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Inspired Broadcast Networks launches in UK: 250 hot spots in two months; 1000 in four months; 3000 by end of year: Guy Kewney's scoop a few days ago breaks to the light of day. The gaming firm Leisure Link already has placement in thousands of locations. Inspired's The Cloud service will piggyback on that. The service will be vendor-neutral host, meaning that you'll be seeing a lot of US and Canadian firms signing up to roam onto that network to increase their hot spot count.
Alan Reiter, as usual, has exhaustive reporting on this, including Ericsson's announcement that they will be building out the infrastructure for Inspired. Watch for Guy Kewney's analysis as well (to come, I'm sure).
I believe we can call today the day the dike broke. Why the UK suddenly went from a few hundred installed and a few thousand committed to tens of thousands in the works and several thousand up in the next months is anyone's guess. There goes that tipping point.
Deep Hot Spot Overview
San Francisco Intl Airport might be turning point for hot spot proliferation: Notice I didn't say anything about hot spot profit. O'Reilly Networks very kindly was interested in a few thousand words from me surveying the state of hot spots, mostly focused on the US. It's a deep overview, if that's not an oxymoron.
Other News
Monty Python's Flying Dog Food Cans: In a typical display of British yeomanship, a man has used dog food tins (cans) to create a wireless link back to a broadband connection. In the US, a coffee can served the same purpose.
Venture capitalists leave networks open: Downstairs neighbor of Benchmark "borrows" a cup of bandwidth: Sure the servers are password protected, but are they using a security protocol like IPsec on the data transmission? If it's in the clear, then no one needs to break into servers, just passively monitor. [via TechDirt]