY Times article: Alan hasn't published that newsletter for years that he's attributed as the editor of, nor did he cite Metricom as an example. He has some extensive analysis of Cometa's challenges.

US sees Wi-Fi as homeland security risk: Paul Boutin reports from a session at 802.11 Planet on homeland security about the government's view of wireless networking.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 8:03 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 5, 2002

The Rainbow Connection Revealed

By Glenn Fleishman

Is Wi-Fi part of your product strategy? Let Blue Mug handle the details: integration, interop, roaming, power, performance.

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

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Project Rainbow announced as Cometa: AT&T, IBM, Intel: The rumored collection of companies planning to offer wireless hot spot service with the code nam Project Rainbow have announced themselves -- with fewer members and under the name Cometa. AT&T, IBM, and Intel are the partners in this operation which will deploy wireless hot spots into hotels, universities, and other venues through partnerships. More news as it emerges.

Computerworld has a more detailed story from before the announcement was formally made. The story also mentions a deal between a firm called WorkingWild and Circle K to deploy hot spots in 15,000 Circle K stores nationwide; Circle K is a 7-Eleven-style convenience store.

Infoworld offers the detail later in the day that the companies will serve the top 50 metropolitan areas with access during 2003.

Other News

Update to wireless article: I've radically revised and dramatically updated the wireless article on this site. I first wrote it last year, after WEP's weaknesses started to appear. It's now rewritten to reflect more of the developments in the meantime, and include some explanation about network-based authentication using 802.1x and EAP.

NIST draft goes final: The report on wireless network security that NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) was circulating over the summer went final last month without any fanfare. You can retrieve document 800-48 directly as a PDF or as a zipped PDF

Boingo embedded hot spot clarification: Christian Gunning from Boingo provided me a clarification on my statement that Boingo software would be embedded on consumer access points and gateways. I was wrong! We're not embedding anything in these devices. We provide the manufacturer with a list of industry standard features and parameters we need in the device to enable out-of-the-box integration -- e.g., full RADIUS functionality and specific attributes, https auth support, access control with passthrough support, etc. And then we test it thoroughly with several hot spot configuration scenarios to ensure it works correctly. There isn't any proprietary code or software in the Boingo Ready specification. We are firm believers in embracing standards to push the industry forward. That echoes one of the messages of 802.11 Planet. Of course, the other half of that message from Proxim and others (see below) is that we're going to support standards even if we're supporting our notion of the draft of a standard!

Blue Mug: I met David Loftesness from this week's sponsor, Blue Mug, at 802.11 Planet. Blue Mug is working on interesting ideas about embedding application support for telephony and shared communication (sketchpad, streaming media) into small devices. They don't want their name on anything. They want hardware companies to have them develop these ideas into code that runs on lots of devices.

I'm tired. 802.11 Planet was completely overwhelming, from the excellent content, the massive number of announcements, meeting terrific people I only know from email, and being recognized by readers of my blog and articles -- I think I'm the unofficial mayor of Wi-Fi-ville, but judging by the scrum around Sky Dayton after his talk, he's the king.

Angela Champness, Proxim, Day 3 802.11 Planet Keynote

Kevin Duffy was the scheduled speaker, but he has moved into the WAN division at Proxim. His replacement is Angela Champness, new senior vice president and general manager of the LAN Division. She was previously the general manager of Agere's Orinoco division, which Proxim acquired this year.

Champness outlined where Proxim is today, both in terms of integrating product lines (and the enormous scope of what they offer), as well as their role in enterprise sales -- less than Cisco, but not much less, and substantially larger than the number 3 player.

Shipments of Wireless LAN adapters are growing enormously, but we're already at 10 million total (about 2.5 million of which ship with PCs), and Champness thinks that 10M understates by excluding handhelds and a number of other embedded devices.

"The MAC will be placed on the motherboard" Intel plans, but the radio will be in an add-on card or other piece, fueling growth. Even with growing market, already have 10M at least looking for places to connect.

WLAN landscape: from a few intergrated vendors, like Agere -- chips, adapters, and client software. "Market was very small, market was vertically integrated."

Now, chip guys, like TI, Intersil, Broadcom, etc., but also any firm that has network chips. OEMs: had to teach them how to integrate, etc. Box providers: Linksys, etc., that just plugs into a broadband line. System provider: Proxim, Cisco, Symbol, integrating into the wired network with authentication, management, etc. Specialty players for aspects like security, voice, etc.

Service providers: Verizon might sell you the DSL or T-1 and then come in and provision, configure, etc. And aggregators like Boingo.

Tip of the iceberg: Only 15 percent of laptops ship with Wi-Fi, but they're looking for places to connect. Coverage of hot spots is sporadic. New standards coming soon.

Status of 802.11b: has limits, channels and coverage, but cost and ubiquity should give it lasting potential. Status of 802.11a: more channels means denser deployment along with higher speed. Dual radios really necessary because of the number of b points.

802.11a's big problem has been worldwide harmonization of 5 GHz availability. Different countries have different power limits, different ranges available.

802.11a also requires more density for higher speed, but they are seeing 12 Mbps at same limits that b provides just 1 or 2 Mbps.

802.11g status: Vendors announced draft-conformance products, appearing in Q1. Backwards compatibility is highly useful. Channel limitations are still a problem.

"That's the radio: the radio's the simple part." (Audience laughs.) "You go to Taiwan and tell them what chips you want and what boards you want," and other factors, and they deliver the product.

Showed large chart of features needed for enterprise, but pointed out that VLAN support is becoming highly important, especially to offer visitor access to the Internet.

Filtering a problem, too, because of peer-to-peer networks needing blocking by many of the companies using the tech.

Dual-mode infrastructure: "If you're going to install infrasutrcture, you should install dual mode." Price different is small, but should because it's coming. Higher speeds are needed.

Cost of deploying is most expensive piece. Cost of APs is not the main thing. Running wires, etc., although Power over Ethernet (PoE) is reducing that cost.

Client side: Dual-mode clients important because you don't know what infrastructure is going to be there. Public space will stay "b" currently. If you have choice, buy combo product. a/g cards coming soon.

Security in WLANs: huge developing area. WPA fixes some of the issues with WEP. Products by mid next year with WPA embedded.

What next? Mature industry, products here and work, market growing, etc., where do we go?

Study from a year ago about penetration into enterprises shows that back then, even though small part of most companies' employees had WLAN access, the plan was for virtually all employees to have access.

What's needed for both enterprise and public space?

Enhanced, scalable mobility. One customer has 600 APs on one subnet. "The reason is that roaming doesn't really work." DHCP for an IP address, but with a VPN session, it breaks. (Editor's note: lots of talk at the show about NetMobile and other firms which use techniques to allow continuous seamless roaming IP connectivity without a change in address or connection.)

Bandwidth management. Still an issue even with increasing bandwidth.

Quality/class of service. We don't have this segmentation in wireless.

Intelligent load balancing: not just across a single AP but across a network. This is how cell services work today -- intelligence is in base station not client.

Improved manageability. When you go over 10 APs, how do you do management?


Reduced deployment costs. Expensive to roll out. Even with products with long MTBF (mean time between failures), you could still see ongoing failures because of the large numbe rof points.

VOIP: should be doing Voice over IP. DECT in Europe has rolled out extensively -- not part of IP infrastructure. (Editor's note: HomeRF builds on DECT and extends it to data.)

Integration with cellular, GPRS, 3G.

Wireless networks will be furthered integrated with wired, but there will be a change in architecture.

Future of standards committees.

802.11e: QoS/Class of Service. Debate about more complexity for guaranteeing, or simpler to prioritize. Not sure about availability.

802.11f: Inter-access point protocol. Done. Neds to be ratified.

802.11g: done, but needs to be finalized.

802.11h: European extensions to 802.11a, done.

802.11i: nearly done, finalizing by end of 2003.

802.11j: 4.9 GHz in Japan.

802.11k: radio/net measurements by higher layers -- that is, "standardize the way that the radio reports the information up" the network layers. Each client software package now reports signal and noise information different ways. Radios and display all vary.

High-throughput study group (no letter).


Some features are available today. NetMotion for Mobile IP-like features, Vernier for policy control. But not manageable to have different boxes for each feature. Expense and manageability are prohibitive costs.

Integrated voice and data in the enterprise: long way to go, but lots of opportunity.

Mobile operators have lots of great developments in store. Ericsson, for instance, uses GPRS backbone with standard access points. All billing, roaming, and operator features are already in place.

Operators have a subscriber base. "Anyone with a cell phone is now potential subscriber." It's a little funky now, but over time will make it simpler -- "SIM dongles," new authentication techniques.

Roaming across the different areas: personal, local, and wide area networks.

Operators recognized that 3G is complementary to Wi-Fi. battle a few months ago, but now, operators clearly recognize complementary way to get low-cost system out there for user base.

"We've come of age here with wireless LANs. This is the tip of the iceberg."

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 6:42 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 4, 2002

Day 2 at 802.11 Planet Conference

By Glenn Fleishman

Is WiFi part of your product strategy? Let Blue Mug handle the details: integration, interop, roaming, power, performance.

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

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Hot Spots and Fragmentation. Both of today's keynotes at Jupitermedia's 802.11 Planet conference dealt with industry fragmentation and hot spots.

Dennis Eaton, the chariman of the Wi-Fi Alliance, talked about how Wi-Fi had united the industry through rigorous testing, and warned against releasing hardware based on draft standards. He also announced a new alliance initiative for marketing hot spots under the name Wi-Fi Zones. This is clearly the precursor of formulating hot spot standards which they could then use as an assurance of levels of service quality.

Sky Dayton, Earthlink and Boingo Wireless founder, pushed a message of fragmentation across two dimensions: fragmentation across networks is bad, resulting in users needing to deal with many settings, many accounts; fragmentation across elements of running hot spots is good (physical venues, infrastructure, aggregation, and end-user branded service). The former fragmentation reduces uptake and increases complexity, while the latter, he says, sorts out the right tasks to the right companies, letting them focus on what's important.

Sky gave out a few pieces of news today. First, the Macintosh Boingo client will ship in the first quarter of 2003. Second, they are focusing on embedding their hot spot authentication integration software into both higher-end and consumer-level access points, allowing a purchaser of standard equipment to become a hot spot with a minimal amount of work. Current Hot Spot in a Box offerings are as low as $500; he expects it to drop to $300 in the near future.

Third, Sky revised his estimate of 4,000 hot spots in their aggregated network by the end of 2002 made earlier this year -- he didn't disavow it explicitly, but they have about 900 hot spots at the moment. But he pointed out that they have over 100,000 hot spots in the pipeline from interested parties who need to take the next step. He estimated 5,000 to 10,000 hot spots during 2003.

The focus on hot spots is interesting in the middle of all the rest of the talk about security at the conference -- but it makes sense. Eaton talked in some depth about WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access), but WPA essentially solves the near-term security problem. Boingo already offers a security solution: a VPN out to their network operations center as a built-in feature (currently included for free) of their client software.

Raw Notes

Day Two from 802.11 Planet in Santa Clara. I'm sick and didn't sleep well, so notes will be in shorter supply than usual.

Dennis Eaton, chairman of the Wi-Fi Alliance and a marketing director at Intersil, keynoted this morning.

After presenting quite a bit of good background on the Wi-Fi Alliance history and goals, he identified 10 top trends for Wi-Fi over the next year:

10. Lower power Wi-Fi chips: "embedded in all sorts of devices that it isn't today" -- "great stuff, but it really sucks my battery down" is common comment

Wi-Fi will find its way into "communications devices and handheld devices"

9. More multimode products: "Wi-Fi and some other technology," such as Bluetooth, GPRS, 3G, high-speed WAN tech with LAN tech

8. Public access will start to mature globally. "It's been pretty popular in the US, the US probably got an early start in this market, NA did, but we've seen a lot of big announcements from other parts of the world." Asia: Japan, South Korea

7. Even higher Wi-Fi penetration in laptops. Increase in cert already for mini-PCI. Wi-Fi standard, not optional feature

6. More desktop computers will use Wi-Fi. As broadband comes into the home, esp.

5. Wi-Fi will be used in more smaller devices.

4. Dual-band products will ship in volume. "Dual-b products will be very important to many people, espially in the enterprise." Laptop vendors looking for universal solution. Want customers to have wireless connection without concern to infrastructure

3. CE (consumer electronics) devices will start to appear in 2Q03. "Seen demonstrations of CE devices." Interest in manufacturers.

2. WPA will be widely adopted in the industry. "Broad support for it when introduced in October."

1. Analysts seem to agree: Wi-Fi will grow at about 30% CAGR through 2006. "We firmly believe that. We believe there's potential for it to do better than that."

He also presented some of what he sees as challenges for next year.

Simplifying product setup: "Somewhat frustrating at times to products to work." Big initiatives by larger companies already, but "industry as a whole is going to have to address simplification of product setup."

Common nomenclature. Too many names for the same things.

Maintain realistic product performance claims: 11 Mbps is data rate, but throughput is lower than that. 300-500 feet range indoors doesn't match with what consumers find. "It's important that we be realistic about claiming what our products" can do.

Prestandard product "interoperability" is bad for the customer and industry -- a painful lesson

"If you release a product before it's ready and before all the interoperability issues among the multiple vendors have been worked out can lead to problems."

Like Bluetooth -- lack of coordination slowed adoption of "wonderful" technology

Resolving roaming and settlement for public access

"One of the most exciting things happening right now in the Wi-Fi industry is public access"

Education for the retail channel to help consumers

Meet demand

Potential surprises
Wi-Fi will be an asset to 3G rollout
Public access matures globally
Wi-Fi and broadband to the home will accelerate adoption of both technologies by consumers

Initiatives
Lowering cost to deliver Wi-Fi certified products
Aggressive marketing to grow industry worldwide
More certifications for WPA, 802.11g, 802.11e, 802.11h (g almost certainly; e, maybe; h, probably)
Training and initiatives to retail channel
More initiatives in the public access space

Eaton announced that a program kicking off in December would brand hot spots as Wi-Fi Zone. The first zone involves promotions for both members and non-members. (I would anticipate that future phases would use the recommendations of the alliance's WISP committee for service guarantees to receive branding.)

Analyst session

I substituted as moderated for a short panel with four analysts of enterprise and consumer wireless technology, all from major firms. I'll distill what they said later, but it was remarkable how in agreement they all were.

Sky Dayton's afternoon keynote

Alan Meckler comes out to introduce Sky Dayton. At Internet World several years ago, Meckler says, "this kid came in…about 22 years old…with four or five adults." "I'm really going to be a power in this field, and I should be a keynote speaker at Internet world.

"I didn't take him up on the offer" but had the chance in this brand new field. "Sky didn't hold it against me…he sure was correct."

Sky: "The reason I had all those adults with me at the time is that I couldn't rent a car. They drove me around."

A whole new business. Alan was one of the first to hop on wireline Internet in the 1990s.

Talk overview: Ubiquitous. But challenges. How we get there.

Wi-Fi's achieved escape velocity. TCP/IP of wireless. Everyone works on and gets benefits of everyone else's work. Consumer adoption price curve. Price reduction pushed adoption.

Public access: Hot Spot Operators (HSOs). Listed many in business. Targeted airports, hotels, cafes, campuses, convention centers. Grassroots side: barrier so low.

Visiting Aspen and used early version of sniffing software. Opened software in hotel and saw three networks. Connects to AP that's named with his name and phone number. Calls the guy up. Jim Selby.

Sky meets with Jim and by the time he returns to his hotel room he has a message from a guy running one of the other networks trashing the first guy and wanting to meet with Sky.

All previous attempts to roll out wireless used proprietary technology, like Ricochet.

"Wi-Fi offers a price per bit that 3G will never be able to touch." Free spectrum, cheap equipment for hot spot. Obscenely low barrier to entry to Wi-Fi hot spots.

Everywhere: two or more signals. He was in NYC, running the new Pocket Boingo software. While in a cab through New York, he saw signals constantly.

36M business travelers in US; 27M carry laptops. Talked about survey from last year that they conducted for market research: most business travelers they spoke to want high-speed service and will pay for it.

"it's becoming incredibly inexpensive to add Wi-Fi to products." Notes that Dell will include Wi-Fi radios by 2003 with all laptops. At Comdex, HP announced iPaq with built-in Wi-Fi. (Editor's note: Just bought one and have it with me.)

Will show up in cell phones, automobiles. Pull into service station and download maps, new information. GameBoy: not untethered, but play against anyone in a hot spot.

Anything with a battery that uses information: calculator, MP3 player, a watch.

Challenges to mass adoption

Ubiquity. 3,000 intentional hot spots; 1M potential locations. 212 conf centers, 3,032 train stations, 5,352 airports, 53,500 hotels, 72K business centers, 202K gas stations, 480K restaurants, cafes, and bars; 1.1M retail stores.

Fragmentation. Short range. Each venue a different hot spot. Looks like early ATM/cellular days. "You would go to a different suburb and your cell phone would stop working in the early days."

"We need to get to unified roaming as an industry." Multiple operators equals multiple accounts.

Hard to use. Invisible. Lights dimmed unintentionally: even when it's dark, the networks are hard to see. SSID: "I hate this word. Users should never see this word. Service Set Identifier? What is that?" Really hard for users.

Lack of focus. One company can't do it all. Short range means too many spots. Hard to deploy and service users.

From here to there

When Earthlink started, industry chaotic. No one knew who their competitors were.

(Editor's notes: Some of these slides are modified but essentially from their original press briefing a year ago -- the model hasn't changed for them, and their message is the same.)

ISP segmentation: physical (wires: Sprint, AT&T), network (IP backhauls like UUNet), and brands (end users: like AOL, Earthlink, MSN). In early days, companies tried to do the whole thing, like Netcom.

Each company ultimately focused primary energy on particular layer. Competition within layers; cooperation across layers.

Hot Spot Industry segmentation: venues (locations or real estate owners like hotels, bookstores, etc.); HSO (networks: Wayport, NetNearU, T-Mobile, etc.). HSOs contract with venues to build hot spots.

Aggregator layer on top of that. Take fragmented layers and aggregate them into a single service. Boingo, GRIC, iPass. Boingo only one focused on wireless, largest aggregated network.

Aggregators offers to end users as the brand: Boingo, T-Mobile, Earthlink, Sprint, AT&T.

"property owners who are working with hot spot operators who specialize in installing and running hot spot networks" then partner with aggregators which offer service to brands.

Lot of opportunity for smaller companies to get in. Room for one or two major aggregators. Both brand and HSOs want to work with companies that have economy of scale.

No HSO will control more than 10 percent of underlying footprint. Short range, low barrier to entry, venue fragmentation.

Boingo: single network plus great service

Boingo client: available for PocketPC and Windows. Mac client coming in Q1 2003

Demos clients. (Lots of active networks in the room.)

900 hot spots. 32 airports, 400 hotels, 200 cafes.

"Our pipeline today is over 100,000 locations. These are not locations that are deployed yet, but these are locations people are looking to deploy in the next 12 to 24 months." 5000 to 10000 could be in Boingo's network by the end of 2003.

Boingo Hot Spot in a Box (tm); $500 now (from Colubris) but will drop to under $300 and will be a feature built into consumer APs that you can just enable.

"There are very legitimate policy" considerations that have to overcome in terms of the upstream provider. But economics could drive revenue that would make it worthwhile. "Every end point of the Internet: attached to it is an access point that is radiating broadband."

Boingo Ready equipment: turnkey for setup. Announcing today: Colubris, Nomadix (using their equipment at the show), Vernier.

What's the value of roaming to hot spot operators? With Boingo, 500K Wi-Fi cards each month come bundled with Boingo software that installed when drivers are installed.

HP includes Boingo bundled on half of laptops they sell.

Carrier and ISP partners. Earthlink 5M customers. You can buy Boingo service from Earthlink today. Fiberlink: targets Fortune 500 companies.

Incremental traffic and revenue to HSOs that join Boingo-like network. Pie will be increasing for everyone in the industry -- market is completely untapped. Roaming plays important role to drive more users and adoption.

Hot spot success factors

Make hot spots highly visible: put it out on a counter. don't hide it.

Got to get easier to find and connect networks. Boingo software is best of breed.

Universal roaming is essential.

Future

Technology agnostic: b, g, a, doesn't matter. But 2.5G and 3G services will be available in dual-mode in mid-2003 for seamless connectivity.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:31 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 3, 2002

News for 12/3/2002

By Glenn Fleishman

Is WiFi part of your product strategy? Let Blue Mug handle the details: integration, interop, roaming, power, performance.

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

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I'm at 802.11 Planet in Santa Clara: Still stinging from paying so much for a decent breakfast in the hotel restaurant, I'm using the Proxim/Boingo-sponsored free wireless near the session rooms. The tutorial/workshop day has just begun.

I ran into Alan Meckler while registering; Alan is the man behind so many Internet beginnings: MecklerWeb (early portal, shut down when it was clear portals wouldn't make money near-term); Internet World, Web Week, and other publications (sold to Penton at the height of their value); Internet World, the trade show (sold to Softbank, ditto). Meckler's current venture spans from purchasing the domain name internet.com a few years ago after spinning off everything but the editorial Web sites he ran.

Meckler in his incarnation as INT Media bought Jupiter Media Metrix's remaining fire sale assets and changed the company's name to Jupitermedia. Meckler is one to watch, because he's usually into things before anyone understands there's money or interest there, and out of them while people laugh at his caution -- until usually a few months or even weeks later, when the industry or segment tanks, and he's laughing all the way to the bank.

Meckler is bullish on Wi-Fi.

Meckler launched the first 802.11 Planet conference for early Oct. 2001, and Sept. 11 forced a reschedule and almost a cancellation. The event was rescheduled to November, a brave financial move, and had just a few exhibitors and a small but focused group of attendees. This year, there are four dozen exhibitors, and a full house -- the hotel sold out its 802.11 Planet room block, in fact, always a good sign.

The conference this year is tightly focused on business and IT: how to, where to, why to, when to, and how much to. One track today is on wireless LAN security; I'll be moderating and presenting at the afternoon tutorial on hot spot security. (You can view in PDF form my presentation.

<bookplug>The presentation itself is adapted (and refocused onto hot spot security issues) from the security chapter of my new co-written book, The Wireless Networking Starter Kit, which is due in bookstores like Amazon.com early next week.</bookplug>

Other News

Trevor Marshall on antennas: Just met Trevor Marshall here at 802.11 Planet. Follow the links on the top of his site to the links for antennas: he's produced some excellent visualizations of antenna patterns. Trevor is speaking on antenna design this afternoon.

NewsFactor on Apple Titanium's range problems: NewsFactor offers a thorough examination of the Faraday cage that is the Apple Titanium PowerBook has a range problem. They tried to uncover more, but there's not enough out there to tell us the details.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:08 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

December 2, 2002

London Hot Spot Report

By Glenn Fleishman

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Guest report on London Commercial Hot Spots: Your intreprid host is off to 802.11 Planet today (Dec. 3-5 in Santa Clara), and received this excellent report on commerical hot spots in London from Tim Woolford, an independent consultant who specializes in wireless, mobile and satellite communications. Herewith, his report:

Reading recent press releases and media comment, you could be forgiven for thinking that the coffee shops and streets of London were awash with Laptop users wirelessly connecting to the Internet. I visited three commercial hotspots in central London to find out first hand what was really happening. Armed with my laptop (running windows 98) and Netgear 802.11b PCMCIA card, I hit the streets.

First stop was Costa Coffee in Farringdon. This is a BT Openzone hotspot, although there is no indication of this from outside. Once inside, there is an Openzone logo on the wall and leaflets are available describing the service. However, in order to use the service, you first have to register at the Openzone website. It did not appear to be possible to gain access to the website unless you had previously subscribed to Openzone. The Network name (SSID) is not displayed anywhere.

I tried various combinations of BT, Openzone, etc, but could not get a connection (obviously with Windows XP this would be easier, as XP can display a list of available networks). Also there did not appear to be any power sockets close by -- so make sure your laptop is fully charged! It looks like BT expect Openzone users to have preregistered for the service before setting out. Interestingly no one else was using a laptop while I was there or later on in the afternoon when I looked in on the way back to the underground station.

Next stop was Starbucks in Fleet Street. Big sign in the window showing that this was a T-Mobile hotspot. So I bought yet another coffee, found a table next to the wall, with a power socket (every wall table had power points close by -- coincidence or is this a Starbucks design feature?). No network name is displayed anywhere; I tried T-Mobile, it worked, and I got a 100% signal. Launched IE, typed in a URL and immediately got redirected to a co-branded Starbucks/T-Mobile web page with a simple (free for now) registration process.

Once registered, I was able to browse the web and send/receive my emails. I also ran a Yahoo Instant Messenger session with a friend. Spotted one other laptop user during the 2 hours I was there. Left with a very positive impression, seems that experience gained in the US has been applied to make accessing and using the service very straightforward. It will be interesting to see what the pricing plan will be once the free trial ends.

Final destination was Paddington Station to try the Megabeam service. Headed for the Lawns area of the station. Didn't see any signage for Megabeam. Fired up my laptop, tried Megabeam as the network name. It worked and I got a strong signal, again entered a URL and was redirected to the Megabeam registration webpage with an option to buy access online, if I didn't already have an account. I didn't buy any access as time was running out and I needed to catch my train, but the process appeared to be straightforward. Again I had a quick scout around but could only see a couple of people with laptops open.

Conclusions. Based on my experiences, it appears that BT is aiming for the corporate user, where they are typically preregistered, with no option for the casual user to buy access while at the hotspot. Starbucks/T-Mobile are going for the mass/SME market and Megabeam falls somewhere between the two with a range of tariff plans supporting both post pay and instant access. Although I was using a somewhat clunky setup getting access to the T-Mobile and Megabeam services was relatively straightforward, if I'd been running Windows XP, then it would have been even easier with no guessing of network names (SSID's).

However, my user experience does highlight one of the major issues with WLAN hotspots, namely roaming. If I were a 'typical' hotspot user then I would have needed three separate subscriptions to use the three hotspots. In comparison, a GSM GPRS service although both slower and costlier (per Mb) does have the benefit of ubiquitous coverage (in theory at least) and a single bill.

The second issue is demand, or lack of it ! I saw very few laptop users, maybe I picked a bad day (or time of day) but based on what I saw actual usage is low to non-existent at this stage.

We should remember how relatively young the UK hotspot business is. 12 months ago there were no commercial hotspots. My own experience reconfirms that the underlying technology is mainstream and reliable. The bigger issues will continue to be demand, roaming, and the development of viable business models for the participants in the hotspot value chain. It is very easy in the IT/Telecoms industry to get caught up in the hype and lose sight of what happens 'out there' in the real world. If you are involved in the hotspot business my advice would be to make sure you 'get out there' and see for yourself what's happening 'on the streets'.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 12:06 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

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