I am trying to set up my home for a total WiFi environment to include my Music. The goal is to connect all my PC's anf the Wireless Media Adapter for my TV/Music room to one Music File Server.

The Music server is using Windows 2000 and everything else is XP Pro. I can only get one of my PC's to network to the Music server.

Is the a standard set-up that I can use on each XP box to connect?

ARTICLE - Verizon they never stop scamming you
29 September, 2005 by admin

Verizon Wireless Services provides people with customer service that is below "Consumer Friendly" - they provide horrible service and lie to its customers

Can you hear me now? We wish Verizon Wireless did but unfortunately that?s not the case. At Verizon Wireless, they strive to destroy people?s lives and peoples credit reporting scores, that?s why looking for a cellular provider may be beneficial if you want to have a provider you can count on.. Hundreds of people a day report that Verizon Wireless has messed up on their bills, have charged them for services not received and have been charge disconnect fees when they were advised by the customer service associates this would not occur. Many people also have reported that their credit ratings have gone down simply because Verizon has reported they charged off their accounts When infact that never really occurred.

In a recent conversation Elizabeth Sturgis, Executive relations for VERIZON WIRELESS clearly stated that once an account has bee ?charged off" and is placed on your credit report you will have to wait 7 years for it to be removed... "Even if you pay off a charged off account, we legally can not remove it from your credit report" she stated via phone and in a letter. Other executives at Verizon Wireless like Mr. Scharnikow is not consumer friendly and insisted that if you owe a debt regardless of how much it is (Even if its $1.00) it will be placed on someone?s credit bureau report and wont be removed.

We have finally found a website doing something about peoples problems with Verizon Wireless. VerizonWirelessEatspoop.com (AKA: VerizonSuxs.com) has a complaint section on his website where people can report his/her problems. He also has a store front and posts his own problems he has encountered.

For more information on this website please visit one of the following links:

http://www.VerizonSuxs.com
or
http://www.VerizonWirelessEatspoop.com


#### article could be found at #####
http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200509/1127937157.html

Is it possible to set up a Wireless network using a wireless B connection rather than a cable or DSL modem? It isn't a high traffic network so having an 11mb connection would be okay. If it is possible what product would you suggest buying to set up the network?

"The Pope is retiring. That stunning announcement is made by Navarro-Valls, Director of the Vatican in a special press conference made hours after a joyous celebration today of the Beatification of Mother Theresa.

'...For the continued reform and progress of the Church, the Holy Spirit has moved His Apolistic Father, Pope John Paul II, to retire. The future of the Pontificate is to be decided according to the Universi Dominici Gregis at the next conclave of Cardinals.' Navarro-Valls did not specifically mention the physical condition of the Pope, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, and arthritis, as a possible factor in his decision, something which Vatican insiders have strongly suggested.

The retirement is unprecedented in the history of the Vatican, now it is up to the..."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/ 31903558.stm

802.16: A Future Option for Wireless MANs

By Jim Geier

There are lots of companies today wanting to deploy wireless connectivity over larger areas, such as cities and rural areas, as an alternative to using copper and fiber-based solutions. Wireless is certainly less expensive to install and support in most cases, especially in locations where it's cost prohibitive to install physical media or right-of-way issues persist.

The problem, however, is that there have not been effective, standards-based solutions for implementing wireless networks within metropolitan-sized areas. Traditionally, companies install proprietary or 802.11 equipment for wireless connectivity over areas outside the confines of a building. Proprietary systems are great for meeting performance and security requirements; however, they tend to be more expensive and a bit risky in terms of long-term support. They also lack interoperability, something that end users demand.

The use of 802.11-based hardware for metropolitan-sized networks decreases costs, but 802.11 has performance limitations when supporting larger numbers of users needing guaranteed bandwidth. In addition, RF interference is often a significant problem with 802.11 when covering large areas due to license free operation. A competitor may install an 802.11 network which interferes with yours, and users will suffer due to sporadic, poor performance. There's really nothing you can do about that because there are no legal grounds to remedy the situation.

802.16 to the Rescue

The IEEE 802 group initiated the IEEE 802.16 Working Group to create standards for broadband wireless access in order to offer a high speed/capacity, low cost, and a scalable solution to extend fiber optic backbones. The first IEEE 802.16 standard, published in April 2002, defines the WirelessMAN Air Interface for wireless MANs. These systems are meant to provide network access to homes, small businesses, and commercial buildings as an alternative to traditional wired connections.

If you want the long range wireless for your needs in the near term, forget it, 802.16 won't work for you -- there are no products yet.

Several companies, such as Airspan Networks, Alvarion, Intel, Nokia, Proxim and Wi-LAN -- all members of WiMax, an industry group backing 802.16 -- are in the process of developing 802.16 products, but they won't be available until mid-2004. That's almost a year away, so your decision should depend on the urgency of installing the system and whether or not you feel that mid-2004 is a solid date. As we all know, product release dates tend to slip, especially for products using new standards and technologies.

With wireless base station equipment targeted at under $20,000, 802.16 can economically serve up to 60 customers with T-1 speed connections (define). That's really attractive to the typical WISP that's short on cash. In addition, 802.16 can provide a feasible backhaul for connecting wireless LAN hotspots together.

802.16 in Operation

802.16 supports point-to-multipoint architecture in the 10-66 GHz range, transmitting at data rates up to 120Mbps. At those frequencies, transmission requires line-of-site, and roofs of buildings provide the best mounting locations for base and subscriber stations. The base station connects to a wired backbone and can transmit wirelessly up to 30 miles to a large number of stationary subscriber stations, possibly hundreds.

To accommodate non-line-of-site access over lower frequencies, IEEE published 802.16a in January 2003, which includes support for mesh architecture. 802.16a operates in the licensed and unlicensed frequencies between 2GHz and 11GHz using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), which is similar to 802.11a and 802.11g.

The 802.16 medium access control (MAC) layer (define) supports many different physical layer specifications, both licensed and unlicensed. Through the 802.16 MAC, every base station dynamically distributes uplink and downlink bandwidth to subscriber stations using time-division multiple access (TDMA). This is a dramatic difference from the 802.11 MAC, with current implementations operating through the use of carrier sensing mechanisms that don't provide effective bandwidth control over the radio link.

Mobility is Coming

The next step for the 802.16 working group is to add portability and mobility to the standard. In March 2002, the working group began the 802.16e Study Group on Mobile Broadband Wireless Access. This group will address many different mobility issues, including providing connectivity to moving vehicles within a base station's sector.

WPA To Whip Wireless Security into Shape
 
By: Larry Seltzer

Wired Equivalent Privacy, better known as WEP, has been one of the security industry's laughingstocks for years. However, a fix is in the works—again. Still, this time, the results look promising.

While the WEP encryption standard is installed in zillions of Wi-Fi devices out on the market, it's been common knowledge that cracking keys and breaking WEP encryption is not all that difficult. There's even been a growing trade in tools to help you do this, not that I would approve of such things. What's worse, the problems are at the protocol level, not in the implementations, meaning that WEP has been just plain broken

The good news is that after some fits and starts, the standards and industry people in the Wi-Fi Alliance finally agreed on a solution, and so far nobody's come up with a serious flaw in it.

Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) can be implemented on all Wi-Fi devices with just a software upgrade (assuming the device is software-upgradable, as any decent should be). It uses a far stronger encryption protocol called Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP), and includes a protocol for changing keys periodically just to make things even harder for attackers. Throw in the Message Integrity Code (MIC or "Michael") and WPA packets also become hard to tamper with in the air.

WPA is a subset 802.11i, a more ambitious standard that has been in the works for a while and given the new marketing moniker WPA2. 802.11i, or WPA2, will add support for a far stronger encryption method called Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which has been adopted as an official government standard by the Department of Commerce and National Institute of Standards and Technology. Since AES may require hardware assistance, WPA2 may not run on all current hardware. But it will simultaneously support the current WPA subset, and will ease the migration to WPA2. This plan stands in contrast to the initial WPA standard which does not guarantee WEP support, at least not for simultaneous usage, although some vendors will support both encryption standards through proprietary means.

On the enterprise side WPA also adds authentication support through RADIUS servers and Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP). Doubtless administrators will be thankful for a standard capability to interoperate with their existing infrastructure. Smaller networks without RADIUS servers can manually share an ASCII "Pre-Shared Key" (PSK) instead of the infuriating hex nonsense that WEP users have grown used to.

At the same time, it's important to note that many, if not all, older products have other security-related features and that there are precautions users can implement now to mitigate the problems in WEP. Sadly, many users never implement all the security available in their devices. If you have a wireless network and you care, look into these:

If your access point allows you to disable SSID broadcast, disable it. SSID is the name of the wireless LAN that shows up when you browse. You'll have to know the SSID and enter it manually when you connect, but strangers won't know it. Actually I've read that there are tools that can sniff out wireless LANs with unbroadcast SSIDs, but I haven't seen them in action. In any event, not broadcasting SSIDs drastically lowers the profile of your LAN, reducing the probability of an attack.

Another good idea is to change your WEP password periodically. This is more a roadblock than a real barrier to attackers, but there's no sense in making things easy for them.

For heavens' sake, change the default administrator password on your access point and refresh it periodically. If someone penetrates your network you don't want them to lock you out of it.

Place your access point at the physical center of the building. This will maximize the broadcast quality inside, but has the added security benefit of minimizing it outside. Many access points, such as many Linksys products, have the ability for the administrator to lower the broadcast signal in their advanced settings. You can use this feature to tune the signal so that it covers your building and as little else as possible.

Finally, and most importantly, use MAC address filtering on your network to prevent use by any network adapters other than your own. This, especially in combination with the other measures above, will make it difficult for an outsider to make their way onto your network.

Of course, even the most elegant network encryption system has a proven weakness: its users. Unless you want to get into 007 stuff like biometrics, in order for your network to be completely secure, you have to trust your users not to betray their own secrets. Sadly, there's little that the Wi-Fi Alliance can do about that.

Get Free Wi-Fi, While It's Hot

By Lance Ulanoff


Over the years, I've seen a handful of news items and at least one documentary on water divining. Usually the practice proliferates during droughts. It involves a tool such as a forked or Y-shaped stick and someone—a dowser—who can use the tool to find water underground. The tail end of the Y bends down when over water. Whether these dowsers are charlatans or there's something behind it, I have no idea. What I do know is that I felt a bit like a dowser myself when I went hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots (what I like to call "hot-spotting") a few weeks ago.

I decided that heading out of my office in Manhattan with my wireless Tablet PC to see what I could find would be fun. Our office is near Madison Square Park which is the home of the original Madison Square Garden and the site of the first public display of the Statue of Liberty's right arm and torch. The park isn't big, and the northeast corner is just two blocks from my office. When I walked into the square, my notebook did not bend southward to indicate the existence of wireless networks (or water for that matter), but it did sniff the air—so to speak—and came up with no less than three available wireless hot spots. They all popped up in a small message from the network icon sitting in my task tray (I guess you could call that my divining rod).


I was encouraged by the number of hotspots I found, although somewhat dismayed to see they were all insecure networks, meaning that I could just hop on without any sort of ID, SSID, or WEP encryption. But now that I'd found the hotspots, I decided to choose one from the list and attempt to connect to the Internet. Windows XP (Tablet Edition and otherwise) makes identifying and connecting to hotspots easy. A list pops up, you make your choice, and if there's no authentication required (as I found with my choice, supplied by www.nycwireless.net, which has more than half a dozen free hotspots dotting Manhattan), you connect and surf. The signal strength of my connection was excellent and I got the full 11-Mbps 802.11b throughput. I used AIM to IM with one of my coworkers in the office. The experience was just like being in the office except for the birds, trees, pleasant breeze, and people sunning themselves on the grass.

When I headed southeast toward the opposite end of the park, signal strength remained strong through the first half, finally dropping away about three-quarters of the way in. That seemed about right for coverage from an 802.11b network, which is pretty much the standard technology for hotspots. Some hotspots use repeaters and boosters to extend 802.11b's 300-foot range, though.

I continued walking through the park and found another couple of networks, one from CWT-NY and one from Verizon (www.verizon.net/wifi/). CWT was simply too patchy to establish a connection, but when I turned and started heading back north through the park, I was able to hook into Verizon—sort of. I got a signal and connected, but could not surf the net or IM anyone. Verizon is, like many of these networks, free, but you need to be a Verizon broadband customer to access the company's Wi-Fi network—apparently that's how I'd get the necessary authentication to access the Internet. Even more disappointing was the fact that once I connected to Verizon, the signal was so locked in, I couldn't disconnect or switch to another, free service.

Somewhat frustrated, I headed back to the office to investigate hotspot Web sites. Intel and others have developed sites that can help you do your hot-spotting before you head out. While some sites let you enter an exact street address, you'll have more success with a single street name or ZIP code.
 
 

At the WiFinder site, for example, I couldn't find any hotspots (free or paid) for the park or area around my office (obviously this was incorrect since I had found three in my own search). Using my ZIP code, though, the site returned six locations—and here's a nice touch—it even gave me the necessary SSID for one of the hotspots. Most Wi-Fi utilities should give you the option of saving multiple wireless profiles so you can create a hotspot connection profile, including the SSID, on your system without losing, say, your main office or home profile.
 
 

Intel's hotspot finder isn't quite as agnostic as some of the other sites I found. The chip manufacturer obviously wants to promote its Centrino platform for wireless connectivity, and even though the platform employs 802.11b like nearly everyone else, Intel only lists the hotspots that feature Centrino branding.
 
 
I could get no more granular than a search on all of New York City, which brought up 16 hotspots (that number is merely a fraction of what's actually available), three-quarters of which were at Starbucks locations. The nearest I could find wasn't near at all, and seemed unlikely to extend into Madison Square Park. You can also find a rather comprehensive list of worldwide wireless nodes at NodeDB.com. The information and level of detail for Wi-Fi hotspots in New York and elsewhere is a bit uneven, but the prospect of anyone who has a Wi-Fi device being able to sit down and connect—often for free—it's still exciting.

Unfortunately, this won't last. The free-wheeling times of open-access hot-spotting will, just like the Internet before it, make the shift to pay-as-you-go. And this will happen much faster than it did with the Internet. Internet-related business owners and service providers are much smarter now, and they know they need only tease you for a little while to get you hooked. And you will get hooked. Sitting out in the park like that, working and chatting with coworkers, I imagined myself doing a day's work there. One of my coworkers immediately asked if the whole team could work outside. I said no. I'm not that dumb.

Verizon Wireless Sees Room For It And Wi-Fi

By Reinhardt Krause

The wireless Internet genie - Wi-Fi - is out of the bottle, and Dennis Strigl knows it isn't going back in.

Strigl, chief executive of mobile phone company Verizon Wireless (news - web sites) Inc., has watched Wi-Fi storm the country over the last 18 months, and he professes no fears.


Wi-Fi takes advantage of unlicensed radio spectrum to provide short-distance wireless data communications for laptop computers.


With a Wi-Fi-ready laptop, anyone can connect to the Internet - often for free - wherever a Wi-Fi antenna has been installed to create a Wi-Fi hot spot. Hot spots include certain airports, hotels, fast food chains, bookstores and beaches. With Wi-Fi access, laptop users can opt not to use for-pay wireless networks owned by phone companies.


It's clear that Wi-Fi has siphoned data revenue from wireless carriers, analysts say. Some warn that demand for Wi-Fi could pre-empt plans by wireless carriers to launch next-generation wireless services.


Not so, says Strigl. He says Verizon Wireless plans another network upgrade in 2004-05 to boost wireless data speeds a notch.


"Wi-Fi doesn't complicate our plans or put anything on hold," said Strigl. "We're not flinching because of Wi-Fi. We're moving ahead with our (network) trials."


Despite Wi-Fi's rising popularity, Strigl says it won't meet all needs, especially those of businesspeople. Wi-Fi hot spots have a connection range of only 150 to 300 feet.


"If you look at the limitations of Wi-Fi today, it isn't in all places," Strigl said. "It's not an ubiquitous network.


"Will Wi-Fi hot spots grow out rapidly across the country? Yes. Is Wi-Fi a good high-speed service? Yes. But at the same time, we have our Express wireless network. It's virtually ubiquitous, and getting faster."


Hooks Up With Wayport


Still, Strigl accepts that Wi-Fi is part of the mobile Internet puzzle.


In March, Verizon Wireless said it would partner with privately held Wayport Inc., a start-up that has built about 700 Wi-Fi hot spots across the U.S. Wayport's Wi-Fi links are in hotels, airports and McDonald's outlets.


Wayport's services should be available to Verizon subscribers in the third quarter, the companies say. Verizon hasn't said what it will charge subscribers. Analysts expect Verizon Wireless to add other Wi-Fi partners soon, even as its conventional wireless network gets faster.


The network uses code-division multiple access technology. The 1X version of Verizon's CDMA (news - web sites) network now in place provides average data speeds of up to 80 kilobits per second. That's a bit faster than wireline dial-up connections, but slower than Wi-Fi.


Verizon is testing an advanced CDMA version, called "EV," in San Diego and Washington, D.C. It's already widely used in South Korea (news - web sites).


Installing EV gear would raise Verizon's data speeds to 2.4 megabits per second.


WiFi speeds typically top out at about 1.5 megabits per second. That's the speed of long-haul T1 digital lines that are hooked up to Wi-Fi antennas. It's those T1 lines that actually connect to the Internet.

The Wayport deal and other Wi-Fi alliances would give Verizon's customers more choices, analysts say. But in the long run, "Wi-Fi could be supplanted by more mobile and higher-speed EV as it becomes available," Bear Stearns analyst Robert Fagin wrote in a recent report.

Strigl likes that thinking. He says Verizon can upgrade CDMA faster than Wi-Fi will spread.

"I would suggest it's less expensive for us to get high-speed data rolled out on a network that already exists cross-country than it is for Wi-Fi to build cross-country," he said.

Researcher Gartner Group estimates there will be more than 50,000 Wi-Fi access points by 2008. But many will be redundant with other hot spots, and Wi-Fi surely won't have anything near the geographic reach of Verizon's cell phone network. The carrier has more than 19,000 cell phone sites across the U.S. today.

Yet, the Wi-Fi phenomenon isn't something Verizon Wireless or parent Verizon Communications Inc. can ignore.

In May, New York-based Verizon Communications revealed plans to wire 1,000 phone booths in Manhattan with Wi-Fi antennas. Verizon is providing Wi-Fi access at no charge to existing customers of its broadband digital subscriber line service.

"It's not illogical to (envision) roaming from a mobile phone network to a Wi-Fi hotspot or a wireless router in the home," said Lawrence Babbio, Verizon Communications president, in an interview. "That, to me, is a huge (marketing) advantage when you're dealing with high-end consumers as well as businesspeople that want some kind of data access on the road."

He adds that Wi-Fi demand is sure to grow as more laptop makers, such as Dell Computer Inc., build wireless links into machines. And No. 1 chipmaker Intel Corp. is pushing Wi-Fi.

Is It Just Big Talk?

If the New York pay phone trial goes well, Verizon says, it will expand its Wi-Fi availability to other cities. But not all rivals are convinced Verizon will follow through.

"It's a good PR play with all the saber-rattling," said an executive with a rival. "It's just a trial."

Verizon Communications, analysts say, is trying to scare cable TV rivals by bundling services cable can't provide. Cable firms lead the Bells in providing speedy broadband Internet access. But cable firms don't own wireless networks.

Verizon's DSL-Wi-Fi strategy is an example of product bundling that's becoming more common by phone companies. Later this year, Verizon Wireless plans to roll out service plans that package mobile phone services with Wi-Fi. Pricing hasn't been revealed.

Verizon Wireless charges $80 a month for unlimited data services via its CDMA wireless network. The pending Wi-Fi plans would provide access through Wayport and perhaps other partners. Verizon would pay Wayport and others roaming fees to let its subscribers access the hot spots, analysts say.

"We're not looking for places where people like to hang out," Strigl said. "We're looking for places that fill spots where our 1X (CDMA) services don't provide the kind of high-speed coverage our customers need."

Strigl adds that parent Verizon Communication's foray into Wi-Fi-equipped public phones doesn't complicate his wireless agenda.

"They've made a good choice," he said. "Wi-Fi is complementary to their DSL service. It should prove helpful in minimizing customer churn (turnover)."

Verizon is playing catch-up to one rival in Wi-Fi. T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, bought a bankrupt Wi-Fi firm in late 2001. T-Mobile owns hot spots in coffee shops, book stores and other spots.

T-Mobile charges $29.95 monthly for unlimited data services, either through its conventional cellular network or through Wi-Fi access. And wireless carrier SprintPCS has partnered with Wi-Fi start-up Boingo Wireless Inc. and others.

While Wi-Fi access is often free, more companies are trying to turn it into a moneymaker. Some start-ups charge $5-$7 an hour. Others charge $30 or more a month.

AT &T Corp. is betting that providing businesspeople with Wi-Fi access will be profitable. It's backing WiFi start-up Cometa Networks Inc.. Outside the U.S., AT&T provides Wi-Fi access to business customers through an alliance with GRIC Communications Inc.

At Verizon Wireless, Strigl says, business customers, rather than consumers, will drive its network upgrade to EV technology - its answer to Wi-Fi.

"1X Express (its current CDMA) service is very convenient to take with you on a laptop," Strigl said. "But we don't have the kind of high-speed data that our business customers really desire."

PCTEL Selected by WiFi-Texas to Launch Hotspot Network Throughout Texas and at Schlotzsky's Restaurants Nationwide


Segue(TM) Roaming Client Enables Rapid and Easy Wi-Fi Connections and Roaming


CHICAGO & AUSTIN, Texas, Jul 22, 2003 (BUSINESS WIRE) --

PCTEL, Inc. (Nasdaq:PCTI) a leading provider of Wi-Fi and cellular mobility software, software-defined radio products and access technology, and WiFi-Texas.com, Inc., a WLAN service provider based in Austin, announced today their cooperation in improving the subscriber experience in accessing Wi-Fi networks. The PCTEL solution will assist WiFi-Texas customers and Schlotzsky's(R) Deli (Nasdaq: BUNZ) patrons in connecting to broadband wireless networks at dozens of WiFi-Texas Hotspot locations in the state of Texas and at participating Schlotzsky's Deli restaurants nationwide.

Specifically, WiFi-Texas has selected PCTEL's Segue(TM) Roaming Client to connect and automatically authenticate subscribers and other authorized users on their networks. Users of all WiFi-Texas installed Hotspots, as well as traveling subscribers who use Wi-Fi services on other networks, will benefit from PCTEL's Segue(TM) Roaming Client. Financial and other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The Segue(TM) Roaming Client offers an intuitive process to give laptop and handheld computing device users secure, seamless access and roaming capabilities to Wi-Fi networks in public areas, at the office, and in the home. The Roaming Client enables rapid scanning of available networks and a user-friendly connection process.

"Not only will the Segue(TM) Roaming Client greatly reduce technical support questions, it allows a preference list of SSID's, VPN settings, and scripts for breezy logins for present and future Wi-Fi network operators," said Murray Freeman, CEO of WiFi-Texas. "This allows the non-technical user to roam from hot spot to hot spot while controlling expenses and security."

"Our customers tell us they love the free Wi-Fi Internet access and the free use of iMac computers at the restaurants where we've introduced these amenities," said Monica Landers, director of communications at Schlotzsky's, Inc. "We hope the Segue Roaming Client will make it even easier for customers to connect to our Wi-Fi networks."

"We're excited to help WiFi-Texas and Schlotzsky's provide the most advanced hotspot services in the state of Texas and nationwide," said Marty Singer, PCTEL Chairman and CEO. "WiFi-Texas joins other network providers who recognize the value that we bring both to Wi-Fi connectivity and cellular data access."

About WiFi-Texas

WiFi-Texas builds and operates "commercial-grade community networks" for its own subscribers and for the benefit of patrons, visitors and users of other hotspot providers and enterprises. Using a range of wireless, wireline and MAN technologies, WiFi-Texas' Amenity Networks(TM) provide a complete solution for a variety of hotspot business models. Amenity Networks(TM) features include 24x7 network monitoring, bandwidth usage monitoring and management at user and hotspot level, optional content filtering, and an advanced Radius implementation that significantly increases the service reliability and reduces the costs of operating a hotspot. WiFi-Texas is located in Austin, TX, and on the web at www.wifi-texas.com. Telephone: 512-479-0317.

About PCTEL

PCTEL, founded in March 1994, is a leading provider of Wi-Fi and cellular mobility software, software-defined radio products and access technology. PCTEL's products include WLAN software products (Segue(TM) Product Line) that simplify installation, roaming, Internet access and billing. Through its subsidiary, DTI, the company designs, develops and distributes OEM receivers and receiver-based products that measure and monitor cellular networks. The company maintains a portfolio of more than 120 analog and broadband communications and wireless patents, issued or pending, including key and essential patents for modem technology. The company's products are sold or licensed to PC manufacturers, PC card and board manufacturers, wireless carriers, wireless ISPs, software distributors, wireless test and measurement companies, and system integrators. PCTEL headquarters are located at 8725 West Higgins Road, Suite 400, Chicago, IL 60631. Telephone: 773-243-3000. For more information, please visit our web site at: http://www.pctel.com.

About Schlotzsky's, Inc.

Schlotzsky's, Inc., founded in Austin, Texas, in 1971, through its wholly-owned subsidiaries, is a franchisor and operator of restaurants in the fast casual sector. Our current menu features upscale made-to-order hot sandwiches and pizzas served on our proprietary buns and crusts, wraps, chips, salads, soups, fresh baked cookies and other desserts, and beverages. As of March 31, 2003, there were 619 Schlotzsky's(R) Deli restaurants open and operating in 37 states, the District of Columbia and six foreign countries. Visit www.schlotzskys.com or www.cooldeli.com for more information and e-coupons.

BT, T-Mobile join Wi-Fi alliance
Alliance plans to operate more than 26,000 hotspots around the world by year end
  
By David Legard, IDG News Service July 23, 2003
 
  British Telecommunications (BT) and T-Mobile have joined an Asian consortium called the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), which plans to be operating more than 26,000 Wi-Fi hotspots around the world by the end of this year.

   BT and T-Mobile join China Netcom Communications Group (China), Korea Telecom, Maxis Communications (Malaysia), StarHub (Singapore), and Telstra (Australia) in the alliance, which operates around 13,000 hotspots now.

T-Mobile's units in both the U.K and U.S. will be involved in the alliance, according to a WBA statement Wednesday.

The original alliance members, except for Korea Telecom, have begun a pilot trial for international Wi-Fi roaming in their four countries at over 500 Wi-Fi hotspots. Korea Telecom is expected to open its hotspots to international roamers by the end of the year as well.

There will be no extra charge for international Wi-Fi roaming during the trial, which will continue until the end of October. Telstra currently charges a minimum of A$5 (US$3.25) for the first 15 minutes of use and A$0.20 per minute after that.

Formed in March, the WBA has said its intention is to build a global Wi-Fi network under a single brand identity, utilizing a common technology platform.

Read an Ad, Get Free Wi-Fi

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59725,00.html

02:00 AM Jul. 24, 2003 PT

Southeast Airlines passengers may soon get to surf the Web wirelessly and talk on the phone throughout a flight.

Southeast, a small charter airline located in Largo, Florida, has signed an agreement with SkyWay Communications Holding to offer free Wi-Fi Internet service, and phone calls for as low as 50 cents a minute. While it still needs the approval of federal regulators, Southeast would become the first U.S. airline to offer wireless Internet service and relatively cheap phone calls through seat-back phones.

There is one caveat to the Internet service: Passengers would have to endure some advertising in order to get it.

"We would take over the audio and video right on the aircraft, and sell advertising on the plane," said David Huy, SkyWay's vice president of sales and marketing. "It would be both pop-ups and banner ads for the Internet access, and then we'll have advertisements with the usual sitcoms and whatnot on those drop-down TV monitors.

"We will be sharing the revenue with Southeast. The advertising revenues would be fairly substantial, so they will be getting a piece of that," Huy said.

Southeast's vice president of planning, Scott Bacon, would not comment on the financial arrangement between his company and SkyWay. He said he did not know how the technology worked or when the Federal Aviation Administration would approve it. Nonetheless, he expressed enthusiasm for the newly formed alliance.

"This is new technology," he said. "That's why it's so exciting for us."

Business travelers, too, are excited at the prospect of surfing the Web and talking on the phone affordably while flying.

Right now, in-flight communications options for passengers are pretty limited. Passengers aren't allowed to use their own cell phones because the devices might interfere with either onboard or ground communications systems. Using specially designed seat-back phones is prohibitively expensive -- Verizon charges $2.50 a minute, plus connection fees.

Jerry Weltsch, an analyst with market research firm Frost & Sullivan, said people might use the seat-back phone, but "once they got the credit card bill, they'd never do it again."

Wireless broadband Internet access has been limited to trials on Scandinavian Airlines and Lufthansa of Germany. The European airlines don't plan to offer the service on all their aircraft until at least the beginning of 2004.

Both United Airlines and Continental Airlines sell passengers dialup Internet service for $16 a flight by leveraging Verizon's seat-back Airfones. No major U.S. airline has unveiled plans to offer faster wireless broadband service because the FAA hasn't approved its use.

The FAA has commissioned the RTCA, a private nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., to study the effects of wireless technology -- Wi-Fi, cell phones, pagers and other wireless gear -- on equipment used to operate planes. RTCA isn't expected to release its findings until November 2003.

"We don't have an opinion yet on any of these new technologies because we need the information the RTCA committee is looking at," said FAA spokeswoman Alison Duquette.

Nonetheless, SkyWay has conducted tests of its own and is confident it will receive the FAA's approval at around the time the RTCA releases its results.

"November, really, wouldn't be that bad because it would fall within our time line," Huy said. "We're probably looking at six to nine months before the installation is complete."

SkyWay, a newly formed company in Clearwater, Florida, plans to build its business around AT&T Wireless' now-defunct seat-back phone service. The Florida company snapped up some of AT&T's ground base stations earlier this month to power the Internet on the plane. It plans to add Wi-Fi access points throughout Southeast's cabins so passengers with Wi-Fi-enabled laptop computers and PDAs can get their e-mail and surf the Web wirelessly.

SkyWay plans to sell phone calls through airplane-installed telephones, but at a much lower rate than Verizon -- around 50 cents a minute with no additional connection fees, Huy said.

"Our biggest source of revenue will be the advertising rights," he said.

Unlike Lufthansa and Scandinavian Airlines, which plan to charge passengers $25 to $35 a flight for Wi-Fi, SkyWay plans to offer that service for free.

But some business travelers said they weren't crazy about the thought of becoming an advertiser's captive audience.

"I would rather pay for it," said Scott St. Onge, a political financial adviser who recently flew into San Francisco from Washington, D.C., for a conference. "I'd pay $10 or $15 a flight. I pay $5 to watch a movie."

Mac Gordon, a spokesman for the Mississippi House of Representatives who recently was at the same San Francisco conference, said he would not like the advertising forced upon him.

"I would rather have the option" to pay for it, he said.

As for cheap phone calls, many business travelers would welcome the service. But some other passengers would be bothered by the constant yapping, said David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, a Washington, D.C., consumer advocacy group for airline passengers.

"The Internet would be well-received," Stempler said. "The one issue that will come up with this service is the use of cell phones in airplanes while in flight. Amtrak trains on the East Coast have had to set up quiet zones because people found cell-phone conversations to be intrusive. That will become an issue on airplanes as well."

Sprint Plans Public Wi-Fi Push

By Colin C. Haley

Sprint this morning became the latest telecom service provider to embrace public Wi-Fi (define), promising 800 hotspots (define) by the end of the summer, and 2,100 by the end of the year.

Verizon and SBC recently announced efforts to give users high-speed Internet access outside of their home or office via Wi-Fi enabled laptop, mobile phone or personal digital assistant.

Sprint's service will work through "Wi-Fi Zones," access points that meet standards of the nonprofit industry group Wi-Fi Alliance.

Sprint partner Wayport has Wi-Fi locations at airports, convention centers and hotels nationwide. And Sprint will rely on Airpath Wireless, a privately held Ohio firm, for hosted billing services.

Once completed, Sprint expects to cover 90 percent of all planned public roamable locations.

"Business customers have told us that convenient and seamless access to information is critical to increasing productivity of remote employees," said Phil Bowman, a vice president with Overland, Kan.-based company.

Sprint's PCS Connection Manager with Wi-Fi software enables customers to travel between disparate Wi-Fi locations, detect Sprint-compatible zones, and access their information.

The application, to be sold in Sprint stores as well as online, will also allow customers to access a directory, kept current via over-the-air updates.

Industry watchers say Sprint's rollout, and especially its move to provide access and billing for roaming, is important to rapid adoption of Wi-Fi. Such agreements were essential to the growth of cell phone adoption a decade ago.

"The Wi-Fi Alliance is pleased to see that a leading wireless carrier like Sprint is establishing Wi-Fi zone public access services on such a broad basis," said Frank Hanzlik, managing director of the nonprofit organization.

Initially, customers must subscribe using their credit cards. In late 2003, Sprint expects to integrate charges into the customers' monthly statement. Pricing has not yet been announced.

Woz to Wield a Personal Wireless System

By Michael Singer <mailto:msinger@jupitermedia.com>;

Apple Computer ( Quote <http://www.internetnews.com/stocks/quotes/quote.php/AAPL>;, Company Info <http://www.internetnews.com/stocks/quotes/quote.php/AAPL/DESC>;) co-founder Steve Wozniak is betting that you want to know where your important stuff is.

The CEO and technical visionary of Wheels of Zeus (or wOz -- a play on his nickname) is preparing a new GPS-based device along with a corresponding online network service that uses satellites to pinpoint things like people and pets as well as phones, briefcases and cars.

The Los Gatos, Calif.-based start-up is building digital identification tags called the "wOz Platform." The chipset is about the size of a quarter and would be sold to manufacturers to put in its products. Using the 900MHz spectrum, the company also is looking to deliver a service called "wOzNet" -- a local wireless network that has a range of about 1 to 2 miles. The tags would bounce off of base stations and alert subscribers by phone or e-mail to the location of a specific device.

The company said it is currently testing the devices and network internally. Plans are in the works to publicly unveil the wOz Platform and wOzNet in the first half of 2004 with products rolling out soon after.

"My vision in starting this company was to create technologies that would be helpful to people's everyday lives. We're developing a breakthrough network technology that fills a substantial gap in the wireless market," Wozniak said in a statement. "We now have a team of savvy and experienced business leaders in place to bring our technology to market."

Wozniak left Apple in 1985 and started the commercial venture last January. A champion of wireless technology, he has managed to eke out $6 million in VC money from the likes of Mobius Venture Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Palo Alto Investors.

To help flesh out the details, Woz has hired a crackerjack team of people who understand personal and mobile technology. The company Monday announced its new management team including Pre-Sun acquisition <http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/2228401>; Pixo exec Rich Rifredi in the role of chief operating officer, Palm visionary Frank Canova as vice president of engineering, and PalmSource exec Gina Clark to tackle business development and marketing.

Clark told internetnews.com the ultimate price point depends on what the partner will want to do with the technology. A carrier, for example, might subsidize the service. But the company is targeting the $200 to $250 price range for the network and around $25 for the ID tag.

"We want to make it affordable for people so we're really set on a finite set of partners," Clark said. "We want to crate the market and not the competition. So we've lined up partners that will be complimentary to the service."

Clark also said the network could grow organically or a vendor could tap into it for a low cost. The service would also be augmented as more compatible wireless base stations are installed.

"If you have an item and you have something that is in Southern California, the network will be able to pick it up," Clark said.

Because of that kind of network, the company is toting the combination of the wOz Platform and wOzNet and as bit of a personal hotspot. The main difference being that instead of tapping into high-speed 802.11 ( define <http://80211-planet.webopedia.com/SHARED/s...et.webopedia.com>;) infrastructures, wOzNET takes in small bits of information (up to 20K bps) -- just enough for location and status information or instant messaging.

Clark said while embedding the wOz Platform into laptops would be a great idea, the company probably won't court the PC makers until its second wave of product announcements based on the low cost-high volume nature of the laptop market.

AirDefense Upgrade Covers 802.11a/b/g

By Eric Griffith AirDefense (http://www.airdefense.net) of Alpharetta, Georgia, this week announced a new version of its AirDefense wireless LAN security and monitoring system. Version 3.5 adds monitoring of 802.11a as well as 11g/b, plus mapping functions and policy enforcement, with the usual interface enhancements one expects in any upgrade.
 
AirDefense is a system consisting of remote sensors placed around a location, which do 24 hour a day/7 day a week monitoring of the air waves for WLAN transmissions. The information gathered is forwarded back to a network appliance, which can be accessed by any user with the right privileges and a secure browser.

The version 3.5 system will add dual-radios to the sensors -- 5GHz radio frequency to monitor 802.11a traffic, and a 2.4GHz receiver to check 802.11g/b signals. These are brand new sensors -- users of the current AirDefense sensors will have to upgrade their hardware to get the 11a detection.
However, Brian Moran, spokesperson for AirDefense, says the company is working on deals for simple returns of older sensors for the new. Brand new, a single AirDefense sensor cost's $495.

Also new in 3.5, specifically in the RogueWatch module, is network mapping for a graphical look at placement of access points and clients on the WLAN. Moran says this is not location based -- it doesn't track movement -- but calls it a "quick representation... on the graphic you'll see signals strength and connection rates."

The company says it doesn't want its products to become a management platform, but felt the need to add some enhanced policy enforcement in this version. The AirDefense appliance can compare the configuration of an SNMP-based access point to the policy it should have -- say the access point is on channel 1 but policy requires channel 6, or the access point is broadcasting the SSID when it should not -- and AirDefense can make the change or shut down the access point as needed. Moran says the platform can monitor about 10 major network attributes.

This week the company also announced that the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) -- the part of the Department of Defense that runs grocery stores on military bases throughout the United States and Europe -- has bought into AirDefense as its monitoring solution of choice. The DeCA has installed sensors in close to 300 locations, which are monitored by only three AirDefense server appliances. The DeCA uses 802.11b to connect rugged devices used for tracking inventory. The DeCA is by far AirDefense's largest customer to date.

AirDefense earlier this month unveiled an entry-level security solution, called AirDefense Guard 1120. For $9,995 a small business can get the server appliance and four remote sensors.

Read A Magazine, Wi-Fi Style By Wireless Week Staff

July 22, 2003
news@2 direct

What's a business traveler do when he is on the road and realizes he forgot his copy of BusinessWeek, and but he doesn't feel like walking to the newsstand for a new copy? Well, the answer may be just a few steps away -- Zinio Systems Inc. has inked a deal to deliver digital magazines to Wayport's Wi-Fi customers.

The partnership calls for Zinio to bring more than 70 titles from 30 publishers to Wayport's network. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

To entice Wayport customers to give the digital magazines a try, the current issue of BusinessWeek will be available for download. For those customers who commit to a subscription to the digital edition of BusinessWeek, Wayport will give them a $25 Wayport prepaid connection card. PC Magazine, Technology Review, Motor Trend and Sporting News are among the other titles that will be offered to Wayport customers either as single issues or on a subscription basis.

Wayport provides its Wi-Fi service in roughly 500 locations, including eight major airports, various hotels and 75 McDonalds in the San Francisco Bay area.

It has been a busy week for Wayport; yesterday Sprint PCS announced it inked a roaming agreement with the company to support its Wi-Fi service rollout.

University says multimode WLANs ease operations
 
 By Joanie Wexler
 
 According to at least one organization, the availability of
 dual-band, multimode wireless LAN access points significantly
 eases site surveys and other RF management tasks.
 
 Brian Jenkins, network and technical services manager at
 Frostburg State University in Frostburg, Md., recounts how the
 blueprints for two new buildings on campus initially called for
 802.11a-only deployments. However, with the advent of
 802.11a/b/g gear, the technology plan changed.
 
 "As the job was nearing completion, we fell onto the 'tech
 bubble' when the WLAN switch appliances and a/b/g APs were
 coming out," explains Jenkins.
 
 Frostburg chose its infrastructure from start-up Airespace,
 which offers APs in both the 2.4-GHz frequency for 802.11b and
 11g connectivity and in 802.11a's 5-GHz band, plus a "switch"
 for centralized management and monitoring. The three
 non-overlapping channels in the 2.4-GHz band plus 13 in the
 5-GHz band supply enough channels to keep interference at bay.
 
 This works in the context of the Airespace gear because the
 company's APs and wireless switch support automated RF
 capabilities, such as dynamic channel selection and interference
 detection and avoidance.
 
 To fully leverage the multichannel strategy, user clients must
 support dual-band, multimode a/b or a/g or a/b/g connections,
 which Jenkins says is what the university recommends to
 students, faculty and staff.
 
 Interestingly, Airespace initially launched a combined
 wireless/wired switch; more recently, it added a wireless-only
 appliance option, when it discovered that some customers were
 already comfortable with their wired Ethernet switches.
 Frostburg, for example, uses the new Airespace 4100
 wireless-only appliance plugged into Extreme Networks wired
 Ethernet switches.
 
 Jenkins says a pen-and-paper site survey was originally done for
 the new buildings - before any bricks were laid - presuming an
 802.11a infrastructure. Then Airespace came in with dual-band,
 multimode products. Frostburg followed the original placement
 plan, but in May installed 48 Airespace 1200 multimode APs
 instead 802.11a-only products and two Airespace 4100 appliances,
 each with 24 ports.
 
 "We brought the products online and could immediately see where
 an appliance was telling certain APs to back off and was
 strengthening signals in other places [to optimize
 performance]," Jenkins says.
 
 He says he found just one area where he didn't have coverage in
 a room built of concrete block up through the ceiling. "So we
 just took an AP from an area that was saturated and just moved
 it to that room," he says.

Cometa hot spots to get cold shoulder?

By Richard Shim
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
July 21, 2003, 4:00 AM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1039-1027529.html

Cometa Networks is showing signs of stress as it races to meet an ambitious schedule aimed at making it the biggest provider of high-speed Internet "hot spots" in the United States.

The San Francisco-based start-up, formed late last year with the backing of technology giants IBM, Intel and AT&T, has announced show-stopping plans to build a network of 20,000 hot spots, with 15,000 up and running by 2005. Hot spots are areas where wireless Internet access is available to the public.

Seven months after its launch, however, Cometa <http://www.cometanetworks.com>; remains far behind competitors in the race to snap up the most valuable hot-spot locations and appears unlikely to meet its ambitious timetable, analysts said.

"I don't think they'll have the numbers they projected," said Pyramid Research analyst John Yurke, who recently wrote a research paper predicting Cometa will have only 10,000 hot spots in place by its announced deadline. "Wiring up a McDonald's is one thing. But to do all the rooms in a hotel or cover an airport can take weeks."

A Cometa representative said the company remains on schedule to meet its goals and downplayed suggestions that it is facing unexpected difficulties. "We're on track," said Cometa spokesman John Balbach, although he declined to elaborate.

Cometa has been in the spotlight because of its high-profile backers as well as the scale of its ambitions, which dwarf those of rival networks by aiming to make wireless broadband access nearly ubiquitous in the 50 largest U.S. cities.

But analysts point to a number of recent setbacks that signal the honeymoon is over for the start-up, which launched amid expectations that it would dominate the booming market for wireless broadband services.

Earlier this month, Cometa rival Wayport won a seat at a high-profile hot-spot trial with Cometa's only announced customer to date, fast-food giant McDonald's. Meanwhile, in a blow to Cometa's hopes of signing up telecommunications carriers, Verizon Communications and SBC Communications have both recently announced plans to create hot-spot services of their own, undercutting the chances of future partnerships.

Because size is one of the key measurements that carriers and service providers will look for in a partner, Cometa's plan all but requires it to be first in building the country's largest hot-spot network. But that task is looking more daunting now than it did when the company first launched, as companies have since rushed to enter the commercial hot-spot business.

To meet its 15,000 hot-spot goal, Cometa will have to build 500 hot spots a month for the next two-and-a-half years. That pace would quickly create the biggest hot-spot network in the United States. The biggest provider for now, T-Mobile, has just 2,400 active hot spots, and most network providers are building out new sites at a rate of tens per month, rather than hundreds.

But working on a less grand scale can have its advantages, analysts said, particularly in the race to secure high-quality hot-spot locations such as airports, hotels and other travel hubs that are most likely to attract large numbers of potential customers.

Lofty ambitions?
Cometa is under the gun because the company isn't thinking small and is looking to do it all itself, while competitors are moving fast and partnering with others to provide the right mix of services and products, IDC analyst Keith Waryas said.

"Cometa is in a tough spot because they're trying to get big, which makes it difficult for them to react quickly," he said. "But if they don't, they're of no use to carriers."

Cometa's Balbach countered that the company's efforts to create a true national network will result in significant advantages in price and quality of service over competitors, once it is built.

One of the biggest issues facing hot-spot companies is the lack of unified coverage, which might force a business traveler to hop between several different providers over the course of a single trip. This is a problem because customers must typically change computer settings and make different billing arrangements each time they sign on to a new system.

Some networks are striking so-called roaming agreements that allow customers from multiple services to use their equipment and thus quickly expand their service footprints. But Cometa said such arrangements are clunky and face enormous administration problems as the number of networks cobbled together increases. By contrast, the kind of single national network that Cometa plans to build avoids these problems and ultimately stands to reap benefits of scale.

Some analysts said the situation for now favors less ambitious hot-spot providers that have come out of the gate more quickly. Cometa competitor Wayport <http://www.wayport.com>;, for example, already has 650 hot-spot locations that it rents to service providers such as Boingo Wireless. By comparison, Cometa has announced just one customer, McDonald's, which has so far installed just 10 Cometa hot spots at restaurants in New York.

A Wayport representative downplayed the importance of sheer size and emphasized instead the need to get to the market first.

"It's not all about having the largest network; it's about having the best locations with the highest amount of traffic," said Dan Lowden, Wayport's vice president of marketing.

Wireless technology known as Wi-Fi has taken off as a cheap and effective way to share resources on a network, such as a broadband connection, and it has quickly spawned a commercial hot-spot service industry aimed at delivering bandwidth in high-use areas including hotels, airports and truck stops. Anticipating demand, providers are expected to add more than 55,000 new hot spots in the next five years on top of 4,200 locations in the United States at the end of 2002, according to IDC.

But the prospects for the service side of the business are not clear. The major criticism of the service business is that no one has been able to demonstrate a sustainable model. Part of that resides in the fact that the market is still young, but the other part is that it requires many new components and payment models, which are still evolving.

Hot-spot pioneer Joltage, for one, has already folded, saying that it appeared it would take longer than expected to acquire enough customers on its networks for the company to sustain itself.

Hooked on hot spots
Doubts about the viability of the hot-spot market haven't stopped numerous companies from trying to break in. Wireless service provider T-Mobile was among the first to jump into the market in a partnership with coffee chain Starbucks. The second-largest service provider is Boingo Wireless, which offers about 1,300 hot spots including 650 through its roaming agreement with Wayport. Other top providers include iPass, with about 1,000 hot spots that it rents from backend providers.

Some large telephone carriers are looking to build their own hot spots. Verizon has activated 150 free wireless broadband hubs in Manhattan as a sweetener for its digital subscriber line customers and plans to increase that number to 1,000. SBC also has said it will begin offering hot spots to its broadband subscribers under a similar arrangement.

Those announcements are seen as a blow to Cometa because Verizon and SBC represent the kind of big customers that the company is eventually hoping to sign on. Once they build their own networks, they may be less likely to seek out partnerships.

Meanwhile, Cometa is competing head-to-head with rivals in early trials with customers such as McDonald's.

Earlier this year, McDonald's announced plans to test hot spots in hundreds of its fast-food restaurants in New York, Chicago and a major market in California by year's end. The pilot program in Manhattan used Cometa for hot-spot service, but for its trial in San Francisco--which included 75 Bay Area restaurants with most up and running in the next few days--the fast-food chain went with Wayport.

A McDonald's representative said that the company plans to expand its Cometa trial within the next few weeks in New York and New Jersey, but declined to say how many restaurants would be involved.

"At the end of the year we will look at the data and customer feedback and decide where we go from here," the representative said. "We might go with just one provider, or we may use several. It's very much an experiment."

In a sign of how little time Cometa can afford to lose, the company on Wednesday confirmed that it is temporarily outsourcing key network management services to software start-up AuthDirect <http://www.authdirect.com>; as it awaits a similar application from investor IBM.

Analysts said Cometa's reliance, even temporarily, on a third-party provider such as AuthDirect underscores the challenges of building a massive network at top speed.

"To reinvent the wheel takes a lot of time and money, especially for research and development in a young market like this," IDC's Waryas said.

As wireless hot spots proliferate, commercial windfall in doubt

NEW YORK (AP) - Take my Wi-Fi, please.

That might as well be the motto of the increasing number of people who set up wireless Internet networks in their homes and businesses and - sometimes unwittingly - leave them open for anyone to share.
Then there are colleges, geeks and city officials who are making Wi-Fi as free as the foliage in public plazas. And now you can use Wi-Fi gratis in New York if you're a Verizon Internet subscriber or eating an Extra Value Meal at some McDonald's restaurants.
Add it all up, and there's a significant number of places where people with a properly outfitted laptop or handheld computer can get wireless Internet access without reaching for a credit card.
That could spell danger for burgeoning efforts to charge big bucks for the use of public Wi-Fi "hot spots." While Wi-Fi is shaping up as a true growth engine for chip-maker Intel and other technology companies, the idea of luring people to pay for it in public could be a flop - outside of select places like airports that have a captive audience of business travelers.
"Carriers going in and making money simply offering Wi-Fi service to customers in coffee shops - the reality of that is, it's not going to be that big," said David Chamberlain, an analyst with Probe Research.
Wi-Fi, short for wireless fidelity, radiates an Internet connection that multiple computers can share, at very fast speeds, for about 300 feet - a single hot spot.
Because it uses unlicensed radio frequencies, Wi-Fi is relatively easy and inexpensive to operate. Many new laptop computers automatically detect Wi-Fi networks, while others easily can be made to do so by plugging in a wireless card.
Beyond widespread Wi-Fi use in homes and offices, the United States has some 5,000 public hot spots. That includes 2,700 operated by wireless phone carrier T-Mobile, mainly in Starbucks coffee shops and Borders bookstores. T-Mobile charges 10 cents a minute (the minimum cost is $6, however), $40 a month or $360 a year, though existing T-Mobile customers can sign up for $20 a month.
Analyst Tim Shelton of Allied Business Intelligence envisions 12,400 hot spots in the United States and Canada by year's end and 78,000 by 2008.
But he says the industry needs to get much better at attracting average consumers. After all, there are only so many business travelers and tech addicts who lug around laptops and are willing to pay to go online while out and about.
Though notebook computer sales jumped 17% in the United States and 14% worldwide in the first quarter, Gartner Inc. analyst Ken Dulaney attributes the rise to lower prices and better laptop performance rather than the buzz over Wi-Fi.
And Parks Associates, a market research firm in Dallas, recently found that only 3% of Internet users have logged on through Wi-Fi hot spots. Only 5% of that small group took out a subscription to a Wi-Fi service.
"If you don't really travel nationwide, what's the need for hot spots?" said Parks Associates analyst Yuanzhe "Michael" Cai. "If you are just the average consumer, why do you want to go to a Starbucks or a hotel lobby when you can just use your DSL at home?"
In hopes of stimulating demand, Wi-Fi proponents at Boingo Wireless Inc. are linking otherwise unrelated hot spots so users can roam, the way cell phone callers do when they leave their provider's range.
But even now, without widespread roaming, Boingo founder Sky Dayton believes there's more than enough demand to make for-fee hot spots successful. "In Wi-Fi, getting to profitability just doesn't require that much traffic," he said.
T-Mobile won't release subscriber numbers, but spokeswoman Kim Thompson says its Wi-Fi usage is growing. Still, she concedes "there are a lot of different (business) models out there."
"In terms of which one of those is going to win out, who knows?" she said.
Assuming mainstream demand picks up, how much of it will be consumed by community-based free hot spots, like the ones volunteer techies run in New York, San Francisco and other cities? The fashionable answer among commercial Wi-Fi purveyors is: not much.
There are too few free spots, their argument goes, and frequent users will be willing to pay for customer service and encryption that can protect wirelessly transmitted data from snoops.
Indeed, security fears have prompted several companies to prohibit employees from accessing corporate networks from home or community hot spots. Some, like Dow Jones, prohibit work-related access from any wireless network at all.
The knock on free networks doesn't fly with Ossip Kaehr, who uses the free Wi-Fi in midtown Manhattan's Bryant Park. Sitting with his laptop and his son at a table in the park one wet, gray afternoon, Kaehr said he doesn't believe security is any better on a Starbucks network.
In either place, Kaehr, chief technical officer for FirstGate Internet, only logs on through a virtual private network (VPN), which provides a secure tunnel to his office for data.
"I like a spot like this, to combine work and leisure," Kaehr said as four-story-high trees ruffled in the breeze and rambunctious organ chords drifted from a small carousel in the distance. "I browse free at home and in the office, so why pay serious money to use it in Starbucks?"
If that belief grows, so could hybrid Wi-Fi service plans. For example, Verizon is turning 1,000 New York pay phones into hot spots that can be used only by people who get DSL or dial-up Internet from Verizon. (As for security, Verizon doesn't employ encryption, advising wireless surfers to avoid sending sensitive information or to use VPN software.)
Probe Research's Chamberlain predicts similar models eventually will dominate. In that scenario, an Internet company like America Online would buy wholesale hot spot access for its customers from a provider like Cometa Networks, a joint venture backed by Intel, AT&T and IBM.
Another possibility, as Wi-Fi-capable handheld computers and cell phones proliferate, is for bookstores, coffee houses and other retail establishments to eat the few hundred bucks it takes to operate a hot spot, and offer Wi-Fi for free in hopes of getting customers to linger or return frequently.
Nine businesses along Boston's Newbury Street have shelled out $350 each to share a high-speed data line that feeds their stores so they can transmit free Wi-Fi. The network has been running for more than a year, and no store has dropped out in disappointment, according to its organizer, computing consultant Michael Oh.
"There's much more money to be had in selling more books, more coffee, many more bottles of wine, rather than trying to sell (Wi-Fi) access," Oh said. "The traditional payment plan of by the hour, or by the month, is eventually going to go away."

Edited by author 07-22-2003 12:37 PM
Sprint Unveils Wi-Fi Strategy

BY BRAD SMITH
JULY 21, 2003

Sprint PCS announced its Wi-Fi hot spot plans today, initially offering
the service at 800 locations later this summer through partnerships with
Wayport Inc. and Airpath Wireless Inc.

By the end of the year, the carrier said it will have more than 2,100
locations, which is almost the number that T-Mobile HotSpots has launched through its
various partners, including Starbucks. T-Mobile also has started integrating its
Wi-Fi offering with its GPRS network, initially with a unified bill.

Sprint PCS' Wi-Fi Access will use its PCS Connection Manager software to
detect both Wi-Fi hot spots and the carrier's cdma2000 1X network. Customers
using the PCS Connection Card by AirPrime PC3200 will have an enhanced version of
the
software that manages both network connections, although a separate Wi-Fi
card or embedded 802.11b chip will be necessary.

The CDMA carrier already has been offering enterprise installations of
Wi-Fi through partnerships with Cisco Systems Inc. Among its customers is Case
Western Reserve University.

Airpath Wireless provides Wi-Fi management to 300 providers in 15
countries.Wayport provides Wi-Fi to some 500 locations, primarily hotels
and airports. Sprint said it is in negotiations with airports, convention
centers, hotels and other public venues to build out its own Wi-Fi infrastructure.
The carrier said it plans on integrating Wi-Fi and PCS monthly payments later
this year. Pricing will be announced when the service becomes available.

Sprint PCS and T-Mobile are not the only U.S. carriers with wi-fi hot
spots. AT&T Wireless Inc. also has a limited launch of Wi-Fi hot spots in some
airports. Verizon Communications Inc. recently activated 150 hot spots in the New
York City area and its wireless subsidiary, Verizon Wireless Inc., has announced
plans to launch Wi-Fi hot spots by the end of September.
These carrier hot spot rollouts have been expected. It's seen partly as a
defensive strategy, but also as a complement to the wireless carriers'
2.5G and 3G networks. Subscribers could use the cellular networks for wide-area
coverage and Wi-Fi for higher speed local coverage.

Many analysts still question the business model of hot spots, even if
Wi-Fi has gained a strong foothold in retail areas, airports, convention centers and
hotels. Juniper Research says there were 10,450 hot spots in service
globally by the end of June. The analyst group said that number likely would swell to
40,650 by the end of the year.

Juniper said the weaker hot spot providers likely will go away, either
ceasing operation or being gobbled up in a consolidation. Still, the analyst group
said the commercial hot spots will generate about $1.3 billion in revenue
globally by 2006.

Pechanga is Betting on Wireless

July 9, 2003


Rod Luck is betting that a wireless local area network (WLAN) will attract business travelers to the Pechanga Resort and Casino .

"We're trying to get conventions and business travelers and a lot of them ask if we have wireless," said the aptly-named Luck, IT director for the 522-room facility in Temecula, Calif., east of Los Angeles.

As a result, deploying the WLAN in the parts of the complex used for conferences and conventions was one of his department's first major projects after the resort and casino opened last year. . "We opened in June (2002) and in July and August we were installing wireless," he said. "We did it as soon as the hotel and casino were stabilized."

However, while the WLAN now is in wide use by conference attendees, Pechanga's deployment also points to how the current lack of strong WLAN security standards has the potential to slow adoption by end users.

Luck said the wireless deployment itself was relatively easy, although he took an unusual step to save money.

"We had a 3Com engineer come and do a site survey," Luck said. "That person drew up a diagram of where the access points should be."

Following the survey, Luck's team installed eight fixed access points in places where large numbers of people gather, such as the ballroom. The units are 3Com's Access Point 8000, which adhere to the 802.11b standard.

However, Luck said adding access points to cover the facility's many smaller conference rooms and meeting areas would have been a budget buster, so his group placed another six access points on rolling carts. If a group requests wireless coverage and is in a room not served by fixed access points, a member of Luck's staff rolls one in.

"There is cable in the walls of all the meeting rooms, so we just bring the cable out to the access point after we roll it in," he said. "That eliminated some costs."

He noted that his IT shop treats the rolling access points like any audio/visual aid. In fact, Pechanga's IT shop manages audio/visual services, including such old-line equipment as overhead projectors. As is typical with such equipment, Pechanga charges conference organizers for use of the wireless network, but Luck said that the charge is nominal -- typically between $100 and $300 a day, depending on usage.

"We're just trying to cover our expenses," he said.

Deployment of the wireless network took between two to three weeks. "We're pretty quick around here," Luck said. So far, he has run into no surprises. In particular, there hasn't been a single problem with interference.

Setup for users is relatively easy -- if they have the right equipment. Besides a wireless network adapter, all they need is an IP address for the network, which typically is set either by the attendee's IT shop or is set automatically by the operating system using DHCP. However, Luck said his staff provides support for users who need it.

"The support calls we get are mostly from Windows 98 and 2000," he said, noting that Windows XP handles connecting to wireless LANs more adroitly. "But we don't get many calls -- maybe not even ten a month."

To ensure the security of the company's internal network, Luck said the wireless network used by conference attendees is entirely separate. However, another security issue has the potential to lessen usage and shows how hard it can be, given the current state of wireless security, to put a WLAN in public places.

Specifically, Pechanga's WLAN uses 3Com equipment that uses that company's proprietary Dynamic Security Link (DSL), a 128-bit encryption scheme. The user's WLAN network adapter must support that protocol, which most 3Com adapters do. However, adapters from other vendors don't support DSL.That is potentially a problem since, obviously, 3Com is only one of several vendors of WLAN network adapters. Luck claimed that, so far, no conference attendees have complained. And, if it does become a problem, Luck said his shop rents 3Com NIC to users for about $10 a day.

Since the organization's original intention was to serve only conference and convention attendees, Luck said he considers Pechanga's WLAN to be fully deployed -- for now. He said that the organization's back office is wired, and there is no need to deploy the WLAN there.

Unlike many hotels, Luck said he is keeping WLAN coverage out of the lobby and guest rooms.

"We don't want to clog up the lobby," Luck said. "And we have wired broadband access in the guest rooms." As is the case with many business hotels these days, guests pay a daily fee for wired broadband access in guest rooms.

Nor is there wireless coverage in the casino, but that will change in time, according to Luck. A WLAN there would enable casino employees to walk around with wireless-enabled handheld devices that access casino-specific software. When they find an active player on the floor, or somebody who is likely to spend a lot, they could look that person up.

"Then, we could decide how best to market to those people," Luck said. "We can find out what kind of player they are and whether we can give them something complementary."

However, the casino can't deploy that application wirelessly because the California Gaming Commission must approve use of specific applications via a WLAN, and that has not yet occurred.

"The gaming commission has approved some casino systems, but our particular software hasn't been approved yet," Luck said. He had no doubt, however, that the commission eventually would approve the software. "It's the trend of the future," he said of the wireless casino application.

In the meantime, Luck said that he is very pleased with the role the WLAN plays in attracting conferences and conventions.

"People use it all the time -- the number is probably in the thousands since it was installed last fall," Luck said. "It definitely enhances our ability to attract business."

Edited by author 07-11-2003 04:29 PM
Flying Under The Radar

July 10, 2003


Alex Neihaus has the passion of a Wi-Fi true believer, and a missionary's zeal. As president of Air11 Technology, a New England reseller of Toshiba's Wi-Fi hotspot service, it's his job to make converts, of course, but Neihaus shows signs of being better at it than most.

After operating for only 90 days, he already has seven locations up and running -- in some unlikely locations, such as Bed & Breakfast inns and small marinas, but also at the prestigious Southbridge Hotel and Convention Center, a new conference hotel mid-way between Boston and Hartford.

Neihaus claims he has closed every sale when pitching prospective location owners that already have broadband Internet access. The cost to them is under $250 (mostly for the Toshiba access point/gateway). Air11 installs and manages the technology. Toshiba provides all the back-end billing and authentication services, as well as 24X7 technical support for end users.

There is little risk for location owners, plus the lure of shared revenues to defray monthly costs of their broadband Internet connection. (It's a three-way split. Neihaus won't say what part Toshiba gets, but he offers location owners a 50:50 split of the remainder. Other Toshiba resellers are or offering 20 and 30 percent to location owners, he says.)

Neihaus says he "wouldn't be surprised" to have 75 to 100 hotspots up by the end of the year.

Wi-Fi hotspots, he is fully convinced, will become ubiquitous very quickly, and it will be small players like his own one-man company that will make it happen, not the big guys. Many of the large ISPs, he notes, are already losing interest after making their moves too soon.

"I find it amusing that at the exact moment everything is finally working together towards the original vision, everybody is turning sour on [the Wi-Fi hotspot business]," Neihaus says. "It's always the same in the technology industry -- this perpetual impatience."

A tech industry veteran, Neihaus spent 20 years with Lotus and IBM and then ran his own software company before selling it. He knows of what he speaks.

By "everything" he is referring to three converging technology drivers:

Cable and DSL companies are battling for dominance, which means broadband is becoming more readily available in more places and prices are coming down. Result: more prospective hotspot location owners already have broadband access.
Toshiba and other low-end hotspot product/service providers such as Pronto Networks and NetNearU are bringing turnkey solutions to market featuring price points that make it very easy for small and mid-size location owners to take a chance on Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi client devices continue to proliferate.
Yet analysts like Gartner and IDC are "turning sour" on the Wi-Fi hotspot concept after initially promoting it, Neihaus contends. The reason is that big players such as T-Mobile, with its project to put hotspots in Starbucks coffee shops and other stores across America, have run into some roadblocks. T-Mobile lowered the price for its service earlier this year.

T-Mobile's business model and timing were flawed, though, Neihaus maintains. It started rolling out its Wi-Fi hotspots when hardware prices were still high, and in most shops it installed expensive T-1 Internet connections, making it difficult for individual locations to break even.

It's also true that usage has not been as high as hoped, but that should have been foreseen, he says -- and it won't last forever.

"The usage will come. This is not a simple build-it-and-they will-come thing. It does take time and effort. On the other hand, Intel is not going to stop building Centrino laptops, and they'll all want to be used. [This current attitude] is just impatience."

He cites the case of one of his marina hotspots on a recent rainy weekend. With sailing curtailed, "live-aboards" and weekend sailors racked up 35 hours of usage on the service in one 48-hour period. "That's an amazing achievement for a hotspot that's been up for less than 30 days," Neihaus says.

So while the big guys puzzle out how to make a buck, Neihaus -- who admits he's "losing money hand over fist" right now -- will attempt to fly under the radar. He'll do it by keeping costs low, going after supposedly less desirable hotspot venues -- and being patient.

The big players, he points out, are all focused on business travelers, a mistake, he believes. "There's a disconnect in the way the industry sees these things," Neihaus says. "It's not just the traveling business person anymore, it's almost everybody."

Because Wi-Fi LANs became a consumer technology early, with massive shipments to residential customers in 2001 and 2002, access points and client devices are "already dirt cheap," he says -- low enough to make the technology ubiquitous.

The same kind of unforeseen viral spread has happened with other technologies in the past -- like e-mail, he notes -- but the technology industry "suffers from an almost total lack of historical perspective."

The major hotspot players all continue to go after high-traffic locations such as airport lounges and big hotels, but Neihaus argues there are others where the value hotspots provide is much greater. At B&Bs, marinas and ski resorts, for example, hotspots let weekenders spend time with family and friends but still keep in touch with work and the rest of the world.

Not everything about the way his business is evolving is perfect, Neihaus concedes. He chose Toshiba because it had the most attractive price points and a true turnkey offering, including all-important end-user tech support.

Now he's finding that some end customers are dissatisfied with the limited pricing plans. They can pay $5.95 for two hours or $11.95 for 24 -- or as little as $8 if the location owner subsidizes the pricing, as Southbridge does. They can't bank time, though.

The low fees and "episodic" pricing model are good in that they turn Wi-Fi access into an impulse buy, Neihaus says. On the other hand, regular customers would like to pay on a monthly basis, and he concedes many would probably prefer to buy a block of time on the network that they could use as needed -- like prepaid cellular.

Toshiba's pricing strategies are completely outside his control, however, and the company doesn't discuss them with him. It will eventually respond as more customers ask for different pricing structures, he believes, but if it doesn't, Air11 isn't locked in.

"I own the valuable thing, which is the relationship with the location owner," Neihaus points out. "I have to do the right thing for them and for my company. If there's demand for [different pricing plans] and Toshiba can't satisfy it in a timely way, well, they have lots of competition."

In the meantime, Neihaus will continue to fly under the radar and make converts at the grassroots. This, he says, is "the next phase of the Wi-fi-zation of America."

Edited by author 07-11-2003 04:26 PM
UltraWideBand could hurt WLAN take-up

West Technology Research Solutions (WTRS), a market research firm focusing solely on emerging technologies, has announced the availability of their newly updated analysis that demonstrates that overall dominance of UWB in the high data rate wireless market place is virtually inevitable.

"Despite its market potential, UWB product release into the market is and will continue to be incremental, in direct relation to overcoming challenges from those industries who are concerned with RF interference issues," said Kirsten West, one of the principals of WTRS. "The throughput potential of UWB being one thousand times greater than 802.11b, and its attribute of supporting a piconet of unlimited size, has the very real potential to displace technologies in LANs, PANs, and ultimately in WANs. A significant number of companies in the technology and communication industry, notably cellular phone handset manufacturers, are fully aware of UWB's immense commercial application, anticipating that UWB will create a wealth of options that likely leave CDMA behind as no longer sufficient."

West estimates that, given a 4% global GDP growth rate, annual shipments for Ultrawideband chipsets into the communications segment alone will exceed 63 million units by 2007. WTRS forecasts 3 scenarios that are dependent upon global GDP growth projections. These reflect adoption potential in various markets while taking into account the nascence of the technology market and its consequent susceptibility to economic conditions.

Renewing the case for LMDS

WASHINGTON - LMDS still has a fighting chance to become a viable, data distribution channel for metro customers as long as service providers orient their business plans around historically favorable economics, said speakers at the WCA (Wireless Communications Association) International Conference held here.


Support for LMDS has widely soured in North America during the last few years because of the collapse of fixed wireless providers like Winstar and Teligent. But, the last chapter probably has not been written on the microwave technology, which in most cases provides high-capacity (up to 100Mbps) distribution through a point-to-multipoint architecture up to a five-mile range.


"What has changed in the last three years is groundbreaking," said Mark Salter, XO's vice president of fixed wireless. XO has an enormous stockpile of LMDS licenses. Salter indicated the provider has its eyes on a national rollout of LMDS services, following a pair of trials currently going in Southern California.


Salter identified several factors that have changed the economics of LMDS. First, today's LMDS radios are far superior in terms of performance. Gear is about 50% cheaper. There is increased customer demand for burstable and scaleable bandwidth. And, unlike the all-or-nothing providers of the past, carriers like XO are building their networks to target revenue and not just to broaden the footprint, said Salter.


Sheldon Gilbert, executive vice president of engineering at fixed wireless maker Ensemble Communications, said LMDS still is viable because he says "wireless DSL" products fail to provide the capacity demanded by enterprises.


A significant share of business buildings in major cities lack fiber or fiber-like connections, said Gilbert, who presented a map highlighting the fact that only 5% of buildings in the financial district of San Francisco are endowed with high-capacity access. "We can provide a range of applications like VoIP and metro Ethernet in a uniquely competitive way," said Gilbert.


Scott Sweetland, vice president of sales at Ceragon Networks, another fixed wireless supplier, stressed that LMDS has another thing going for it - the FCC's recently moved to allow carriers who possess wireless licenses to lease out some of their capacity. Members of the FCC have stated that they believe the creation of secondary spectrum markets could free up more bands and enable more utilization.


Salter, however, said the development is so new that the market is still in search of consistent pricing models.


The opportunity to use microwave for cellular backhaul traffic seems also to be widening, according to panel speakers. Salter said wireless carriers are more interested in accessing licensed spectrum instead of unlicensed spectrum, because of reliability issues.


Nonetheless, wireless carriers continue to rely on T1 lines to transmit traffic. Their allegiance to these contracts (often with landline partners) shows little sign of lessening.

Wi-Fi wafts to RV parks, beaches

By Michelle Kessler, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — As big players such as McDonald's bring wireless Internet to the masses, smaller companies are taking Wi-Fi technology to quirky spots.
Take the Truck Pride Travel Center in Chicopee, Mass., where truckers check e-mail from their rigs. Or the Club One gym in Pittsburgh, where fitness buffs log on after workouts.

All they need is a laptop set up for Wi-Fi (most new laptops are) and a credit card to pay fees of about $5 an hour.

Wi-Fi, which sends Web pages through the air as radio waves, works well in any spot people spend a lot of time sitting around, entrepreneurs say. They're setting up Wi-Fi service in:

•RV parks. At the Austin Lone Star RV Resort in Texas, campers can surf the Net for $3 an hour, or $45 a month. About 40 sign up each month — both young, tech-savvy tent campers and snowbirds with RVs, says Jim Rowley, owner of the 159-spot campground.

Lone Star could soon have competitors. Wireless start-up LinkSpot has installed Wi-Fi in 30 East Coast RV parks, and plans to expand to more than 100 nationwide.

Rival TengoInternet has equipped 12 parks in California, Texas, Arizona and Florida.

•Marinas and beaches. Sunbathers atNewport Beach, Calif., can surf the Web before they surf the waves, thanks to start-up Beach Wireless. In Newport, R.I., they can surf DSL.net. Competitor iDockUSA has equipped 13 California marinas. The companies charge $3 to $7 an hour.

The services are targeted at beach-goers and boaters in their slips, but they work offshore, too. In Rhode Island, the Wi-Fi signal reaches 21/2 miles across the bay.

•Laundromats. Customers of Bar of Soap in Dallas can check e-mail while waiting for their clothes. Wi-Fi start-up Serynade is hooking up a San Francisco laundry and has others planned.

Big players are pushing Wi-Fi, too. McDonald's, one of the latest, plans to equip several hundred stores in the New York, San Francisco and Chicago areas with Wi-Fi by year's end.

Bookseller Barnes & Noble will start testing Wi-Fi in 24 stores in Seattle and Atlanta next month, with plans for a nationwide rollout next year. SBC plans a Wi-Fi service. T-Mobile, Verizon Communications and others also have growing Wi-Fi networks.

Nearly all Wi-Fi services are losing money, analysts say. Some fear that the technology is overhyped and will go bust. Several Wi-Fi services have gone out of business in the past two years.

But companies are taking a chance for a piece of a fast-growing market. More than 53,000 Wi-Fi networks will blanket the USA by 2008, researcher Gartner says.

Research Firm Says Wi-Fi Will Go Bye-Bye

By Susan Kuchinskas
July 10, 2003

Emerging technology researchers say Ultrawideband (UWB) will eventually beat out the current Wi-Fi wireless networking standard and make Bluetooth go the way of the sabertooth.

Meanwhile, according to West Technology Research Solutions, (WTRS), the open standard ZigBee protocol will enable every system in the house to talk to each other.

If those bold predictions from the Mountain View, Calif.-based WTRS come true, then they promise that standards battles for wireless networking will continue into the next decade.

The firm said Ultrawideband, or UWB, would eventually eclipse the 802.11b , or popular Wi-Fi networking protocol, which is spreading in use across the country, helped by rollouts of wireless Internet access in Starbucks coffee houses and McDonald's Restaurants.

Another report, also released today, predicts that the Zigbee Protocol, which promotes the IEEE 802.15.4 standard for low-power wireless applications, will become ubiquitous and dominant in two-way low data-rate wireless applications for the home.

UWB works in what is sometimes called the "garage door spectrum," the unlicensed frequency of the spectrum commonly used for garage door openers, portable telephones and baby monitors. But its high speed data transit capabilities of 40 to 60 megabits per second, in some cases nearly ten times as fast as Wi-Fi, low power requirements, its ability to penetrate walls, and use GPRS information make UWB an attractive option for all kinds of handy machine-to-machine communications.

UWB's data throughput potential, and its ability to support a piconet , (an ad hoc network of devices using the Bluetooth networking standard) means it has the potential to displace technologies used in local area networks, WTRS' Ultrawideband Market Report said. UWB's impact could be just as dramatic on technologies used in personal area networks and, eventually, even the CDMA cellular networking standard that is deployed by many U.S. cellular carriers, the report continued.

Already, Consumer electronics manufacturers are experimenting with UWB, according to WTRS principle Kirsten West. "Streaming video to the television set wirelessly is the hot application they're working on right now," West said. UWB will also become the standard for the home gateway, the control center for automating everything from the security, heating and lighting systems to remote controlled appliances and home entertainment centers.

In office buildings, UWB is expected to replace 802.11b networking protocols because of its penetration abilities. "Walls, cubicles and people can all interfere with 802.11 technologies," West said. "UWB doesn't have this problem." She estimates that Wi-Fi companies will enjoy about a ten-year run of sales before UWB technologies begin to disrupt their products.

The report also said that a number of manufacturers plan to make UWB-enabled cell phones in order to provide the same kinds of short-range networking features and functions that Bluetooth can provide.

Right now, today's UWB-enabled chips have a range of only around 30 feet, but that's due to a cap on the amount of power they can be transmit. West said that the Federal Communications Commission may change that cap, which would allow telcos to replace their CDMA cellular towers with the cheaper, more powerful UWB chips.

UWB has the potential to wipe out current contenders in wireless local area networks and -- eventually -- wireless wide area networks, according to West's second report, called ZigBee Market Report and Analysis. It said that the evolving open standard, which has a radio frequency range of 30 to 225 feet and uses very little power, could take over from the mess of non-standard transceivers now being used for home automation. "It won't become a household name, from a consumer's point of view, but it will be important for manufacturers because their products will work with others. You need the ability for connection among machines from various OEMs."

For example, a Whirlpool smart washer and a GE smart refrigerator will be able to communicate with the same home gateway. The report predicts that by 2006, annual shipments for ZigBee-based chipsets for home automation alone will exceed 46 million units and continue to grow rapidly.

It predicts that at least one small corner of this industry will not suffer disruptive change. Today's garage door openers will work just fine with the next generation of wireless networks.

Enterprise LANs: What Next?

By Tom Nolle
07/07/2003 12:00 PM EST
URL: http://www.networkmagazine.com/shared/arti...?articleId=10818277

The foundation of enterprise networking is the LAN. First deployed in the mid-1980s to provide for the sharing of then-expensive hard disks, LANs are now the vehicle through which almost 90 percent of all business computers gain primary communications access. Even sites with WAN connections use those connections to link LANs in most cases. All this means that changes in the LAN space are extremely critical to network users.

Change number one is the Wireless LAN (WLAN). Popular for several years in Silicon Valley, WLANs are now sweeping into the rest of the country, driven by diverse factors such as the increased use of laptops as mobile work platforms within the workplace, increased interest in IEEE 802.11-based "hotspot" Internet access, and even home networking.

Security issues with WLANs are well known, but a lesser-known problem is address management. Portable and mobile users may change access points within a facility, which can impact IP address management, and even compromise application security measures where a subnet address is used to authenticate a user's rights to "see" specific applications. It's important to understand how 802.11 will integrate with current addressing and application security schemes before jumping in.

Another wireless challenge is created by the new versions of 802.11 now emerging. With data rates ranging up to 50Mbits/sec, these variants could offer major benefits in performance. On the downside, they can bring higher costs, and congestion on the higher-rate versions of 802.11 can drop speed dramatically. So should you deploy the more established 802.11b (Wi-Fi), the newer 802.11a, or wait for 802.11g?

The introduction of voice traffic to the LAN also poses design challenges. There's little question that Voice over IP (VoIP) will dominate premises voice communications by 2006, and any company making a major premises voice purchase today needs to look seriously at VoIP. However, VoIP demands low levels of congestion and delay in the LAN, and many corporate LANs are already bulging from data traffic growth.

The big debate isn't whether something needs to be done to LANs to facilitate voice communication, but just what to do. Some favor traffic management, providing voice a priority and assigning specific QoS to voice flows. Others think the best solution is to over-engineer in capacity-bits are cheap, and 10Gbits/sec Ethernet is becoming available.

Speaking of cheap bits, there's a price revolution in the works as well. Many network veterans remember the price drops in LAN switches in the late 1990s-the ones that toppled Cabletron. Another such drop may be underway, spurred by the joint venture between 3Com and Chinese networking vendor Huawei. This could change the competitive landscape in the LAN switch area, as well as how network planners deal with other LAN challenges. Why? Because the new joint venture is threatening to drive down prices on LAN switches. Everyone expects Huawei to be a price leader, and Cisco Systems itself dramatically lowered prices on some of its products in April 2003, apparently anticipating the 3Com/Huawei venture.

Lower prices for LAN switches give planners the option to do major surgery on LAN design. Creating 1 Gigabit or even 10 Gigabit backbone links is now practical where 100Mbits/sec was the rule before, and getting all users on the LAN up to 100Mbits/sec from the typical 10Mbit/sec connection is also practical. All this capacity may mean that VoIP doesn't have to depend on traffic management-you can just bury your problems in bits. Additional capacity may be less expensive than trying to create traffic priorities for voice, and it could improve data application performance as well.

Faster LANs may also mean faster wireless. The original 802.11b standard is about as fast as a standard 10Mbits/sec Ethernet connection, but the new 802.11a and 802.11g standards can improve data rates to 20, 30, or even 50Mbits/sec. Obviously, faster WLANs mean more traffic on backbones, and cheaper switches can let planners up-speed their networks as needed to support the new wireless standards.

All of this speed and cheapness may come at a price. When LAN switches were tens of thousands of dollars even at the workgroup level, vendors could lavish sales and support attention on their customers. When prices fall, those sales and support resources tend to get spread thinner, and customers may not get the attention they once received. The past again provides a lesson: "I used to see my Cabletron guy every day," a representative from one Philadelphia engineering company told me. "But when switch prices dumped, the guy disappeared."

Some even believe that all but the high-end LAN products may end up going to distribution versus direct sales. Some of the low-end products will surely end up in retail stores. Sales on DVD-ROM drives, add-on memory, and LAN switches; coupons-we could be headed there. For very low-end products, we're already there. And remember, when PCs became commodities, companies had to develop their own internal experts to replace the support they lost from their suppliers.

More will be demanded of LANs in the next five years, and during that period, we may see dizzying declines in price and support. Buyers will have the option to develop capacity beyond their dreams, but they'll also have to dream up ways of keeping those super-LANs running. More equipment will deploy in LANs in the next five years than in the last ten, and more challenges will develop.

Mobile Operators To Benefit From WiMax (IEEE 802.16)

As mobile data becomes more of a basic consumer and business user want through the years, services can be augmented by an emerging complementary standard to WiFi. This standard, 802.16a, will at first be used for fixed and portable applications and by 2004/2005 be utilized to offer the best price and performance available for high-speed wide area wireless data.

This more robust standard for high-speed broadband wireless delivery to laptops and desktops will begin to augment the burgeoning WiFi market beginning in late 2004. The position of the 802.16a standard today parallels that of WLAN technology in the late 1990’s, when the market finally grew as 802.11 price vs. performance gains converted WLAN from a niche to mass market. In the very near future, 802.16a will also achieve important price and performance points, a new Visant Strategies study finds.

“Under the current conditions, 802.16a could emulate 802.11’s rise several years from now,” said study author Visant Strategies Senior Analyst Andy Fuertes. “Many chip and equipment vendors ignored the chance to get into the 802.11 market early and create market share due to market-size limitations created by high equipment costs, a much smaller potential audience and no need for all things Internet and Intranet yet. WiMAX offers these technology companies a fresh start.”

802.16a is considered the next step beyond WiFi because it is optimized for broadband operation, fixed and later mobile, in the wide area network. It already includes numerous advances that are slated for introduction into the 802.11 standard, such as quality of service, enhanced security, higher data rates, and mesh and smart antenna technology allowing better utilization of the spectrum.

The study, “ 802.16/WiMAX Technologies: World Market Forecasts 2003-2008,” finds WiMAX and WiFi complementary as the two technologies address different segments of the market and are optimized for different tasks; local vs. metropolitan area networking. Last mile access will be the first application for 802.16a but mobility will follow via 802.16e. WiMAX is considered a migration path to 4G, but more likely to be used by holders of BWA spectrum rather than mobile carriers. 802.16a is also expected to play a role in outdoor and private networks, the expansion of indoor hot spot locations, and backhaul applications that lack line-of -sight.

The opportunity for 802.16a equipment is forecast to reach a value of approximately $1 billion in 2008, the study finds, with growth accelerating late in the period. The study provides global forecasts by region for 802.16a/e equipment, chipset shipments, and service revenues.

Mitsubishi beats Cisco to market with WLAN phone

By Guy Kewney, Newswireless.net
Posted: 03/07/2003 at 09:37 GMT


Accepted wisdom is that people will always need ordinary mobile phones "because voice over Internet isn't acceptable quality." IP Talk, in Japan, reckons this is nonsense: its new WiFi phone is designed for hotspots, uses voice-over-IP - and also offers Web browsing and email.

IP Talk is a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electric, and its WiFi phone is conservative, using just standard 802.11b WiFi hotspots, according to a local paper in Japan.

The launch means that Mitsubishi has beaten Cisco to market; the Cisco WiFi phone will also appear this month, in Japan.

A comment from Microsoft's Mobility department said that despite cost savings, most people in the phone business didn't expect the system to be popular. "The quality of service, digitising voice and sending packets over the Internet using WiFi, is simply not good enough," suggested one senior Mobility executive at Barcelona TechEd.

But the advantage of using the internet is that the cost of a call, anywhere, is the same, no matter how long you talk. Mitsubishi and Cisco are betting that a call at zero incremental cost will attract a lot of users, especially those who are WiFi equipped at home.

Do You Want Wi-Fi With That?
Jason Ankeny
July 10, 2003

A story in yesterday's Chicago Tribune reported that the McDonald's restaurant located in the city's Field Museum was closed Tuesday after Department of Public Health officials discovered that employees had used pens to alter the expiration dates on some 200 cartons of milk. Additionally, a floor drain in the food preparation area was clogged with raw
sewage.

So this is the future of Wi-Fi, eh?

Mere hours before the milk carton debacle, McDonald's corporate leaders announced Monday an expansion of the in-restaurant " McDWireless " Wi-Fi initiative the fast-food giant first launched in Manhattan in March, and will now offer wireless Internet service in 75 restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. Other New York City, Chicago and even a few Canadian locations are on tap for later this year. McDonald's is partnering with service provider Wayport to offer the Wi-Fi access and, according to reports, plans to charge customers $4.95 for two hours of service.

Just one question: Who in their right mind is going to pay five bucks to access the Web from McDonald's? While I've certainly waited in McDonald's drive-thru line for what seemed like two hours just to get my order filled, the thought of willingly spending 120 minutes in their noisy, crowded restaurants, surfing the Net while unattended children scream and holler from high atop their perches in McDonald's Playland, makes me...well, grimace. (Given the choice between accessing the Web from a Turkish prison or a Mickey D's, I'd choose the former, if only because the food promises to be better.)

In the past, this column has expressed serious doubts about the future of T-Mobile's Wi-Fi rollouts in Starbucks coffee shops and Borders bookstores, but at least the coffee and bookselling businesses promote the kind of quiet, relaxed atmospheres conducive to comfortable Net access. (Not to mention that they cater to the more upscale, professional clientele most likely to seek out Wi-Fi-enabled destinations.) McDonald's whole business model, on the other hand, is geared to serving and dispatching customers as quickly as possible, hence the "No Loitering" signs; on the unlikely chance that Wi-Fi takes off among fast-food fanatics, how will restaurant managers feel come lunchtime should all their tables be occupied by Web surfers instead of diners? And from a customer point of view, what if there's a problem logging on? McDonald's employees are unlikely to be able to help, and besides, they're too busy changing the expiration dates on dairy products anyway.

Make no mistake: Wi-Fi needs to penetrate the mainstream consciousness, but while they don't come any more mainstream than McDonald's, McDWireless is as ill conceived as the McDLT. It's the wrong place at the wrong time. And that doesn't even bring into account network security--can you really trust the safety of your data to a company that keeps the Hamburglar on its payroll?

All Aboard for Canadian Wi-Fi
July 10, 2003


Passengers traveling between Montreal and Toronto will now be able to check their e-mail and conduct other Internet access functions thanks to a new wireless network installed on some Canadian trains.

Intel (Quote, Company Info) Wednesday said it has teamed with Bell Canada and VIA Rail Canada to equip a handful of cars with wireless LANs. The four-month pilot service combines the technology, products and services of Bell Canada in conjunction with Intel and PointShot Wireless.

While it's a first for Canada, making the Internet available on trains got its North American debut on three popular U.S. Amtrak lines. That six-month campaign back in January 2002 outfitted riders with Compaq iPAQ Pocket PCs while Yahoo! provided the wireless connections.

The Canadian experiment is part of Bell Canada's AccessZone project and will let an Internet connection be transmitted to the train from Bell ExpressVu's Internet satellite service to onboard equipment and then to the end-user's notebook. Responses from the end-user's notebook are then transmitted back to the train's wireless networking equipment and then delivered over Bell Mobility's 1X wireless network to the Internet.

On the outset of the pilot, VIA Rail express train number 53 from Montreal to Toronto and number 66 from Toronto to Montreal will have a VIA 1 car equipped with WLAN capabilities. During the pilot Bell Canada intends to rollout more VIA 1 cars with WLAN access.

For its part, Intel is using its "Wireless Verification Program" via its Centrino mobile technology to test the system and make sure its compatible. Ottawa-based PointShot is providing the wireless technology within the train.

Supporters of the project point to a survey conducted by PointShot and Intel that showed 90 percent of respondents saw benefits in having the ability to access the Internet and e-mail while on a train.

"Our research indicates that Canadian business people want to use their travel time to catch-up on email, work on presentations and do other work-related tasks. They appreciate easy and convenient access to the Internet," said Intel Canada general manager Doug Cooper.

Intel has been on a tear of late getting new and unusual places set up with wireless. Earlier this year, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip making giant equipped a Boeing plane with a WLAN. The No. 1 chipmaker has also been instrumental in launching hotspots in McDonald's fast food restaurants.

Bell Canada is also aggressively pursuing the 802.11 brass ring with its AccessZone project. Launched in December 2002, the pilot has grown to include more than 20 enterprise locations including: Toronto's Union Station and Mount Sinai Hospital, Montreal's Dorval Airport, Kingston, Ontario's Confederation Park and Marina and Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounges.

Wi-Fi Hot Spot Market Picking Up
July 10, 2003

A new report predicts there will be rapid growth in the global market for Wi-Fi hot spots, or private locations around the world to link to public wireless networks.
Allied Business Intelligence, based in Oyster Bay, N.Y., says in its new report on Wi-Fi that hot spots will grow from their current level of 28,000 locations to more than 200,000 within five years.

ABI says that while North America is home to more than 12,400 hot spots, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow at a faster rate in the next few years. The study focuses on commercial hot spots, inside coffee shops, fast food restaurants, airports, railroad terminals and other establishments.

"For the Wi-Fi market to grow over the next few years, several things have to happen. For one, roaming agreements between operators need to happen. Secondly, there has to be a clear single message to consumers on the value of Wi-Fi," says Tim Shelton, director of wireless research for ABI.

"The greatest opportunity could potentially be with the cellular providers, because it will help them drive consumers to the data usage model," says Shelton, adding that T-Mobile is currently the biggest operator of hot spots around North America, other operators include Wayport, and a host of smaller players.

Shelton said one private company making a major push into the Wi-Fi market is Boingo. "They are not strictly an operator, but more of an aggregator. They don't own the actual network, but they enter to roaming agreements to offer Wi-Fi based services."

And beyond wireless network service providers, if the Wi-Fi hot spot market grows, there will be other beneficiaries.

"The hot spot market certainly will provide opportunities for access point hardware manufacturers and other backend solutions," Shelton said.

Despite the rosy market outlook, ABI's Shelton does say that there are concerns about hackers being able to violate the integrity of Wi-Fi-based wireless networks.

"While there's no question there will be growth, wireless security remains a must for the credibility of the hot spot market," says Shelton.

Shelton expects that hotel chains, restaurant franchises and other national retail chains will potentially use hot spot technology "to drive customers to their doors and to capture a competitive advantage by offering an innovative wireless service."

Starbucks (Quote, Company Info), McDonald's (Quote, Company Info)and Borders (Quote, Company Info) are three national chains which have gotten behind the wireless technology by putting Wi-Fi hot spots inside their commercial establishments.

Shelton said these companies believe it will provide added-value to their customers and predicts revenue generated from hot spot technology will rise from $59 million this year to $3.1 billion in 2008. Users pay either an hourly, daily or monthly fee to access Wi-Fi networks.

"Some of the issues facing the hotspot industry range from interoperability between hotspot locations to the need for operators and aggregators to acquire more users," Shelton writes in his report.

ABI's report is called "Wi-Fi Public Hotspots: Business Case Analysis through Deployment and Subscriber Forecasts."

Edited by author 07-09-2003 05:36 PM
Intel vying to gain ground in WLAN market

By Jack Robertson , EBN
Jul 3, 2003 (12:06 PM)
URL: http://www.electronicstimes.com/story/OEG20030703S0024

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Intel Corp. trails its chief rivals in the market for wireless LAN chipsets for the new 802.11g standard by more than six months. But despite the gap, some analysts expect Intel to come on strong once it fields its advanced Wi-Fi devices.

An Intel spokesman said the company still expects to introduce its dual-mode 802.11b/g chipset in the fourth quarter, with Centrino-brand notebook PCs adopting the protocol in the first quarter of 2004. That places the Santa Clara, Calif., company behind at least three other vendors -- Atheros Communications, Broadcom, and Intersil -- all of which already are delivering production quantities of single- and dual- mode 802.11g chipsets. Moreover, several other vendors are expected to field their own "g" chipsets in the next few months.

The Intel spokesman claimed the company will not suffer as a result of its later entry into the 802.11g market. "We will launch product on our road-map. We take a long-range view of the Wi-Fi market," he said. "We won't release any product that doesn't meet the Intel-brand promise."

There are a few factors that may work to Intel's advantage. For one, the "g" standard was ratified by the IEEE only in June, meaning that the industry Wi-Fi Alliance will be spending several months conducting product compatability tests before certifying chipsets as compliant with 802.11g.

Another factor tilting in Intel's direction is the company's Centrino mobile wireless computing campaign which, similar to the Intel Inside program, subsidizes the marketing budgets of PC makers. Intel's expectation, according to analysts, is that its financial clout and general market presence will entice notebook computer manufacturers to drop other "g" chipsets in exchange for Intel's help defraying their product promotion costs.

But whether the company can roll back the gains of its competitors remains to be seen. Several rivals hope to use their earlier entrance to add enhanced chipset features ahead of Intel.

"The Intel delay gives us a huge advantage," said Jeff Abramowitz, senior WLAN marketing director at Broadcom Corp., Irvine, Calif. Abramowitz noted that while 802.11g chipsets share the same 2.4GHz frequency as Intel's existing 802.11b-compliant devices, "g" products offer data rates of 54Mbits/s -- five times faster than what Intel's Centrino platform can deliver today.

Intel will also miss out on the back-to-school and Christmas sales seasons, which are expected to be big drivers for "g" Wi-Fi, said Craig Barratt, president of Atheros Communications Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif. "By the end of the year, the sales of 802.11g and 802.11b should be running 50-50," Barratt said.

A spokesman for Intersil Corp., Irvine, Calif., agreed that "g" Wi-Fi chipsets will outsell the "b" version by the end of the year, with multimode 802.11a/b/g moving heavily into the notebook market in the fourth quarter.

Already the three "g" WLAN producers said major notebook PC builders like Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, NEC, Sony, and Toshiba are offering 802.11g Wi-Fi as an option to the Centrino platform.

"Customers will determine whether they will buy the optional 802.11g Wi-Fi or stick with the Intel 'b' WLAN in Centrino," said Will Strauss, an analyst at Forward Concepts Co., Tempe, Ariz.

Atheros' Barratt said the decision to go with "g" or "b" Wi-Fi must be made by consumers at the point of sale, since the factory-installed WLAN mini-PCI card can't be easily replaced by the user.

Before it transitions to 802.11g, however, Intel will roll out a dual-mode 802.11a/b chipset in the middle of the third quarter. As with the "b" version, the chipset will use a radio component manufactured by Philips Semiconductors and an 802.11b baseband made by Texas Instruments Inc. For the first time, Intel said it will supply its own internally developed 802.11a baseband. Strauss said if Intel has developed an 802.11a baseband IC, then it is likely well on its way to developing an 802.11g baseband, because both WLAN protocols use a similar complex OFDM (orthogonal frequency division modulation) technique.

"If Intel has mastered this, then getting to a 'g' Wi-Fi shouldn't be that difficult for them," Strauss said.

Intel said that its 802.11b/g WLAN will be the first to use all-Intel chips for the radio, MAC, and baseband. Yet another Wi-Fi chipset, a multimode 802.11a/b/g device, is on the Intel roadmap, to be introduced in the first quarter of 2004.

Why bother with Wi-Fi when CDMA can do?

By David Berlind, Tech Update
July 8, 2003 3:41 AM PT


I have a question about Wi-Fi (802.11) wireless LAN technologies: Why bother?

If you followed any of my recent trials or tribulations with Handspring's Treo 300, you know that I stumbled upon an application from June Fabrics called PDANet that allowed my notebook to get access to SprintPCS' 2.5G CDMA 1xRTT network at a throughput rate of about 70 to 80 kbps. From a hotel room in Washington, D.C, accessing my email actually worked faster via CDMA 1xRTT than it did via dial up. Can you imagine that? While 70 to 80 kbps doesn't sound like a lot, you'd be surprised at just how sufficient this is for 99 percent of what you do (unless all you do is watch streaming video).

If I can get 70-80 kbps and my hotspot is all of SprintPCS' and Verizon Wireless' coverage area and the "line" is secure (which it is, compared to Wi-Fi) and streaming media isn't a priority for me, why bother with Wi-Fi?

Wi-Fi coverage is spotty, and there are virtually no roaming agreements. If I subscribe to T-Mobile to get coverage at Starbucks, chances are I won't get coverage at the local airport where the provider is Wayport without paying for another subscription. Meanwhile, there's a chance that a single CDMA 1xRTT network covers both and maybe even my office and my home. The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether I can do without a Wi-Fi radio altogether. That way, I don't have to bring two cards with me everywhere I go, and install or fiddle with any software that helps me to manage which wireless network to connect to. Keep it simple stupid: Isn't that what they say?

Want another reason? Recently, there's been talk about voice over IP (VoIP) for Wi-Fi-based handhelds. I've played around with a Microsoft VoIP technology from the company's labs called Portrait that works on PCs and handhelds. Using a PocketPC-based device such as an HP iPaq with a Wi-Fi card, Portrait makes it possible to have a VoIP conversation with someone else using Portrait on another, similarly equipped handheld connected to the Internet. Considering the cost of VoIP (free), the come-uppance of Wi-Fi along with its availability in public settings raises some interesting possibilities. Take the same Wi-Fi/VoIP-equipped handheld into a public hotspot and, from a functional point of view, what's the difference between that and a cell phone? In that scenario, could Wi-Fi present a threat to the existing wireless carriers?

But given the uphill climb that's necessary to turn VoIP into a killer application for both the Internet as well as wireless handhelds (thus turning the handhelds into data- and voice-capable terminals), there is little choice but to reconsider the CDMA-connected handheld. The wireless voice provided by CDMA-based, data-capable phones is as good as wireless voice gets and the calls are practically free when you look at the number of minutes you get with just about any package. Combine that with a better hotspot and built-in security, and CDMA continues to look better than Wi-Fi.

What about the GSM(voice)/GPRS(data)-based 2.5G alternative to CDMA? Currently, the real world data throughput for GPRS is running at about half (30-40 kbps) of what people are getting out of CDMA. At that speed, most networked applications are noticeably degraded. Until that situation improves, I can't recommend the GSM/GPRS option--except for world travelers (GSM/GPRS is the standard most everywhere else in the world) and for people who want their data sessions to be interrupted for inbound calls. That feature is not yet available for CDMA.

Another feather in CDMA's cap is its future. Currently, most CDMA deployments are of the 1xRTT flavor. However, Verizon Wireless is prepping two cities --- San Diego and Washington, D.C. --- for a CDMA 1xEV-DO rollout. What's the difference? Oh, just a few hundred kilobits per second. Compared to 1xRTT's theoretical peak throughput of 144 kbps, 1xEV-DO's peak is 2.4 mbps. But like 1xRTT, which delivers far less than its advertised peak, 1xEV-DO is predicted to deliver somewhere between 400 and 800 kbps. That's faster than most cable or DSL connections.

I asked Verizon Wireless' corporate communications executive director Andrea Linskey whether her company was having any thoughts about how CDMA (1xRTT or EV-DO) could be a better strategic wireless target than Wi-Fi, even for people working in their offices and homes. In addition to CDMA 1xRTT-based connectivity, Verizon is rolling out public Wi-Fi hotspots in places like airports through a partnership with Wayport. Although Linskey said she believes that Verizon "could go pure CDMA," she made it clear that the carrier was not trying to intercept businesses leaning in the direction of Wi-Fi in hopes of getting them to reconsider that decision.

"For now," said Linskey, "we don't view Wi-Fi as a threat to the CDMA business. We see it as complementary. In campus settings, businesses may be likely to launch with Wi-Fi as the in-building, wireless alternative. Out of the buildings, they can choose to go with Express Network." Express Network is Verizon's brand name for its wireless wide area network (WWAN). "Carriers like AT&T and Verizon are hedging. While we are waiting to see what becomes of the de facto wireless standard, we're preparing to roll out in 2004 a product that makes switching between a company's native Wi-Fi network and Express Network automatic for someone [with radios for both]. It will detect and automatically connect to the right network. Before then, however, customers will have to manually select which network to use."

Today, Verizon Wireless offers an all-you-can-eat data plan for approximately $80 per month. It requires a CDMA 1xRTT-based PC Card or one of Verizon's phones with Verizon's Mobile Office Kit. Ideally, the way to go is to share one radio --- presumably a phone --- for voice and data communications. One radio means one account and keeps things relatively simple. The best way to connect a device to a phone is through Bluetooth. But, currently, Verizon Wireless isn't reselling a Bluetooth-based CDMA-enabled handset, which means that any time a connection to the CDMA network is desired by a PDA or notebook computer, a hardwired connection is required between the device and the phone. Is a Bluetooth-enabled phone in the offing? "Verizon Wireless has extremely stringent quality requirement for its handsets," said Linksey. "We're testing some units now but have nothing to announce."

Meanwhile, Verizon's biggest CMDA 1xRTT competitor, SprintPCS, has announced it will be offering Sony Ericsson's Bluetooth-enabled T608i starting this month. However, that offering could be in jeopardy: Sony Ericsson announced recently that it would be discontinuing CDMA phones in the U.S. In response to an inquiry about what SprintPCS plans to do should Sony Ericsson stop production on the T608i, company spokesperson Suzanne Lammers told me, "We're still looking at our options, and should be able to give you an answer fairly soon. It's possible that we may carry only limited quantities through select channels, but nothing has been confirmed yet."
    
IDC wireless analyst Shiv Bakhshi concurs with Linskey that the CDMA and Wi-Fi are currently complementary, but agrees that a more robust CDMA could be viewed as a Wi-Fi replacement.

"1xEV-DO, if it works, could be a confrontation to Wi-Fi," said Bakhshi. "Once 1xEV-DO comes on line, it only has to come at 400 kbps of throughput to satisfy most users. The question is whether the underlying backhaul to the Internet will be able to handle the load. It could be like sucking a watermelon through a cocktail straw." In light of the fact that Verizon Wireless is just now piloting 1xEV-DO in only two cities, Bakhshi doesn't see that confrontation happening any time soon. In addition, Bakhshi told me, "Neither CDMA nor GPRS are very good at penetrating buildings. In fact, outside, they're still not particularly good."

But, in the same way the WWAN technologies exhibit weaknesses indoors, Bakhshi questioned the business model for all of these public Wi-Fi hot spots that are showing up everywhere. "Maybe in specific areas like at airport gates," he said, "where a lot of people need to get on just before the plane takes off. In situations like this, the cellular technologies don't scale very well. The radio resources of the cell network are constrained. For example, if 15 people make calls from the exact same spot, do they all get on? No. So, in certain spaces where there's lot aggregation of people, maybe that's where it makes more sense to improve the local radio resources through Wi-Fi."

Like Verizon Wireless' Linskey, Bakhshi thinks that, for the time being, the best solution for people who need anytime, anywhere access is to run a blend of both technologies. Echoing Verizon Wireless' recognition that switching between two wireless technologies needs to be seamless, Bakhshi said: "A CDMA 1xRTT / Wi-Fi combination card would be a nice thing to have along with the software that makes it simple to switch between the two." Such combination cards do exist. For example, last year, GTRAN Wireless introduced a dual mode CDMA 1xRTT/Wi-Fi card using Intersil's Wi-Fi chipset. On the software side, solution providers appear to be responding to users that want seamless switching between the two radios. In addition to Verizon Wireless' promise to address the issue by next year, companies like NetMotion Wireless [link: www.netmotionwireless.com] are providing software solutions like Netmotion Mobility and partnering with wireless network providers such as GSM/GPRS-based AT&T.

Ultimately, whether CDMA or any other 3G technology will be able to kick Wi-Fi's butt may be determined by cost. Right now, all-you-can-eat data plans from Verizon Wireless and SprintPCS cost about $80 per user, per month , How will that compare to the per user total cost of ownership for Wi-Fi? One cost and administrative headache that's eliminated by a pure-CDMA strategy is the securing of the local air. When you outsource your wireless networking to a wireless carrier, you're also outsourcing at least one element of your security. In either case (Wi-Fi or CDMA), going wireless in a public scenario requires a virtual private network if someone has to get behind a corporate firewall, so that cost is a wash between the two options anyway. But with Wi-Fi, the additional measures needed to secure the air require a measure of expertise, expense, and time that some would rather avoid.

Putting a finger on the per user TCO for Wi-Fi isn't quite as simple because there are certain breakpoints in company size where the infrastructure costs take a sudden leap. Gartner analyst Phillip Redman told me, "I don't think you can say [what the per user TCO] is definitively. It has to be based on usage." Even so, Redman has developed two scenarios: one where the WLAN is a primary network for small offices and a second where the WLAN is a complementary network for large offices. Whereas the per user annual TCO for the former (assuming a small office of 45 users with occasional additional part timers) was $10,000, the same for a mid-size to large office is about $3,052.

Regardless of the comparison, the question I keep asking myself is this: For $960 per year, would I be willing to put up with lower bandwidth if it meant being able to cruise around a bigger hotspot without having to manage two separate radios or worry about roaming between providers at Starbucks and the airport? When I asked Verizon Wireless' Linskey what she thought the much higher performance 1xEV-DO service might cost, I was surprised to hear her say, "We haven't priced the data-only service yet. But my expectation is that it will be similar to the things you're seeing on 1xRTT right now."

If that's the case, sign me up. If everyone else is so gung-ho about Wi-Fi, more power to them. If there aren't more CDMA believers like me, perhaps the congested scenario that IDC's Bakhshi speaks of will never happen. Of course, if you're located in the sticks where none of the 2.5G or 3G networks are floating about, then Wi-Fi connected to a local DSL, cable, or T1 backhaul may be your only choice. So, Wi-Fi isn't dead. But I'd love to see something like 1xEV-DO take off.

CDMA over Wi-Fi? Am I off my rocker or am I onto something? If your warehouse or facility had great CDMA 1xRTT coverage from a provider like Sprint or Verizon Wireless, would you consider going with that for all your mobile users instead of Wi-Fi? Especially since they could roam beyond the confines of your campus? Use TalkBack to let your fellow ZDNet readers know what you think. Or write to me at david.berlind@cnet.com. If you're looking for my commentaries on other IT topics, check the archives.

Edited by author 07-09-2003 05:32 PM
WiMAX set to overshadow wi-fi

By Caroline Gabriel: Wednesday 09 July 2003, 07:40

THE PAST FEW weeks have seen a storm of debate about the economics and return on investment of Wi-Fi hotspots. What almost all the arguments entirely ignore is the standard lurking on the horizon, which will turn current assumptions on their head. This is the 802.16x wireless metropolitan area network (WMan) specification, which is being developed and promoted by the WiMAX industry group, whose most powerful members are Intel and Nokia.
Intel has called 802.16 "the most important thing since the Internet itself", and even allowing for a dose of self-serving, it is not talking entirely in hyperbole. WiMAX will extend the potential of Wi-Fi to far longer distances – around 30 miles. It is important, and is evolving at the speed of light (in standards terms anyway), but this rapid development is at the cost of the agenda being dominated by two already over-powerful vendors, Intel and Nokia.

WiMAX is showing off its first system profiles and interoperability tests at the the WCA annual conference in Washington DC this week, in a significant step towards making the 802.16a standard, ratified by the IEEE in March, a commercial technology. While a fully mobile version of WiMAX is in the wings, this first release will cover fixed wireless, and its supporters are focusing in particular on broadband last mile in unwired areas, and on backhaul for hotspots. Intel will start to make WMan chips this year and we should see WiMAX products early in 2004.

This is the opportunity for wireless technologies finally to grow up and offer the speed, multimedia support and ubiquity that Wi-Fi can never deliver. WiMAX president Margaret La Brecque is keen to stress the fact that Wi-Fi and WiMAX are complementary, but the newer standard holds all the real power. By providing a backbone for hotspots, based on standards rather than the various proprietary WLan expansion technologies out there, it makes the idea of a ubiquitous wireless network to rival cellular far more realistic than it ever was with Wi-Fi alone, despite the claims of the enthusiasts. The equipment makers are eyeing it keenly – amid all the doubts about the sustainability of the hotspot boom, anything that offers them a new product line plus helps to preserve the interest in Wi-Fi is to be welcomed.

For operators, there is a doubled edged sword. WiMAX operates in a mixture of licensed and unlicensed spectrum, and the initial products will be focused on 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz licensed and 5.8GHz unlicensed bands (though the full standard supports a far wider range of bands). The licensed spectrum gives operators the chance to apply for franchises for fixed wireless broadband provision, especially in rural and remote areas, something Intel is promoting assiduously as a means to increase investment in Centrino-enabled PCs (it now has a director of rural broadband access).

The unlicensed aspect means that independents have the chance to provide backhaul services for hotspots, which have the potential to create a nationwide wireless network. If the operators can control this, as they have been trying to do with Wi-Fi, they will be able to offer parallel, integrated services and achieve a stopgap as they struggle towards ubiquitous 3G – one with lower margins than cellular perhaps, but swifter ROI on lower upfront investment. They certainly have the power and resource to take control from alternative network suppliers, but they may also be condemning their 3G investments to stillbirth.

But the genie is out of the bottle now, and while the operators hesitate, the equipment makers are driving ahead, Intel in the vanguard, and Nokia, which has supported WiMAX from its earliest days, looking forward to the mobile standard and to the chance to add a new form of base station business to its ailing networks unit.

There are significant names missing from WiMAX so far – its initial focus on last mile is indicated by the bias of the membership towards fixed wireless, OFDM specialists (the 802.16 specification is built on an implementation of OFDM from Wi-Lan of Canada), rather than enterprise focused suppliers or mobile carriers. Some major vendors will be taking the usual gamble of trying to establish such market presence for their proprietary solutions as to sideline the industry standard – Motorola with its Canopy broadband fixed wireless platform springs to mind. But these companies will join – Cisco being a critical target – and in the meantime, the really impressive aspect of WiMAX has been its clear focus and unity of purpose. So far, perhaps because of its fairly low numbers, with most of these being smaller companies, it has avoided the complex politics and hidden agendas of most industry bodies – though this comes at the cost of a direction that is highly dominated by Intel and Nokia.

The best example of this is to contrast the political fiasco that scuppered the fast Wi-Fi standard, 802.11a, with the clarity of the 802.16a process. 802.11a had some technological shortcomings, notably its lack of backward compatibility with 802.11b, but its low uptake compared to the ‘g’ version was largely because it was continually delayed by wrangling between the IEEE and the European ETSI standards body. ETSI’s HiperLan standard and 802.11a use the same frequency and so there was pressure to unify the two, but this was achieved painfully, with a separate implementation of "a" for Europe, which has further delayed product roll-out and confused users.

In contrast, WiMAX has set out from the start to harmonize 802.16 and the metropolitan area ETSI standard, HiperMan, and the specifications it showcases this week will demonstrate that unification. All this with remarkably little political in-fighting – the difference between leaving standards bodies to sort out their own futures, and putting a technology in the hands of vendors with a clear commercial objective, and deadline.

These vendors are finally giving broadband wireless the teeth it needs, with a standards base, to take on wired options for the last mile and for long distance networking. The WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) group was actually set up two years ago by Nokia, Ensemble and the OFDM Forum, but gained a new lease of life in April when it was revived by Nokia in collaboration with Intel and added five new members, with nine more joining in May. The non-profit group takes a similar role to the Wi-Fi Alliance in WLans, backing development of wireless Man products based on 802.16 and working on standards certification and interoperability testing.

The initial version of the standard operates in the 10-66GHz frequency band and requires line of sight towers, but the 802.16a extension, ratified in March, uses the lower frequency of 2-11GHz, easing regulatory issues, and does not require line of sight. It boasts a 31 mile range compared to Wi-Fi’s 200-300 yards, and 70Mbps data transfer rates.

Labrecque says that collaborating on mass market products will achieve similar economies of scale to those seen in Wi-Fi WLan devices. She says base stations will cost under $20,000 and support 60 enterprise customers with T1-class connections.

Systems based on the mobile version of the standard, which should ship towards the end of next year, about six months after fixed wireless products, will be able to achieve long distance wireless networking and will have far greater potential than Wi-Fi hotspots to provide ubiquitous coverage to rival that of the cellular network.

Although 802.11x cards will not work on an 802.16 network, the two could be bridged using a router between the two systems, effectively filling the gaps – and the inherent weaknesses – in the hotspot system. An extension of the standard, 802.16a, can operate over 50 kilometers and without line of sight connection, and could provide the last mile link between the national backbone and the high speed WLans. However, volume shipments are not expected for over a year.

Components of the standard
The WiMAX standard, 802.16a, was published in March. It extends the April 2002 line of sight fixed wireless Man standard, which focused on licensed 10-66GHz spectrum. The extension provides for non-line of sight access in low frequency 2-11GHz bands, some of which are unlicensed, and adds support for PMP and mesh technologies, plus boosting the maximum distance from 31 to 50 miles. Both of these standards went largely unnoticed until the WiMAX group was formed, led by Intel and Nokia, to promote and develop commercial solutions. Intel has now promised WiMAX versions of its Centrino chipset for next year, while Nokia says it will have battery and other technical issues solved in time to launch a WiMAX cellphone in two years’ time.

The "b" extension is concerned with quality of service features, while the "c" extension focuses on interoperability. It relates to protocols, test suite structures and test purposes. Similarly, 802.16d focuses on fixing the errata and other protocols not covered by 802.11c.

The "e" taskgroup is working on enhancing the Wireless LAN air interface to support mobile as well as fixed broadband. It incorporates the work of the ad hoc committee, the Handoff Committee. A draft will be completed in July for ballot.

The "d" amendment creates system profiles for compliance testing for 802.16a devices. These tests will be in place within two months.

The overall vision for 802.16 is that carriers would set up base stations connected to a public network. Each base station would support hundreds of fixed subscriber stations, probably mounted on rooftops. The base stations would then use the standard's medium access control layer (MAC) -- a common interface that makes the networks interoperable -- to nearly instantaneously allocate uplink and downlink bandwidth to subscribers according to their needs.

Conceivably, 802.16 MANs could anchor 802.11 hotspots, which serve as wireless local area networks (LANs), as well as servicing end users directly.

The 10 to 66 GHz standard supports continuously varying traffic levels at many licensed frequencies (e.g., 10.5, 25, 26, 31, 38 and 39 GHz) for two-way communications. It enables interoperability among devices, so carriers can use products from multiple vendors and warrants the availability of lower cost equipment. The draft amendment for the 2 to 11 GHz region will support both unlicensed and licensed bands.

CenDyne Takes Wireless to the Game Console
July 9, 2003


CenDyne of Santa Ana, Calif., a maker of connectivity products for items like portable CD-RW drives, is releasing its first 802.11 products next week. The company concentrates on the home market, but its first Wi-Fi products won't be the standard PC Cards and access points. Instead, they're releasing two 802.11b Ethernet-to-Wireless adapters that are specifically for getting a Microsoft Xbox or Sony Playstation2 game console online.

"It's a real rigmarole when you do networking to hook them up," says Paul Goldberg, vice president of marketing at CenDyne. "None of the other products have very specific instructions for hooking up the game consoles."

The other products he's referring to are Ethernet-to-Wireless adapters from companies like D-Link, SMC, and Linksys. While most of these products will work with a game console -- the are configured using a PC with an Ethernet jack, then plug into the embedded Ethernet jack on the console -- they're also meant to work on any product with Ethernet. CenDyne's products, the CenDyne Wireless Xbox Network Adapter and CenDyne Wireless PS2 Network Adapter for PlayStation 2, target the game consoles exclusively.

The company, which resells in stores such as Circuit City, Costco, Fry's, Radio Shack, and others, expects to sell the product in the same areas as the consoles themselves. Instructions in each will also be specific to the consoles.

Setup will require a Windows PC (with Win98 on up to XP) or Macintosh with an Ethernet card, and, of course, the presence of a wireless LAN on the network. The cards can get their IP address via DHCP . Configuration is actually done by connecting to a Web site set up by CenDyne. Goldberg says the Web-based Wizard takes about five minutes to run through. After that, plug it into the console using the included 10Mbps Ethernet cable and it should go online. The adapter uses separate AC power, and has a power button on the front so users don't have to accidentally connect to the network if just playing a one person game.

PlayStation 2 games each have their own individual online components with their own individual monthly costs; Xbox users must sign up for the $50 Xbox Live program to go online with any games that support it. Xbox Live registration lasts for one year. Nintendo's GameCube doesn't come with a built-in Ethernet port.

CenDyne expects the shelf price of its wireless game console adapters to be $99.

Double-barreled boost for enterprise Wi-Fi

By Peter Judge
ZDNet (UK)
July 2, 2003, 5:49 AM PT
URL: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-1022865.html

COMMENTARY--So, 802.11g and WPA security have both been approved, and wireless LANs on the 2.4GHz band have just got faster. 3Com has announced an 802.11g enterprise Wi-Fi product, and Cisco has launched a strategy for Wi-Fi.

All this is a signal for a bigger take-up of Wi-Fi in the enterprise. And that would be no bad thing, if the murmurings about the hype over public Wi-Fi services turn out to be true.

Some analysts are predicting that the Wi-Fi hype will lead to a dot-com style crash amongst public wireless ISPs, though I reckon that the hype is still manageable and the fundamentals are good.

So, if Wi-Fi service providers don't lay a golden egg, vendors will want to sell some more office-based Wi-Fi networks. Of course, it is quite possible that the market for office-based Wi-Fi is being hyped just as much as the service providers. To hear some people talk, you would think that the old wired office network has had its day, and that is certainly not the case.

Whatever the different markets for Wi-Fi do over the next few years, it is certain that right now there is a market for optimistic market research. What turns that research into a bubble is when too many people start to believe it, and forget that market research is usually commissioned by those with a stake in the market who want a bright future for people to invest in.

So, research aside, what is going to make enterprise Wi-Fi start to hum? WPA may be more significant technically, but 802.11g is getting publicity because speed sells. This is the case even though speed has not actually been a barrier to enterprise Wi-Fi (although users do share the bandwidth at an access point, so extra bandwidth means more users).

802.11g's arrival in the office will be powered by its previous success in consumer products. Whatever vendors in both spaces may say, the enterprise Wi-Fi market has a lot of synergy with the consumer market. We all know that products have to be different for the two spaces (if only to justify higher prices for business customers), but there's no denying one thing: the fact that there is a consumer market for this stuff makes it easier for the vendors to produce enterprise versions.

For instance, vendors have been selling "802.11g" products for at least six months to consumers. The standard has been pretty solid for a while, and perfectly ready for sales to the consumer market. While these products don't conform to a final standard, that doesn't matter to consumers, who usually have standalone networks with one access point. Users don't expect to be able to roam with their home Wi-Fi devices into their friends' houses.

Businesses, on the other hand, do need a full standard before they adopt a technology. They have had to wait, for .11g. However, the experience vendors have gained in selling 802.11g to consumers means they don't have to spend a long time preparing 802.11g for businesses; they just need to tweak consumer-grade products to make them business grade.

So, it is no surprise to see 3Com launching a product almost immediately. Others are moving a bit slower, with Intel not expected to bring out its.11g products till the end of 2003. Symbol is being even more cautious, warning that early 802.11g products may have drawbacks, and won't have a .11g card till next year. Symbol's delay may be surprising, since it was ahead of the other enterprise Wi-Fi vendors last September when it launched its wireless switch--a specialized switch that sits in your wiring closet, handling all the wireless LANs that might be attached to your corporate network (and rooting out the ones that shouldn't be there). As I've said before, the wireless switch has become this year's essential enterprise networking product. Symbol's is taking off well, apparently: networks based on it now make up 40 percent of the company's wireless LAN revenue--a much faster take-off than Symbol expected.

So what problems does Symbol see with 802.11g? The company says the products will have trouble when working with .11b clients, including poor roaming and lower battery life. "Backward compatibility is very important to us because we believe that 'b' clients are going to be around for many years, probably another five years," says Gary Singh, senior director of worldwide marketing at Symbol. "The efficiencies that you get from power management in 'b' technology don't exist in 'g' and 'a' today."

Fair enough: that's a testable statement, so I'd advise you to check roaming and battery life on any .11g product before you buy in any big numbers. Symbol is not the only one to give 802.11g a miss: Trapeze is concentrating on .11a, for the stated reason that it is better. It supports more channels and has less interference.

Another point is that the .11g products coming at the end of the year will include combined abg products. "At this point, the alphabet soup will go away," says analyst Richard Webb of Infonetics. Confusion with .11a is indeed an alphabet soup issue, not a technical one. Although .11g's 54Mbit/s speed spec is the same as .11a, neither Singh nor Webb expect a battle between the two. 802.11a is on 5GHz so it will be the standard of choice where interference with other 2.4GHz radio, such as Bluetooth is an issue.

But what of the Cisco launch? At a recent briefing, Symbol spent most of its time picking holes in Cisco's wireless strategy, instead of comparing its products with the other wireless switches that have come along since last September. This is because of Cisco's dominance. A Cisco launch into any networking area, usually late, and always at a higher price, is always seen as legitimizing that area. And it sparks off a time of clarification, when other people figure out the distinguishing features of their own technologies.

Cisco's Structured Wireless Aware Network is no exception. It does not include a specialized wireless switch but bundles together other Cisco products and manages the wireless traffic on the existing Catalyst switches that vast numbers of enterprise customers already have. That may sound like a good idea, but Symbol's Singh dismisses it: "they had to come out with something," he says, "but it's really nothing but a product-bundling approach." Add up all the additional things you need from Cisco, and it comes to ten-times the cost of a switch-based Wi-Fi solution from a vendor such as Symbol, he says.

Other vendors are going to divide up according to how their wireless switches are architected. Do they aim to make you replace the switches in your wiring closet? Not surprisingly, switch vendors like Foundry seem to have solutions in this class. Or do they make an overlay alongside what you have already, saving existing investment? Symbol, Trapeze and others are in this class.

There are plenty of other factors to look for. What kinds of technology do the vendors use to support wireless roaming? And if they have a wireless switch, do you need to have an actual cable from that switch to each access point, or can you tunnel those links through the corporate network?

These questions will get progressively answered as enterprise Wi-Fi moves from infancy to childhood.

RoadPost: Wi-Fi This Way

It takes all kinds to make a Wi-Fi world. The variety of business models being tried fairly boggles the mind. Which ones will win? Place your bets.

Take, for example, RoadPost's. A Canadian firm with a Rockville, Md., office and a customer base over 50-percent American, RoadPost is a long-time player in the niche-y but lucrative mobile telephony roaming business.

The company rents mobile and satellite phones and mobile telephone numbers to U.S. and Canadian business travelers heading to Europe and Asia-Pacific.

For a couple of years now RoadPost has been providing roaming Internet access as well -- with 25,000 dial-up POPs in 150 countries. Now, through partner GRIC Communications, the company will add broadband services: hotel Ethernet and Wi-Fi.

"This is being driven from so many different directions," notes RoadPost president and CEO Morris Shawn. "The most powerful is that people are setting up Wi-Fi networks in their homes and offices, and they want it to be as easy and fast as that when they're outside the country."



What RoadPost now offers is a one-stop shop: all your overseas communications -- whether e-mail or phone or corporate Intranet access -- needs from one supplier, on one bill, with discounts for bundling.

"That's our competitive edge," Shawn says, "that we tie all this stuff together. To have one product that combines all these things is very powerful."

The company currently has some of its corporate customers -- enterprises that buy services in bulk from RoadPost -- market trialing the broadband access services. There will be "a broader introduction of the service," by the end of this year when it will also be made available to individual business customers, and RoadPost will introduce bundled voice-data service packages.

There is a tiny flaw in the business plan, though -- GRIC. Not that there is anything wrong with the service GRIC provides, far from it. Shawn says his company did an extensive evaluation of the market before deciding to partner exclusively with GRIC. It was the best it saw.

"The key is that all access -- whether dial-up, Wi-Fi or Ethernet -- is through the same GRIC client software," Shawn notes. "What we're finding is that customers don't want a separate subscription with a Wi-Fi operator, because they'll need dial-up besides, depending on where they are. Putting it all together on one rate plan is a huge attraction."

The common customer experience wherever the traveler goes is another big plus. They connect the wire -- unless it's a Wi-Fi location -- fire up the GRIC software, select their location from a pull-down list, click the type of connection, enter their ID and password and they're in.

"It's very user friendly," Shawn says.

All the remote authentication is handled by GRIC and settlement is done through online integration with RoadPost's billing system. Shawn insists that GRIC as a company is very easy to work with on all aspects of the relationship. So what's not to like?

According to Shawn, RoadPost customers will have access to some 2,000 GRIC broadband access points, about 1,600 of which are Wi-Fi. That's the most of any aggregator he looked at. The catch is that three quarters of those POPs are in the U.S. The rest are spread -- thinly, we'd have to say -- around the world.

If your target customers are mainly interested in your core services because they travel outside North America, what's the good of having three quarters of your broadband POPs in the U.S. -- where chances are your customers' existing mobiles will work fine, and where they can deal direct with GRIC or some other aggregator if they want Wi-Fi connectivity?

In fairness, the U.S. hotel Wi-Fi and Ethernet market has developed much more quickly than markets in Europe and even Asia-Pacific. There are simply more POPs to choose from here. Still, the European market in particular has been coming on gangbusters recently.

France Telecom recently announced an extension of its deal with the Accor Group hotel chain. It's now committed to putting Wi-Fi in 1,300 Accor hotels. I recently visited Vienna, Austria, where start-up Metronet (which we wrote about earlier this year) has hundreds of hotspots up and running.

They're just the tip of the iceberg. Wi-Fi is breaking out all over in Europe.

Also GRIC expects to double its number of broadband POPs by the end of this year, although Shawn can't say if the geographic mix will change.

Almost every Wi-Fi operator we've talked to recently stresses that getting roaming agreements in place is job one. This may be easier said than done with dueling aggregators looking to lock up the biggest operators in exclusive relationships, but it has to be done.

From RoadPost's point of view especially, Wi-Fi ubiquity through roaming agreements must extend to other parts of the world. It's a global economy and a global village. Customers are not going to sign up for services if they need umpteen subscriptions to cover all the different places they go.

RoadPost will find that out. If GRIC can expand its overseas broaband POPs, RoadPost's combined voice-data roaming service will be very attractive indeed.

Edited by author 07-09-2003 04:43 PM
ReefEdge Connect System 3.3 Nominated for ''Best Wireless Product'' in the 2003 InfoWorld Readers' Choice Awards

ReefEdge Connect System Selected Based on its Ability to Secure and Manage WLANs

ReefEdge, Inc., an industry leader in wireless network infrastructure products, today announced that ReefEdge Connect 3.3 has been nominated as the Best Wireless Product for the InfoWorld Readers Choice Awards. The product was chosen for its comprehensive, open systems that cost-effectively enable the deployment, protection and operation of mission critical WLANs.

ReefEdge products are part of the ReefEdge Wireless Services Fabric(TM), which is the basis for a family of products that address all aspects of the wireless LAN lifecycle: deployment, operations, management, monitoring, and support. The Wireless Services Fabric provides core packet-processing services for security and mobility; closely interlinked core management services for RF monitoring, reporting and multi-site management; and integration services for integrating the wireless LAN with existing network authentication, accounting, directory, logging, and management systems. By linking these components, the Wireless Services Fabric delivers a comprehensive, open, standards-compliant architecture that reduces the cost of deploying and operating a wireless LAN and enables the deployment of mission critical wireless applications across a variety of industries and topologies.

"I am delighted that InfoWorld has selected ReefEdge as a finalist in the Best Wireless Product Category for their Readers' Choice Awards. This recognition is further acknowledgement of the tremendous traction ReefEdge is getting in the wireless LAN market," said Ajei Gopal, CEO of ReefEdge.

The Readers' Choice Awards offer InfoWorld readers a chance to express their opinions of the industry's products, technologies, trendsetters, and events. The categories and award candidates are selected by InfoWorld's senior editorial staff based on technology trends, wave-making products, and the top reviews conducted by the Test Center during the year. Readers then vote on the categories, and their responses are tallied to determine the winners.

To request a ballot, please e-mail readerschoice@infoworld.com. Voting ends Sunday, July 8, 2003. The winners of the InfoWorld Readers Choice Awards will be revealed in the July 28 issue of InfoWorld.

About ReefEdge

ReefEdge (www.reefedge.com) leads the WLAN industry with award winning innovative solutions that enable enterprises to deploy, manage and secure their mission critical wireless networks. Through world-class channel partners and system integrators, ReefEdge provides comprehensive, open solutions that integrate wireless LANs with existing network infrastructure and services such as voice and data applications. Founded in 2000 and privately held, ReefEdge is led by an executive team with extensive experience in the mobile wireless and data networking industries. ReefEdge's corporate headquarters are in Fort Lee, NJ with a European Development Center in Rennes, France, sales offices across the U.S. and worldwide distribution.

Siemen's Combines Wi-Fi, DSL, and HomePlug
July 7, 2003


Efficient Networks , a division of Siemens (Quote, Company Info), today announced a new line of SpeedStream-branded gateways that incorporate not only the modem for a digital subscriber line (DSL) connection, but also include an 802.11g access point as well a model with 802.11g and HomePlug-based powerline networking.

The new product line, which is geared toward ISPs who would then provide them to DSL customers, consists of three units: the SpeedStream 6200 Wireless-Ready DSL Gateway has a five-port 10/100 Ethernet switch and can support Wi-Fi when an 802.11g PC Card is plugged in; the SpeedStream 6300 Wireless DSL Gateway comes with the 11g built in; and the SpeedStream 6400 Powerline/Wireless DSL Gateway has the Ethernet, Wi-Fi and powerline-support all on board. The company has previous offered router products combining the wireless, Ethernet and powerline direct to consumers, but without the built in DSL modem.

Each version of the SpeedStream DSL Gateway comes with embedded software called ControlNet, which is actually controlled by the DSL service provider, to allow them to offer extended services to consumers. It can handle things like content filtering (controlled by the parent in the household), monitoring of Web sites, and time-based access controls (such as preventing teens from getting online until parents get home from work). ControlNet features can be branded and customized by service providers who would offer the gateways to customers.

Each unit can serve as the DSL modem used by the family, or existing customers can take advantage of the integrated WAN/LAN port with the DSL modem they've already got, to get the full gamut of ControlNet features.

The company release on these products says the SpeedStream 6200 and 6300 are shipping now, but no pricing was provided.

Edited by author 07-09-2003 04:36 PM
Boingo Wireless, TSI partner for WiFi-to-cellular roaming

WiFi aggregator Boingo Wireless and Telecommunications Services Inc. (TSI) yesterday announced a partnership to boost Boingo's WiFi roaming services. Under the terms of the deal, TSI will combine its network management and billing systems with Boingo's services, allowing Boingo to offer WiFi-to-cellular (and back) roaming services for both GSM and CDMA networks. The deal will allow Boingo to expand its service footprint and to ink roaming agreements with leading wireless carriers. TSI will provide Boingo with AAA (authentication, authorization, accounting) broker services, authentication for GSM carriers, AAA hosting , data billing support, data clearing, and settlement and customer care services. TSI will also facilitate roaming agreements between Boingo and wireless carriers. No financial details were released.
=============================

TSI and Boingo Wireless™ to Provide Seamless Roaming for Wi-Fi and WWAN Services

Wireless industry expert TSI and leading Wi-Fi roaming provider Boingo Wireless team up to promote seamless WLAN and WWAN roaming to drive mass adoption and increased revenues for wireless operators

TAMPA - July 7, 2003 - TSI Telecommunication Services Inc. (TSI) (www.tsiconnections.com <http://www.tsiconnections.com>;), a global communications technology company, and Boingo Wireless, the leading roaming provider for Wi-Fi Hot Spots, today announced an update to their strategic relationship to accelerate adoption of wireless data roaming by wireless operators and subscribers.

The two companies will combine TSI's long-term wireless industry clearing and settlement expertise with Boingo™'s Platform Services to establish cooperative roaming services for Wi-Fi WLAN networks and WWAN networks. Wireless Operators can leverage Boingo's Platform Services to add fully branded Wi-Fi WLAN services to their existing product offerings, while utilizing their existing relationship with TSI to integrate these services with their existing systems, including combining authentication and billing data into a seamless reporting stream to simplify customer billing.

"By combining TSI's authentication, billing and reporting expertise with Boingo's Hot Spot roaming network and customer software, wireless operators get a quick-to-market solution that unites Wi-Fi and wireless WAN," stated TSI CEO Ed Evans. "With TSI and Boingo, wireless operators get the best of both worlds - traditional roaming settlement and leading Wi-Fi services."

"Wireless Internet access is on the verge of exploding in the United States and abroad," said David Hagan, president of Boingo Wireless. "Wireless operators need to be prepared to address customer requests for a combined Wi-Fi and wireless WAN service. Using Boingo's Platform Services with TSI's clearing, settlement and roaming facilitation services, operators can make WLAN and WWAN services appear seamless - both to the customer and through billing processing."

About TSI
TSI Telecommunication Services Inc. (TSI) is a global communications technology company specializing in innovative business and network engineering solutions that manage and interconnect voice and data systems in 26 countries throughout North America, Central and Latin America, Asia Pacific and Europe. TSI provides technology interoperability, network services and call processing to more than 250 mobile operators, wireline carriers, emerging telecom market entrants and business customers. Products include SS7 intelligent network solutions, clearing and settlement services, voice and data roaming facilitation, fraud management, revenue enhancement solutions and more than 25 other integrated services. TSI is a privately owned corporation headquartered in Tampa, Fla., U.S.A., with offices in major cities throughout the United States and offices in Amsterdam, London, Luxembourg, Beijing and Hong Kong. For more information, visit www.tsiconnections.com <http://www.tsiconnections.com>;.

CUSIP: 87287VAB8 Bloomberg Tickers: TSITEL (Bond) 32497Z (Equity)

About Boingo Wireless
Boingo Wireless, Inc. is an ultra-high-speed wireless Internet service now available in hundreds of locations across the country, such as hotels, airports, cafes, and other public places. Boingo provides business travelers with a wireless broadband Internet connection to improve productivity while on the road. Through its free Wi-Fi software, Boingo makes finding and connecting to Wi-Fi networks point-and-click simple and secure. EarthLink founder and chairman Sky Dayton founded Boingo in 2001 and serves as its CEO. To sign up for Boingo service, or to download Boingo's free Wi-Fi software, visit <http://www.boingo.com>; or call 1-800-U-BOINGO.

Readers Split on WLAN v 3G
07.04.03

The argument over whether wireless LAN is a true 3G killer, or the biggest hype since, er, 3G, continues to rage following Unstrung’s totally unscientific but absurdly popular Wireless Personality Test conducted last month.

A record 505 readers logged their opinions on the fighting credentials of wireless LAN and 3G -- a bout that finished with a controversial near-split decision. Forty-five percent of respondents believe a public access wireless LAN hotspot is the best way to access wireless data on the move, but another 44 percent back a trusty packet-data cellular network.

Cellular comes out on top in a hardware head-to-head battle between tri-mode WLAN cards and data handsets, however. Fifty-one percent of readers are convinced a cellular “high-heeled fashionista” would have no problems thumping a “low-browed executive” armed only with a laptop.

The results fly in the face of a recent analyst prediction that wireless LAN will establish itself as the dominant wireless infrastructure within the next five years, at the expense of 3G (see WLAN to Squeeze Out 3G). Such findings will also provide some relief to carriers struggling with early deployments of data-intensive, next-generation networks (see J-Phone's Limited Appeal, Japan's 3G Needs a Kick Start and 3G UK Cries for Help).

In fact, it appears that considerable work remains to be done in educating the user on the benefits of wireless LAN. Forty-one percent of readers curse the technology because of configuration problems with their own devices, and a further 19 percent find the whole concept just too damn “geeky.” Another 40 percent are turned off by fears of their spanking new laptop being stolen from public places.

On a final note, Unstrung is now slightly concerned as to the credentials of its reader base. Thirty-eight percent of respondents readily admit to being “a total slut” when deciding upon a wireless technology for personal use. It seems these hapless souls will take any wireless access on offer, regardless of its reputation or track record.

Thankfully, 32 percent of readers express some form of dignity by deeming themselves too sensible to be duped into answering such a question.

WLAN Hotspots to Singe City 3G?
07.07.03

Continued carrier investment in the rollout of public wireless LAN services could cut 3G infrastructure investment in cities and further depress the battered cellular network equipment market, according to the findings of a report from Lehman Brothers.

Despite prevailing uncertainty over the potential success of the much hyped hotspot model (see Readers Split on WLAN v 3G ), the company believes that growing carrier interest in wireless LAN could affect investment in 3G networks.

In its latest report -- Investigating Wireless LANs: A Global View – Lehman Brothers adheres to general market belief that the two wireless technologies will be complementary to one another, but claims that “in metropolitan areas and attractive WLAN spots, buildout of 3G will not need to be as intensive as may have previously been envisaged.”

“It is true that wireless LAN is likely to displace 3G capex and coverage in metropolitan hotspots,” says Will Draper, European wireless services analyst. Draper expects carriers to focus wireless LAN investment in specific metropolitan areas, whilst 3G and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) rollout will be concentrated on wider “urban areas and suburban/rural coverage” respectively.

As a result, Draper believes the overall market for 3G network infrastructure could face a further hit. “We expect to see slightly lower levels of 3G capital expenditure than we have previously seen.”

Lehman’s findings contradict rival analysts' belief that the worst of the wireless equipment market downturn is over (see W-CDMA: When, Not If). If the bruddas are right, this will come as a further blow to traditional equipment vendors such as LM Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY - message board), Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE/Toronto: NT - message board), and Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK - message board).

However, plenty of other analysts dispute Lehman's take on the situation. “From all around the industry we are picking up signals that the infrastructure market is at last stabilizing,” wrote Nomura Holdings Inc.'s Dr Richard Windsor in a statement only last week. “From operators right the way through to component vendors the message is clear; the days of deep spending cuts appear to be over.”

Nextel's Spectrum Coup
07.02.03

Nextel Communications Inc.'s (Nasdaq: NXTL - message board) surprise $144 million cash bid for the wireless assets of bankrupt operator WorldCom Inc. (OTC: WCOEQ - message board) has once again sparked interest in the operator's strategy for rolling out high-speed wireless data services in the U.S.

According to a filing with the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan late Monday, Nextel has won the auction for spectrum licenses, network equipment, and tower leases, beating out a previous bid of $65 million from BellSouth Corp. (NYSE: BLS - message board). A spokesperson for WorldCom confirmed the Nextel bid but offered no further comment. The deal won't be made official until it has been approved by a bankruptcy court judge. A hearing is expected on July 8.

WorldCom, which plans to trade under the name MCI when it emerges from Chapter 11 protection but is using the WorldCom name for its bankruptcy proceedings, is the largest holder of Multipoint Microwave Distribution System (MMDS) spectrum in the U.S. MMDS services operate in the 2.1GHz to 2.7GHz band licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), offering 1-Mbit/s data transfer speeds over an area of around 30 miles in a line-of-sight (LOS) configuration (i.e, no big buildings or hills in the way).

WorldCom had been using this licensed spectrum to provide fixed wireless, high-speed Internet services in about a dozen markets in the U.S before its spectacular downfall last year. It holds licenses for over 100 U.S. markets.

Forget the fixed, however, it's what kind of mobile wireless service Nextel might be able to provide with the spectrum that has got analysts talking.

Companies like IPWireless Inc., Navini Networks Inc., and others have been talking about using MMDS frequencies to allow laptop computer users to move between wireless base stations without losing their connection.

Traditional line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) systems don't have the ability to hand off between base stations because the large MMDS modem that is used to send and receive signals from the home is not practical for mobile use.

Analysts say that it may be time for the MMDS technology to migrate to the laptop and mobile phone. "It raises a lot of interesting possibilities that bear close consideration," says Andy Fuertes, senior analyst at Visant Strategies.

Nextel is the only major U.S. carrier that has not yet announced a migration path to third-generation services, and the operator has said in the past that it may consider alternatives to established 3G technology to provide high-speed wireless data services to its business and blue-collar-oriented subscriber base.

The carrier is also known to have already tested similar systems from Flarion Technologies (which doesn't have a technology that operates in this spectrum in the U.S. at the moment) and NLOS wireless kit vendor NextNet Wireless Inc. in the Philippines (see Nextel Trials Flarion's Flash).

Fuertes says he can think of at least four reasons why Nextel wants the spectrum:

It values the fixed wireless infrastructure.
It plans to use the bandwidth to launch a brand-new, wireless WAN service.
It could use the spectrum to provide wireless backhaul for an 802.11 wireless LAN hotspot deployment.
It just likes the feel of RF radiation.
Phil Marshall at the Yankee Group also had a bit of a chin-scratching session about Nextel's plans for the spectrum. "They could use it for a wide-area data service, a bit like a hotspot network, but with more mobility," he conjectures.

Nextel isn't offering much in the way of comment about its plans. "Nextel has made it a practice to pursue valuable spectrum for affordable prices today in order to provide maximum flexibility for the future," writes a Nextel spokesperson in an email reply to questions.

WorldCom originally paid around $1.3 billion for the MMDS licenses in 1999. [Ed. note: gutted!]

Switches Improve WLAN Range and Performance
July 2, 2003


Traditional access points offer a shared medium, wherein clients take turns transmitting data. This is similar to a hub in a wired Ethernet network. Only one access point can transmit at a particular time. It's possible that two or more clients or access points may transmit at the same time, however, which results in a collision and corresponding packet retransmission. This increases the amount of time it takes to transmit packets, which reduces overall throughput of the wireless LAN.

Switched access points, on the other hand, implement a switching technology similar to what you find in traditional Ethernet switches. Switches enable multiple wireless clients to communicate with the same access point simultaneously and eliminate collisions between packets. The overall result is better range and throughput.

How WLAN Switches Work?
There are a couple of different approaches to switched wireless LANs. One is to have a single access point switch that takes the place of multiple access points. Vivato and Bandspeed are the two primary companies implementing this approach.

Vivato's switches use planar phased array antennas to support simultaneous traffic for up to 150 users. The Vivato switch is a rather large (48"x25"x3") wall-mountable panel and is available in both indoor and outdoor versions. The switches connect to the main network through a single Ethernet port, which also provides power-over-Ethernet (PoE). They can operate in either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz bands, making them suitable for supporting a variety of requirements.

The indoor version of the Vivato switch generally installs in the corner of a building and provides coverage for an entire floor of a building. It does this by using highly directive, narrow beams that automatically point to specific clients roaming through the facility. Instead of transmitting RF signals in every direction like traditional access points, Vivato uses their PacketSteering technology to concentrate power into a single directional beam, very much like a movable, high-gain directional antenna.

Since the switches use phased-array antennas, they can send different signals in different directions at the same time. This enables simultaneous, collision free transmission among clients associated with the same access point.

Because they use directed signals, Vivato indoor switches have a range of around 300 meters at their maximum throughput. Vivato's outdoor switches will deliver wireless connectivity to a much larger area, with a range up to 4 kilometers. They can also provide wireless connectivity to an entire multi-level building by mounting a Vivato switch within an adjacent building. The switch will then beam coverage throughout the building. This method of deployment is an ideal solution for areas where there are lots of buildings that are close to each other, such as college campuses.

Bandspeed offers a technology that is very similar to the Vivato switch, except that it is somewhat smaller in size. Named Gypsy, the switch technology uses directional antennas to provide 360 degree coverage with a range similar to that of the Vivato switch. Gypsy also supports both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, making it applicable to 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g networks. Bandspeed doesn't sell these switches directly to the public; rather they supply original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original development manufacturers (ODMs) with the technology and products necessary to build the switches and sell to the public.

Another approach to existing switched wireless LAN technology is to have a single Ethernet-based switch that interconnects many small, lower technology access ports (think of them as access points without the brains -- some call them "lite access points") mounted throughout the facility. The access ports offer a low cost method of providing small cells throughout large facilities. This provides users with the performance enhancing qualities of a switch and a highly scalable solution. You can start with a limited solution and add access ports as needed.

The Symbol Mobius System offers this type of technology. Symbol's Axon Wireless Switch runs the control and management functions for the wireless network. All of the intelligence and features found in normal access points fall within the Axon Switch.

The Axon Switch connects to Mobius Access Ports through standard 100BaseT cabling. The relatively small access ports contain the wireless LAN radio and antenna, which you can mount almost anywhere. They support PoE, and also include a second built-in Ethernet port for "daisy chaining" multiple access ports together.

The Mobius system currently supports 802.11a and 802.11b, and is almost ready for 802.11g. The access ports require no configuration because the centralized Axon Wireless Switch includes provides all configuration settings.

The Advantages
Here are some key advantages pertaining to switched wireless LANs:

Increased capacity and range: Switched access points allow you to provide greater coverage with less hardware, which can result in cost savings due related to hardware and installation. Through the use of directed beams, for example, Vivato and Bandspeed switches provide increased range of coverage, close to ten times that of regular access points.
Simpler installation: The use of switched wireless LANs make installation somewhat easier. For example, the Vivato and Bandspeed approaches limit the need to consider RF channel assignments for access points. The switching mechanisms rather than RF channels keeps users apart from each other.
Centralization: There are fewer access points to manage with wireless LAN switches, making configuration and troubleshooting a lot easier. Also, because there are generally fewer components, there is a much lower chance of anything going wrong.
Improved security: It's possible to implement tighter security measures, mainly because centralization limits the number of devices that hackers can exploit.
The Disadvantages
As with anything else, there are some disadvantages to deploying switched wireless LANs. One of the disadvantages is initial cost. For example, the Vivato switches range in price from $8,995 for the indoor model to $13,995 for the outdoor model. These prices are rather steep now, but the prices probably will come down in the future as volumes increase. Also keep in mind that the greater coverage of the switch will likely make the installation of a large wireless LAN less expensive than using traditional access points.

Another issue to consider is newness of the technology. There are no standards for switched wireless LANs. The 802.11 standard doesn't come anywhere close to defining switched wireless LAN technology, except for the Point Coordination Function (PCF) that is an optional medium access method that vendors don't implement.

Certainly any enterprise should consider the use of switched wireless LANs for large-scale deployments. Similar to the massive migration from Ethernet hubs to switches in the mid-1990s, IT managers will likely adopt switched wireless LANs as needs for higher performance wireless LANs proliferate.

Wi-Fi at Wimbledon

This week's Wimbledon tennis tournament at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in London is by no means the first major sporting event to feature on-site Wi-Fi hotspot services. It is the first in Europe, however -- yet another sign that Wi-Fi in Europe is on fire.

The service, provided by a joint venture between UK-based public Internet access firms Broadreach Networks Ltd. and WebPoint, is also one of the first anywhere to offer public Wi-Fi access at a sporting event as opposed to access for members of the media only.

For Broadreach, a fast-rising star in the UK Wi-Fi firmament, it's just the first of many special events at which it expects to provide high-speed Internet services. It will be involved in two more "high-profile cultural and sporting" events in the next couple of months alone, says CFO and co-founder Simon Weatherseed.

"I'd love to tell you about them, but the ink isn't even dry on the deals yet," Weatherseed says.

Talking about them now might also take away from the excitement at Wimbledon. If you're one of the lucky 50,000 this week who come to watch the stars of tennis in action on Centre Court -- and you bring along your Wi-Fi-enabled laptop or PDA -- you can slip out between sets and check e-mail, or upload the candid photo you just snapped of Serena Williams.

Actually, you can do that even if you're not Wi-Fi enabled because Broadreach and WebPoint also installed fixed wired Internet terminals.

Access is available in four areas around the grounds. Two of them, near the famous Long Bar near Centre Court and in the food court area near Court One, offer Wi-Fi access as well as fixed terminals.

Broadreach is using 3Com and Netgear access points and a WG-2100 Wireless Gateway from Bluesocket. to authenticate and route all wireless traffic on the site.

It may be hard to figure why anyone would want to go on the Internet in the middle of a thrilling pro tennis match, but apparently they do. This is the second year WebPoint has offered fixed access services at the tournament.

"We know certainly from the WebPoint stats on how many were using the fixed terminals last year that the demand was quite considerable," says Weatherseed. "By extension, we could see there would also be demand for wireless service."

Like stadiums and arenas in North America, Wimbledon has lots of corporate boxes -- or tents -- where companies butter up their clients by wining and dining them. Guests and hosts both need to keep in touch during the day, Weatherseed points out.

Usage results by mid week were slightly disappointing from a Wi-Fi perspective, though. Only "a couple of handfuls" of wireless users had logged on to the service each day, while several hundred a day were using the fixed terminals.

This is about exactly what Broadreach expects. The company was formed in 2000 to provide high-speed public Internet access, initially using fixed wired terminals.

"We could see the roadmap on Wi-Fi when we started," Weatherseed says. "But we're very much grounded in reality. We also realized it would be some time before there would be significant take-up of wireless -- and in fact, up until the end of July last year, it was illegal to offer commercial services over 802.11b in Britain anyway."

In the retail/consumer market Broadreach is going after, wireless will eventually overtake fixed access, the company believes, but that likely won't happen for at least five years. "For now, the only ones using wireless are the corporate market and other early adopters," Weatherseed says.

So Broadreach has a dual-technology strategy. Since the regulatory changes were made last summer, it has been rolling out both wired terminals and Wi-Fi hotspots -- to slightly over 50 locations so far, but with an ambitious target of 4,000 by the end of 2005.

A spin-off from the management consulting firm Arthur D. Little, Broadreach is well funded, with a roster of investors that include heavy-hitters such as BT (British Telecom), Intel Communications Fund and Virgin.

Despite its own OpenZone Wi-Fi play, BT sees Broadreach as complementary rather than competing. OpenZone is primarily a corporate offering, Weatherseed notes. Broadreach is a broader play and not even Wi-Fi-centric.

Special events is one of three primary areas of focus for the company. To this point it has concentrated on the other two: transportation/hospitality (with a heavy emphasis on rail) and retail/leisure sites. The 50 sites so far include some traditional hotspot venues, but also some that have yet to be tried on any scale in North America.

Broadreach has signed deals with key retail/leisure location owners, including Virgin Megastores (music, video and other Virgin-branded products and services) and LA Fitness and Holmes Place (both fitness center chains).

"Health clubs here have social areas and cafes and they're looking to increase the amount of time members spend in their clubs, and the amount of money they spend," Weatherseed says. "At the same time they're looking at providing additional services. That's what we're doing for them."

Broadreach has a deal with another Virgin company that operates trains and train stations in Britain's deregulated rail industry. In the first phase of the agreement, Broadreach is putting Wi-Fi hotspots (and fixed terminals) in Virgin-run rail stations. Euston and Paddington in London are already up and running, with stations in Birmingham and Manchester next, and more to come after that.

The partners are also working on a way to provide Wi-Fi access on moving trains, though they admit there are big technological challenges. Given the predominance of rail as a mode of transportation for commuters in the UK, figuring out how to solve those challenges is a priority for Broadreach.

If the company's hotspot location strategy seems slightly foreign to North American observers, its strategy for building a subscription base is only slightly less so.

Broadreach is not looking to build its customer base directly, but by partnering with non-competing Internet and mobile service providers -- something like Cometa Networks, the Intel-IBM-AT&T venture, Weatherseed notes.

So far it has deals in place with BT and Virgin mobile phone companies that give it access to some 4 million subscribers and associated other users. Those customers can log on to Broadreach facilities using their BT or Virgin IDs and passwords and can have the charges added to their mobile phone bills.

Just under 30,000 have signed up for Broadreach accounts and have used the service within the last three months, Weatherseed says. All are customers who have "charged up" their accounts by buying prepaid vouchers at Broadreach locations -- from one pound for 15 or 20 minutes to 10 pounds for a day.

When customers have an account, they can bank minutes. If they don't, the vouchers run out in real time.

The 30,000 does not include casual customers who use vouchers but don't bother to go through the process of setting up an account. It also doesn't include BT and Virgin subscribers who have set up accounts and arranged to have charges added to their mobile bills.

Nor does it include many Wi-Fi users, since Broadreach currently isn't charging for wireless service. It will probably start charging in the fall, Weatherseed says. So how many customers does Broadreach have? More than 30,000, it's safe to say.

Allowing customers, including Wi-Fi customers, to get access to its network with a voucher only, without creating an account is one of Broadreach's important differentiators, Weatherseed says.

"It's one of the beauties of our system," he says. "I can't understand why most of our competitors are doing it differently. We're very much focused on, 'Here's our network, you can get on anytime you want, you can pay as you go or you can use a third party account.'"

Wi-Fi users need neither client software nor account. When they launch their browser within range of a Broadreach hotspot, a log-on screen will pop up automatically.

The relationship with location owners is also different than it is for many North American operators. Broadreach typically owns the infrastructure, although some location owners may be given the opportunity to cover part of the investment, in which case their split of revenues is greater.

The revenue splits vary from location owner to location owner. Weatherseed won't even give a range.

Nor will he talk much about the company's finances. The current roster of investors has provided enough funding to move forward with Broadreach's business plan and it is not actively seeking additional funding.

"That's not to say that if someone came along with the right offer that might allow us to do things on a bigger sale that we wouldn't take it to our board of directors," Weatherseed says. "And they might say, 'Fine, let's bring in additional investors.'"

Even without additional funding, though, Broadreach seems to be on target to have, well, a broad reach in the UK Wi-Fi market.

You Judge It -- Wirelessly
July 7, 2003


Film festival audiences often cheer, hiss, boo and walk out to express their feelings about the product on the screen. Some just fall asleep.

At the first annual U Judge It! Film Festival, held July 6 at the Delancey Street Theater in San Francisco, the audience was able to rate films, talk directly to film makers and vote for awards -- including distinctly odd-ball categories such as "Actor/Actress You Would Most Like to Date" -- all without leaving their seats.

U Judge It! was the first film festival in which audience members with Wi-Fi enabled laptops, PDAs and phones were able to participate directly in the proceedings. Media people and film makers at the 2002 and 2003 Sundance Film Festivals had access to a Wi-Fi network, but not audiences.

"We saw a great opportunity to use a new technology in a way that hasn't been done before," says festival organizer Evette Murray, executive director of the Media Arts Interplay Association (MAIA). "It will be a lot of fun for people and it will be very useful interaction for the artists."

MAIA organized the event with sponsorship from multimedia software developer Macromedia, San Francisco-based wireless handheld application developer Primal Cause, The San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper and Skyy Vodka.

Incorporated last December, MAIA is, according to its charter, "a nonprofit arts education organization committed to providing opportunities for artists and audiences to interact with each other. Our mission is to empower both the creators and consumers of media arts by facilitating the sharing of creative processes and products."

The film festival was the organization's first event. "The original idea was to have a film festival that focused on the user experience and that would bring artist and audience together," Murray explains. "Then the question was, how to do this?"

The answer, which occurred almost simultaneously to the original idea being formed, was Wi-Fi. "I couldn't say Wi-Fi is the reason we decided to do it," Murray says. "But it's an extremely powerful tool in bringing artist and audience together."

Primal Cause, which also developed the Macromedia Flash-based application to be used at the event, installed just one Linksys access point at the 150-seat Delancey Street Theater. It covered the auditorium, the lobby and a little way out onto the street in front.

Capacity could have been an issue, but audience members were connecting to a local server, not the public Internet, and the Java application was not particularly data intensive, notes Primal Cause's Josh Krinsky. The Linksys access point supposedly supports as many as 200 simultaneous users.

"We think it's manageable," Krinsky says.

Murray expected a full-house on July 6, and said she wouldn't be surprised if every single person turns up with a Wi-Fi device. This is the epicenter of techno-America, after all. In fact, this may be the only place on the planet such a scheme might actually work.

Murray takes a longer view. "The Bay area is really good place to start out," she concedes. "There is definitely a high concentration of people with wireless devices here. But it's like the telephone -- people everywhere are eventually going to have this, it's just a matter of time."

Organizers planned to walk audience members through the process of setting up their devices to access the ad hoc network. Participants will need to have Flash, Version 6 installed on their systems.

Users opening the Festival intranet page were to have a choice of four activities: rate a film, vote for an award, talk to a film maker or sound off at the "shout-out" bulletin board.

To rate a film, they simply clicked on the film title in the menu and then used radio buttons to rate it. The awards were, to say the least, kooky. Others include "Film You Wish You Were In" and "Line You Will Quote."

If they choose to talk to a film maker, they could either enter a free-form chat session or answer the four questions about their work that each artist is allowed to post. Some of the film makers were scheduled to be at the event, others planned to participate remotely via the Internet -- including one in Turkey.

The audience-artist interaction is what the event is all about, Murray says, and Wi-Fi is a key enabler.

"When you have Q&As at these things, some people will get up to ask questions if they're not too shy. If they're a little more shy they might wait until after and run up and ask a question."

"By doing it through technology, we're letting anybody ask whatever they want. It means we'll get a lot more questions, and it's very valuable feedback for the film makers. They're really excited about participating."

We almost forgot, there were also films at the U Judge It! festival. Most were indie and short subjects. Programmers looked for award-winners from other recent festivals and new works by former award winners.

Murray is convinced the U Judge It! festival will be back next year, and she also believes there are lots of other applications -- trade shows in particular -- where artists or advertisers could benefit from audience feedback delivered wirelessly.

In fact, Murray says a contact in the film industry in L.A. was intrigued by her project and thinks the idea could be applied to post-release audience surveying for commercial releases -- or even on-the-fly tinkering with the editing of movies.

"Let's say you get all this feedback at the 2 p.m. showing," Murray speculates. "With digital [projection] technology you could download a new version of the film with the offending scene edited out for the 4 p.m. showing."

Edited by author 07-09-2003 04:20 PM
McDonald's Serves Up Wi-Fi in SF
July 8, 2003

SAN FRANCISCO -- Fast food giant McDonald's (Quote Tuesday continued its quest for providing wireless Internet access and took the wrapping off of its latest batch of hotspots during a launch party here.

The company, which successfully opened 10 kiosks in downtown New York back in March, said it is supplying local area networks via Wi-Fi at 75 of its Bay Area restaurants from SF to Half Moon Bay with 55 going live today.
Customers will be able to identify participating restaurants by signage that displays the Golden Arches in the universal Internet @ symbol. Cost for a two-hour wireless Internet connection at these locations is $4.95, with other purchase options available. Buying a Big Macs and Filet-o-Fish is not mandatory, however.

"We want the Golden Arches to be the first choice for a great meal and a place to go wireless," McDonald's West Division President Don Thompson said.

As before, chip making giant Intel is helping with the launch, providing sponsorship, technology and a joint marketing campaign. But instead of using Cometa Networks as its provider, McDonald's has tapped Austin, Texas-based Wayport. The wireless ISP is best known for its hotel and airport contracts including seven major airports: Dallas-Fort Worth, Seattle-Tacoma, San Jose, Austin-Bergstrom, LaGuardia, Oakland and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Cometa is a partnership between IBM, AT&T and Intel.
Intel and Wayport have worked together in the past to promote hotspots based on Intel's Centrino wireless chipset. McDonald's said all of its Wi-Fi restaurants are verified with Intel Centrino mobile technology.

"And now in the San Francisco Bay Area, these guests will be able to connect either directly through Wayport or through our 'roaming' partners who in total serve more than 60 million consumers," said Dave Vucina, CEO of Wayport.
Oak Brook, IL-based McDonald's is expected to launch several hundred restaurants by year's end. In addition to New York and San Francisco, Chicago has been tapped as the third U.S. metro area for wireless access in McDonald's franchises. The company said A number of New York City and Chicago McDonald's restaurants will soon offer Wi-Fi access. McDonald's recently launched Web site dedicated to finding their wireless sites only lists the 10 restaurants in Manhattan.

The New York promotion included a three-week campaign where customers with wireless laptops who purchase an Extra Value Meal at participating McDonald's restaurants will get one hour of free high-speed wireless Internet access. Customers could also purchase a single session of up to 60 minutes for $3.00.

Independent of its nationwide rollout, the company has already signed up to deploy hotspots in some of its franchise locations. A McDonald's in Media, Ohio claims it is the first Golden Arches in the nation to offer both 802.11b Wi-Fi Internet access and regular hardwired access.
Overseas, McDonald's of Japan and investment firm Softbank are discussing installing up to 4,000 hot spots in the restaurant's Japanese outlets. Australia-based Telstra <http://telstra.com/index.jhtml>; said it in negotiations with McDonald's to complement Telstra's existing $3 million wireless network, which already covers Qantas airport lounges and Rydges Hotels.

But with wireless hotspots on the rise -- current estimates pointing to some 78 million wireless consumers nationwide -- analysts say McDonald's choice to host hotspots is less about the technology and more about getting more customers in the door.

"I think it's as much about McDonald's and incremental money from food as it is about how McDonald's is ubiquitous," said Jupiter Research analyst Julie Ask. "They are everywhere. And if they are everywhere, and they put hotspots in their restaurants, then there's a great footprint of Wi-Fi access points. So it's less about public hotspots than it is about piping information out of McDonald's."

Ask says right now the majority of McDonald's customers do not own laptops or PDAs.

"But that will the story two to three years from now when consumers have handhelds or laptops with Wi-Fi cards and when the price of devices comes down," Ask said.

AT&T locks down hot spots
By Ben Charny
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
July 9, 2003, 11:48 AM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1039-1024175.html

In a bid to win more business customers, AT&T will extend the same network security measures it makes available for broadband and dial-up connections to 2,000 "hot spots."
Hot spots, which use Wi-Fi equipment to deliver wireless Web access, have scared away some potential customers because the connections are notoriously insecure.

AT&T says it will try to allay those concerns by locking down hot spots in 20 countries using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which many corporations already use to secure other types of remote connections. AT&T plans to sell access inside these select hot spots as part of its overall VPN service, called the AT&T VPN Tunneling Service, by the fourth quarter.

AT&T is not the first company to try to secure Wi-Fi connections using VPNs. Hot-spot service provider Boingo Wireless has been pushing VPN protection as well.

AT&T's new security measures are being provided by Gric Communications, a maker of Web-based mobile office communications systems for businesses. AT&T is the first major U.S. carrier to use Gric's hot-spot VPN product, according to Gric. Financial details of the deal between the companies were not disclosed.

Gric competes with iPass. Cometa Networks, a customer of iPass, is a Wi-Fi start-up backed by AT&T that hopes to build a network of 20,000 hot spots.

Broadband Central Signs ACC to Deploy Wi-Fi "Blue Zones"
By Tara Seals
Posted on: 07/02/2003


Broadband Central has finalized a $17.5 million sponsorship agreement with Accelerated Communications Corp. (ACC). ACC will deploy Broadband Central's Blue Zones (one-mile diameter exclusive coverage areas for Wi-Fi wireless Internet access) in California, Georgia and Texas.

Broadband Central works with sponsors in profit-sharing arrangements. ACC will deploy the equipment and resell the service, and the two companies will share the revenues. The agreement stipulates an initial deployment of 100 Blue Zones in each of the three states with a total deployment of more than 2,700 Blue Zones in all three states over the next 12 months.

Broadband Central also has announced plans in May to launch its services in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, with a minimum of 100 Blue Zones deployed initially in each state. In total, Broadband Central has commitments to deploy more than 3,700 Blue Zones in an 11-state area, giving the company a projected footprint of more than 3,700 miles of Wi-Fi coverage.

"We are very pleased with the rate at which we've been able to expand our coverage area," says Tali J. Haleua, Broadband Central's CEO. "We developed our unique business model to subsidize the cost of infrastructure and facilitate a rapid deployment that will bring affordable broadband services to communities everywhere. With our expanded manufacturing capabilities, our focus is to complete a nationwide infrastructure deployment faster then any other broadband service provider. Our sponsorship agreement with ACC will allow us to open three important markets and move us closer to that end."

Each Blue Zone deployed by Broadband Central allows residents within a one-mile diameter area to connect wirelessly to the Internet at broadband speeds. To offer this service, Broadband Central deploys one of its proprietary 22-inch diameter 802.11 compliant Blue Zone sites, with each device utilizing three smart antennas and advanced radio transceivers developed and manufactured by the company. At each customer location, Broadband Central installs a corresponding eight-inch diameter antenna/client device onsite, to provide "always on" high-speed Internet access.

"Broadband Central offers distinct advantages of lower prices and easier access," says Zane Holmberg, general manager of ACC. "In our experience of marketing wireless Internet services, there have always been challenges of charging large upfront costs for equipment, or high monthly prices to amortize those costs. In spite of the high consumer demand for the service, line-of-site requirements of other providers have made much of the market inaccessible. Broadband Central's powerful advanced radios and signal propagation methodology eliminate both these problems."

Broadband Central's entry-level monthly price point for high-speed Internet access is $19.95 for synchronous connectivity at 128 Kilobits per second. At up to 10 times the speed of the actual throughput of dial-up connections, this is comparable to ISDN speeds, but lower in cost. For $29.95 per month, subscribers can double their connection speed to 256Kbps, comparable to DSL speeds. At $39.95 per month, a subscriber can get cable modem speeds of 512Kbps, while a $59.95 per month subscription will allow residential connection speeds up to 1 Megabits per second or more.

UN: Wireless Internet Promoted For Developing World
By Nikola Krastev

The United Nations is stepping up efforts to promote the wireless Internet, known as Wi-Fi, as an important emerging technology for developing nations. Many states lack the infrastructure and funds for traditional copper-based networks. Wi-Fi, on the other hand, provides an opportunity for them to bridge the digital divide. But so far, many of the developing nations are taking a conservative approach with regard to their Wi-Fi policies.

United Nations, 2 July 2003 (RFE/RL) -- Hoping to bridge the so-called "digital divide," a number of public- and private-sector officials are promoting the wireless Internet for developing nations.

At a UN conference in New York last week, many of the more than 200 participants agreed that the wireless Internet, or Wi-Fi, must become a priority for policymakers in the developing world. They cited its cost-effectiveness, worldwide standards, potential for growth, and its deregulated nature.

Sarbuland Khan, a former Pakistani diplomat, is the director of the division of support and coordination for the UN's Economic and Social Council. He spelled out the importance of Wi-Fi implementation.

"Wi-Fi could possibly be, probably offers the opportunity of great equalizer, to try and deliver some of the content to the developing world which we are lacking at this point. If high-speed wireless access is available, then video streaming, distance education, health information, etc, will become much easier. The investment is not the same as it was in the fiber optics but it's still costly. And the cost of putting it up is not that much but the cost of operating it is probably a fair amount. We recognize that, so the challenge is to find a creative solution using multinationals, using foundations, using governments' capacity to try and build public-private partnership to try to achieve that," Khan said.

Wi-Fi transmitters use unlicensed sections of the radio-wave spectrum used to send any kind of data, which is then accessed by computers and other devices with infrared receiver ports.

Patrick Gelsinger, the chief technology officer at Intel Corporation, stressed in his address to the UN conference the advantages of Wi-Fi. "It's unlicensed, it's unregulated, its industry and worldwide standard, and it's delivering broadband Internet access. Those four attributes result in a very cost-effective technology that makes it uniquely valuable worldwide. We encourage nations, particularly developing nations, to take aggressive policy stances that enable this within their own countries. We see many of the actions of developing nations to be scarcity-mentality -- meaning to minimize the amount of unlicensed spectrum to maximize the regulatory position for a few dollars of regulation or licensing benefits. And that's exactly what's limiting the growth of this technology in emerging nations," Gelsinger said.

According to a recent report by Boston Consulting, an Internet research company, 30 new customers are subscribing each minute for Wi-Fi services in the United States. The technology is becoming ubiquitous in large urban areas and is embraced by young professionals and business executives.

Mohsen Khalil, the director of information and communication technologies at the World Bank, was another participant at the conference. He said that the real potential of Wi-Fi will be tested in the developing world where it is considered to be the most promising broadband Internet technology.

"Why is wireless [technology] particularly of interest? Because it is very promising. We have experiences and data [in the developed world] that show that the advances that have been achieved in the wireless technology over the past 10 years or so are very dramatic, much more than has been achieved in the previous 50 years," Khalil said.

The UN Wi-Fi conference, the first major international gathering of its kind, aimed to spread awareness about the technology and spell out the challenges facing developing states. It was also seen as an opportunity for possible public-private partners to share views and work to develop broadband wireless Internet policies.

Amir Hasson, who is an executive in First Mile Solutions, a Wi-Fi provider in India, cited one example in which a bus shuttling between villages in India was equipped with the technology. Those villages where residents -- usually a small number -- had proper computers had instant access to the Internet. The project, he said, cost less than $300.

But Hasson also stressed the challenges of providing Wi-Fi to poor rural areas. "The hardware requirements for rural access devices, rural infrastructure need to be extremely rugged and able to sustain and withstand the kind of maintenance that may not be at equal levels to urban areas, [as well as] heat and other factors. The most significant challenge in implementing these [Wi-Fi] networks that I found in developing countries is [poor access] to the equipment required, in that you can get it but oftentimes you will pay 30 to 50 percent duties. You also have to give yourself three to four months lead time on ordering them because of holdups at customs offices," he said.

Summarizing the benefits of Wi-Fi technology for the developing world, Gelsinger of Intel said that his company is convinced that the time for copper networks is long over.

Gelsinger said it's time to end investments in copper infrastructure and instead to develop fiber-optic networks. Fiber is renewable, follows the advances in technology, and has the ability to deliver increasing amount of bandwidth, Gelsinger said.

"We are just stunned, as we go to developing nations, for their excitement with technology as providing a meal ticket to them, [allowing them to] become first-class world citizens. When you are on the Internet, I can't tell if you're in a hut outside of Beijing or if in fact you are in a high-rise in Manhattan. The anonymity, the global access allows the developing nations to be seen as first-world citizens in this exciting new interconnected world of the Internet. And that's what we think the [proper] spectrum policies will in fact allow," Gelsinger said.

The Wireless Internet Institute, the co-organizer of the UN conference, is an international think tank that brings wireless Internet stakeholders together to foster universal connectivity in support of economic, social, and educational development around the world.

Bubble trouble

Jun 26th 2003 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition


Is the “Wi-Fi” wireless internet boom about to turn into a bust?
 
 
 

 
IT ALL sounds ominously familiar. A new technology emerges and is rapidly embraced by technology enthusiasts. Hundreds of firms spring up, hoping to cash in on its expected breakthrough into the mass market. Profits, or having a sensible business model, are forgotten in the rush. But demand proves elusive, a painful bust ensues, and only a handful of firms survive. It happened during dotcom mania and is now about to happen again, albeit on a smaller scale, to Wi-Fi, a popular way to surf the internet wirelessly.

Wi-Fi is mainly used in homes, schools, universities and offices. People with Wi-Fi-capable laptops can get online via access points that can link computers within 50 metres or so to the internet. Gartner Dataquest, a research firm, estimates that 15m Wi-Fi adaptors for computers were sold worldwide last year, and 4.4m access points. Alongside this boom in the private use of Wi-Fi, many firms have rushed to set up public “hotspots” in airports, hotels, shops and restaurants, hoping to charge for Wi-Fi access.

Public hotspots are outnumbered by private access points, but their numbers are growing fast. There are expected to be more than 70,000 this year (see chart). Consortia in America, Europe and Asia have announced ambitious plans to build tens of thousands of hotspots over the next few years, even though there is little evidence of any demand for them. Meanwhile, private-equity investors are throwing money at Wi-Fi firms—over $1.5 billion since 2000, according to Rajeev Chand of Rutberg & Company, a San Francisco investment bank. In short, it all looks like a bubble. As a recent report from Forrester, a consultancy, notes, “it's as if the dotcom boom and bust never happened.”


Perhaps the best-known network of hotspots is that operated by T-Mobile, a wireless operator, in over 2,000 Starbucks coffee shops in America. Around 25,000 people access the hotspots each week, which works out at an average of less than two users per day per hotspot. But the cost of connecting each hotspot to the internet is several hundred dollars a month. The Wi-Fi hotspot at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport is used by only a dozen people each day. Operators are gambling that demand will pick up as they build more hotspots—eerily reminiscent of the “build it and they will come” approach taken by many firms during the dotcom boom.

Users may be deterred by high prices. Even after a recent round of price cuts, using T-Mobile's network of hotspots costs $6 per hour, $40 per month, or $360 per year. Other operators in America charge $40-70 per month. Prices in Europe are as high as euro130 ($150) per month. A study by ForceNine Consulting found that demand for Wi-Fi hotspots was highly price-sensitive, and that further cuts might boost demand. Only 3% of tech-savvy American consumers surveyed said they would pay $2 per hour for Wi-Fi access, but 20% said they would pay $1. However, a subscription to one network of hotspots does not entitle you to use others, so you may need one subscription in the airport, and another in the coffee shop.

But there are more fundamental challenges facing public hotspots. The number of people who carry laptop computers around is quite small. Daniel Sweeney of Forward Concepts, a consultancy, points out that travelling businesspeople and other “road warriors” have proved an illusory market for wireless-data firms in the past. Unless Wi-Fi is added to mobile phones, most people will not carry a Wi-Fi-capable device. And unlike a mobile phone, which can be used anywhere, any time, Wi-Fi hotspots depend on casual usage. “That's a shaky foundation for a communications business”, says Mr Sweeney.

The coming shake-out in Wi-Fi will force operators to identify which of their many hotspot locations make sense. They should concentrate on business users, advises Andrew Cole of Adventis, a telecoms consultancy. The bubble, he says, is in consumer Wi-Fi. Hotspots in coffee shops, cinemas and malls will mostly prove uneconomic. Gartner predicts that the number of hotspots in retail outlets will peak in 2005, and then decline, as uneconomic hotspots are switched off.

But for “real-estate owners, hotels, airports and convention centres, you can build a business case,” says Mr Chand. Such venues may, however, choose not to operate hotspots themselves, but instead delegate marketing, billing and roaming to incumbent telecoms firms. Either that, or they will give away free access to attract customers. Neither model bodes well for the hotspot-operator start-ups now trying to capture the Wi-Fi market.

The outlook is equally grim for the dozens of start-ups making Wi-Fi chips, systems and equipment. A few may get lucky, and be bought out by a larger equipment-maker, such as Cisco, says Mr Chand. But most will fail. Already, though sales of Wi-Fi equipment are booming, prices have tumbled, and margins are now wafer-thin. Wi-Fi will continue to spread, and will remain popular. But, rather like the internet, it may disappoint many investors who hoped to make their fortunes.

KFC in Prague Wi-Fi pilot

Cesky Telecom, in cooperation with American Restaurants, is now operating five new Wi-Fi hot spot locations at selected KFC restaurants in Prague. The number of access points in the current pilot operation of public wireless Internet access has increased to 42 since the beginning of the project. Cesky Telecom is also extending the pilot operation to the end of September, allowing customers free connection to the Internet until then. The first 50 users to use the service (which began yesterday) will receive a free KFC breakfast.

Edited by author 07-09-2003 03:56 PM
IP Talk launches Wi-Fi handset

IP Talk, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electric, has launched a new Wi-Fi handset in Japan. The handset works on voice-over-IP and also offers Web browsing and email. The phone will operate in 802.11b hotspots, according to Nikkei Electronics Asia Online. Because IP phones allow customers to make calls over the Internet rather than private telephone networks, the cost of long-distance dialing is considerably cheaper. Cisco has also announced that the new Cisco 7920 Wi-Fi phone will be on sale in Japan starting in July. Unlike IP Wi-Fi phones from other makers -- most notably the 7920 from Cisco -- IP Talk's device comes with email and Web browsing features.

Edited by author 07-09-2003 03:55 PM
Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz said that the installation of wireless Internet service at company stores was definitely one reason for what he called "stunning" sales results that the coffee-shop chain reported Tuesday. He credited the unexpectedly strong 10 percent comparable-store sales increase seen in the five weeks ending June 29 in part to "popular programs such as the Starbucks card and Wi-Fi network" (and also to "market-defining beverage innovations"). Overall sales at Starbucks soared 27 percent, leading to Tuesday's upgrade from Smith Barney.
======================================
Starbucks to begin offering Wi-Fi wireless net connections

Steve Alexander
Star Tribune
Published 07/02/2003

Starbucks, the coffee shops so widespread that Austin Powers' nemesis, Dr. Evil, invested in them for diversification, today begins offering for-pay "Wi-Fi" wireless Internet access at 24 Twin Cities stores.

By offering the service, Seattle-based Starbucks Coffee Co. is following a national trend of offering wireless Internet connectivity in public places such as airports, restaurants, coffee shops and hotels.

Seven of the Wi-Fi-equipped Starbucks are in Minneapolis, four are in St. Paul and the rest are in suburbs, including Edina, Roseville, Golden Valley, Woodbury, Burnsville, Maple Grove, Eden Prairie, Wayzata, Bloomington and Eagan.

The Starbucks Wi-Fi service already is available in 2,300 coffee shops across the nation through T-Mobile USA, a Bellevue, Wash.-based wireless phone company. Starbucks customers whose laptop or handheld PCs are equipped with Wi-Fi circuit cards will be able to connect to the Internet for $6 an hour or $29 a month.

The question is whether customers are willing to pay for Wi-Fi service. A Minnesota competitor, Dunn Bros. Coffee Franchising Inc., offers free Wi-Fi service as a way to draw customers, and it says it has no plans to change that strategy.


And some consumers say they use Wi-Fi (short for "wireless fidelity") precisely because it is free, since most people can't afford to pay for both home Internet access and Wi-Fi.

"I go to Starbucks quite a bit, but if I have a choice of going to a place with free Wi-Fi, I will go for the free service every time," said Kevin Jones, a Minneapolis-based telecommunications consultant for telephone company SBC Corp. "Wi-Fi is going to be a marketing lead -- something businesses offer for free because if they don't, some other guy will."

Skip Fay, co-owner of Dunn Bros., said it costs his company about $50 a month per coffee shop to provide free Wi-Fi service to customers.

"You can get free Internet access at Dunn Bros. and use your $29 to buy 10 mochas," Fay said.

But Starbucks said business people are willing to pay for an easy-to-use Wi-Fi service that's available at coffee shops across the country whose ambience is a pleasant respite from going to the office to retrieve e-mail.

"The mobile business professional is the person using our Wi-Fi service," said Brady Brewer, Starbucks marketing manager for the national Wi-Fi effort. "About 25 percent of the U.S. workforce travels as part of the job on any given day, even if it's just across town for a meeting. Those people need access to their e-mail or to a presentation that they need for their next meeting, but because they don't have quick access to their home or office computers they go to Starbucks."

Brewer says he's not worried if competitors offer free Wi-Fi.

"We truly look at anyone offering Wi-Fi, for free or for pay, as a good thing because it will help advance Wi-Fi adoption," Brewer said.

Since last August, Starbucks has put the Wi-Fi service in about 60 percent of its 3,800 company-owned coffee shops in the U.S., but so far has not provided it through licensed Starbucks in airports and hotels.

The speed of Starbucks' Internet access is slower than the the 11 million bits-per-second speed that Wi-Fi is capable of because the service is limited by the slower T1 telephone line that connects the coffee shop to the Internet, Brewer said. But that slower speed, 1.5 million bits per second, is still faster than most consumers experience at home with cable modems or DSL (digital subscriber line) services, he said.

But what Starbucks is really counting on is not the speed of the service but its wide availability.

"Since Starbucks has a ubiquitous presence, customers can count on finding the Wi-Fi service," Brewer said.

SBC's Wi-Fi strategy revealed

Unnamed sources at SBC Communications have allowed The Wall Street Journal a glimpse at the public Wi-Fi strategy of the company. The broadband service provider will install about 2,000 hot spots in hotels, airports, and other public venues in its 13-state coverage area by the end of the year. In early May, SBC issued a request for proposals (RFPs) for the network gear necessary for building wireless access sites. The vendors "responded in late May and we're still in process of reviewing the RFPs," Michael Coe of SBC told internetnews.com. "We hope to select (one) and announce that soon." SBC is now offering hot spots for enterprise (using Cisco gear) and home customers (relying on 2Wire gear). Cisco, Proxim, and Symbol, are likely among those hoping to land SBC's business. More details about equipment suppliers and potential partners will be announced in late July or early August. The Journal's numbers mean that SBC will install twice as many access points as Verizon Communications is installing in Manhattan. Analysts agree that the push into Wi-Fi is important for carriers who are trying to entice new broadband subscribers and prevent their current subscribers from defecting to cable companies such as Comcast, which bundle broadband access with their cable offerings.

Five Wi-Fi Myths

MYTH #1
People won't pay for Wi-Fi if venues offer it for free.
Let's suppose that Wi-Fi does go free in most locations; we still would not rule out a successful paid business model. Consider the early success of iTunes, in which Apple has sold two million songs in roughly two weeks. Here is a case where people are paying for songs that they could have found for free using file sharing software from the likes of Kazaa. Kazaa, similar to free Wi-Fi, isn't very dependable nor easy to use. And while free Wi-Fi will continue to exert pressure on paid business models, it may not eliminate them. Consumers will pay a premium for usability and consistency -- something Wi-Fi, even free, currently lacks.

MYTH #2
Wi-Fi isn't secure enough for enterprises.
The security industry has a vested interest in pouncing on the weaknesses of any new technology. And while it is important that Wi-Fi security continues to improve - which it is doing - it is just as important that executives not lose sight of the big picture. If determined hackers can break into Microsoft - which seems to happen about once a month - using plain old wires, why is Wi-Fi taking so much heat? Perhaps people are naturally more suspicious of things they cannot see. Perhaps wires just appear more secure. And perhaps IT departments are naturally resistant to new technologies. The fact of the matter is that any network connected to the Internet - wired or wireless - is going to be insecure to a degree. There are a number of startups who are ready and willing to help enterprises secure their Wi-Fi networks.

We suspect that IT departments will be dragged kicking and screaming into Wi-Fi adoption as they discover "rogue" departments installing access points without permission. Intel CFO Andy Bryant notes that even Intel's IT managers initially tried to resist Wi-Fi. "We found that as long as we kept saying 'No,' the number of unsecure networks increased inside our company," said Bryant.

MYTH #3
Wi-Fi provides a 300-foot radius of coverage.
Unless you're installing a hot spot in an open field, you're going to have obstacles and devices that interfere with the signal, like microwave ovens and portable phones. While the most popular standard 802.11b is capable of reaching 300 feet, for all practical purposes the range is more along the lines of 100 feet, or even less. Many consumers are finding out the hard way that they cannot provide house-wide coverage with just one access point - leading to a fair amount of head scratching and disappointment. This should be a warning to Wi-Fi vendors. If vendors had simply claimed an in-house radius of 100 feet, instead of 300 feet, expectations would be better managed.

MYTH #4
Wi-Fi will erase the "last-mile" broadband deficit.
Wi-Fi is often portrayed in the media as a last-mile wireless solution, which it is not. While there are indeed companies seeking to stretch the reach of an access point - a la Vivato - or link outdoor hot spots together - a la Tropos Networks - Wi-Fi is fundamentally not a last-mile technology. That's not to say it can't be made to solve many last-mile problems, just that it wasn't originally designed to do so.

That's where 802.16, or WiMax, fits in. The last-mile wireless market is once again getting very interesting -- the WiMax Forum just signed 18 new members. The larger issue will be to what degree Wi-Fi complements WiMax or competes with it. I'll be learning a great deal more about these developments at the Wireless Communications Association Conference and will report back.

MYTH #5
T-Mobile is making a critical mistake with Wi-Fi because not enough people are paying for it.
True, Wi-Fi isn't a cash cow, particularly with prices dropping like a stone. But it's important to keep in mind that T-Mobile makes most of its money from voice. And, come November, mobile carriers are going to be required to support phone number portability. A spike in subscriber churn is all but certain, unless of course, a carrier has a compelling differentiator - something it can use to hold onto its most valuable customers, or attract new customers. Wi-Fi is one such differentiator. Although we believe T-Mobile will have to go below $10 a month before Wi-Fi becomes a truly mass-market success story, no other carrier in the U.S. is so well positioned to leverage Wi-Fi when the U.S. mobile markets get even more chaotic this fall.

Edited by author 07-09-2003 03:40 PM
Wireless Hunters on the Prowl

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,59460,00.html

02:00 AM Jul. 02, 2003 PT

Mike Outmesguine leans against a Chevy Suburban packed with Wi-Fi, GPS and ham radio gadgets, gazing out at the necklace of hilltop radio towers that surround Los Angeles' Chinatown.

"The cool thing about war driving is that it makes what's invisible -- the wireless Internet -- visible," the Southern California Wireless Users Group co-founder says, grinning. "I worked on radio frequency jamming systems in the U.S. Air Force, and when I got out I remember returning home and suddenly being aware of wireless waves everywhere."

Outmesguine, a Gulf War veteran and Los Angeles-based wireless technology consultant, isn't alone in that fascination. During the third WorldWide WarDrive taking place now through July 5, participants in dozens of U.S. cities roam around with Wi-Fi-sniffing gear, logging access points that will then be collected, shared and analyzed.

Organized by a loose-knit group of security professionals and wireless enthusiasts, planners say the WWWD serves to raise awareness of the need for home and corporate users to secure wireless networks from unwanted access or snooping.

The first drive, held in 2002, logged 10,000 access points. A second drive held six weeks later documented 25,000. This year, exponentially higher figures are expected due to Wi-Fi's growing popularity. The group hopes to broaden awareness of the need to lock down wireless LANs with WEP (wired equivalent privacy) or other encryption tools.

Organizers gather data from the weeklong WWWD to create a statistical analysis of access points. Results will be presented by founder and lead organizer Chris Hurley, aka Roamer, in a presentation at this year's DefCon 11, a hacker convention.

While Wi-Fi fans around the country prepared for the WWWD, Wired News joined SoCalWUG co-founders Outmesguine and Frank Keeney for a war driving excursion from Los Angeles' Chinatown through the city's financial core. In just 40 minutes, we logged nearly 400 access points, and many were unsecured. Software on Keeney's laptop allowed us to view some of the actual contents of network traffic, revealing detail as precise as file names and user names.

Both Outmesguine and Keeney drive antenna-spiked SUVs equipped with amateur radio equipment, GPS units and multiple PDAs and laptops running applications such as Netstumbler and Kismet.

Netstumbler detects networks that reveal their SSIDs (short for Service Set Identifier), which are typically broadcast under the default setting for wireless routers, while Kismet "listens" for radio signals in the air. GPS units connected to laptops by serial cables allow network locations to be charted on digital maps.

One of Keeney's laptops runs a shareware application called APRS that displays the location of fellow war drivers and ham radio buddies on city streets. Using two-way radio or a text chat application, he communicates with them as he drives.

"Now, more than ever, the number of networks is exploding," Keeney said. "When you do this over time, you're struck with just how quickly wireless growth doubled, then tripled."

The Northern California WWWD organizer, who goes by CK3K, likens war drivers to contemporary cartographers.

"We're interested in how the technology works and in raising security awareness by showing how many unsecured access points are out there. We don't gain access to the networks we find; we just log and move on," CK3K said. "Wireless network security is just as important as on wired networks, but we see so many (access points) out there that have clearly just been taken out of the box, turned on and left alone."

Awareness appears to be growing. A 2003 Jupiter Research report states that nine out of 10 U.S. executives surveyed named security as the top issue shaping wireless network deployment decisions.

Still, only about half of companies in the survey implement wireless security precautions, and of those, many rely on measures such as "off-the-shelf" WEP -- considered by many security experts to be inadequate for corporate security needs.

Corporate systems administrator and Silicon Valley WWWD organizer Chris K., aka Vtocsearch, has been war driving since 2001.

"Then, about 90 percent had wide-open networks, and that includes big Fortune 500 companies," he said. "Network admins also need to scan for rogue wireless access points within their company and wireless access cards with default settings, which, in my opinion, are just as dangerous."

When asked what one piece of advice he'd give to would-be Wi-Fi users, WWWD founder Hurley recommends beginning with the basics.

"Use the built-in features of your access point," Hurley said. "Implementation is easy and information on how to (use them) is readily available, including at the WWWD website."

Edited by author 07-09-2003 03:25 PM
Overcoming Wi-Fi Security Fears
iPass improves interface and connectivity for global, virtual network
by Mathew Schwartz
 
Welcome to the wireless revolution—well in progress. Head down to the local consumer electronics superstore, and you can have Wi-Fi—the wireless LAN protocol also known as 802.11b—access running at home or in your office in no time. Many new laptops already ship with built-in Wi-Fi, and earlier this year Intel released a new laptop chip, Centrino, designed specifically for mobile (and Wi-Fi) operations.

Two concerns still plague Wi-Fi, especially for would-be enterprise users: usability and security. The two are related, since the easiest and quickest way to connect to a wireless connection (known as a hotspot) is to disable Wi-Fi security. That, of course, leaves corporate data unencrypted and vulnerable to attack.

“Wi-Fi is still not as easy to use as users want, but, more importantly, it is inherently insecure,” notes Matthew Kovar, an analyst with Boston-based Yankee Group. “Depending on where you are and how you access a hotspot, there can be several elements that require configuration” in order to get any security. Yet public hotspot providers are in the game to make money, and often just disable security altogether, since it means easier user access.

To address the need for secure corporate access via Wi-Fi, whether from café, airport, or office, Redwood Shores, Calif.-based iPass Inc. released iPassConnect 3.0, an interface for iPass Corporate Access enterprise connectivity. The Windows software and service offer users a secure way to connect while on the go, no matter if it’s to Wi-Fi hotspots, on-campus wireless LANs, or broadband connected to a Wi-Fi router at home. The upgrade sports an improved interface and user experience, and a new, location-specific (rather than connection-specific) approach to logging on.

“We provide remote connectivity to the enterprise, whether dial-up, 802.11 Wi-Fi, or wired Ethernet, in about 150 countries,” says Piero DePaoli, senior product marketing manager with iPass. Existing customers include Borden Chemical, eBay, and J.D. Edwards.

To log on, a user enters his or her location in the iPass software. If any iPass Enterprise-Ready Wi-Fi hotspots are in range, the user gets the option to connect, and iPassConnect configures and secures the user’s Wi-Fi hardware accordingly. The important consideration is ease-of-use: as with existing dial-up software on corporate laptops, users need only enter their location, then click to connect. Note that if there’s an available Wi-Fi connection in the area that's not part of the iPass network, the user won’t even see it.

iPass authentication works with a range of existing corporate databases, including NT domains, Active Directory, Unix flat files, and LDAP. When a user connects via Wi-Fi, iPass also encrypts user credentials, from the computer through to the actual provider, since many hotspots are insecure.

“The first thing the software does is get the user authenticated and onto the iPass network. Once there's a successful connection, we can launch VPN software automatically for the user, and we will be creating a VPN connection to the corporation's VPN switch,” says DePaoli. The software can also ensure that VPN, anti-virus, and personal firewall software keep running. Deactivate any of those, and iWire disables the connection.

The alternative to an approach such as iPass, or its competitor, GRIC (Global Roaming Internet Corp.), is to disallow wireless access, or kludge together an approach via homegrown technology and corporate security policies, and hope users don’t deactivate security controls.

An all-in-one approach can simplify administration as well, says Vickie Ellis, a division manager at farm equipment maker Deere & Co., based in Molina, Ill. “In the past 18 months we were able to easily deploy their service to a targeted portion of our mobile workforce and soon began to realize a cost savings. It was far easier to let iPass handle the network piece, especially since their service worked with our existing VPN solution.” Deere is currently beta testing the iPassConnect 3.0 interface for Wi-Fi.

For more information, visit the company's Web site: www.ipass.com.

Free Wi-Fi on way to becoming standard of service

By Glenn Fleishman
Special to The Seattle Times

Michael Prins has his eyes — and nose — on his coffee, but his ears tell a different story. His new shop, Herkimer Coffee, opened at the end of May in the Greenwood neighborhood to the sound of tapping keys.

Prins brews a nice cup of joe using beans roasted by his previous company, Caffé Vita, which he co-founded and sold his interest in last year. "There are not that many places in town that have a great cup of coffee," he said, and he wants to be one of them.

But the java doesn't explain why his store is frequently full of individuals working on laptops, including three users the morning he was interviewed for this story.

"On the very first day we opened, at noon there were three people with laptops in here," Prins said. "I was like, 'How did you guys even know?' "

Herkimer offers a free Internet connection via Wi-Fi, a wireless standard increasingly included as a default option in laptops. Prins placed a small sign in the window noting the free service, and the connected set found his shop. "It's amazing how fast word travels," he said.

Prins' store is one of many public venues in Seattle and worldwide that are following a different path from Starbucks, Borders, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and some other independent coffee shops, by charging nothing for wireless access under the presumably measurable hope that other revenue will increase.

The typical proprietor or chief executive of these venues says "free" can have a way of paying for itself by bringing in more repeat customers and encouraging people to linger in the shop and spend a little more money.

Analyst John Yunker of Pyramid Research, a Cambridge, Mass., market analysis and consulting company, said hotels ultimately will stop charging for Wi-Fi and the commonly available in-room wired broadband, instead offering high-speed Internet access as just another amenity.

Many currently charge for the service while the window of opportunity is open, although pricing models continue to vary. Marriott spokesman Scott Carman said the chain experimented with offering unlimited local and long-distance calls and broadband Internet for $9.95 per night. The test was so successful the chain rolled it out to all of their properties.

The rise of free?

Yunker believes that will change rapidly, however. He estimates that half of the hotels providing wireless broadband in 2007 will provide it free. "Even some of the executives will candidly tell me that they see it as a cost of doing business eventually," he said.

In the short run, Yunker noted, hotels with free broadband can attract more guests and large groups than their competitors. That translates into a rapid return on investment. "If you have a half-of-one-percent uptick in occupancy, you would more than cover your investment" in less than three years, Yunker said. For a moderate-size hotel, that's one or two extra rooms occupied each night.

Yunker's analysis of a 127-room Hampton Inn in Michigan that decided to offer free Wi-Fi service shows a payback period of less than a year, even with a conservative, worst-case analysis.

At Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, Vice President Dave Riley said last year's addition of free wired and wireless broadband in rooms and common areas to its By Request affinity club resulted in a fourfold increase in the number of guests that use the service. The By Request program is free to join, and Wyndham has broadband in more than three-quarters of its hotels.

The number of guests who use broadband has increased at the same time, as Wyndham garnered more market share in areas its serves, he said. "While both are going up and doing well at the same time, you perceive there is a relationship there," he said.

Riley pointed out that the free guest broadband has allowed the company to woo large groups more easily. It's one selling point to help Wyndham bring entire corporations into its affinity program. Riley said the company is "using our improved high-speed level of service to gain groups and take them away from competitors."

Choosing a restaurant

On a smaller scale, the national restaurant chain Schlotzsky's Deli has seen a return by offering free wireless and free computer access in just a handful of company-owned stores in the Austin, Texas, area.

Monica Landers, Schlotzsky's director of communications, said that in surveys 6 percent of customers in the company's Internet-equipped restaurants said online access "was an important part of the decision" to come in.

Company CEO John Wooley has said that at those rates, each store could see an additional 15,000 customers and $100,000 in additional revenue per year. Even better, those customers tend to come in during the slack time in the afternoon, Landers said.

That's a refrain echoed by many venues: Wireless users — whether free or paying — tend to add to overall customer numbers and fill in the empty times.

Starbucks spokesman Nick Davis said via e-mail that the T-Mobile HotSpot Wi-Fi service found in the company's locations "has been successful in extending the amount of time customers spend in our stores and bringing customers in throughout the day."

Davis noted that the average HotSpot user spends about 45 minutes in a store and 90 percent of the usage occurs after 9 a.m. A competing hot-spot operator, Surf and Sip, noted that the average session for laptop users in May on its network was about two hours.

Prins doesn't have the weekday volume yet to see an ebb and flow as clearly as that, but he has noted that laptop users tend to show up when there are fewer people in the store. With setup costs in the low hundreds, and a monthly business broadband bill of about $80, Prins doesn't need much additional traffic to offset those expenses.

He does have one concern, however. "I don't want to be known as the Wi-Fi place," he said. "It's secondary, but it helps promote the goal, to be known for awesome coffee."

Glenn Fleishman, a freelance technology writer in Seattle, writes the Practical Mac column in the Personal Technology section.

Execs tout, question Wi-Fi
Industry leaders at Vortex 2003 disagree about impact of 802.11 options.

By Bob Brown
Network World

DANA POINT, CALIF. - Vendors might be furiously trying to exploit Wi-Fi wireless LAN technology, but the consensus at last week's Vortex 2003 conference was that few have figured out how to make a real business of it.

Intel CEO Craig Barrett, Verizon President Larry Babbio, Jr. and General Motors CTO Tony Scott were among the industry movers pressed on-stage for their thoughts about Wi-Fi (also known as 802.11).Vortex, in its sixth year, is a gathering of high-level network industry executives, investors and entrepreneurs that is run by Network World's IDG Executive Forums division and moderated by Network World's Editorial Director John Gallant.

Several speakers cited Intel's strong backing of Wi-Fi - including heavy marketing behind its Centrino wireless processors and a $150 million wireless investment fund - as a boon for the fast-spreading technology. And Barrett did nothing at the show to temper Intel's support.

"When people say [Wi-Fi is] hype, I get a little riled," Barrett said, noting that the technology has paid its dues in the grass-roots community and is no overnight sensation. "Hell, Wi-Fi is the only exciting thing in the whole industry."

Intel's plans are to get more devices in the market that run Centrino, and that wireless access will boost demand for broadband services, which would generate sales for more powerful computers and devices with Intel technology inside.

Barrett said the opportunities in Wi-Fi are many, especially for companies that put new wireless data infrastructures in place and figure out technical challenges such as roaming. These companies don't need to gouge customers, such as those vendors charging $10 for 'Net access at airports, to make money, he said. Wi-Fi could even stimulate demand for lagging 3G services, he said.

The intersection of Wi-Fi and cellular is key for supporting voice and data needs, Barrett said.

"After 25 years of talking about convergence, this is the first time we've seen real evidence of convergence between the computing world and communications world," he said.

Cisco, too, is betting big on Wi-Fi and might have carved out a leadership position in what Infonetics Research estimates will be a $2 billion WLAN hardware market this year.

"We're investing not just in the enterprise space but in the consumer space" with the recent Linksys acquisition, said Charlie Giancarlo, Cisco's senior vice president and general manager of product development.

Giancarlo dismissed the efforts by a group of wireless switch start-ups that he said are failing to focus on what customers want. He said customers want to greatly simplify wireless in enterprise networks; they want to "put one box in the wiring closet and have an entire floor covered." Cisco plans to elaborate on its WLAN strategy early next month.

Verizon's Babbio said his company's enthusiasm for Wi-Fi is more muted, although he mentioned recently announced plans to convert old pay phones for use as Wi-Fi hot spots and that Verizon Wireless also has Wi-Fi designs. He said the pay phone-to-Wi-Fi service would be an add-on for DSL customers, not for the general public.

"I'm not sure what the business model is" for public Wi-Fi, he said. "But it's so early, we could be having a totally different conversation next year."

Paul Jacobs, president of Qualcomm's Wireless and Internet Group, isn't so sure wireless carriers have big plans for Wi-Fi other than as a fill-in technology.

"I sort of feel trapped back in the Internet bubble days," he said, referring to the buzz surrounding Wi-Fi. When asked if carriers had requested Qualcomm to include Wi-Fi support in the chips it builds for mobile devices, he replied: "They have not asked us to do that."

But he said Wi-Fi could be good for cellular carriers because they are now charging a flat rate to users, and if they can get those paying customers off their cellular networks and onto Wi-Fi networks it could keep their cellular systems from getting overburdened.

Other Wi-Fi discussions at Vortex included a debate between former IBM Vice President of Internet Technology John Patrick and analyst Peter Bernstein of Infonautics Consulting. Patrick was charged with arguing for Wi-Fi as being the most disruptive technology since the Internet, while Bernstein took the opposite view. By show of applause, the audience judged the debate a draw, apparently unconvinced by Patrick's examples of Wi-Fi's promise and ability to reshape social norms.

Wi-Fi at work

Perhaps more persuasive was GM's Scott, who said the automaker spends $3 billion a year on IT. Among its recent projects was replacing almost all proprietary spread spectrum wireless networks with 802.11. One thing he likes about Wi-Fi is that it's a standards, and that fits into an approach at GM whereby the company tries to stick to buying standard technologies to help simplify support and interoperability across its many locations. GM also is looking at voice over Wi-Fi in some areas.

Although GM hasn't experienced huge surprises with Wi-Fi, Scott said the company has used the technology in more places, such as quality control, than originally intended. However, GM doesn't quite trust the technology enough to support applications in the manufacturing process that involve human safety, he said.

Scott cited 3G wireless as the most overhyped technology. "That's something we're not worrying about," he said.

Not that companies aren't without worries about Wi-Fi. Ted Julian, chief strategist for security company Arbor Networks, said Wi-Fi "has some encryption issues" - so much so that Arbor requires Wi-Fi users on its staff to come in through a VPN.

Hot Spots: Don't Get Burned

By Anne Chen

Convenience, low cost and increased productivity are driving users to wireless hot spots: Armed with little more than a laptop, an inexpensive wireless card and perhaps a credit card to access fee-based hot spots, users can jump onto a wireless hot spot and gain access to e-mail and other corporate resources.

 
Wireless hot spots take Internet access to places it couldn't easily go in the past. But as any IT manager will attest, public wireless hot spots combined with 802.11 ubiquity (sanctioned or not) is a source of concern—mainly with security.

Still, IT managers and wireless LAN experts say many of the dangers inherent in wireless hot spots are the same as those encountered when accessing corporate data beyond the firewall. And, they say, the productivity gains of anytime, anywhere Internet access far outweigh the potential disadvantages.

"The huge number of hot spots that are starting to come online will really change the ways we think of and use the Internet," said Keith Waryas, an analyst at International Data Corp., in a report released last year. "Very high-speed access, combined with the portability and mobility these new networks enable, will make the next few years a very exciting time for both business and consumer Internet users."

To stay ahead of trouble, IT managers need to take a proactive approach to hot spots: They should teach users how to securely access corporate resources and should develop and enforce hot-spot policies that are in line with those in place for remote access. A number of services designed to ease access are also coming online (see review).

Mobile, Global Work Force

With the corporate work force growing more mobile and global, it's no surprise that high-speed wireless Internet access has developed a mainstream following.

IDC's Waryas estimates that more than 5 million consumers will access the Internet through U.S. wireless hot spots by 2006. And while cafes and airports now offer wireless Internet access, road warriors are expected to make use of wireless access most widely in hotels. Pyramid Research LLC, for example, expects roughly 25,000 hotels globally to offer wireless access by 2007 ( see chart ).

At Company Finance Inc., in San Mateo, Calif., employees use nationwide wireless hot spots from T-Mobile USA Inc. to check e-mail on the road. The company has used GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) for access in the past, but Pankaj Chowdhry, president and chief technology officer of Company Finance, said GPRS coverage is not as reliable as the coverage he has come to expect from Wi-Fi hot spots.

To ensure security, employees at Company Finance use Windows Terminal Services, said Chowdhry, who is also an eWEEK Corporate Partner. Terminal Services supports 128-bit bidirectional encryption between the server and the client using RSA Security Inc.'s RC4 encryption algorithm. The same security methodology is in place for Company Finance employees using a wired hotel broadband connection.

Vulnerable to Attack

Wireless hot spots are vulnerable to eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks, which is why IT managers who allow employees to transfer data outside the corporate firewall should authenticate users and enforce encryption. Virtual private networks already in place should be used to secure Web browsing and the transfer of information, whether it's via instant messaging or e-mail.

At the Web site of Edmunds.com Inc., an automotive information source, employees are asked to follow the same security policies when accessing public hot spots as they do when using a dial-up connection.

"I don't have any restrictions, but there is a standard set of policies users are expected to follow," said Angelo Kapitsas, a network engineer at Edmunds.com. "It shouldn't matter how they're accessing data, as long as it stays secured."

For example, employees are expected to keep passwords private, run anti-virus software and close browser windows when a Web session is complete, said Kapitsas. With these policies understood, employees who have wireless cards are free to access e-mail secured by standard Secure HTTP using any Web browser.

"There are chances that data could be wirelessly intercepted, but if users are accessing corporate resources from a public hot spot, that data is encrypted," said Kapitsas, in Santa Monica, Calif. "I'm more concerned about people getting onto our network within our offices, to be honest."

The Dangers of Wireless Hacking


With wireless LANs evolving so quickly people recognize the potential risks, but many do not understand the significance and implications of these risks. While most people are familiar with Netstumbler, only a few have tested the vulnerabilities of their networks. If only people knew how easy hacking is and the type of damage that is possible, they would view the risks differently.

Recently I was challenged by a prospective customer to prove my position on wireless hacking. In 30 minutes
I was able to teach him how to assess his WLAN using the same tools and methods that a hacker uses. Through this process he was able to scan into 40 of his physician's locations and hack into 15 of the 40 in one afternoon. Besides accessing the Internet, he was able to view patient data, physician's professional and personal email addresses and browse through their hard drives. Unfortunately, he found that he was not the only one who had discovered the value of the open network. Nearly 5 percent of their Internet bandwidth was consumed by outside users.

With the popularity of wireless hacking growing daily, various websites are devoted to this phenomenon. Every year a "World Wide Wardrive" week takes place where thousands of people hook up Global Positioning to their PCs and drive around with powerful antennas to map all open access points. After the open networks are found, they are then documented on www.wigle.net, which offers the geographic location
and descriptions of homes and businesses that have open access points. These "wardrivers" claim hacking as a hobby and that they are doing public service to those who are looking for wireless Internet connectivity while on the road, but somehow I think their intentions run a little deeper.

Wireless hacking is easy to do and growing in popularity. This article will teach you the tools and methods that hackers use so you can assess your own network.

By following these simple steps to easily configure a Windows PC (no Linux skills needed), anyone can find and penetrate open wireless access points. These steps will show you how much damage can be done once you are in the open network.

First, you will need a basic understanding of PCs, network addressing and protocols. The free software will do the rest of the work. I am withholding details to protect my inbox from security moralists, but this should be enough information to educate IT management of the risks and give techies the insight and motivation to fill the blanks for themselves.

Warning
If you are attempting to use this knowledge to audit your own network and inadvertently access a neighbor's network, you are violating the new anti-cyber terrorism laws and can easily end up in federal prison. Even if the attack wasn't done maliciously the odds of a jury believing your good intentions are going to cost you time and money.

Let's now take a look at the reasons why wireless hacking is so popular.

Wireless Hacking Is Inexpensive
Go online or visit any computer, electronics or office supply store and you can purchase an 802.11b wireless LAN card for about $50 (I recommend the Orinoco Silver card from Proxim). Hackers usually choose a radio with the ability to connect an external antenna and a magnetic mount antenna with 3 times the power and sensitivity of the standard antenna. You can find both online or at an electronics store.

Next, the hacker will need to download their free tools. For the purpose of demonstration, we will stick to easy-to-use Windows software. The three most common types of software packages are: Netstumbler (www.netstumbler.com), Ethereal (www.ethereal.com) and GFI LanGuard (www.gfi.com). Your PC should already have network neighborhood installed, and ZoneAlarm (www.zonealarm.com) could also be helpful. All the products mentioned above are free and have legitimate uses, but if they are used in a malicious manner they can cause major problems.

Wireless Hacking Is Anonymous
The first step a hacker takes is to make sure they have no way of being caught. In the wireless world, it is relatively easy to be anonymous because network forensics cannot be traced. Hackers go to great lengths to cover their tracks because logs and counterhacking systems, such as intrusion detection systems, firewalls and ISP routers, can trace their steps. If the hacker uses a machine that does not have their identity advertised, such as host name, network name, shared files etc., the target only has one piece of evidence to track the hacker down: the hacker's wireless Media Access Control address. With most wireless cards a MAC address can be easily sent and traced to a false address. The hacker could also use the address of a legitimate user by sniffing one out of the air. Any activity deemed to be inappropriate would be traced back to the employee whose MAC address was used.

Changing the MAC address is simply a matter of creating an entry in the Windows registry. A popular MAC address is 0000DEADBEEF, and by reinserting the card you can activate new MAC addresses. To help hide their identity, the ZoneAlarm software package can be used to prevent an intrusion detection system from scanning their PC if it becomes suspect. Since the hacker has an anonymous PC, false MAC address and shields from being scanned, it is almost impossible to identify the hacker.

Wireless Hacking Is Easy
Many tools are available for hacking into secured wireless networks. With the unique vulnerabilities in wireless networks, hacking programmers have developed scanners, sniffers and tools to crack encryption, assume the identity of a legitimate user, disable the network and more. The list is intimidating, however most networks can be attacked without sophisticated tools. The majority of wireless access points are not using encryption and have been hidden inside buildings to steal bandwidth. The access points were deployed by employees and IT managers with good intention, but misconfigured due to maintenance errors or power glitches that reset the flash memory of the access point.

Hackers look for the weakest link and track the open network. To find open networks, hackers simply run Netstumbler and drive around town looking for open access points. If the access point is located in an apartment or office, the hacker can use a directional antenna and aim at nearby buildings. If the hacker cannot afford an antenna, a modified potato or soup can could be used to create a high-gain antenna for under $10. Netstumbler can show the hacker where the open networks are and if they have encryption turned on. If encryption is not available, the hacker can open the Windows WLAN configuration tool and select the open network they wish to view.

Wireless Hacking: A Gateway to Your Enterprise Network
Once the hacker is attached the access point, they are now inside the network where a valid TCP/IP address is given to them. If the target network has Internet access, the hacker can access and download any resources they want, such as movies, music, pornography, stolen software and many more. A sophisticated hacker can launch an attack against other networks since their activity will be traced back to the target network.

The hacker can run Ethereal and immediately gather all traffic broadcasted by the network.This data could contain sensitive company documents, such as emails, usernames, passwords, corporate email accounts and passwords of corporate servers. With usernames and passwords, the hacker can log on to the user's email account and send embarrassing emails or spam that can appear to come from any employee.

By running a GFI LanGuard, the hacker can "case the joint." LanGuard allows the hacker to scan all of the host systems in the network and report back on any vulnerability it finds, including PCs and corporate servers. If a hacker wanted to look at someone's hard drive, LanGuard can show who has file and print sharing turned on. By opening Windows network neighborhood and typing in the TCP/IP address, any unprotected or shared directories will immediately appear. The hacker is now able to copy any files from the PC. Financial spreadsheets, marketing plans, personal emails and documents are all now obtainable to the outside world.

Wireless Hacking Is "Fun"
After reading news headlines with the latest wireless hacking arrests, I believe that there must be some reason why people enjoy wireless hacking. I am not a psychologist or sociologist, but I do believe that wireless hacking is equivalent to looking into someone's medicine cabinet while at a party. What teenage hacker would not like to show off some sensitive corporate documents that they found on their last "wardrive." This type of hacker is only moderately dangerous, but with the barriers to wireless hacking set so low, you have to wonder how many people have malicious intent. How would you know if someone was snooping through your network? What are they doing? Why? What harm might they cause? And What can you do about it?

Continuous Monitoring and Intrusion Protection
Hopefully, this brief overview of wireless hacking has given you a clear understanding that hacking is inexpensive, anonymous, easy, yields great results and fun. Thousands of wireless hackers are sharing information and constantly developing new tools to make hacking easier. A new tool on the market is a Linux distribution called Knoppix, which is CD-Bootable and contains scanning, sniffing, encryption cracking and other potentially dangerous wireless hacking tools. Wireless hacking is a greater threat than people understand.

Some businesses have halted wireless deployment until they have the security equation figured out, when in fact they could be assuming the greatest risk of all. Who is more likely to deploy a rogue access point, someone who has ready access to a sanctioned, secure corporate wireless network or someone who wants mobility and is not readily able? If mobility is wanted, an unsanctioned wireless network can be deployed in minutes for under $100.

Other businesses have deployed VPNs to secure their network backbone, but VPNs do not stop rogue or accidentally misconfigured wireless deployments. Hacking tools that attack the devices themselves and ignore the network backbone completely are available. By posing as access points and coaxing the device to connect to the hacker's PC, the hacker can attack the vulnerability of the PC directly.

To protect your network from rogues and your stations from direct attack, you must monitor the airwaves throughout your organization on a continuous basis to ensure that encryption and authentication policies are followed for any wireless deployment. Monitoring is similar to having security cameras or an alarm system. In the wireless world, the most dangerous point of entry is in the air itself.

There are two choices available when it comes to monitoring. You can use hand-held sniffers and scanners to do it manually on a scheduled basis, or you can deploy a monitoring 24x7 solution. Using tools, such as Netstumbler may be cost effective for small, single-building offices, but they are limited in their effectiveness because they only provide a snapshot view of the network. You don't know what happened before or after the site survey.

The most effective way of organizing and monitoring your airwaves comes from AirDefense, the pioneer and market leader of 24x7 monitoring of wireless LANs. The AirDefense solution begins with sensor deployment through organization. The sensors report back to a central server appliance that has been configured to reflect the organization's wireless policies. Any violation of these policies generates an alarm. The system is designed to provide forensic information, location and potential damage, audit the response and provide regular reports to management and IT staff. For a senior executive, whose reputation is on the line, becoming the next wireless hacking headline is a major concern. Being able to view a weekly or monthly report showing that their wireless LANs are secure can be a comforting experience.

Wireless hacking is a popular and real phenomenon. Many participants appreciate the cost, simplicity and adolescent fun they gain through this experience and then others could have malicious intentions. If someone was attacking your network at this very minute, you would never know. To protect yourself effectively you need an alarm system for your airwaves and AirDefense can be your solution.


Bill Sims is Director of Healthcare Solutions for AirDefense and has spent the last 20 years working in the healthcare industry creating technology solutions to supporthealthcare information systems. His product experience includes a wide range of technology solutions including network infrastructures, thin-client technology, storage systems, security systems and managed network services. He was previously product manager of McKesson's wireless services group where he led installation and management of over 185 enterprise wireless networks. As the Director of Healthcare Solutions for AirDefense, Bill is responsible for helping healthcare customers create secure and reliable network infrastructures to support their mission-critical mobile healthcare applications.

Intersil Sampling True WLAN Global Radio
Capable Of Covering All Regions and All 802.11 Standards

PRISM WorldRadio(TM) delivers seamless, worldwide tuning capability performance
& low power consumption surpasses all other 802.11 dual-band WLAN solutions

    Intersil Corporation, a world leader in the design and manufacture of high performance analog and wireless networking solutions, announced it is sampling PRISM WorldRadio (WR) with key customers and leading Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs). The newest member of the PRISM(R) WLAN portfolio is a two-chip, dual-band (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) solution designed to provide true global wireless connectivity. PRISM WorldRadio is Intersil's second-generation dual-band WLAN solution and leverages the experience gained from our first-generation PRISM Duette(TM) chip set. This PRISM dual-band WLAN solution sets new standards in world-class power, performance, software, security and cost.

    PRISM WorldRadio enables users to establish a WLAN network connection throughout the world with any standards-compliant wireless 802.11 infrastructure they encounter, including existing and proposed standards -- 802.11a, b, d, g, h, i or j. PRISM WorldRadio is capable of tuning frequency ranges that cover the entire worldwide wireless LAN spectrum (2.40 - 2.50 and 4.9 - 5.85 GHz). PRISM WorldRadio also delivers the industry's best power performance, consuming up to 75% less power than competitive designs, allowing users to spend more time connected on battery power.

    "PRISM WorldRadio is an advanced wireless networking technology that essentially eliminates all barriers when connecting to whatever 802.11 network you may encounter worldwide. PRISM WorldRadio will provide Wi-Fi users greater mobility and interoperability than they experience with their cell phones," said Rich Beyer, President and CEO of Intersil. "There's been strong growth in wireless networking across many regions of the world, but each region has different spectrum allocations or regulatory requirements; even within regions there are networks based on the three varieties and two bands of the 802.11 standard. PRISM WorldRadio overcomes these barriers to deliver true, worldwide client coverage. The PRISM WorldRadio solution also delivers best-in-class performance in throughput, range and power consumption. Along with advanced security and support functions, this gives our customers the most advanced 802.11 solution in the industry."

    Kurt Scherf, Vice President of Research for Parks Associates said, "To achieve the ultimate vision of wireless networking anywhere, there needs to be a universal card that providers users with wireless connection from their office, living room, the local coffee shop, an airport or hotel, and literally any public WLAN hot spot. Intersil is the world leader in WLAN silicon, and its solution for this world radio vision addresses the standards compliance, security, performance, power consumption and other issues in such a way as to yield a very stable, high performance solution for any wireless user, anywhere."

    Standards, Bands & Regional Coverage

    PRISM WorldRadio is designed for compliance to each of the 802.11 standards (802.11a, b, d, g, h or j) and with the ability to identify, associate and connect to networks employing access points operating to any of the standards. For true worldwide operations, PRISM WorldRadio self-configures to the appropriate frequency and operating parameters specific to any region. For instance, in the 5 GHz band, European regions have different and separated WLAN spectrums. PRISM WR fully supports the 2.40 -2.50 and 4.9 - 5.85 GHz frequency ranges with certified dynamic frequency selection (DFS) and transmit power control (TPC) capabilities to ensure non-interference with specified radar operations. PRISM WR also complies with the proposed 802.11j amendment for operation within the 4.9 - 5.1 band in Japan.

    PRISM WorldRadio Technical Features

    PRISM WorldRadio features a dual-band (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) zero intermediate frequency (ZIF) transceiver chip and an integrated Baseband Processor and Medium Access Controller (BBP/MAC) chip. ZIF architecture eliminates the need for an intermediate frequency, reducing components and complexity, thereby reducing size and cost. The BBP/MAC chip handles both frequency bands and both OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) and CCK (Complementary Code Keying) modulations necessary for support of IEEE802.11b, .11g or .11a networks.

    Up to 50% Increase in Throughput

    PRISM WorldRadio employs Intersil's PRISM Nitro(TM) technology, a firmware upgrade that is part of Intersil's SingleSource(TM) Driver suite. PRISM Nitro technology delivers up to a 3x improvement in throughput for 802.11g clients operating in mixed-mode wireless networks and up to 50% greater throughput performance in 802.11a and 802.11g only networks. PRISM Nitro technology is fully IEEE 802.11 compliant, and uses prioritization algorithms and enhanced protection mechanisms to significantly increase network performance.

    Best-in-Class Power Management

    The PRISM WorldRadio solution includes new power management technology that has the lowest standby current, receive current and average idle current in direct testing against competitor's WLAN solutions. The Power Save Mode feature allows PRISM WorldRadio to save up to 35% receive mode current versus competitive solutions. PRISM WorldRadio consumes significantly lower power than competitive solutions over a wide range of user activity; this equates to longer battery life for mobile handheld and notebook users.

    Intersil's power management IC, the ISL6411, powers the PRISM WR solution. The ISL6411's 4 X 4 mm quad flat no-lead package significantly reduces board space to accommodate shrinking form factors. In addition, this highly integrated IC greatly reduces the bill of materials by combining three low drop-out regulators, a reset function and extensive current and thermal protection functions into a single chip. On-chip logic provides sequencing for BBP, MAC and analog supply voltage outputs.

    "The PRISM WR solution is 100% compliant to all IEEE 802.11 WLAN standards, including the recently adopted 802.11g Standard, and offers our customers a reduction in total bill of materials along with the WLAN industry's leading features and performance," said Larry Ciaccia, Vice President and General Manager of Intersil's Wireless Networking Product Group. "Intersil customers are designing innovative new dual-band products such as the Universal Client Card with our new PRISM WorldRadio solution and PRISM Nitro technology. They are leveraging PRISM WR's dramatically improved performance and increased battery life, offering compelling value to the market."

    Comprehensive Security Enhancements

    PRISM WorldRadio fully supports Wi-Fi Protected Access(TM) (WPA) and the IEEE 802.11i draft security standard with high-speed encryption capabilities for both the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) and the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Intersil has also integrated within the drivers and reference design solutions of the PRISM WR chip set, Cisco Compatible Extensions (CCX) support and Meetinghouse's AEGIS Authentication API to enable fast, easy-to-implement compliance with 802.11i, WPA and CCX. Intersil's industry leading security solution also works with Funk Software's Odyssey(R) Client WLAN access control and security system to provide interoperability and promote ease of use with virtually all major Windows operating systems.

Edited by author 07-09-2003 02:56 PM
WLAN's Spray Play
06.27.03

File under: Fun for the Weekend!

Forget 802.11 switches or antennas made from Pringles™ cans -- meet WiFi Spray (http://j-walk.com/other/wifispray/index.htm), a revolutionary new product that actually cleans the air that carries 802.11 radio signals, making for faster data transfers and a more carefree life for you!

Honest! It's better than X-Ray Goggles!

It works like this: You simply spray the area around your computer and -- when data is transmitted over a wireless connection -- millions of "scrubbing molecules" [ed. note: now that's scientific!] are released into the signal path along with the bits and bytes. The makers say that an average bottle lasts about an hour.

Best of all, this modern day miracle is less than $20 for a 24 ounce bottle, a lot better value than some wireless LAN equipment we could mention.

Making wireless dreams a reality
Robert Morrow , Special to ZDNet India,

Employees are more productive, and able to work in a more flexible environment, with key corporate information at their fingertips.

Warehouse workers receive incoming shipments from suppliers using their wireless PDA, and your inventory system and other key business systems are instantly up to date. Mobile delivery personnel keep store shelves perfectly stocked using accurate routing and delivery information loaded on their wireless handheld each morning and throughout the day. Retail clerks using the latest line busting technology effortlessly sell your products to happy customers who no longer have to stand in a checkout line.

At headquarters, your network operations centre runs smoothly with no wireless network outages. Last year's embarrassing attack on your wireless network is a distant memory, and the hackers are no longer a threat. Your CEO has the company's key performance indicators available on her wireless PDA from any conference room, thanks to your foresight to wirelessly-enable the executive offices. You have increased productivity, reduced costs, and are in line for a big promotion.

Then, you wake up.

The perfect world...

In a perfect world, wireless LANs (WLAN) always delivers the consistent high bandwidth required for the mission critical applications you use to run your business. There is no threat of service interruption, and therefore no loss of data. Users operate in a more flexible environment transparently roaming from one WLAN access point to another with no threat of loss of connectivity. The threat of hackers is non-existent, every application is a bandwidth-friendly thin client and employees never loose, drop or generally abuse their mobile assets. In a perfect world, the effort to manage wireless devices and the applications that run on them is no more difficult than managing your corporate desktop systems. But wireless LANs are far from perfect.

The reality of today's mobile world
For many businesses, managing wireless devices and designing applications for a WLAN environment is a significant challenge that must be addressed to gain the full advantage of this promising technology. In the real world, a successful mobile deployment involves much more than placing the latest and greatest wireless device in your employees' hands. Specifically, organisations must create thoughtful strategies to manage their mobile bandwidth, applications, devices and security. Even in the seemingly always connected world, you still have issues that need to be addressed with management technology. 802.11 sounds good and is good as long as you operate within certain parameters. These restrictions are real and must be addressed for the real-time enterprise to exist as it is envisioned.
 
Bandwidth
With 11 Mbps of 802.11b bandwidth, there is more bandwidth than on your old 10 Mbps LAN. This means there is plenty of network capacity to run applications designed for a high speed, always-on network. Or is there?

The actual throughput of a WLAN is dependent on several factors, such as the quality of the radio signal emitted from the WLAN access points (APs). Signal quality is affected by several factors such as distance from the APs, obstructions between the APs and the devices, radio interference, and many other factors. As the signal degrades, bandwidth reduces until finally there is no longer a connection between the wireless device and the APs. This loss of a network connection can prevent even the best-designed applications from functioning, especially if they rely on an always-on, high bandwidth network environment. And if your WLANs are at remote locations, the actual bandwidth available to a remote device communicating with headquarters servers is limited by the lower speed of your WAN. An 11 Mbps WLAN device may actually seem slow if communicating over a 64 Kbps frame relay cloud.

An infrastructure with built-in efficiencies for moving applications and data across networks of all speeds, and of differing reliabilities will pay off in the long run. File transfers pick up where they left off when a network failure occurred. Updates to software packages are faster thanks to byte-level-differencing technology. Device management tasks dynamically adjust the bandwidth they consume to allow mission critical tasks to be performed. But what about the applications mobile workers will depend on to do their jobs? How much bandwidth will they consume?

Applications
The thin client versus thick client battle is far from over. One would think that a network providing high bandwidth with always-on connectivity would lend itself to thin client architectures. But since consistent high bandwidth and persistent connections are not guaranteed in the wireless environment, application architectures must include the possibility of a lost network connection.

Thick client architectures must also consider whether there is reliable high-speed access to corporate databases. If the network must be available for an application to access a database, you may be negating the benefits your WLAN brings to the corporation by finding workers struggling with running applications, unable to perform their jobs. Considering application architectures that include both "online" and "offline" approaches may be the answer. In the offline world the application is always available and data is refreshed once a day, periodically throughout the day, or on a transactional basis. Efficient synchronisation and transfer of database records between the handheld application and the headquarters database will be an important consideration when architecting these offline applications.

Devices
So how do you manage thousands of remote wireless devices? Can't you use your existing enterprise management system? The total cost of ownership of a handheld device used for business purposes is estimated at US$3,000 per year--more than the annual TCO for laptops.

Experts blame the increased TCO on additional administration, training, and maintenance services that must be performed by a team using management software designed for desktops and servers. Adding wireless connectivity increases the annual TCO per device to US$4,400. If you have ever tried to install and configure a WLAN card on your laptop, you already understand the reasons for this leap in management costs. The myriad of settings required to establish communications with a wireless access point make wireless devices much more labour intensive than simply plugging your desktop into a network outlet.

And then there is software distribution and management. If your organisation is relatively new to the wireless world, then it's likely your wireless applications are new as well. This means more frequent software updates as new features and enhancements are incorporated. A solid policy on how you will distribute and update these new applications should be in place to ensure a successful wireless device rollout.

Devices running Palm and Microsoft operating systems have become as fun to tinker with as your kid's video games. This tinkering can lead to device configurations that make the device about as useful to your business as a video game. The definition and enforcement of comprehensive device configuration policies can be another method of reducing TCO for these devices. One critical component of defining and enforcing device configuration is establishing consistent and effective mobile security standards.

Security
WLANs have a built-in security technology called Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) that provides a measure of security for data flowing across the wireless portion of your network. However there have been many reported cases of serious weaknesses in WEP that are easily exploited by hackers. And since WEP only encrypts data over the WLAN, it travels in the clear from the wireless access point to its final destination.

Additional layers of security that provide data encryption from the device to the data centre should be incorporated to ensure data is not tampered with, or read by unauthorised personnel. This may include SSL encryption, VPN technology, file encryption, or other means. Companies are increasingly looking to "thin" VPN technologies like SSL as a more cost effective and easy-to-implement solution than traditional "thick" VPN technologies that require client software to be installed on the device.

Finally, there is always some risk that a handheld wireless device will be lost or stolen. So a method of securing access to the device, and protecting the data stored within the device are required to ensure your private corporate information is not compromised.

The Reality of 802.11
WLANs and wireless devices can help companies implement new ways of doing business. They can increase the productivity of employees in the warehouse, in your mobile fleet, in retail locations, and in corporate management.

There are some unique challenges in managing wireless devices, and architecting wireless applications. With a solid plan, and the right infrastructure in place, maybe that big promotion will become more than just a dream.

Sidestepping wireless LAN money pits

By Jim Rendon, News Writer
SearchNetworking.com

In this era of tight budgets, many companies are willing to experiment with wireless local area networks because they are inexpensive. Wireless access points are particularly affordable, selling for a little more than $100 on average, and many laptops come with 802.11b cards already installed. But that can be just a tiny portion of the overall cost. IT professionals need to consider a range of hidden costs before deploying their wireless networks, said Phillip Redman, a research director with Gartner Inc., the Stamford, Conn. research firm. Here Redman shines some light on the bills that may be lurking in the shadows of your network.
 
 
 
SearchNetworking.com: Many companies deploy wireless LANs because they are so inexpensive, but are they really that cheap?

Phillip Redman: There are a lot of different elements to consider with technology in the enterprise: hardware, software and service costs are just a few. There are also administration costs [and] potential end users' costs. Even if a technology is free, there will still be operational costs for implementing the system and supporting the users. Wireless LAN access points may not be as expensive as servers, but there is still going to be an impact on the budget.

SearchNetworking.com: What are some of the costs that businesses may not foresee?

Redman: There are four main elements. The infrastructure is a reliable up-front cost. There is the cost of implementation, ongoing costs for user support, adding new applications, operating systems and driver updates. With wireless LANs, we see a lot of self-support, where users change their own configurations if they cannot connect or assist other people in the office.

Costs also vary depending on the use of the network. Some businesses only use the wireless LAN as an addition to the wired network; others use it as their primary means of connection. If the network is for part-time use, support costs will be lower. If it is the main network, you will have to do more work for adding, changing and deleting users. The cost of downtime also increases if it is the primary network, and the network will need to be monitored more for congestion and interference.

SearchNetworking.com: What do IT departments need to do to manage devices on a wireless LAN?

Redman: There is the initial implementation with whatever device you are using. You may have to add a modem or a PC card. Today, many laptops have PC cards integrated in them, which reduces costs. The battery life tends to be better -- as is the reception -- and you won't have to worry about drivers. If the PC card is not embedded, you will have to add drivers. Windows 2000 and XP have the drivers built in, but if you are using Windows 95 or Windows 98, this can be a real headache.

SearchNetworking.com: How about on the network side?

Redman: On the network side, you have network administration issues to consider. If you have spaces where a lot of people are using the network at once, like a conference room or a classroom, you may need to look at load balancing. In some cases, you may have problems with roaming, as users move from one wireless LAN to another, particularly if the systems use different vendors. You will also need to look at security and authentication. We are starting to see a new wave of management software and wireless LAN switching that puts dumb access points on the network attached to switches that can be managed. Companies such as ReefEdge Inc. and Bluesocket Inc. have products that manage access points.

SearchNetworking.com: How can companies better calculate total cost of ownership for wireless LANs?

Redman: IT departments need to look beyond capital costs. [New] staffing or training existing staff is important. You need to make sure that the technology is well understood and that there is support. Implementation costs need to be considered, as well as the impact on the network. You have to look for the hidden costs, not just write the check for the hardware.

SearchNetworking.com: What kinds of problems can companies run into if they deploy without understanding the full TCO?
 
Redman: Budgets are already stretched to the limit. You are adding additional technology, and that will impact the budget. It makes sense to prepare for it beforehand; that way you can get the most out of the technology, rather than just putting it out there and then playing catch-up.

Edited by author 07-09-2003 02:46 PM
Do WLANs Really Pay?

One might assume wireless local area networks will result in faster decision-making, increased productivity and higher employee satisfaction, but enterprises want vendors to prove their return-on-investment cases.
 
By Brad Smith
Wireless Week
© 2002, Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 
When enterprises started looking at wireless local area networks two or three years ago, their No. 1 question was about security. No more.

In this age of hackers, security will always be a challenge for any kind of network manager. But a lot of the questions about Wi-Fi security have been disposed of with such answers as virtual private networks, the new Wi-Fi Protected Access protocol and the coming 802.11i standard.

Now, bottom-line enterprise IT managers are asking another question–can they make a case for WLANs based on dollars and cents? With corporate budgets the way they are today, that question has become paramount.

Unfortunately, there aren't any easy answers to that return on investment question, although more information is being developed all the time as more enterprises plug WLANs into their networks. IBM even has come up with a modeling tool that can be used to answer ROI pretty quickly, although it requires the IT department to come up with its own initial numbers.

The actual costs of installing a WLAN can be estimated pretty well in advance. Where ROI gets tricky is picking and choosing the benefits gained from a Wi-Fi network. Sometimes value judgments have to be made about translating increased user performance into cash savings.

There are three different scenarios for WLANs and each has a different cost structure, according to Eric Steinberg, a vice president for the IT systems integrator Boulder Corp. These are installing a network in a building where pulling cable is difficult, where workplace/cubicle moves and changes are fairly frequent, or for meeting rooms.

It is easiest to show an ROI for moves and changes, Steinberg says, because it typically costs $75 to $125 for each drop on a wired LAN and that cost disappears with a WLAN. Steinberg says security was the No. 1 enterprise concern with WLANs a year ago, while now his customers are just as concerned with ROI.

MEASURED SAVINGS One of the most often cited studies on ROI for WLANs was done last year by a London-based research firm, NOP World-Technology, which surveyed 300 U.S. companies and organizations. The companies ranged in size from 100 to 10,000 or more employees.

The NOP World study concluded that a WLAN saved the enterprises an average of $164,000 a year on cabling costs and labor associated with adding, moving and changing work stations. That savings, the study said, was about three-and-one-half times what the IT department had estimated before putting in the network.

Those were measured savings, too. The study did not take into account the financial benefits of increased productivity.

On that point of productivity, the NOP World study said a WLAN made it possible for workers to stay connected one hour and 45 minutes more per day. Assuming that extra connection time was spent working, that meant a 22 percent productivity gain per person, the study said.

Totaling hardware, labor and productivity gains, the study estimated an annual ROI per employee of $4,550 by installing a WLAN.

Richard Siber, an Accenture partner and wireless consultant, says there is a clear case for enterprise ROI just for the move-add-change labor savings. That can amount to a 30 percent savings for an enterprise telecommunications budget even without taking into account improved productivity.

Accenture believes so strongly in WLANs that it has installed them in many of its facilities globally, Siber says. The company also has helped set up WLAN deployments for companies such as Norway's telecommunications company, Telenor, and for the U.S. Air Force and Navy.

When Wi-Fi really will generate a bigger ROI, Siber says, is when WLANs are integrated with wireless wide area networks. That's something several carriers and vendors are looking at doing within the next year.

That's still in the future. Let's take a look at the past and the present of WLANs through several case studies.

PROVING IT One of the best-known WLAN case studies is one put together by Intel, which has been a big believer in the technology for several years. Cynics might suspect Intel's motives, but the chip maker has some solid numbers to back up its ROI case.

The Intel study was done by its internal IT division, which serves 83,000 employees in 45 countries. The first step it took was to look at its notebook PC usage. From 1998 to 2001, mobile PC usage at Intel climbed from 20 percent of the work force to 65 percent, with notebooks costing an average of $1,000 more than a desktop PC.

The cost difference for a notebook could be justified, Intel determined, if a mobile worker used it one extra hour per week for productive work. That could be done during a business flight, or accessing information during a few meetings.

"But it turns out mobile users are significantly more productive," an Intel white paper says. "When the Office Computing group sat down with executive management to discuss a mobile computing initiative, they had learned that mobile users realize productivity improvements on the magnitude of three to eight hours per week. Not only would Intel IT be able to break even in deploying mobile PCs–it could actually make Intel money."

A Gartner Group study backed Intel's discovery, estimating that business users with a notebook who spend 20 percent or more time out of the office realize a minimum annual benefit of $34,560 in improved productivity.

FASTER DECISIONS Among the benefits from mobile computing cited by the Intel study were faster decision-making, improved accuracy, increased productivity and the intangible of higher employee satisfaction. And those benefits were before a wireless network was installed.

Intel IT said it anticipated real savings in the following areas: lower network and installation costs; lower costs of upgrading networks; lower costs to add, move or change computing systems; and lower costs of setting up and maintaining conference rooms and common areas.

The company estimated WLANs provide an additional 16 minutes per day of productivity in a campus environment and network serving 5,000 employees. That additional productivity was valued at $6,000 annually for each employee. The WLAN could pay for itself with just four minutes of additional productivity per day, the study said.

"The benefits of wireless networking–anytime, anywhere computing–are similar to those of notebooks," the Intel white paper says. "But wireless offers even more opportunities to drive down TCO (total cost of ownership), including lower network installation costs. Whether re-wiring a building or setting up a network in a new building, wireless networks help avoid the costly, time-consuming job of laying wire."

Another white paper issued by HP, which recently introduced its ProCurve Networking Adaptive EDGE Architecture, said mobility ROI varies by industry and by each business. HP points out, however, that a Yankee Group study estimates 40 percent of workers spend less than half their time at their primary workplace, which means remote access translates into increased productivity.

There are other ROI case studies, as well. Among them is one done by Barton Malow, a large general contractor/engineering/consulting firm in collaboration with Cisco Systems. Barton Malow has implemented not only WLAN, but IP telephony, unified messaging and IP videoconferencing. The company has annual sales of $1.2 billion.

Phil Go, Barton Malow's CIO, says the company saw technology as a way of outperforming its competition. The company sets up WLANs at construction sites, allowing employees to check project management and labor data using laptops or PDAs.

"It is a quick and convenient way to push computing and applications into all reaches of the enterprise," Go says. "Essentially, we lay down the network and then move it along to the next job site as needed."

Barton Malow also uses Wi-Fi at its Southfield, Mass., headquarters, especially for a multimedia training room. Rooms and work areas can be configured to the most efficient use, Go says.

These IP-based technologies have improved the customer dispute resolution process by 33 percent to 66 percent, the company says.

Another report by the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School says it is fairly easy to show an ROI for Wi-Fi in specialized vertical markets such as logistics and manufacturing where employees might have not been connected to a network at all without a WLAN.

"But growing numbers of organizations have equipped their professionals with mobile PCs over the last few years and are hooking them up to wireless LANs as well," the school says. "What's more, they're beginning to see results. Both hard numbers and anecdotal evidence suggest that wirelessly networked notebook users realize increased productivity and enhanced levels of collaboration, while their employers benefit from lower acquisition and deployment costs."

Wharton's report cited the installation of a WLAN at Ford Motor Company, which started on the 11th and 12th floors of the corporate headquarters for Ford's top executives. Top managers use Wi-Fi to communicate with their secretaries during meetings without disrupting the meeting itself.

Another example is American Airlines, which uses Wi-Fi to make updated sales data available to representatives for their presentations. The sales reps merge revenue data and booking data from American's reservation system to show how their accounts are performing.

The airline also uses Wi-Fi at trade shows and at training seminars. It has several pilot projects in airports to allow mobile employees to provide flight and reservation information to passengers.

VERTICAL MARKETS Hospitals often are cited as an example of a key vertical market for WLANs. Health care also finds more than cash value in the technology.

O.J. Wolanyk, CIO of the Memorial Health System in Springfield, Ill., decided to install a WLAN in the main medical facility to provide better patient care and also to get away from the tons of paper used for patient records. Wolanyk says patient safety was the overriding reason for the network.

Memorial is using the ReefEdge Connect System at its main hospital to provide secure access to medical records for the entire staff no matter where they are, Wolanyk says.

"Memorial's need for a wireless LAN could not be more mission-critical," he says. "We were running out of places for PCs and had to reduce the $770,000 we spent annual on scanning medical records."

He's sure there will be a cost savings but that he's more interested in helping the doctors and nurses treat patients more efficiently. Wolanyk also says access to digital records will help eliminate potential errors caused from misreading handwritten notes.

So, can you make an ROI case for a WLAN? The answer is "it depends." Enterprises are holding their vendors' feet to the fire, asking them to prove their case.

Nick McQuire, an analyst with Pyramid Research, recently ran a hypothetical ROI analysis for a relatively small 240-user deployment in a 12-story office building. He says his estimate of increased productivity from a WLAN was 4 percent per employee per day.

Assuming a conservative annual salary of $40,000 for each user and working in the fixed costs of the deployment, McQuire says an enterprise can achieve ROI in less than two months. "What the analysis does show is that even in a most conservative scenario, respectable ROI is attainable and payback periods can be swift," the analyst says.

Wayport: Wi-Fries & MCI
07.08.03

Hotspot service provider Wayport Inc. has today announced wireless LAN deals with fast food giant McDonalds and MCI (Nasdaq: MCIT - message board) (a.k.a. the bankrupt WorldCom) (see MCI Taps Wayport for Hotspots).

Wayport, which already has a network of around 500 public access wireless LAN hotspots in hotels and airports around the U.S. and deals with AT&T Wireless Services Inc. (NYSE: AWE - message board) and others, is installing hotspots in 75 Mickey Ds around the Bay Area.

However, this wireless LAN deployment is clearly just the tip of the iceberg [ed. note: lettuce?] for the keepers of the golden arches. McDonalds, which is the largest franchise in the U.S., says that it will roll out further hotspot sites in New York and Chicago in the coming months.

The burger behemoth has already teamed up with Cometa Networks Inc. to roll out ten sites in NYC (see Cometa's Hotspot Hassles). However, a spokeswoman for the company says that its new agreement with Wayport has no affect on the Cometa deal and none of its hotspot supplier agreements are exclusive. "These are all pilot schemes," she tells Unstrung.

Meanwhile, MCI says that its customers can now access their corporate networks, VPNs, and the Internet hotspots in airports, hotels, and soon -- you guessed it -- McDonalds joints through its new roaming deal with Wayport. MCI is now incorporating an 802.11 option in its Corporate Dial network connectivity client software for business travelers.

Ding! Wi-Fi’s up at McDonald’s

 By Dan O'Shea

TelephonyOnline.com, Jul 8 2003

 

Global fast food giant McDonald's has expanded its initially limited foray into public Wi-Fi service by launching hot spots at 75 of its restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley.
The service launch, which had been expected in recent weeks, is being described as a pilot program by McDonald’s, but it augments the Wi-Fi trial McDonald’s had started in March at 10 of its restaurants in New York City. The company, based in Oak Brook, Ill., is partnering with Intel and network operator Wayport on the Bay Area service. Cometa Networks has been McDonald’s network partner in the New York trial.

The Bay Area program is also the next step in McDonald’s plan to offer service at several hundred of its restaurants in New York, San Francisco and Chicago by the end of this year, the company said.

The restaurants involved in this week’s launch are located from San Rafael in the northern Bay Area to San Jose in the south, and from Pleasanton in the east to Half Moon Bay along the California coast.

McDonald’s is charging Bay Area users $4.95 for two hours of Internet access, with other options available.

A complete list of McDonald's restaurants with wireless access in the Bay Area can be found at www.mcdwireless.com.

Wi-Fi group approves new standard
By Richard Shim
CNET News.com
July 8, 2003, 5:13 PM PT
URL: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-1023951.html

Products that use the 802.11g standard received a clean bill of health from an influential industry group on Tuesday, further ensuring the popularity of the wireless networking technology.

As expected, the recently finalized 802.11g standard was endorsed by the Wi-Fi Alliance, which said it had certified its first batch of products for interoperability. The announcement means that those products have passed tests that prove they are compatible with one another.

Someone using an approved PC Card should be able, for instance, to walk into any cafe with an approved access point and seamlessly connect to the network. An access point is essentially a radio transmitter linked to a wireless network.

Industry insiders saw the certification of products using the 802.11g standard by the Wi-Fi Alliance largely as a rubber stamp of approval, because products using 802.11g-based components have been on the market for some time, and the latest version of the specification was seen as stable. The Standards Board Review Committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) approved the 802.11g specification as a standard in mid-June.

The 802.11g standard allows wireless networks to transmit data at 54 megabits per second, uses the 2.4GHz radio band and is meant to be compatible with Wi-Fi equipment based on the earlier, slower 802.11b standard. Wi-Fi lets people access and share resources on a wireless network.

Still, the certification is significant, because it means that consumers are likely to get a similar experience whenever they use an approved wireless networking product. Many people have credited standards and interoperability testing with being a major factor in the success of the wireless networking market.

Certified interoperability is meant to avoid compatibility issues such as the one experienced by products that used a pre-standard 802.11g specification earlier this year. Initial 802.11g products did not perform up to snuff with one another or with products using the 802.11b standard. But the issues were resolved when the IEEE released updated versions of the specification.

With the release of products that use the 802.11g standard, the 802.11b standard will likely be modified to allow devices using that standard to consume less electrical current but also have a reduced range. This will make the 802.11b standard a good candidate for use in portable devices such as handhelds and cell phones, according to Brian Grimm, a Wi-Fi Alliance spokesman.

Grimm added that he expected fewer products using just the older 802.11a standard to be introduced and that dual mode 802.11g and 802.11a products would likely become more prevalent.

The Wi-Fi Alliance certified eight products--four access points and four PC Cards--from six companies that use chipsets from four different silicon suppliers. The group certified the following access points:

• Atheros AR5001X+ Universal 802.11a/b/g Wireless Network Adapter.

• Broadcom 54g(tm) AP Reference Design - BCM94306-GAP.

• Intersil PRISM Duette PCMCIA Adapter Model ISL39000C.

• Intersil PRISM Duette Access Point Developer's Kit Model ISL39300A.

The group also certified the following PC cards:

• Melco AirStation 54Mbps Wireless Notebook Adapter-g Model# WLI-CB-G54(A).

• Proxim ORiNOCO AP-600b/g.

• Texas Instrument TNET1130 WLAN Cardbus Reference Design.

• Texas Instrument TNETWA622-g10-DP Access Point Reference Design.

T-Mobile Venture Fund Makes Investment in Flarion Technologies - July 8, 2003

Leading European Investment Firm Fuels Flarion’s Growth and Expansion

BEDMINSTER, New Jersey, USA (July 8, 2003) – Flarion Technologies, the architect of the ‘IP-friendly’ flash-OFDM® wireless broadband system for data and voice services, today announced that the T-Mobile Venture Fund is making a investment in Flarion Technologies. Financial terms of the investment are not disclosed.

“Our investment in Flarion provides us with a window on technology to what we consider to be one of today’s most exciting private wireless infrastructure companies,” said Axel Kolb, Managing Director of the T-Mobile Venture Fund. “The technology, the team and the investor basis are truly outstanding. We are investing in Flarion at a time where the company is poised to make a difference in the wireless industry.” Flarion’s mobile broadband system is currently deployed in operator trials on three continents and is ready for commercial production.

“We are very proud of our relationship with the T-Mobile Venture Fund,” said Ray Dolan, chairman and CEO with Flarion Technologies. “With the T-Mobile Venture Fund and the backing from our prestigious group of investors, Flarion will continue its momentum for market adoption around the world.”

With Flarion's IP friendly flash-OFDM technology, mobile operators can seamlessly connect corporate LANs with a wireless Wide Area Network with the speed and low packet latency that exceed stringent corporate network requirements. This, along with large-scale IP Quality of Service (QoS) control, enables mobile enterprise users to experience comparable performance, security and bandwidth allocation to what they would on their office Local Area Network (LAN) environment, without making any modifications to user settings, applications, protocols, content or devices.

About the T-Mobile Venture Fund

The T-Mobile Venture Fund was established in 2001 and is managed by T-Venture (www.t-venture.de), the venture capital entity of Deutsche Telekom. The activities of the T-Mobile Venture Fund (Euro 100 Million) provide T-Mobile with an innovative edge and strong commercial synergies. T-Mobile International is one of the leading providers of mobile telecommunications services.

About Flarion Technologies

Flarion Technologies is mobilizing the Internet with its innovative mobile communications network technology. Flarion's flash-OFDM® technology, which originated in Bell Labs, enables licensed mobile operators to profitably offer voice and data broadband services. For mobile operators, Flarion’s technology has the lowest cost per broadband subscriber as compared to any mobile system in the world. Flarion's RadioRouter® base station product easily overlays onto an operator's existing network and radio spectrum, and provides a seamless routing interface to the operator's existing IP network. Flarion’s flash-OFDM-based enabled devices provide people with a true broadband mobile Internet access experience for voice and data. Flarion Technologies is based in Bedminster, New Jersey (USA). The Company has been named as the #1 company on Unstrung’s “Top 25” and “The Fiercest 15” by FierceWireless. Investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Charles River Ventures, Cisco Systems, Equitek Capital, New Venture Partners II LP, Nassau Capital, Pequot Capital, SK Telecom and T-Mobile Venture Fund. More information about Flarion can be accessed at www.flarion.com

MCI Adds Wireless "Hot Spots" To Remote Access Solution Through Wayport
MCI to Support Wireless Access in Hotels, Airports and Select San Francisco Bay Area McDonald's Locations

ASHBURN, Va., JULY 8, 2003 - MCI (WCOEQ, MCWEQ) today announced that customers can now access corporate networks, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and the Internet via wireless high-speed connections at more than 600 U.S. locations including hotels, airports and select San Francisco-San Jose area McDonald's restaurants through a roaming partnership with Wayport.

Beginning today, McDonald's will begin offering wireless services as part of a pilot via Wayport's Wi-Fi network at select San Francisco Bay area restaurants. McDonald's wireless restaurants will be added to MCI's list of remote access locations later this month.

"With the addition of Wayport's 'hot spots' to MCI's ever growing number of dial-up POPs, customers can now access MCI's world-class global Internet backbone while waiting for an airplane, staying in a hotel or enjoying a Big Mac at McDonald's," said Ralph Montfort, MCI director of Access Services. "These 'road warriors' on the go will be able to connect using Wi-Fi, Dial or Ethernet, without having to worry about third party security, billing or software compatibility because MCI takes care of it all through one customer interface."

By including wireless access points into MCI's Corporate Dial solution, customers benefit from a seamless solution to launch a VPN client, authenticate access and establish secure connections to corporate networks in an un-tethered environment. In addition, MCI Corporate Dial customers have one supplier for technical support, dedicated customer service and a consolidated bill for all wireless and dial up access charges.

Combined with enhanced Service Level Agreements, MCI's advanced remote access suite helps businesses reduce connectivity costs while supporting higher levels of productivity for traveling and remote workers. Through a single point of entry, administrators can easily create and modify user groups, configure multiple product sets, set user passwords and prohibit more costly connections.

About Wayport, Inc.
Wayport is the world's largest provider of high-speed Wi-Fi (802.11b) wireless and wired Internet access in more than 565 major hotels, including such brands as Four Seasons, Loews, Wyndham, Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton, Doubletree and Embassy Suites, and Wi-Fi wireless Internet access in seven major airports: Dallas-Fort Worth, Seattle-Tacoma, LaGuardia, San Jose, Austin-Bergstrom, Oakland and Minneapolis-St. Paul. At airports, travelers also can take advantage of Wayport's 16 Laptop Laneairport business centers, which feature private offices with high-speed Internet access and other business services, as well as mobile devices and accessories for sale. To learn more, please visit http://www.wayport.net.

About WorldCom, Inc.
WorldCom, Inc. (WCOEQ, MCWEQ), which currently conducts business under the MCI brand name, is a leading global communications provider, delivering innovative, cost-effective, advanced communications connectivity to businesses, governments and consumers. With the industry's most expansive global IP backbone and wholly-owned data networks, WorldCom develops the converged communications products and services that are the foundation for commerce and communications in today's market. For more information, go to http://www.mci.com.

Edited by author 07-09-2003 02:27 PM
WiMAX Moves Forward
By Wireless Week Staff
July 9, 2003
news@2 direct

   Intel Corp. today said it will work with Alvarion to commercialize wireless metropolitan area networking products based on the 802.16a standard known as WiMAX.

Intel said it will develop WiMAX chips that will be used in Alvarion's last-mile wireless access equipment.

WiMAX is seen as a last-mile solution to create a wireless metropolitan area network connecting Wi-Fi hot spots that use 802.11 technology. WiMax equipment is expected to have a 30-mile range and optimum data rates of 70 megabits per second.

Intel Executive Vice President Sean Maloney said the chip maker sees WiMax as a complement to its Centrino Wi-Fi chips for laptops and other wireless networking products.

In another WiMAX announcement today, Aperto Networks said it is working with leading chip providers, including Intel, for an accelerated delivery schedule.

'With the advent of component suppliers like Intel committing to develop silicon, we expect Aperto's vision of mass market broadband wireless access to be accelerated,' said Aperto CEO Reza Ahy. Aperto is a last-mile wireless equipment provider.

The official CWSP online practice test is now available at cwne.com. This online practice test is in the same format as the CWNA practice test (also online at cwne.com), and includes two forms of 60 practice test questions each. These practice questions are very similar to those that appear on the actual CWSP exam (PW0-200).

The CWSP exam is $49.95 for a 60-day license. The 60 days begins when the user logs in for the first time.

http://www.cwne.com/products/CWSPPT.html

Good luck on CWSP!

Edited by author 07-08-2003 11:58 AM
AirDefense Describes Lack of Client Security at Show
July 2, 2003

Alpharetta, Georgia-based AirDefense (http://www.airdefense.net) previously reported on what it saw as a severe lack of wireless LAN security at the May Networld+Interop show (http://www.80211-planet.com/columns/article.php/2203421) in Las Vegas. And that was from just a two-hour monitoring sweep.

Last week at our own 802.11 Planet Conference & Expo in Boston's World Trade Center, AirDefense set up two different locations on the exhibit floor to keep an eye on all the WLAN traffic for three full days -- the company was billed as the official 802.11 Planet security provider.

In all, the two monitoring centers detected as many as 523 client stations connecting to the 141 available access points. And sadly, the results since the last big networking show haven't changed much. In fact, end users taking advantage of the free wireless Internet access on the show floor left themselves especially open to hackers, whether malicious or curious.

The direct threats the company detected included scans by tools like Netstumbler (149), spoofed MAC addresses used for identity thefts (84), Man-in-the-Middle attacks (32 attempted, three successful), and Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks (105) .

The company even says it collected the signatures for as many as five attacks that have not yet been documented.
All of the above has to be expected at a show that focuses on wireless-- imagine what it's like at a show just for hackers. But perhaps more interesting is the numbers indicating how individual end users left themselves vulnerable. In the process of surfing the Web, checking e-mail, and instant messaging (the three most popular past-times of attendees... hopefully so they could share information about the quality of the panels and workshops...), few if any did so with any security. In fact, at most, AirDefense saw only 12 percent of users utilizing a secure tunneled Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection when checking corporate e-mail.

Even worse, a total of 84 end users had set up their 802.11 client stations to allow an ad hoc connection -- and 17 ad hoc networks were formed. This means users could have accidentally connected directly with other users, sharing files they won't want to share and the possibility of being subject to direct attacks
AirDefense says the "most alarming vulnerabilities" included 74 users with open Service Set Identifiers (SSID) . This allowed the computer in question to automatically connect to the strongest signal it could find, no matter whose access point was putting out the signal. Again, like in the ad hoc connections above, users could have been subject to direct attack or snooping -- in fact, they could easily be connecting to access points not even within the walls of the conference.

AirDefense sells a self-titled WLAN security platform which captures all wireless information, and includes tools such as RogueWatch for detecting rogue access points, and AirDefense Guard for intrusion protection. The platform features a Linux-based central server appliance accessed via SSL Web browser interface for management; the server connects to remote sensors that monitor all packets in the air, something AirDefense has compared to video security cameras that just monitor WLAN traffic.

SBC's Wi-Fi Plan Taking Shape
July 1, 2003

Details of SBC Communications' public Wi-Fi strategy are starting to leak.

The broadband service provider will install about 2,000 hotspots in hotels, airports and other public venues in its 13-state coverage area by year's end, the The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported today.

Michael Coe, a spokesman for the San Antonio, Texas-based company, wouldn't comment on the story's specifics, saying final decisions about the number of access points, pilot markets and pricing haven't been made.

In early May, SBC issued its request for proposals (RFPs) for the network equipment needed to build wireless access sites.

"(The vendors) responded in late May and we're still in process of reviewing the RFPs," Coe told internetnews.com. "We hope to select (one) and announce that soon."

Currently, SBC offers hotspots for enterprise (using Cisco gear) and home customers (using 2Wire gear). Cisco, as well as Proxim and Symbol, are expected to be among those vying for the business.

Another outstanding question is partnering. Although SBC has said it would base some hotspots at SBC pay phone sites, it hasn't ruled out teaming with hotels and airport operators.

"We're looking at all avenues," Coe said. "You want to be in venues where customers would be using laptops and have time on hands. We need to talk to those companies but Whether it's (an agreement with) one at a time or a chain remains to be seen."

More specifics should be announced in late July or early August, Coe said.

If the Journal's numbers are correct, SBC's 2,000 hotspots would be double the access points being installed by Verizon Communications in Manhattan. Verizon was the first major carrier to announce plans to offer Wi-Fi with home or small business broadband contracts.

Although Verizon's push is only in New York (1,000 hotspots (define) by year's end), the carrier has grand plans. Executives were reluctant to announce a rollout schedule, but hope to use feedback from the Big Apple to launch in other East Coast markets.

For service providers, the purpose of Wi-Fi incentive is two-fold: to attract the 50 percent of U.S. Internet users who have not made the jump to high-speed access; and to keep current subscribers from defecting to Comcast which delivers broadband through cable.

In other Wi-Fi news, book seller Barnes & Noble is said to be readying Wi-Fi test in more than 20 stores in the Atlanta and Seattle areas. The offering will likely be offered through a telecom partner.

For retailers, the importance of Wi-Fi is as an amenity, not as a money maker by itself. Customers who stay longer in stores will likely buy more books, magazine and CDs.

UN urges wi-fi for all
Wireless networks could help poorer regions catch up with the pace of technology change, says the UN.
But many countries will need help to deploy and make the best use of wi-fi, says UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at a technology conference on Thursday.

Wireless networks remove the need to lay costly wires and could quickly bring fast and convenient net access to large populations currently denied access.

Chip maker Intel said it was getting growing interest from developing nations keen to use wireless networks.

Hi-tech lust

"It is precisely in places where no infrastructure exists that wi-fi can be particularly effective," said Mr Annan, "helping countries to leapfrog generations of telecommunications technology and infrastructure and empower their people."

The UN Secretary General made his comments at a conference organised by the Boston-based Wireless Internet Institute which debated what wireless technology could do for developing nations.


By removing the need to lay lots of cables to get communities online, wireless could help poorer nations narrow the digital divide and catch up with countries where the technology has already taken hold.
Wi-fi has become hugely popular in offices and homes because it makes it so easy to set up a network and to share fast net connections among several different machines.

Many cities in Europe, the US and Asia are dotted with wi-fi hotspots that let anyone with a suitably equipped portable computer get net access.

Mr Annan said governments, telecommunication regulators, technology firms and enthusiasts should work together to ensure that nothing stands in the way of broader wireless network use.

Pat Gelsinger, chief technology officer of chip maker Intel, said it was getting huge amounts of interest about wireless networks from many poorer nations.

"This reflects a worldwide lust for technology," he said. "We see millions of people with the potential to become wi-fi users."

Mr Gelsinger said wi-fi was proving popular because it sent data over a radio frequency that was not government controlled and the standards defining it were widely shared and open.

Mohsen Khalil, director of information and communications technology at the World Bank, sounded a cautionary note.

He said the equipment needed to use wi-fi was not cheap and the popularity of the technology might tempt some regulators to impose tariffs on its use.

IDC: Wi-Fi hype contrasts with reality
IDG News Service 6/20/03

Scarlet Pruitt, IDG News Service, London Bureau
Analyst firm IDC threw some cold water on the hotspot hype this week, predicting that although worldwide commercial Wi-Fi locations are set to grow 57 percent annually over the next five years, the market is still young and rife with uncertainty.

In a summary of a report released Thursday, IDC analysts likened the hotspot market to a "technology gold rush" and warned that despite promises it is still in the early phases of deployment. Most business models are not yet proven and the competitive landscape is very unclear, Keith Waryas, research manager or IDC's Wireless Business Network Services program, said in a statement.

The firm predicted that the Wi-Fi market would evolve in two stages, with an emphasis on network expansion over the next two years, followed by three years of relationship building amongst carriers. During the second phase, carriers will make network roaming agreements and partnerships that will be essential to filling gaps in their individual networks, IDC said.

Still, the market could offer some sizzling revenue opportunities. IDC estimated that Wi-Fi revenue streams would grow 143 percent annually over the next five years, while the number of users is due to double each year over that same period. By 2008, hotspot users will approach 25 million, IDC said.

IDC, in Framingham, Massachusetts, is a division of International Data Group Inc., parent company of IDG News Service.

3Com & Fiat WiFi Together in the Back Seat

Source: yahoo.news

Madrid, Spain - 3Com and Fiat have announced a new wireless networking technology enabling passengers to connect with high-speed access to the Internet offered by service stations, car parks or urban environments equipped with wireless 'hot-spots.'

The Wi-Fi system installed in the Lancia Phedra, first seen at Diva 2003, offers broadband Internet access via the vehicle's multimedia system, with the same level of functionality as provided in the office or home. The 3Com advanced Wi-Fi connectivity solution is augmented by AWAutoPC with a wireless keyboard, developed by AWA, a partner of 3Com.

Wi-Fi technology is not only used to connect the vehicle to wireless stations or hotspots but also to create a wireless LAN inside the car so passengers can connect to the Internet or exchange files and gain access to different applications such as wireless video security, traffic information or roadmaps.

"The automobile industry is one of the first markets introducing these new technologies with the aim of making the passenger experience more comfortable and enjoyable," said Claudio San Pedro, country manager, Fiat Auto España, S.A. "Adding 3Com's Wi-Fi technology to vehicles creates amazing opportunities for both the business or consumer user. Because we recognize the great popularity of wireless technology, we have equipped our Lancia Phedra car with a Wi-Fi system to show its applications and advantages."

Source: Yahoo News

MobileInfo Comments and Advisory: This is not rocket science under the cover, as far as Wi-Fi is concerned but is yet another innovative way of extending Wi-Fi hotspot concept to the car and its passengers. A sub-WLAN within the car is interesting idea to avoid fighting among your kids who may want to subscribe to different channels of entertainment. Unfortunately, this divergence is possible only when you are at a gas station or fixed spot. As you drive out, gone is the entertainment because 3G is not out there on the highway at affordable price even in future. But we can dream on.

802.11g Standard Good for WLAN Business Says New CIR Report

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., June 27 - The recent approval by the IEEE of the 802.11g standard is a major step forward for wireless LAN (WLAN) market, according to CIR, a market research firm based here. CIR's soon-to- be-released study of the WLAN chipset market indicates that 802.11g should help to promote both the demand side and supply side of the WLAN chipset market "equation."

On the demand side, CIR's new study, WLAN Chipset Markets: 2003-2007 - Customer Requirements, Market Forecasts and Product Differentiation Strategies notes that in the past bandwidth and throughput have been a major limitation on the growth of the WLAN market and that the 54 Mbps offered by 802.11g will be sufficient for most needs.

On the supply side, CIR claims that the ratification of the standard will lead to a slew of new product introductions, since manufacturers now have a way of ensuring that their products will be compatible with the large number of installed WLANs based on the popular 802.11b standard. According to CIR, these product introductions will include not only plain vanilla PHY/MAC chipsets, but also new value-added devices aimed at exploiting the potential for voice and video transmission on WLANs. Until now Broadcom has been the dominant chip supplier in the 802.11g space, based on its semi-proprietary version of 802.11g, but with the standard now in place, CIR believes that other major vendors will start to bite at Broadcom's market share as the 802.11b market starts to decline. Companies that CIR sees as ultimately jockeying for position in the 802.11g space include: Agere, Intersil, RF Micro Devices, and Texas Instruments and they will play in this space both with 802.11g chipsets and ones that combine 802.11g with 802.11b and other wireless networking capabilities. However, CIR also points out that the WLAN market has proved itself to be a market where early entry into particular segment is a good way of achieving success, so Broadcom's early start may prove an advantage.

In addition to these major players, CIR's new WLAN chipset report reviews the activities of almost 50 chipset suppliers including such interesting start-ups as Airgo, Atheros, Envara, Icefyre, Magis and Mobilian. It also discusses Intel's entry strategy for the WLAN market. Both the forecasts and analysis in CIR's new report are based on in-depth interviews with WLAN equipment vendors in Asia and North America. These are the firms that actually buy the chips, so it reflects market realities, rather than the hopes and dreams of chipset suppliers. The report provides all the survey data as well as comprehensive forecasts broken out by application (home networking, mobile computing and enterprise networking). For each of these applications, the projections are further broken out by standards and technology and by the type of end user product (hubs, switches, laptop, card, etc.) in which the chipsets are used. The new report offers readers key strategic advice on where the smart investments will be made in the WLAN chipset market as it moves out of its initial growth phase, along with a realistic appraisal of the strategies of today's WLAN chipset manufacturers.

For more information regarding "WLAN Chipset Markets: 2003-2007 - Customer Requirements, Market Forecasts and Product Differentiation Strategies" visit CIR's Website http://www.cir-inc.com.

Wi-Fi vs 3G: Friends or foes?
 
 
 
 

Is WLAN going to deliver the death blow to 3G, or save its neck? Global technology editor John C. Tanner goes on the trail of the biggest debate in wireless and discovers that Wi-Fi is not as easy as it looks


It's been almost two years now since the first reports began to surface on the emergence of the hot new trend of mobile data taking the telecoms industry by storm - wireless LAN, a.k.a. 802.11b, a.k.a. Wi-Fi, the IEEE technology that exploited the unlicensed 2.4 GHz ISM band to make wireless Ethernet LANs a reality in the home and the office.

Or, as it turned out, university campuses and the local cafŽ. Hot spots began popping up all over the place, many of them initially ad hoc networks set up by savvy cafŽ owners and franchises like Starbucks. By the time Wi-Fi hot spots turned up in airport lounges, the word was spreading, Wi-Fi cards were selling and the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (now the Wi-Fi Alliance) had certified hundreds of PC cards and access points. Telcos such as PCCW, SingTel, KT and Telstra, as well as mobile operators like Maxis, NTT DoCoMo, China Mobile and China Unicom were deploying hot spots in their respective service areas.

Inevitably, the comparisons to 3G began, and went something like this: Forget W-CDMA's clunky 120 kbps (out of a theoretical 384-k) on a screen the size of a Mini-Disc! For the same spotty coverage and battery life, you could be sitting somewhere drinking espresso and cruising the Web at a cool 11 Mbps (actually, it's more like 2 or 4 Mbps, depending on what the access point and the server you're trying to connect to is using for backhaul, and it gets lower after that as more users log on to the same access point, but hey, it's as good as that corporate LAN or residential DSL/cable modem). With all that and multimedia on a decent-sized screen, who needs 3G?

That was then, and many operators reputedly lost sleep over it. "One CTO told me that he would wake up every morning and wish that it were gone," recalls Kimmo Kaitala, GM of Nokia Networks' Operator Wireless LAN division. "Since then, though, it's been put into proportion."

Indeed - for the past 18 months, vendors like Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, Alcatel, Nortel Networks and other 3G infrastructure vendors have promoted WLAN technology not as a threat, but an opportunity - a complementary addition to a carrier's service portfolio at a time when new services is exactly what carriers are now looking for. And now it seems that cellcos and telcos alike are finally getting the message, says Sarah Kim, wireless/mobile analyst at Yankee Group.

"The view of Wi-Fi as a threat to 3G has evolved towards peaceful co-existence," Kim says. "The vast majority of the industry views [Wi-Fi] as a complementary technology."

It's even the official position of the GSM Association, says GSMA spokesperson Mark Smith. "Individual operators have their own plans on how to utilize these technologies, and they range from a focus only on 3G, to providing a fully seamless data service that exploits both technologies."

It helps, of course, that WLAN's threat is diminished somewhat by the fact that accessing data via a laptop or via a cell phone doesn't make them mutually exclusive options for users. It also helps that the business case for both is still more theoretical than practical. It helps even further that a public WLAN service is not as easy - or as cost-effective - to deploy as it looks.


The true cost of Wi-Fi

For all the hype about Wi-Fi's obvious advantages - namely cheap access points and access speeds way up into the 54-megabit range as 802.11a and 11g products start hitting shelves this year - it comes prepackaged with numerous disadvantages as well as far as public access services go. For a start, says Jean-Luc Jezouin, vice president of mobility solutions for Nortel Networks, public WLANs aren't quite as cheap to deploy as they appear.

"The system cost is expensive, as is the backhaul link, and if you deploy enough of them the cost perhaps becomes almost comparable with deploying 3G," he says.

Kaitala of Nokia Networks agrees. "Access points are small and inexpensive, but they add up. If you have to go out and do any kind of maintenance on them, it gets costly. Doing truck rolls on all those access points is expensive, and it gets more expensive every time you add a new hot spot."

There are other hidden costs of WLAN deployments, points out John Lipp, business development director of Mobile Networks at Alcatel Asia Pacific. "Deployment costs for things like rooftop access, property rights and even electric power add up fast," he says.

That said, the opex costs of public WLANs don't have to necessarily be a barrier, says Janice Hulse, Asia-Pacific director of service provider mobility at Cisco Systems, who says that this is where careful systems integration comes into play. "System integration is partly about how you manage geographically diverse hot spots, but it's also about how to seamlessly integrate these technologies into the network itself - the applications, the hardware, and how it all comes together," she says.


Apples and oranges

Even for those who argue that WLAN is still cheaper than 3G, WLAN's limitations aren't limited to cost management, says Eric Jao, regional marketing manager of Intel Communication Group

"802.11 is not designed for fast-moving users riding in cars, trains or even walking down the street," Jao says. "It's more suitable for single-spot coverage. For things like the ability to roam from one hot spot to another, or moving fast from one point to another, 2.5G and 3G are better suited."

That hasn't prevented Wi-Fi enthusiasts from pointing out that this is a temporary condition - witness the current drive towards roaming, from clearinghouse providers like GRIC and iPass to regional initiatives like the Wireless Broadband Alliance formed two months ago. Witness also gap-filling technologies like 802.16a point-to-multi-point routers that can theoretically create a wireless mesh network over a major city. Then there's the growing hype about voice-over-WLAN, which is already being trialed by Sharp in Japan. Such technological advancements, as well as cutting-edge tech like wearable computers, nanotech and quantum computing, are often cited in declaring WLAN as the eventual successor over cellular mobile as we know it.

Perhaps, says Lipp of Alcatel, but it's still a mighty tall order. "If it could all deliver handovers and high speeds and coverage at the same level or better than mobile, it could threaten 3G. But economically, it would deteriorate soon after you tried to deploy it."

Lipp cites KT Corp's recently announced plan to spend $100 million to expand their hot spots from 8,500 to 16,000. "If you break down that $100 million by hot spot, that works out to be a lot cheaper per site than 3G," he says. "But at the same time, if you look at all the operators that have done rollouts on that scale, they've all lost money."

In any case, he says, all the hype over Wi-Fi hot spots is still essentially theory. "There's not enough information about what they still need and what they can actually do."

But surely the same could be said for W-CDMA?

"Yes, but the difference is that a lot of the functionality of W-CDMA is already designed into the product. That's not the case with WLAN in terms of offering it as a service."

Ian Johnston, OSS marketing segment manager for the Asia Communications Solutions Group at Agilent Technologies, offers a similar view. "3G is coming from a very planned, organized base, so that when it does go to market, you can do certain things straight away, such as roaming, billing, and customer care."

Wi-Fi, by contrast, was developed from the Internet path. "It lacks a formal infrastructure," he says.

Nortel's Jezouin puts it more candidly: "It's essentially a quick and stupid pipe for bits."


All about the backend

It's this particular aspect of public WLAN - that is, the backend - that has to change if service providers are going to realize any value out of it.

Hulse of Cisco Systems, for example, says that the main challenge for Cisco's customers is backend functionality such as SIM authentication, roaming agreements, and billing.

Jezouin of Nortel notes that solutions to address this are already on the market in the form of edge gear designed to manage disparate access services.

That said, however, Intel's Jao adds that much of the challenge is more human than technological. "It's really a matter of convincing different service providers to share customer data with each other, but their concern is, 'why should I share my customer information and my billing information'?"

The twist, Jao observes, is that the mobile industry went through the same thing in the early days of GSM. "They didn't trust one another then, either. So the WLAN operators are at the same stage now that mobile operators once were."

It may seem odd that the proven revenue benefits of cell phone roaming don't outweigh the instinctive protectionist concerns over proprietary customer data, but then few operators feel comfortable when the competition is saying, "You show me your data first." Consequently, some regulators have been stepping in as third-party arbitrators to help jumpstart the process.

"In Singapore, the IDA is leading a project to establish a switching center between ISPs to address this," Jao offers as an example. "In Taiwan, the government is setting up something similar. So is China. They see the need to get ISPs together in the same room and work this out."

Jao adds that upcoming standards like 802.11i, the proposed IEEE standard for authentication on WLAN systems, can help.


Similar business models

Still, this should not be taken as an argument against deploying hot spot services at all.

"It's quite interesting then that the pros and cons of wireless LANs are almost perfectly complementary to those of 3G," says Nortel's Jezouin. "So they will both be used, but the business aspects may be questioned, especially the business models."

Indeed, if there's one thing that 3G and WLAN have in common, it's a murky business case.

Indeed, the business case for hot spot is as unclear as that for 3G. Says Johnston of Agilent, "For a coffee shop, it might be to increase walk-in business and see if they can get more bums on seats, but how do you determine what their cut is? The cafŽ can say, well, I'm the source of all the new traffic, so I should get 50%, but the operator says, yeah but I'm providing the hardware and the backhaul and the billing, so I should get 90%."

There's also the question of just how much revenue there would be to split. No major hot spot service provider is turning a profit from it, and the common wisdom of broadband service in general is that the access pipe business model only goes so far.

"The danger of public wireless LANs is that they have to make money, and you can't really do that by offering all-you-can-eat access," says Lloyd Carney, executive vice president of Juniper Networks. "You need to be able to offer different classes of services, to include different classes of bandwidth, and you have to do it in a way that can scale, especially since Wi-Fi enabled PDAs aren't that far away from the market."

Juniper's MINT concept aims to enable just that - partly via its edge router products that aggregate and manage traffic at wire speed from various access technologies, but also by getting service providers to think in terms of services rather than technology.

"You really have to start with the service and how to make money rather than the technology," says Carney.


Bringing it together

John Edwards, Asia-Pacific VP and GM of Motorola Professional Services, insists carriers need to think in terms of the eventual convergence of services.

"Right now, WLAN is sitting there more as a bolt-on rather than being part of a comprehensive roadmap, which is how we think it should be," Edwards says. "We're telling carriers that they should be addressing things from the user level."

Part of that equation, says Hulse of Cisco, is single-account billing. "The most important thing is that whatever service I use, I'm using one number, and I'm billed as a single user - that's the challenge that telcos are facing in offering these services."

Nortel is addressing the convergence equation from the core, which ideally should be a seamless packet core that's completely agnostic to access technologies. "3G technologies will blur over time," says Jezouin. "We're seeing it now with CDMA vs UMTS. It is not obvious, of course, but it's happening at the core, and it's happening at the terminal level too. And it will happen as we see new technologies come along, such as EV-DO and EV-DV, and 802.16 - all of them will nicely converge."

Part of that convergence vision has, in the last year, been the quest to enable handoff between Wi-Fi and cellular systems, which is more of a backend issue (i.e. authentication) than a terminal issue, but despite work being done in that direction, Kaitala of Nokia (itself a major proponent of Wi-Fi/cellular handoff) downplays its importance.


Educating the users

"That's turning out not to be as important as people initially thought," he says. "Users see them as different services. There probably is some level of demand for not wanting to lose your session if you have to move from one environment to the other, but it's not a determining factor when you select a vendor."

However the convergence roadmap for 3G and WLAN plays out, vendors are going out of their way to assure mobile providers with 3G plans that WLAN is part of the solution, not part of the problem.

"The more people that get used to the idea that they don't have to plug in to get access to data, the better for all mobile data systems," says Alcatel's John Lipp.

That said, Nortel's Jezouin cautions operators not to let enthusiasm for that synergy lead to marketing efforts that confuse one service with the other.

"WLAN is ready, nomadic, with high throughput. 3G is ready, always on, and can be used almost anywhere. It doesn't have to be high bandwidth necessarily," he says. "It's the difference between mobile access and nomadic access. Operators have to be careful to make the distinction, however, otherwise they could damage the whole wireless data area."

Mobile data is coming, and backhaul needs upgrading
 
 By Daniel Briere and Claudia Bacco
 
 Whatever your opinion is regarding how fast it will happen, it
 seems inevitable that near broadband, and eventually true
 broadbandwirelessservices are on their way.Verizonis trialing
 EV-DO in Maryland and San Diego, and several smaller carriers
 have also begun full-blown market trials and even
 revenue-generating deployments. Other carriers, likeClearwire,
 are using UMTS systems for portable/mobile broadband data
 deployments. Still others are mixing Wi-Fi hot spots into their
 existingGPRSor 1XRTT networks.
 
 Regardless of the wireless technology being used, these trials
 and deployments are causing one pain point for many
 wireless/mobile carriers: backhaul costs that could potentially
 skyrocket as network utilization and traffic increase. It's one
 thing to backhaul 32K bit/sec mobile voice back from a cell
 tower- a few T-1s will usually do the trick. But when hundreds
 of users access a cell tower with data rates measured in the
 hundreds of K bit/sec or even in the M bit/sec, T-1s just won't
 cut it.
 
 Wireless carriers we've spoken with have expressed great concern
 over the potential costs they'll take on with true 3G networks.
 A substantial portion of their data revenues will simply get
 turned around to the local incumbents providing them with their
 landline backhaul.
 
 The good news is that there are a lot of vendors working on
 solutions that can keep this wireless data backhaul traffic
 wireless and off of expensive leased lines as long as possible.
 
 There are two camps of vendors approaching this market: those
 providing free space optics (FSO), and others supplying
 point-to-point RF products, mainly using "millimeter" wave
 systems. We spent some time at SuperComm talking with a smaller
 FSO vendor,LightPointe, which has had some success in this
 market, particularly in Asia where 3G services are ahead of
 those in North American. We expect that larger FSO vendors
 likeTerabeamwill also continue to make the mobile backhaul
 market a focus in the near future as well.
 
 Not all service providers have really bought off on the FSO
 concept, however. Worries about interference and uptime have
 made disaster recovery, rather than mission-critical service
 provisioning, perhaps the largest market for FSO products to
 date. In fact, Terabeam recently launched their own millimeter
 wave RF product, the Gigalink, which they claim provides Gigabit
 Ethernet services with higher uptime than the company's FSO
 product line. Other vendors, likeDragonwave(who we talked about
 in ourrecent columnon Wi-Fi backhaul), are also aggressively
 pursuing the mobile backhaul market.
 
 The big question concerning these wireless backhaul systems
 isn't, however, the technology of choice (we'll leave that up to
 the labs to figure out); but who will provide them.
 
 In one scenario, mobile operators could potentially create their
 own backhaul networks using these point-to-point links,
 aggregating onto a relatively inexpensive metro fiber provider's
 network.
 
 Another option- and an opportunity for forward-thinking wireline
 providers- is for the local telco to develop wireless backhaul
 services for any and all mobile carriers in its serving area.
 While this might cannibalize some existing wireline services, it
 offers an easy way for a carrier to offer high-speed backhaul
 services in areas where fiber connections do not reach existing
 cell towers - places where the existing T-1 connections simply
 will not scale up to the requirements of true broadband wireless
 services. As an added benefit, these backhaul facilities could
 also be used to carry aggregated traffic from Wi-Fi hot spots.
 
 Regardless of who owns and operates the equipment, we think that
 wireless backhaul will become a growing trend over the next few
 years. Until fiber's reach becomes truly ubiquitous, high
 bandwidth point-to-point wireless systems may be the best
 solution for getting wireless users' traffic back onto the wired
 network.

UN pushes Wi-Fi to bridge digital divide


By BOB BREWIN
JUNE 26, 2003

 
   
     
    
   UNITED NATIONS -- The Wireless Internet Institute, the United Nations and major Wi-Fi technology vendors today kicked off a global effort at UN headquarters to use wireless LANs and other inexpensive and unregulated wireless technologies to bridge the digital divide in developing nations.
Pat Gelsinger, chief technology officer at Intel Corp., was the keynote speaker at the Wireless Internet Opportunity for Developing Nations conference. He said technologies such as Wi-Fi and the 802.16 standard for wireless metropolitan-area networks (MAN) provide the chance not only to close the digital gap "but leapfrog ahead of the digital divide."

Daniel Aghion, executive director of the Boston-based Wireless Internet Institute, said today's conference grew out of a challenge made last November by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to "think of ways to bring wireless fidelity applications to the developing world" via unlicensed spectrum to deliver cheap and fast Internet access. The Wireless Internet Institute is backed by World Times Inc., the Boston-based publisher of a global newspaper, one-third of which is owned by Computerworld's parent company, International Data Group Inc.

Gelsinger presented an Intel plan to help developing nations realize the benefits of Wi-Fi that included an admonition to "say no to copper" for a wired backbone and install broadband fiber instead. Once that infrastructure is in place, developing nations then "need to deploy wireless aggressively," he said.

The combination of short-range Wi-Fi, 30-mile-range MANs now under development that are based on 802.16 standards, and a fiber backbone will present developing nations with "the greatest opportunity for scalable and cost-effective networks," he said.

Gelsinger also urged developing nations to follow the lead of the developed world in putting as few strings as possible on the use of Wi-Fi in unlicensed spectrum bands. Amir Dossal, executive director for the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships, agreed, saying developing countries should keep Wi-Fi spectrum as "unregulated as possible."

Moshen Khalil, director of information and communication technologies at The World Bank, said the debate on allocation and unfettered use of unlicensed spectrum in developing countries is still open and the UN, the Wireless Internet Institute and vendors will face "very tough" challenges before Annan's vision can be realized.

In addition to the spectrum issue, widespread proliferation of Wi-Fi in developing nations needs to overcome a number of hurdles, including heavily regulated and expensive wired backbone carriers and tariffs that often push up prices for Wi-Fi gear -- equipment that has reached rock-bottom prices as low as $20 to $50 for a wireless access card in the U.S. Vendors and potential service providers in developing nations also need to "create viable business models," Khalil said.

Amir Alexander Hasson, founder and managing partner of First Mile Solutions LLC, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that has started to implement wireless service in India, said equipment used in developing nations often has to be tougher and more resistant to heat and dust than WLAN gear used in more developed nations. But even with that proviso, Hasson said he was able to assemble a WLAN system for use in rural Indian villages for about $250.

Dossal said he believes the hurdles can be overcome, with wireless Internet access eventually serving as the "great equalizer" in communications infrastructure between the developing and developed world.

Dell builds its wireless portfolio
By John G. Spooner
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
June 27, 2003, 8:25 AM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1044-1021728.html

Dell Computer is going wild with wireless.
The Round Rock, Texas-based PC maker announced on Thursday a partnership to let Dell notebook owners sign up in advance to access T-Mobile's hot spots. Across the United States, T-Mobile has thousands of such hot spots, which are public areas outfitted with Wi-Fi, or 802.11, wireless networks to tap the Internet.

The benefit of the deal is that Dell notebook users can then access T-Mobile hot spots more quickly by entering a username and password, as opposed to having to plug in credit card information.

The T-Mobile deal also grants Dell customers 2,000 free minutes of wireless access during their first month of service.

Meanwhile, Dell is moving ahead with plans to build Wi-Fi into its Axim personal digital assistants, which will let the devices access 802.11 wireless networks as well.

The product development efforts, as well as partnerships with T-Mobile and AT&T Wireless, augment Dell's vision of lending business executives and consumers the ability to stay connected to e-mail or to surf the Web nearly anywhere.

Dell announced a deal with AT&T Wireless on Tuesday that lets Dell customers gain Internet access using AT&T's cellular networks anywhere the company provides coverage. The wireless program, which uses GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), provides data transfer rates similar to a standard 56K modem.

Dell notebook owners could potentially use the T-Mobile service while inside airports, Borders book stores, Starbucks coffee shops or any of about 2,600 T-mobile hot spots around the United States. They could then switch to AT&T Wireless while on the road.

Dell plans, over time, to add wireless to nearly all of its notebooks and Axim PDAs. Dell is expected to start its handheld effort by building 802.11b into a version of the Axim by the end of this year.

During 2004, Dell is expected to broaden the wireless capabilities of the Axim with a version that offers 802.11g. Dell is also expected to build a hybrid Axim that combines PDA and cell phone characteristics and can operate on three different wireless network standards: GPRS, CDMA (code division multiple access) and GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications).

T-Mobile will offer three basic service plans for Dell customers. One plan offers a 10-cent-per-minute, pay-as-you-go rate. Another will offer a single-month rate of $39.99. A third offers a 12-month contract with monthly payments of $29.99. The latter two plans offer unlimited access.

Most Dell Latitude business notebooks now come standard with built-in Wi-Fi. Its consumer-oriented Inspiron notebooks can be fitted with a Wi-Fi module for about $50.

AT&T Wireless service requires more of an investment. To get started, customers must purchase a wireless network card, which lists for $299, and sign up for a monthly service plan. Monthly fees start at $29.99, Dell said.

World Wireless Web
June 26, 2003


The Advanced Infrastructure Solutions (AIS) division of computer giant, IBM, is targeting three particular market opportunities in the Asia Pacific region. These include public wireless local areas networks (PWLANs), ad-hoc networks, and citywide broadband.

"PWLAN is really booming worldwide," says Ryutaro Kusumoto, business development manager for Advanced Infrastructure Solutions at IBM Asia Pacific. "Particularly in China, Korea, Japan and Singapore. IBM is in a position to pursue these opportunities."

Kusumoto, in Sydney this week, was previously president of Silicon Valley-based start-up, Whistle Communications, before IBM acquired the company in 1999.

"IBM has done a fair bit of business in PWLAN for the enterprise," he says. "For example, a number of customers have integrated WLAN on university campuses. The spotlight is now on the public space, which we consider to be great social infrastructure."

Kusumoto continues, "the deployment of 3G has been delayed and hasn't really lived up to earlier promises. PWLAN is a great bridge between 2.5G and 3G. Carriers find it interesting and useful to supplement services."

The largest move by IBM into the PWLAN space has been the creation of a wholesale hotspot developer.

In December, IBM formed Cometa Networks with AT&T and Intel. The company, backed by venture capitalists Apax Partners and 3i, predicts the development of 20 000 hotspots in the United States by 2004. By that time, users will be within five minutes of a hotspot.

McDonalds is one of the largest customers to date. In March, they announced a pilot program for ten of the golden arches in Manhattan, New York.

The trial coincided with the launch of Intel's Centrino, mobile technology for laptops that features built-in wireless capability.

Kusumoto believes the integration of IEEE 802.11x in laptops and other handheld devices will drive usage of PWLAN, which requires a critical mass to be commercial viable.

The growing hype surrounding PWLAN, however, provides an opportunity to exploit the shortcomings of third generation mobile technologies (3G), which has been plagued by deployment delays and speeds lower than promised.

Security and privacy remain the key inhibitors for enterprise use of PWLAN, he says.

Perhaps more interesting than going for a slice of the hotspot pie, however, are trials exploring citywide broadband. IBM are testing the technology in one US county, which vary in area from a couple hundred to fifty thousand square kilometres, and in population from about a thousand people to about ten million.

"This technology is both first and last mile," says Kusumoto, "based on a derivative or advancement of 802.11x."

Ad hoc or mesh networks use technology such as multi-hopping that allows for peer to peer wireless routing where each subscriber device acts as a repeater and a router for all other devices on the network.

Multi-hopping, patented by Mesh Networks, creates a robust meshed network that automatically routes around congestion and line-of-sight obstacles, while improving throughput as subscriber density increases.

The network does not depend on GPS for subscriber geo-location, making it particularly useful for emergency services.

In ad-hoc or infrastructureless networks, a collection of nodes can form a temporary network without any centralised authority.

Kusomoto also points to other emerging standards such as 802.16 and 802.20 in overcoming some of the limitations of 802.11 such as congestion and the need for line-of-sight.

"Multi-hopping solves this problem," he says. "802.16 can be a hub for 802.11a b and g. You you can fill the whole area with some kind of frequency range. "Some cities the United Kingdom have citywide broadband. They have become self-sufficient in communications and don't need a telco."

He continues, PWLAN speeds are far superior to 3G at 10Mbps to 50Mbps. "However, they will be complementary technologies as PWLAN will only represent five percent of the coverage of CDMA in two or three years time."

Set up in 1999, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.16 Working Group on Broadband Wireless Access Standards are supporting the development of broadband wireless metropolitan area networks.

The aim of the IEEE P802.20 Standard "is to develop the specification for an efficient packet based air interface that is optimized for the transport of IP based services," according to the organisation. "The goal is to enable worldwide deployment of affordable, ubiquitous, always-on and interoperable multi-vendor mobile broadband wireless access networks that meet the needs of business and residential end user markets."


Kusumoto believes the critical mass required to develop a solid business case for PWLAN is slowly building. "Thousands of wireless ISPs operate in the world," he says. "The big question is how can it be commercially successful."

Initiatives such as the Wireless Broadband Alliance are a step in the right direction, according to Kusumoto. The Alliance has five major telcos including Korea Telecom, China Netcom, Malaysia's Maxis Communications Berhad, and Singapore's StarHub.

Key pilot projects of the Alliance include interoperability of WiFi roaming throughout Asia to simplify communications and billing for business travelers in the region.

Kusumoto believes that greater interoperability will allow PWLANs to become a valuable social infrastructure. "Back in the IT boom in the late 1990s," he says, "everyone took part in a land grab. If one operator takes McDonalds and one takes Burger King and they can't communicate, that's a big problem."

The key, he concludes, "is a roaming service among providers where eventually the access charge will be close to zero."

Saying Oui To Wi-Fi
June 25, 2003


Despite a unified currency and a European parliament, when it comes to Wi-Fi Europe remains a patch-work market. In the case of Wi-Fi, it's mainly because of differences in national regulatory policy.

The Scandinavian countries were first and fastest out of the gate, followed by the UK and Germany. Now France, which only officially removed regulatory barriers to Wi-Fi hotspot operators in December 2002, is off and running.

France Telecom, the country's incumbent (and largest) telecom provider and owner of Orange cellular/PCS companies in France and other European countries, jumped into the race earlier this year, announcing a major deal with Accor Group to put Wi-Fi in 1,300 of Accor's hotels around the world.

More recently, Orange announced a major deal with Air France to put Wi-Fi hotspots in the airline's frequent flyer lounges around the world.

"If you compare France to the U.S., we're late, yes, certainly," says Yves Tyrode, director of data marketing services at Orange France. "But if you compare us to the UK and Germany, it's not really the case. You have to check the number of customers and the number of sites at the end of this year."

In other words, France Telecom intends to make up some ground on its European rivals -- er, friends. If any company in France can do it, this is the one, says Amy Cravens, a senior analyst with In-Stat/MDR in Scottsdale AZ.

"France Telecom is really the first company in France to have a larger strategy and initiative," Cravens says. "They're very focused on the business traveler. But there are also a lot of smaller players doing cafes and other retail."

However, France Telecom's strategy isn't particularly unique. Most of the Wi-Fi activity in France appears to revolve around travel venues. Passman, a Paris-based systems integrator, announced a new turnkey Wi-Fi hotspot offering for the hospitality industry in May.

Passman, which provides non-wireless networking and systems services, already includes major hotel chains such as Holiday Inn, Marriott, Best Western, Kyriad, Suitehotels, Novotel and Mercure in its customer list.

It's not just Wi-Fi hotspots. In June, Appear Networks, a Franco-Swedish wireless application developer and systems integrator, demonstrated an innovative application that will allow recently landed aircraft to automatically transmit technical data over a Wi-Fi network to technicians on the ground carrying tablet or hand-held PCs.

France also boasts a few Wi-Fi hotspot start-ups that are surprisingly well established given how recently the regulatory hurdles were removed. Kast Wireless, for example, has hotspots in more than 60 French towns and cities and a handful of other European cities. Most are in airports, hotels and conference facilities.

TLCMobile is going after exactly the same target market -- business travelers -- and venues. It says it will have 600 up and running by 2005. WiFiSpot, which is focused on the hospitality industry, has seven hotels up and running in Paris so far.

But it is clear that France Telecom intends to be the market leader. The Accor deal alone makes it a major player by any standards. It will make Orange the leading Wi-Fi provider in France, with the largest network of hotspots deployed by the end of 2003, the company says.

As of early June, Orange already had 25 hotels up and running and expects to have 400 in total by the end of this year -- 100 more than it was forecasting when the deal was first announced. The remaining 900 will be installed in 2004. The total is also up from the 900 mentioned in the original announcement.

Orange is installing Wi-Fi in the hotels' conference and meeting rooms, public areas and in at least 25 percent of the guest rooms. It's using mainly Cisco networking gear, although the access points are made by an Asian Cisco OEM.

In the hotels that are up and running, the service is free for now, while the company tests its market. Tyrode expects to go commercial by September.

The Air France deal will see Orange install 17 lounges this year, starting with major airports in France. Another 54 will go live next year, including important sites outside France such as JFK in New York and Tokyo's Narita Airport.

In keeping with its tight focus on business travelers, the company is unlikely to expand out of the lounges into other areas of the airports, Tyrode says.

While there is apparently still a possibility that Air France will either give the service away to its best customers or provide it at a discount, airport and hotel hotspots users will be Orange customers, and will be able to use all Orange hotspots.

They'll pay about $15 for two-hour and $50 for 10-hour prepaid packages. There will also be monthly subscriptions and discounted bundled deals for GPRS and Wi-Fi service. Orange eventually plans to offer seamless roaming between GPRS and Wi-Fi.

The company will also offer bundled deals in association with ISP Wanadoo, a 70-percent owned France Telecom subsidiary that provides high-speed residential access using ADSL. High-speed customers will be able to buy bundled hotspot service at a discounted rate.

Orange is involved in a new roaming initiative with other French cellular/PCS companies that offer hotspot services. Under the deal worked out with SFR and Bouygues Telecom, customers will be able to use hotspots owned by any of the three providers. The three will open the association to other hotspot operators as well, Tyrode says.

"We want French customers to have access to as many sites as possible," he says. "If we want [Wi-Fi] to be a success, we need to offer the best possible coverage."

Orange meanwhile is working on its own on roaming agreements with foreign service providers -- including U.S. aggregators, Tyrode implies. Some will be signed as early as July. The company is anxious to have deals in place for the expected September kick-off of commercial service.

Even without roaming agreements, though, Orange will have more to offer than most in France. The company is nothing if not ambitious. "We think that by the end of the year, we will have a very high market share," Tyrode says.

Ascendent Bridges Wi-Fi, Cellular
June 26, 2003


BOSTON -- Moving to further integrate 802.11 technology into the workplace, Ascendent Telecommunications has unveiled a product it says bridges the gap between an enterprise's Wi-Fi and cellular technology.

The offering, announced and demonstrated here at the 802.11 Conference and Expo today, is designed to be integrated into corporate networks.

Ascendent's equipment is installed in a company's existing data and voice network using circuit connections and Voice Over Internet Protocol , reducing wireless network infrastructure and usage costs while enhancing mobility.

Calls are routed through a company's PBX or Centex switch, with users able to access many of the same functions and features of their desktop phones using cellular and VoIP devices.

"People can now use their company phone numbers and dialing patterns in-building on 802.11 wireless devices," said Stephen Forte, Ascendent's chairman and CEO. "Our technology also allows their calls to stay connected while changing modes between 802.11 and cellular if they leave their in-building environment."

Ascendent's products also work with public wireless access points or "hotspots". When remote device users step outside a hotspot, Ascendent technology enables the phone call to continue on cellular.

Ascendent products and services are distributed to enterprise customers through Nextel, Science Applications International Corp., EDS, Norstan, Toshibaand TELUS in Canada. In addition to corporate customers, the company also counts the U.S. governemnt as a client.

Awarding 802.11 Planet's Best of Show
June 26, 2003


BOSTON -- It was a hot day in Massachusetts, but inside the Boston World Trade Center, the show floor of the 802.11 Planet Conference & Expo was cool. Not calm however, as hundreds swarmed in the booths to get information on the latest Wi-Fi products on the market now or soon to come.

It was from among the more than 90 exhibitors on the show floor that we picked the 802.11 Best of Show Awards. While many were nominated and considered, only five could win. Here's the scoop on what we think are among the most promising technologies for WLANs today:

Monitoring and Security
Network Chemistry's Neutrino Sensor -- Targeting the small to medium business (SMB), the Neutrino Sensor (sensors, really) monitor and analyze all 802.11 packets and report results back to network administrators via a management console running on a Windows- or Linux-based computer. The sensors can capture all the 802.11b packets from any Wi-Fi compatible transmitter, including all management packets, on any channel. The company is currently selling the products direct from their Web site, and the price is affordable, at under $400 per unit for 10 sensors or more. Using protocols like SNMP and DHCP, it'll integrate with almost any network to keep tabs on what's going on in the air.

Software/Hotspots
iPassConnect 3.0 service interface -- For enterprise users on the move with a Wi-Fi-equiped laptop, there's few guaranteed ways to get a secure connection back to the corporate LAN. iIPassConnect 3.0, the latest software release from hotspot aggregator iPass, supports not just Wi-Fi but other forms of connection, whether broadband or even dial-up. Hotspot users benefit from instantly being notified if they're in range of an iPass certified location. The software supports various types of VPN connections and firewalls, and should they collapse the iPassConnect tool will tear down the connection preventing any security breach to the corporation. It's roaming that a CTO can feel secure about.

WLAN Switch
Vivato Switch technology -- While many people dispute the term "wireless switch," few could argue that Vivato's approach isn't one of the most innovative in this industry. With both and indoor and outdoor version of its large-panel, wall-mounted 2.4GHz switches, the company can provide Wi-Fi to one floor of a building or an entire neighborhood.

Home/SOHO WLAN Equipment
WiDeFi's WLAN Xtender Technology -- This "residential extension" product design, which the company will make available to original equipment manufacturers, is more than just a repeater. Using a patent pending technique that works with any access point, it will double the range of the network. SOHOware is already set to offer an indoor version of the product, and there will be an outdoor version as well. We hope to see many versions.

Enterprise WLAN Equipment
Proxim's ORiNOCO 802.11g line -- The first 802.11g products to ship for the enterprise market, the latest Proxim's ORiNOCO units builds on the line that help establish wireless networking in the first place a few years ago. The line currently consists of the dual-radio ORiNOCO AP-2000b/g, which supports two different 2.4GHz networks simultaneously and thus avoids bandwidth issues in mixed-mode networks, as well as the $495 single-radio AP-600b/g. The company also has a full line of multi-mode and single-mode network cards. These products are, at the moment, one of the only prospects for SMBs or enterprises that want 802.11g they can depend on.

  
Report: Many Companies Lack Wi-Fi Security
June 26, 2003


BOSTON -- In a rush to improve productivity, many enterprises have overlooked the need to secure the flow of data over their wireless local area networks , according to new research from Jupitermedia's research arm.

The study, released here today at 802.11 Planet Conference & Expo, finds that only 28 percent of enterprises are using point-to-point virtual private networks . Meanwhile, the next Wi-Fi standard, which includes security measures, is yet unratified.

"Many enterprises rely purely on 'off-the-shelf' solutions with basics such as (Wired Equivalent Privacy) with either manual or automated rotation of keys, restricted (service set identifier) service set identifier) access or MAC-based device authentication," said Julie Ask, a Jupiter Research senior analyst.

In general, larger enterprises take WLAN security more seriously than their smaller counterparts, Ask said. Comprehensive network security can cost tens of thousands of dollars and smaller companies can't afford it, Ask said.

But as the number of people with Wi-Fi PC cards continues to grow so do the potential threats of someone breaching corporate networks.

The findings could represent an opportunity for equipment vendors and service providers. Several are addressing the issue, including Nortel which recently introduced a WLAN portfolio that includes a number of security features. Service providers are also adding wireless security installations and integration as part of their offerings.

Jawad Khaki, Microsoft's vice president of Windows networking and communications, said one of the company's recent user surveys indetified security as the top concern in adopting Wi-Fi.

"Connected all the time means all the time under attack," Khaki said in his keynote address. "Security is important. . . and it's still evolving."

Khaki stressed the importance of wireless industry hardware and software makers to adopt standards, saying the goal should be to have wireless access be like plugging a phone into a walljack -- simple, reliable and secure. A uniform structure will allow developers to build advanced media applications, which will spur growth.

"Proprietary protocols are adding to the confusion," Khaki said.

Experts: Planning Key to Successful Enterprise Wi-Fi
June 27, 2003

BOSTON -- For executives at DigitalNet, a Dulles, Va., systems integrator, there were two reasons to install wireless local area network: to improve the productivity of its workers and to gain experience to perform similar projects for its clients.
"We wanted to do it to ourselves first," Bob Martin, vice president of wireless and digital computing for DigitalNet, said during a panel discussion here at 802.11 Planet Conference & Expo.

First, the company had to determine that Wi-Fi would improve the productivity of its workers -- otherwise it was a nonstarter. Believing its workers would benefit from access to e-mail and files when traveling, as well as greater collaboration in its headquarters and regional offices, convinced DigitalNet to proceed.

That was the easy part. DigitalNet had other decisions to make. Since the company does about half its business with the defense department and intelligence agencies, security was paramount. A publicized breach at DigitalNet could undermine the company's reputuation.

Given that, DigitalNet needed a system that was compliant with FIPs 140-2 (an encryption standard demanded by the federal government). To date, many hackers have fallen under the "experimentor" or "snooper" categories, but that will change, hence DigiNet's need for the more stringent standard.

In addition, the company bought network monitoring software to detect usage patterns, which could alert managers to intrusions.

Useage policies for employees were also drafted, with guidlines for passwords, encrytption of local and transmitted data as well as mandatory installation of anti-virus software on all mobile devices. Other moves included changing default settings and setting network timeouts.

The majority of DigitalNet's access points are Cisco gear, but the company also installed some Enterasys equipment for comparison sake.

Joseph M. Bruno, associate dean for information technology at Harvard Medical School, faced similar issues when architecting the instittion's wireless systems.

The school occupies a dozen buildings and is used by thousands of faculty, staff and students and before a system was established, unauthorized wireless access points were springing up in labs causing security and compatibility concerns.

"Price was important but we wanted a system that we could easily and deploy and manage," Bruno said.

The Ivy League school recently spent millions of dollars on new wireline IT and telecommunications systems, so the wireless system needed to complement, rather than replace existing assets. After evaluating several vendors, the school bought 40 Cisco Aironet 350 access points and deployed them in six buildings. It connects with two Bluesocket WG 1000 gates.

In the future, the school will look at ways of hanfling increased userss, ad hardware switching and impelent additional security measures. It will also look to add more access points to better support loading.

Panelists cautioned that simply choosing the right equipment isn't enough. Preparing the IT staff to install and manage it must be taken seriously.

"You just can't just tell IT folks that they are now responisible for wireless," Martin said. "There is some translation in the skills but it is different."

CSR fuels BMW’s new in-car Bluetooth systems


Date posted in ITsecurity.com: 24 June, 2003

Bluetooth Congress, Amsterdam – June 17, 2003 – CSR
(Cambridge Silicon Radio) today announced that car maker
BMW will be using CSR’s BlueCore technology to bring
Bluetooth to the road. BlueCore will be used to Bluetooth-enable
the latest vehicles with a view to providing a safe and convenient
in-car wireless communication system which can be tightly
integrated with the car’s multimedia interface and control panel.

The Bluetooth system includes a Telematics Control Unit (TCU)
which uses an embedded GSM module and an embedded
Bluetooth module with a powerful CPU. It connects to a
Multi-Media-Interface (MMI) on the car dashboard, through an
optical MOST Bus system. The system is also equipped with an
in-car rechargeable cordless Bluetooth handset which allows the
passengers to place and accept calls directly through the TCU
Bluetooth link. The user is thus able to place calls over the
Bluetooth handset and to transfer that call to the Bluetooth enabled
hands-free phone system in the car. One of the eagerly awaited
benefits of Bluetooth, possible with this system, is the ability to
also connect a Bluetooth-enabled portable PC or PDA to
exchange emails and surf the internet via a cellular system while
connected through the TCU.

There are several reasons why CSR is the most popular Bluetooth
integrated circuit used by automotive and telematics design
engineers. This powerful and truly first System-On-A-Chip (SoC)
single-chip integrated circuit solution is highly programmable, has
versatile high-speed interfaces, and allows automakers to include
multiple Bluetooth Profiles. This allows very easy integration into
MOST and CAN automotive bus systems, as well as provide a
very good user experience through audio and data services.
CSR’s mature, single-chip automotive Bluetooth device is also
produced under stringent ISO 9001 requirements and is available
in a 0.8mm pitch package for low cost printed circuit board
construction. CSR is the only automotive grade Bluetooth solution
available which can run the complete Bluetooth protocol stack and
application software on-chip, without the need for an optional
external microprocessor.

By adding Bluetooth to these vehicles, the user can make a phone
call, surf the internet, or access email on a Bluetooth enabled PC
or PDA while riding in the cabin. These features are expected to
grow in popularity as Bluetooth becomes a dominant technology in
the new generation automobiles.

Unique to vehicles which embed the CSR chip, is a technology
implemetation developed at CSR’s laboratories called CQDDR,
which stands for Channel Quality Driven Data Rate. CQDDR is
now a de-facto technical standard being deployed in new
generation cars which helps aid in the very tough environmental
conditions inside a vehicle on a wireless Bluetooth link to ensure
very robust data throughput. CSR has optimised CQDDR to
operate quickly and efficiently and totally out-of-sight to the user.

Anthony Murray, Bluetooth Automotive Specialist at CSR added,
“To match BMW’s stringent quality, reliability and interoperability
requirements, the Bluetooth equipment had to be guaranteed to
withstand in-cabin automotive requirements”. Murray continued,
“At this time, only CSR’s BlueCore offers such a guarantee to
operate or exceed the necessary range of -40degC to +105degC
for in-cabin electronics systems. Automakers and Automotive Tier
One suppliers can not afford to rely on anything less.”

Wireless automotive applications are expected to generate
US$1.5 billion in additional sales for car OEMs by the end of
2003 and will be worth US$6 billion in less than three years,
according to Allied Business Intelligence (ABI). Bluetooth is likely
to represent the majority share of this huge market. In fact, ABI
predicted that 20 percent of all new cars will come with
embedded Bluetooth technology by 2007.

Already illegal in 35 countries, the worldwide legislative trend
towards banning the use of handheld mobile phones whilst driving
will be a factor fuelling the addition of Bluetooth to cars and
Bluetooth in-car kits are likely to play a key role as hands-free
operation of mobiles becomes commonplace. Industry experts
estimate that up to 70 percent of all mobile phone calls are made
from cars. Bluetooth hands-free systems provide a safe,
convenient alternative.

CSR recognises this need and provides everything necessary to
assist automotive designers in developing a fully featured Bluetooth
hands-free system, including the recently announced AutoSira, an
example design which includes ciruit descriptions, a complete
BOM and all software (including the embedded Bluetooth stack).
The hands-free profile runs in external Flash memory but the
circuit design may be easily converted to a ROM-based single
chip solution.

In the future, CSR will make available implementations of new
automotive profiles for vehicle diagnostics, streaming video and
mp3 file streaming for multimedia and info-entertainment. CSR will
also work towards further extending the guaranteed temperature
range of BlueCore2-External and future products.

About CSR
CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio) is the world leading provider of
single-chip radio devices for Bluetooth wireless communication.
CSR offers developed hardware/software packages for each of
the fastest growing Bluetooth applications markets which are all
based around BlueCore, a fully integrated 2.4 GHz radio,
baseband and microcontroller. BlueCore features in 60 percent of
all qualified Bluetooth v 1.1 enabled end product designs with
international names such as Microsoft Corp, Panasonic, Audi,
NEC, Toshiba, Samsung and Sony already using BlueCore in their
range of Bluetooth products.

CSR is headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with offices in
Richardson, Texas; Tokyo, Japan; Singapore and Aalborg,
Denmark.

More information can be found at www.csr.com and the partner
web site www.btdesigner.com

More information about Bluetooth can be found on the SIG web
site at www.bluetooth.com

http://www.itsecurity.com/tecsnews/jun2003/jun253.htm

Plan for wireless before rogue access points appear
Tue Jun 24, 8:00 AM ET


Mia Shopis, SearchSecurity.com Assistant Site Editor

Many IT administrators may be surprised to learn that their enterprise (news
- web sites) has a wireless (news - web sites) local area network (LAN) in
operation -- and it's the kind of discovery that gives IT cold sweats.

There's no denying that wireless networks are
on the increase, especially with Starbucks,
airports, hotels and private individuals jumping
on the bandwagon and providing free access to
the willing. If a user can log on in a coffee shop
or catch someone else's access for free, why
can't it be done at the office?

Rogue wireless access points are a serious
security problem for IT administrators, however.
Wireless networks are fairly inexpensive and
easy to set up. Linksys, Siemens and D-Link
Systems all sell wireless routers for between
$65 and $200. So, instead of waiting for IT to
get around to it, workers are setting up their
own networks -- logging on, surfing and
downloading -- all under the nose of IT.

Wireless demand certainly puts security
administrators and IT managers in a bind. On
one hand, there are users clamoring for it, but
on the other, there remain serious security
issues. Encryption technology in WEP (Wired
Equivalent Privacy), which is based on static
keys that can easily be deciphered by a
talented hacker, puts sensitive data at risk. The
upcoming Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)
standard implements different keys for each
packet, making it more secure. Still, most
enterprises are not planning for wireless deployments, but are reacting
instead, said Gartner Inc. analyst John Pescatore.

However, it's very clear that IT and network administrators are going to need
to add wireless LANs to their "to-do" list. Better to set up a network, a
security policy and education sessions first, before unsecured, rogue
wireless LANs pop up. Given the appropriate education, users can learn how
to safely use their mobile devices and protect their data from loss or theft.

"Don't assume that your devices are trustworthy, and make people aware of
this problem," said Gartner analyst John Girard.

In short, wireless LANs don't have to be a nightmare. With the proper
precautions, they can give workers greater mobility and be another secure
method of communication.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...c_techtarget/911444

Edited by author 06-26-2003 11:24 AM
Tips on setting up a wireless LAN

Analyst offers money-saving advice

By BRIAN SULLIVAN
JUNE 25, 2003

BOSTON -- When setting up a wireless LAN for
your company, there are a couple of things you
should keep in mind, according to Craig
Mathias, a mobile and wireless analyst and
founder of Ashland, Mass.-based Farpoint
Group.

First, forget about conducting a site survey
to determine the location of access points. Unless
your company has a big facility with a large
number of users, site surveys are a waste of
money, Mathias said at a workshop at the 802.11
Planet conference here today.

"We generally don't recommend site surveys anymore because it is just taking a
client's money," Mathias said.
Access points are relatively cheap, between $600 and $1,000, so it's easy to buy
more if coverage is spotty, he said. Trial and error works just as well as hiring
someone to map out where each access point should be, he added.

When buying access points, keep in mind that they all should be the same brand and
model, Mathias said. Don't assume that products from multiple vendors will work
together just because the vendors say they're compatible, he said. The same goes
for "Wi-Fi-enabled" stickers. Read the fine print to ensure that the devices are
compatible, Mathias said.

He also recommended against using spectrum analyzers to determine dead spots for
all but the largest networks. Such tools can cost as much as $2,000 for a handheld
and $24,000 for a large system.

Mathias suggested that vendors' claims about device performance be "de-rated" by
50% to 60%. And he cautioned that ever-changing environmental conditions affect
performance. Those could even include a metal cart rolling down a hallway. Mathias
also noted that all the metal tooth fillings, earrings, wristwatches and other
accessories that people in the audience were wearing had created a "radio hell"
that would affect the WLAN that was running in the hall.

Benchmarking is difficult to do, Mathias added. He said that when he benchmarks a
product, he does it in real-world conditions and runs the tests for 48 to 72
hours. Often, he runs conflicting devices to see which can handle interference
better.
Companies shouldn't worry about range when configuring a WLAN, Mathias said. They
should worry more about optimizing a WLAN for capacity, he said. Short-range
devices, for example, can be compensated for by adding more access points and
antennas. Short-range devices will also save users money because they use less
power and allow for greater throughput of information.

As for security, Mathias said that the Wired Equivalent Privacy protocol for
802.11 devices is "junk." He called the security standard a place holder until
something better can be built, adding that no one should rely on it. Instead, he
said, companies should build in end-to-end security, for example, by encrypting
data going over both the wireless and wired parts of the network.

Mathias also advised companies not to worry about outsiders seeking an opportunity
to tap into their networks.
"Who is going to sit in your parking lot waiting for something interesting to
happen?" he asked.
What an information thief is more likely to do is to break into the Ethernet
connection or simply steal a device, Mathias said. Most people don't encrypt the
data on their devices, and it's easy for a thief to distract you at an airport and
steal your handheld device or laptop, he added.

Mathias will participate in a panel discussion on the future of 802.11 tomorrow.
The conference runs through June 27.

http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/...0.html?nas=PM-82489

VoIP-enabled WLANs offer cutting-edge benefits

Tue Jun 24, 8:00 AM ET

Jim Rendon,
SearchMobileComputing.com News Writer

NEW YORK -- As companies are starting to get their feet wet with voice over
Internet Protocol (VoIP) and, at the same time, setting up wireless local
area networks remains a pet project for many businesses, one presenter at
CeBit America 2003 made a strong case for merging the two.

Jason Johnson, director of the Wireless VoIP Consortium -
http://www.wirelessvoip.org/index.html - and a speaker last week at CeBit,
argued that that's why companies should consider adding voice to their Wi-Fi
networks. The two technologies are working their way into enterprises on a
similar timetable, and companies can gain both increased efficiency and cost
savings by deploying wireless VoIP systems.


Citing a study paid for by Cisco Systems Inc., Johnson said that the average
employee spends 40% of his time away from his desk. As a result, seven of
every 10 calls end up in voicemail, and employees then spend one and a half
hours per day leaving and returning voicemail messages.


Given those work patterns, Johnson said, it makes sense for employees to use
mobile phones in their offices. However, many companies do not forward calls
directly to mobile phones, and increased in-office mobile phone use can be
expensive.


If employees use wireless VoIP systems, they will have a single number for
all of their calls, he said. They can take their phones with them when they
move through the office, and even to remote hot spots, hotels and other
places where Wi-Fi networks exist. If an employee is calling the office,
these calls can be made at little additional cost.


With VoIP systems, presence awareness functionality can be integrated into
the voice applications. Not only can users know who is available before they
call, but presence awareness can also cut down on voicemail. Unlike wide
area network wireless air interface standards, the 802.11 standard is
global; the devices will work anywhere they can pick up a signal.


Michael Jablon, an independent consultant based in Stamford, Conn., and an
attendee at the show, said that, with a Wi-Fi VoIP phone using the Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP) standard, one could make Internet phone calls
anywhere in the world for a flat fee. That, he said, is a very compelling
application.


But this technology faces a number of hurdles. Wi-Fi security is still an
issue, even with the arrival of products that use the improved Wi-Fi
Protected Access (WPA) security protocol.


The largest roadblock is quality of service. Wi-Fi was not designed for
voice traffic, which is very sensitive to latency and jitter. Right now,
Jablon said, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is
developing a new standard called 802.11e, which will give voice traffic
priority over data traffic.


Franklin Baitman, a partner with the Stevenson, Md.-based consultancy Nobska
Group LLC, said that many companies decide against deploying voice service
on top of their wireless LANs because they are not comfortable enough with
security and quality of service. But he added that large companies make the
opposite decision because they are more comfortable with Wi-Fi as a reliable
medium for voice data.

Source: http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/

StayOnline, Boingo target in-room Wi-Fi

 Dan O'Shea

TlephonyOnline.com, Jun 25 2003

 

StayOnline, a service provider addressing the market for Wi-Fi inside hotel rooms, and Wi-Fi aggregator Boingo Wireless have announced a partnership that will make it easier for users of Boingo’s interface to log-on from StayOnline rooms.
Though the idea of taking Wi-Fi access beyond the hotel lobby and common area hot spots has been gaining steam recently, the relationship with Boingo should give StayOnline a much broader potential market reach. StayOnline operates wireless systems at more than 130 hotels, including Hilton, Crowne Plaza, Embassy Suites, Marriott, Renaissance and Sheraton brands.

“The tide is quickly turning as business travelers are now actively seeking out hotels with wireless access, not only in common areas, but throughout the hotel,” said StayOnline President Antonio DiMilia said in a statement. “By accommodating subscribers to the Boingo roaming system, we enhance our client hotels’ status with these travelers.”

The agreement also means carrier member of Boingo’s Carrier Platform Services program can provide their subscribers with Wi-Fi access at StayOnline hotels. The program offers private label Wi-Fi software and roaming services to major carriers and ISPs. Current partners include EarthLink, Fiberlink and Metrocall, as well as T-Mobile for client software.

Boingo, based in Santa Monica, Calif., has more than 1300 public hot spots using its systems, including many hotels, airports and cafes. StayOnline is based in Atlanta, and so far has Wi-Fi installed at about 100 hotels.

Remote Alaskan Community 'Plugged In' to the Internet
With SkyFrames' Wireless Satellite Broadband System

    SkyFrames, Inc., a provider of low-cost, highly secure satellite broadband Internet services, is very pleased to announce that the Company has completed the infrastructure installation of its integrated satellite wireless Internet solution in the rural community of Coffman Cove, Alaska. Coffman Cove is a community of 200 residents located 250 miles south of Juneau on Prince of Wales Island. Deployment of the SkyFrames' Satellite system infrastructure from inception to "plug in" was completed in 7 days. SkyFrames' solution now provides the citizens, businesses and city government entities; including the public library, administration building, and business training center, with a broadband pipe to the worldwide web.

    Prior to the installation of SkyFrames' Wireless Satellite System, citizens of Coffman Cove wanting access to the Internet had to call long distance via a slow dial-up connection. Under this scenario, a single email could take up to 10 minutes to download. This method was very costly, frustrating and limited. In April 2003, citizens of Coffman Cove voted overwhelmingly to utilize municipal funds to create their own Municipal ISP. As a result of the installation, Coffman Cove now has access to T1 equivalent broadcast speeds across the SkyFrames' Satellite System," stated Ed Bukstel, Vice President, Marketing of SkyFrames. "In the near future, they will also have VoIP telephone and web conferencing features added. Aside from the technology component, the logistical and human effort was phenomenal. The installation team arrived in Coffman Cove via jet, barge, ferry, and seaplane from Philadelphia, Iowa, Wisconsin, and California. When the nearest hardware store is 130 miles away, you have to prepare for anything," Bukstel further stated.

    "We are very pleased to bring the beautiful remote community of Coffman Cove into the broadband arena," stated Jim France, CEO of SkyFrames. "At a time when communities around the country are developing new product and service offerings via the Internet, broadband service is an important economic and educational enabling factor. SkyFrames believes the residents of Coffman Cove will now be bringing their contribution to the digital marketplace through the SkyFrames System," France further stated.

    "We are very pleased with the installation of SkyFrames' wireless network in Coffman Cove," stated Elaine Price, City Administrator. "There were many people that said it couldn't be done, but SkyFrames did it."

    The SkyFrames Satellite Broadband Service is a combination of wireless connectivity solutions that includes 802.11 and omni-directional radio frequency antennas. In the Coffman Cove ISP, each subscriber will receive their own IP address and will be responsible for paying monthly broadband charges. Additional network subscribers have already expressed interest and will be signing up during the next few weeks. Other potential subscribers include ferryboats and fishing vessels that pass Coffman Cove. The wireless broadband signal is projected from Prince of Wales Island into a popular commercial waterway.

    Americans living in rural areas are lagging behind the national average in computer and Broadband Internet access, regardless of income level. As a result, the Federal Government is taking a substantial step to help rural communities receive broadband access.

    A government delegation composed of Senator Ted Stevens, Governor Frank Murkowski, and Representative Don Young recently visited the Coffman Cove. This Community has taken a proactive approach to bringing broadband to its citizens, the fishery, the public library and the city's Postal Service.

    The Federal Government, under the United States Department of Agriculture, recently launched the Rural Broadband Loan and Loan Guarantee Program. The Federal Government has made available $1.4 billion in loans and loan guarantees to provide broadband services in rural communities.

    Alaska is made up of approximately 300 rural communities such as Coffman Cove. With Coffman Cove on-line, other rural Alaskan communities now have access to Federal resources, as well as a working model to create their own ISP utilizing SkyFrames' Satellite Broadband Services.

Convergence Goes Wireless

By John Jainschigg
06/04/2003 5:00 PM EST
URL: http://www.cconvergence.com/shared/article...?articleId=10300173

You're sitting in your office, working away, waiting for a phone call. But then someone calls you into a meeting. What do you do?

Yes, yes ... clever computer telephony types will have several answers: filtered forwarding, automated call-park and announcement, etc. But let's be real: the best solution is wireless. Just pick up your extension, stick it in your pocket, and go to your meeting.

In today's frenzied, staffed-down, cranked-up, survival-mode business scene, in-office wireless voice connectivity is a no-brainer. "Calls going straight to people" should be part of the mission-statement for any organization that cares about productivity ... about serving customers ... about getting paid.

A decade ago, before ubiquitous cellular telephony (and almost equally-ubiquitous home wireless phones), this was a harder sell - a harder concept to grasp. Voice messaging was supposed to stop the gap between ring-no-answer and (eventual) response.

But now, the definition of "accessibility" has changed. Media like email and IM offer more convenient, reliably-auditable alternatives to voicemail jail for "subcritical" work-group communications. But - driven by the cellular model - the phone is now, more than ever, the preferred means for mission-critical, can't-wait communications. It's the tool bosses use to bark commands to subordinates. The tool customers use to complain about service outages. The tool the daycare person uses when the baby spikes a fever. And when these folks call, voicemail won't cut it.

Thus: in-office wireless. "Haul-it-out-of-your-pocket-and-answer-in-the-elevator" has, for good or ill, become a hallmark of good service: one of the simplest, and most effective ways businesspeople can "show up."

CELLULAR FORWARDING

The simplest way to go wireless, of course, is to use the offsite-transfer feature of your PBX to forward calls to your cell phone. Those gifted with contemporary PBX and/or integrated unified communications systems can be very clever here: filtering calls, letting some pass through to voicemail, having others forwarded automatically. They can set up their systems to try their cell phone whenever their extension is RNA - even prompting with the caller's name so that you know whether or not to take the call.

The trouble is: this is cellular. If you're out of the office and on the go, it's probably the only practical solution. If you're in the office, it will typically give you little joy.

Reception is iffy - highly-sensitive to location. If you've forwarded calls to your cell via standard transfer, the Calling Line ID on your cell phone will record your office's telephone number, not the caller's - useless for call screening, or for one-touch callback (if the call goes south, mid-sentence). Even if the call reaches you and call-quality is acceptable, you may not be able to transfer, open a second line, initiate a multiparty conference, or do other useful tricks. In the end, you may need to defer business until you can return to your desk. Congratulations - wireless has made you 100% more accessible, but no more efficient.

IN-OFFICE DEDICATED WIRELESS

Beginning in the early- to mid-90s, companies like Uniden and SpectraLink, and eventually most of the larger PBX vendors, began offering better solutions for in-office wireless. The low-end market entrants in this class were (and are) slightly amped-up versions of home wireless phones, where a single transceiver base station - often attached to a spare analog line - communicates with a generic wireless handset. Depending on the technology used (900 MHz spread-spectrum was common, initially - 1.8 or 2.4 GHz more common, today) and on environmental factors, you can range 50-150 feet from the base station and still (usually) get your calls. The user-interface on entry-level generic phones tends to be clumsy (flash-plus-DTMF-access to your PBX's analog feature-set), though no worse than any analog extension.

A second generation of PBX-adapted wireless extensions swiftly followed - many designs OEM'd from Uniden by different PBX makers. Same basic RF technology - one phone per base station/charger - staying perhaps one generation ahead of what was state-of-the-art for the home market; but with digital station emulation and an improved user interface with a few dedicated keys for hold, transfer, conference; perhaps some programmable keys, and a small LCD for menus, prompts, Caller ID. In a parallel channel, companies like Siemens experimented with various iterations of multiline small-office "wireless PBX" - their 'GigaSet,' for example, offered up to eight 2.4 GHz extensions, all registering with a single multiline business phone-cum-digital-voicemail-cum-transceiver.

Products in these simpler classes (though not the GigaSet - retired apparently due to poor quality-control) are still widely available: the PBX-adapted units through PBX sales channels; the generics and stand-alones through SOHO channels (e.g., Hello Direct). Most represent good value for money, despite their limitations. In a small office, they may be all you'll need.

In a bigger office or campus environment, where you want to roam freely, or empower hundreds or thousands of users, they're clearly insufficient. Enter in-office dedicated wireless network systems. Pioneered by SpectraLink, this paradigm has continued to evolve to the present day - represented by their Link WTS Wireless Telephone System (see Figure 1). The largest PBX makers have their own entries in this category.

SpectraLink's Link WTS - typical of the breed - includes a master control unit (MCU) and optional OAI interface to an application server. The MCU is integrated portwise, directly to the PBX. (PBX makers such as Alcatel and Iwatsu have collapsed the MCU component to a plug-in PBX card). Smaller-scale models hook to up to 16 analog ports per unit and daisy-chain to support more ports; larger-scale, card-cage models (Link 3000 MCU) can accomodate multiple T-1s and expand to up to 3,200 ports. The MCUs hook by network-grade twisted-pair cable to transceiver base stations up to 6,000 feet away. Each base station - like a miniature cell-site - can handle up to four simultaneous calls; and the phones and transceivers interoperate to permit graceful hand-off from one base station to another as a caller moves around. User interfaces vary - the baseline model, analog-integrated, provides flash-DTMF and programmable smart-key (much better!) access to PBX or Centrex features. SpectraLink also adapts and OEMs their products to major PBX manufacturers, including Inter-Tel and NEC - OEM versions feature dedicated keys and a 'look and feel' that approximates a digital station set.

Using products such as SpectraLink's Link WTS, you can wire up a large office building, grounds, factories, a campus, a multi-building office park, obtaining high-performance wireless voice and a relatively high degree of integration with PBX features. Having a dedicated network (central unit, wires, transceiver base stations) has certain advantages, including a level of intrinsic redundancy. The technology is mature and works great: SpectraLink phones sound considerably better than cellular (or, for that matter, all but the very best single-line wireless phones). And the technology is optimized for business use: centralized management, a suite of applications (for text-messaging, email, etc., available via the OAI interface from third-party vendors), security, etc.

WiFi WIRELESS VOICE

But it's not convergent, open, multipurpose! You still have to pull special wires to the transceivers. The transceivers are dedicated: all they do is serve the wireless extensions. And those transceivers are loaded with proprietary RF technology, handoff technology, etc.

Technology, in short, that does pretty much the same thing as the increasingly-commoditized stuff in your brand-new WiFi network. Which is why the world of in-office wireless telephony has suddenly taken a sharp turn towards convergence and compatibility with 802.11.

SpectraLink, Symbol Technologies, and several other entrants are now busily staking out this turf. All are taking essentially the same approach: they offer a gateway device that integrates portwise to a legacy PBX and converts voice to IP packets - initially on the wired LAN, thence to its wireless domains. These packets find their way to endpoint devices that speak 802.11 natively - either in its slower, frequency-hopping form (1mbps) or its faster direct-sequence form (11 mbps). Result: wireless IP telephony. See Figure 2. for a schematic of SpectraLink's NetLink 802.11-based system.

The SpectraLink gateway communicates with 16 endpoint devices via H.323 with SpectraLink proprietary extensions - effectively standing in for the MCU in a dedicated wireless network setup. When integrated with a legacy PBX, the gateway can emulate digital stations from a wide range of manufacturers - proxying and translating to provide an analogous user interface on the wireless device. When the system is integrated directly to an IP PBX, the gateway is eliminated - stations themselves can be firmware'd to emulate proprietary H.323-based IP stations, and SpectraLink has one that's Cisco SCCP-compatible as well.

SpectraLink adds some additional hardware and logic to improve QoS: they have a proprietary voice-packet-forwarding scheme called SVP (SpectraLink Voice Prioritization) that you set up by cabling a special SVP server to the wired LAN and setting your 802.11 access points appropriately (presuming they support SVP, which selected models from Avaya, Cisco, Enterasys, Intermec, Symbol, Proxim, Teklogix and others now do). SpectraLink's website (www.spectralink.com) has a frequently-updated list of compatible 802.11 access points. Clearly, this adds some cost to the system - though as typical WiFi link speeds increase from the current 1mbps de-facto rate, it may be possible to avoid this expense. Alternatively, IP PBX makers may license and add SVP or similar QoS protocols to their products in future, eliminating need to purchase and install a stand-alone device.

Adding voice to a WiFi network makes sense from a number of different perspectives. You eliminate redundant wiring and transceiver devices - the latter a major component of cost in dedicated in-office wireless networks. Your wiring efforts serve a dual purpose - enabling data communications as well as voice. The typical map for a WiFi buildout includes conference rooms, reception areas, office blocks, warehouses - the same places you'd want to make accessible to wireless voice users. Wiring, in general, is simplified, because a single high-speed LAN backbone carries all packet traffic back and forth between far-flung wireless domains and the central point of integration with a legacy PBX - you don't need to pull multiple home-runs back to a single location and plug them into a wireless MCU.

802.11 is also, arguably, a more robust means of transmitting information. An 802.11 direct-sequence (as opposed to frequency-hopping) voice phone can work up to 1,000 feet from a base station, meaning that (depending on the number of simultaneous users in an area) you may be able to get away with fewer access points than you would with a dedicated wireless network. Larger access-point footprint size also means (in general) fewer handoffs. In fact, this is a good thing, since 802.11 access-point handoff was designed to serve data, not voice (and may cause momentary-but-audible problems in a voice environment).

So, too, use of IP and 802.11b, in principle, should permit eventual commoditization of wireless endpoint hardware, making the per-endpoint price more manageable - even cheap. Use of IP also provides easier, more straightforward means for integrating wireless endpoints with applications. By the same token, increasingly standards-based wireless packet telephony infrastructure is now capable of supporting software-only solutions - for example, IP Blue and several other vendors now offer H.323, SIP and SCCP-compatible softphones that run reasonably well on 802.11-enabled handhelds, like the Compaq iPaq.

Here's a roundup of some of the hottest new wireless products.

ALCATEL

Alcatel (Calabasas, CA - 800-995-2612) offers their 4073 PWT in-building wireless phones, which work with IP-networked base stations, driven by MCUs on PBX cards. Interestingly, their MCU cards can drive up to 16 base stations per card (64 wireless users) or a mix of base stations and standard digital extensions. An Alcatel OmniPCX can be equipped with up to 256 base stations in all, supporting up to 1,000 users. The PWT phones offer access to most features of Alcatel's Reflexes station-set, including text-messaging. They sit in a nifty charging station that doubles as a desktop speakerphone.

Alcatel also partners with SpectraLink and Symbol for 802.11-based VoIP wireless telephony.

AVAYA

Avaya (Basking Ridge, NJ - 866-462-8292, www.avaya.com) offers a host of wireless solutions. Their simplest is the TransTalk 9000 line, which connects small wireless base stations to analog or digital ports (depending on TransTalk model) on Partner, Merlin, Definity and IP Office PBXs. Base stations are networked to provide single- or dual-zone coverage of large areas. Each base station supports two MDW 9040 handsets. The handsets provide a solid UI that's analogous to that of a feature set.

Avaya's IP Softphone for PocketPC is a freely-downloadable (if you own an Avaya softphone license) 802.11-based softphone for efficient mobile communications within the footprint of an 802.11 LAN that's integrated (via gateway, as required) to an Avaya PBX.

Avaya also OEMs a 900 MHz version of SpectraLink's Link WTS, as well as their NetLink system for 802.11-based wireless voice.

CISCO

Cisco (San Jose, CA, 800-553-6387, www.cisco.com) just introduced the wireless IP Phone 7920. Effectively, it's a Cisco deskset in a wireless package. It has a pixel-based display, softkeys, and a rocker switch for scrolling through menus; Hold and Mute keys; six line appearances (each with its own speed-dial key) plus additional speed-dial key combos, displays calling name and number, provides one-touch access to voicemail and other AVVID features. It's an 802.11b direct-sequence phone, and can run up to 500-1000 feet from a base station, depending on environmental factors.

The 7920 is compatible with Cisco's AVVID and Aironet access points, including the 1200, 1100, 350 and 340 series. No additional gateway or MCU devices are required.

INTER-TEL

Inter-Tel (Tempe, AZ - 480,449-8900, www.inter-tel.com) is compatible with SpectraLink's Link WTS dedicated premise wireless system. On the 802.11 side, they've released an H.323-based softphone for Pocket PC. They also sell Unified Communicator - a sophisticated call control system that lets you emulate an Inter-Tel handset on a WAP phone or PDA (among many other features).

IWATSU

Iwatsu (Carlstadt, NJ - 800-974-5070, www.iwatsu.com) offers Omegatrek, a 1.9 GHz unlicensed PCS-band dedicated-wireless solution. The Omegatrek MCU integrates directly into their ADIX PBX as an internal card. The MCU can support up to 108 remote base stations on a standard ADIX (96 on ADIX APS). Each base station can support up to four simultaneous users - the system as a whole can be optioned to support 392 handsets. Base stations can range as much as 3,180 feet from the central controller, if you wire it with AWG 18 four-wire cable.

The endpoint lets you access ADIX system features via eight programmable multi-purpose keys with red/green LED, plus seven feature keys. It features an integrated speakerphone for voice announce and hands-free answerback. Has a three-line LCD. Stores 500 speed-dial numbers. And of course, there's a headset jack.

SYMBOL

Symbol Technologies (Lake Forest, CA - 800-877-3897, www.symbol.com) makes a wide range of 802.11 access devices, under the Spectrum24 WLAN aegis. They also make the NetVision phone, which can be firmware'd to support generic H.323, Mitel MiNET or Cisco SCCP protocol. A gateway makes the connection to legacy PBXs.

UNIDEN

Uniden's (Fort Worth, TX - 800-297-1023, www.uniden.com) makes a line of single-line analog wireless phones that can add solid, short-range wireless capability to any small PBX. Their ANA 9310 is a 900MHz cordless with a built-in RF collision-avioidance system. A tiny handset features a 16-digit, two-line LCD and 20 speed-dial numbers.

Uniden has also just introduced an extremely low-cost H.323 IP telephone with a built-in directory, large LCD and many smartkeys, and has announced a relationship with Artisoft to supply this phone for use with their TeleVantage PBX. Uniden's other IP phones include an H.323 phone certified as compatible with Lucent's iMerge Centrex Feature Gateway.

TOSHIBA

Still under embargo at press time (but not when you read this, otherwise we'd be in jail), Toshiba's (Irvine, CA - 949-583-3000, www.tais.com) new Mobility Communications System (MCS) is an 802.11-based wireless VoIP system for Toshiba Strata CTX or third party PBXs. Based on SIP, the product is emerging from a Toshiba initiative called ITSUMO - Internet Technology Supporting Universal Mobile Operation: a collaborative effort ofToshiba Telecommunication Systems Division, Toshiba Computer Systems Division, and the resources of Toshiba America Research, Inc.

The MCS system was designed to integrate with the Strata CTX telephone system to provide all the features and functionality of Toshiba's digital telephones. By adding a media gateway to the network, MCS can also connect to other telephone system brands, while providing some of the most often used office telephone features. Easy Internet-based management gives you anywhere access to your system and the ability to configure, add, delete, view usage, and much more at your convenience.

The MCS system uses powerful PANA security - Toshiba's proprietary Layer 3 network authentication protocol - which works with existing network security to ensure wireless communications remain private and secure and maintain the highest quality service possible.

MITEL

Mitel (Herndon, VA - 703-318-7020, www.mitel.com) offers 802.11-based wireless VoIP via an OEM'd version of Symbol Technologies' NetVision telephone and Spectrum24 base station/gateway equipment. The device has firmware to support Mitel's proprietary MiNET extensions to H.323, and the endpoint device user interface maps almost 100% to standard digital station features.

NEC

NEC (Irving, TX - 800-338-9549, www.necusa.com) is partnering with SpectraLink to produce a seamlessly-compatible enterprise 802.11b wireless VoIP system based on SpectraLink's NetLink. The first generation of this product, produced as part of NEC's emerging NEON initiative, will private-label e340 and i640 wireless telephones incorporating NEC's dTerm IP protocol (H.323 + NEC extensions). NEC also expects to create a wireless switch that will provision, power- and frequency-manage 802.11 access points used for voice and data applications.

SPECTRALINK

In addition to the Link WTS and NetLink systems and endpoints exhaustively described in this article, SpectraLink has just announced a NetLink-compatible line of desk phones. Incorporating a speakerphone, large display, and special feature keys, the NetLink Wireless Desksets will be available as standalone desktop telephones with an integrated 802.11b wireless client, or as docking stations for SpectraLink's recently announced NetLink e340 and NetLink i640 Wireless Telephones. In the docking station configuration the user has the option of using the NetLink Wireless Deskset's traditional wired handset or the NetLink Wireless Telephone handset to roam throughout the enterprise.

VOCERA

Vocera (Cupertino, CA - 800-331-6356, www.vocera.com) makes an extremely-cool 802.11-based "phone system" designed for communications in and around hospitals. A server hooks to your LAN - the server integrates IP telephony componentry and Vocera system software with a speech recognition engine. Users wear sleek little badges comprising an 802.11 wireless endpoint, speaker, mic, and a small display. To communicate, you just speak the name of the party or parties to whom you wish to be connected - the speech-rec engine figures out who you want to speak with and sets up the call paths across your wireless LAN. All hands-free. Integrates with text-messaging, standard telephone trunks.

You've Been Ripped

Gutterwatch Reporters leave flies open for flies to fly into


By Tom Henderson: Tuesday 24 June 2003, 09:44

IMAGINE FOR a moment that you're in a flashback Max Headroom episode, where all of your credentials, from online access to credit cards to your flat key are now instantly and wholly invalidated. You rush to the bank, where you’re shown the door after a clerk determines that your account never existed, let alone had funds in it. You’ve become a non-person. Your name's been scraped from all databases, file cabinets, and messaging lists. Even your driver's license, vehicle reg, and other relational data are gone. Welcome to the nightmare of data dependency.
The reality of the nightmare is that we're adding technologies at furious paces where the information that's communicated from devices is as easy to read as this column. Currently, the biggest privacy compromise comes from WLANs. During my tour of New York last week for CeBIT America Version 1.0, I took along a wireless analyzer that's in my lab for review, along with a NetGear 802.11a/b/g card.

At the trade fair, I discovered 71 access points in the Jacob Javitz Convention Center; most of them were 802.11b, but there were a handful of 802.11a and a surprising number of 802.11g. Many of the APs were open as public access points. Since I had a few minutes here and there, I decided to use the packet capture function of the analyzer software to see if I could find some juicy bits floating through the air. The results were both jaw dropping and hilarious.

Many of the users were fellow members of the press. I won't name names or affiliations. Instead, I’ll relate the following items that I discovered