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Wayport scores CNN arrangement, still must negotiate with airports: Wayport has signed a deal with CNN, according to internetnews.com, that allows them to build out vendor-neutral host access points at the 38 airports at which CNN has its airport television network. The rub: Wayport still needs to negotiate with each airport, but it doesn't have the same kind of infrastructure cost as going it alone.

As you may have read in this space before, most airport authorities and an increasing number of commercial venues are looking for vendor-neutral situations in which one company acts as the infrastructure provider and fee settlement firm, while other networks have full roaming access for the fees set in those locations. The only complication is that some of these hosts require daily fees, not monthly memberships, so even an unlimited service plan wouldn't include the location. This will certainly change, but the fee settlement will be complex.

Those with long memories will recall Global Digital Media, a company I mentioned in Feb. 2001 in the New York Times article that led me into covering field. GDM had signed a deal with CNN, the head of GDM said, that let them into the same sort of relationship. I've been waiting for this to resurface. [via Joe Brancatelli]

Other News

Intel promotes Asian roaming: Intel is working with several companies in Asia to try to develop integrated roaming and billing systems. Research firm IDC estimates 150,000 Asian Wi-Fi users outside Japan and 2.7M by 2007.

Joe Broke Me: Configuration-less hot spot might need tech support: Joe Sharkey, the business travel columnist of The New York Times, writes about his experience using Wi-Fi in a London hotel that's pushing the service. For him, it worked fine -- with a laptop configured by the hotel. But when his colleague Joe Brancatelli fired up his own machine, no go. Brancatelli told me that it the tech guys wrestled with his machines, but it turned out (later) to be a setting that forced a connection through a dial-up modem. Unchecking a box gave him access. So much for automatic configuration: tech support is always needed, and hopefully, they'll actually check the network settings next time.

Alan Reitermania: Alan on Toshiba's hot spot plans and Guy Kewney's scoop on 30K hot spots in Britain: Alan covers two interesting stories today. The Toshiba announcement is fascinating; the company has been selling turnkey hot spot systems (see my turnkey rundown) for some time. However, they've moved into high gear: they want to get 10,000 hot spots set up by selling their system for $199. Alan reports that they will be advertising heavily in four test markets to support merchants who adopt the system. A few days ago, Toshiba of Canada announced plans to roll out Canadian hot spots themselves.

Meanwhile, Alan also reports on Guy Kewney's remarkable scoop: a UK gaming company that already has DSL lines to 3,000 pubs and other locations that feed their gambling machines. These machines were connected to allow high-speed upgrades of new games and other services, and their security is as airtight, they say, as you'd imagine a gaming operation to be. It's a breeze for them to turn on Wi-Fi service in those 3,000 locations. They've also placed an order for 21,000 DSL lines over three years. Guy doesn't explain how that turns into 30,000 hot spots at year's end, but perhaps some of these locations would be linked locally instead of via DSL.

Seattle, Portland (Oregon), Vancouver (BC): we've cut more cords: An Intel-sponsored Best Places study shows that the triumvirate of Northwest cities has more density of hot spots than elsewhere, and the west coast is heavier than the east coast in spots to unplug. There are lots of local stories based on this report.

Taiwan, Inc., to offer wholesale prices of $10 per 802.11 PC Card: It's expected that by the second half of this year, wholesale prices for 802.11b PC Cards will be $10; they're already as low as $16-$17. These cards are typically rebranded and coupled with OEM-customized software.

Sony Ericsson to introduces 802.11b/GSM/GPRS: Sony Ericsson's card supports three GSM bands, GPRS Class 10, and 802.11b, and will allow roaming when more of the backend components are built. This card would allow a carrier to bill using EAP SIM, which encapsulates messages over the GSM network to allow Wi-Fi network authentication using the SIM authentication module. I'm unclear whether this will use simple MAC address clearance -- your MAC address sent over GSM and then the hot spot unlocking access for that address -- or something more sophisticated. If just MAC address unlocking, it's easy for someone with a sniffer to clone your address. According to IETF presentations a few months ago, all of the EAP-plus-method flavors lack cryptographic binding between network layers, which allows address spoofing, but not necessarily network access.