2 front-runners vie for Houston Wi-Fi project

Houston moves forward with two finalists: The city will consider EarthLink and a firm with local ties, Convergent Broadband. The network would span 600 square miles.

Google Invests in Meraki

Meraki Networks is building a business off of wireless mesh hardware and software based on the MIT's Roofnet project. Google has been very interested in the Mountain View-based startup as a way to extend its WiFi network coverage indoors.

Booming Business of Muni Wi-Fi

Building out municipal Wi-Fi networks has become abooming and attactive business -- both in the US and internationally -- according to VON magazine.

The Cloud seeks to cover Europe with muni WiFi networks

The Cloud, a company that has established WiFi networks in 16 European cities, including the City of London and Amsterdam, says it will seeking to expand its operatons across the continent over the next two years. According to the company, they are in discussions with over 30 cities, including Stuttgart (Germany). They also have received RFPs from cities like Paris and Prague. Obviously, The Cloud is not the only player in the citywide wireless sector in Europe, but it looks like they are trying to emulate EarthLink in stamping themselves as the leading provider.

Alexandria, Virginia chooses EarthLink for municipal wireless network

Alexandria, Virginia chose EarthLink as the winner of the bid to provide the city with a municipal wireless broadband network that covers 16 square miles (41 square kilometers). The network is open to other service providers on a wholesale basis. EarthLink will deploy Tropos mesh nodes, Motorola's MOTOwi4 portfolio of products, including its Canopy high-speed backhaul and Wi-Fi mesh network equipment.

Waiting on mobile WiMAX

Too many missing details put this wireless broadband technology into the wait-and-see category, according to John Cox of Network World.

New and (Soon) Improved

The Wall Street Journal offers a primer on fixed and mobile WiMAX, with quotes from Clearwire and Alvarion, among other players.

Ruckus Beamforming Upgrade

Ruckus will demo a "smart" consumer-level Wi-Fi system based on next-generation 802.11n technology at CES in January. Current products based on draft 802.11n specification allow devices to transmit at speeds greater than 70 Mbps, but they all have problems sustaining the high performance at far distances, challenging locations or in noisy environments. The Ruckus technology is said to reject noise and delivers consistent throughput regardless of location and device placement. "Patent-pending BeamFlex-N is a dynamically-configurable, multi-polarized antenna system capable of forming thousands of unique antenna patterns to reject interference and focus transmit energy in various directions and orientations. BeamFlex-N selects the best antenna configurations for each packet by identifying the optimum path for each transmit radio and steering signals away from obstacles and interference."

Longer Range Municipal WiFi

"InspiAir says their technology can enable full throughput of 11 Mbps over standard 802.11b, and an extended range up to 5 km (Point-to-Multipoint) and 40km (Point-to-Point) using 100 mW radios. But there's not much to go on." Wavion, in constrast, is represented as a company with a shipping product. Mati is mentioned as a pioneer in the field.

Alvarion Concentrates on WiMAX

Alvarion is selling its Cellular Mobile unit to LG Wireless for $15 million in notes and the assumption of certain liabilities. Alvarion is unloading the unit to focus more of its efforts on WiMAX.

A Bad Week For WiMax

1) Deutsche Telekom has chosen not to use fixed or mobile WiMAX in the foreseeable future to expand their ISP business to rural areas of Germany. They won't bid for 3.5GHz licenses.

2) Nokia has promised a WiMAX phone, but not until 2008.

3) With MIMO integrated into WiMAX technology (which is good), the costs of the CPE are going to exceed expectations (which is bad).

4) The Yankee Group released a major report saying that mobile WiMAX won't be available until 2008.

5) AT&T pulled out of a mobile WiMAX trials in which it was participating with other carriers. AT&T's explanation for leaving the Netherlands-based, multi-operator trials was that 'the technology was too immature'. According to Informa, AT&T says it will be another two years (2008) before 802.16e is mature enough in security terms to power service to enterprise customers.

City Wi-Fi Projects Have A Lot To Prove

More than 300 cities have or plan to have Wi-Fi networks. But the business models and even the technology still are being ironed out, even with Google and Microsoft on board.

Google wants to put up its own SF test network

IDG News Service reports that Google wants to build a test network using as many as 1,500 utility poles in San Francisco that would be separate from the EarthLink network. (Google is EarthLink's partner, but will be a customer of EarthLink's network, purchasing 300 Kbps access that it will give away.) The city thinks it's unlikely to accommodate the request. EarthLink asked the city for access to 450 poles with an option for 1,500. The story says this access would be "a condition of its participating in the project," which is a far cry from earlier statements."

Is Mesh a Problem for MuniFi?

The CEO of Israeli WiFi software equipment company InspiAir1, Tamir Galili, says the inherent limitations of WiFi mesh technology are behind some of the slow MuniFi rollouts in U.S. cities — a lot of the test pilots that these cities are doing are failing, and mesh is just not suitable, he says.

Colubris lands $14M; searches for new CEO

Colubris Networks Inc., a maker of wireless LAN gear based in Waltham, has closed its fourth round of funding to the tune of $14 million. The infusion of cash brings the company's total funding to $50 million since its founding in 2000. All of the company's previous investors participated in the round. The funding also comes despite the departure of Bob Eisenberg, former chief executive officer who left the company three weeks ago "for personal reasons," according to Roger Sands, vice president of engineering and interim co-president.

Wireless Mesh Node Market to Surpass $90M in 1996

Dell'Oro Group reports that shipments of wireless mesh nodes used predominantly to develop metropolitan Wi-Fi networks are on track to generate revenues of over $90 million this year. In the third quarter, Tropos led the wireless mesh node market with 23 percent.

Wi-Fi standards face patent threat

Australian government agency says it invented the tech used in two wireless standards--and it wants manufacturers to pay up.

Dallas gets new citywide public-safety wireless infrastructure

Dallas, Texas has received a partnership with CoCo Communications Corp., who said that the large Southwestern city is poised to become the nation's first city to have fully interoperable communications among municipal public-safety agencies without replacing existing networks.

Wireline Speeds Don't Always Match Promises

"Before we hear too much about how cell, WiMax, and Wi-Fi networks aren't as fast as promised, let's cast a steely eye on wired services: Whether fiber, coax, or phone lines are involved, the New York Times reports on how variables service can be at higher data rates. Wireless, of course, has more difficulties because wireline service tends to be consistent, with congestion being a secondary problem after basic line conditions. If the line is good, it's typically good for as long as the wire or glass is intact. The route out to the Internet at the ISP then becomes the next important factor, and we already know service provider dramatically oversell the ratio between downstream bandwidth to customers and their downstream feed from the Internet -- ratios can vary from 20 to 100 to 1 oversell."

How the new US Congress will affect telecom issues

Harold Feld has a long post on how the newly elected members of Congress could affect telecom and media issues in the United States. With several opponents of net neutrality gone, what will happen next? And it’s not just net neutrality that will be affected, it’s also the opening up of the television “white spaces” for unlicensed use, low power FM, and media consolidation.