WiMax Numbers

Infonetics Research's latest WiMAX and Outdoor Mesh Network Equipment report says that 'radio access networks' (they call them RANs) had an overall jump in sales of 20% to $8.9 billion from Q1 to Q2 of this year. WiMax by itself was up 107% to $141 million. They expect RAN growth to continue through 2009, fueled mainly by the sales of Wi-Fi switches and controllers. Look for WiMax sales to go to $3 billion by 2009, with more than two-thirds of the equipment revenue from the sale of customer premises equipment (CPE). 40% of that will be in the Asia Pacific region; North America will account for only 17%.

Tropos Mentioned in ABC 7 Story on Wi-Fi

A WiFi network requires the installation of hundreds of routers on top of light poles. It took 414 of them to blanket Mountain View. Tropos Networks in Sunnyvale supplies the units and the software to most of the metro-wide systems. It has 110 employees now, but will add at least 50 more next year as more cities leap into WiFi. Chief Executive Ron Sege says there are 250 million WiFi equipped devices, many of them waiting to connect. "Every Sony Play Station portable has WiFi on it. Every Nintendo DS gaming machine has WiFi on it. An incredible number of cameras have WiFi on it. So you can only imagine how people will start using those devices as metro-scale WiFi becomes ubiquitous."

Mesh Lights Up Toronto

Touting its 1.5-square-kilometer WiFi mesh system as the 'first municipal network to go live in a major metropolitan area in North America,' Toronto Hydro Telecom Inc. said today it has lit up Phase 1 of the project that is planned to eventually cover the entire city of Toronto. The network includes dense array of nodes (88 for the 1.5km first phase) and, upon completion sometime in 2008, will cover the entire 460 square kilometers of greater Toronto using BA 200 access points from BelAir.

IBM, Cisco & SeaKay Win Silicon Valley Wi-Fi Bid

Free Wi-Fi is coming to 2.4 million Silicon Valley residents by way of Silicon Valley Metro Connect, a consortium that counts IBM Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. as members. The consortium beat out several other bidders, including VeriLAN and MetroFI, for the task of unwiring 38 cities in California's San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda and Santa Cruz counties. The network will likely need anywhere from 40,000 to 50,000 of access points when finished, says Cohen. Cisco's Aironet 1500 mesh units provide 11b/g for access and use 5GHz 802.11a for backhaul. The project will cost between $75 to $250 million.

Switching from cell to Wi-Fi, seamlessly

T-Mobile USA, the fourth-largest mobile phone company in the United States, is preparing to launch a service this month that will allow people talking on their cell phones to seamlessly switch between T-mobile's cellular network and their home Wi-Fi networks.

Harold Feld on the dangers of incumbents getting into muni Wi-Fi

Harold Feld writes on the dangers of using an incumbent like AT&T or a cable company to deploy and run a citywide wireless broadband network. He also differentiates between "muni broadband" and "community broadband." A municiple network is operated by a local government with a responisbility to all of its residents and operated for specific purposes responsive to those broader needs. Community-based networks are maintained by residents and private (usually non-profit) organizations within specific communities to meet the needs of that specific community.

Providence to announce emergency wireless communications system

The Mayor of Providence, David N. Cicilline, will announce today a new wireless communications system. The system, developed by Motorola, has been designed to allow emergency responders to access information from any location in the city. The news conference will feature a demonstration of how the system will work. The system, valued at over $2 million, was financed via a grant from the Federal Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Justice Department.

Podcast Interview: Matthew Gast

Glenn Fleishamn interviews Task Group N member about the politics, the technology, and actual speed 802.11n will deliver.