Wi-Fi Networking News

Bing Offers Sponsored Wi-Fi after Searching

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:13:13 -0800

Bing is underwriting free Wi-Fi at some hotspots if you perform a single Bing search: Microsoft's new search engine has gotten positive reviews--I quite like it, though I haven't become a regular user yet--and the company has teamed up with JiWire to push brand awareness through sponsored hotspot access. The program started in September, and incorporates thousands of hotspots--though JiWire is providing details about which one. JiWire says that 30 to 40 percent of visitors take Microsoft up on the offer.

[My usual disclosure: I own a vanishingly small number of shares in JiWire, a privately held company, from my time as an employee and consultant.]

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Voters Defeat Longmont Takeover of Failing Wi-Fi System

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:58:25 -0800

This isn't a referendum on cities running Wi-Fi, but shows how freaked out incumbents still get over muni-Fi: Longmont, Colo.'s independent Wi-Fi service provider was struggling, and the city wanted the ability to take over the service should the company fail. However, a variety of Colorado laws required the city to be vague and not spend money saying exactly what it planned to do. Cable operators spent hundreds of thousands to defeat the measure, which implied that the city could run a triple-play system, even over fiber.

Now that the election's over, all the details have come out, and the city may take another go at it. About 400 to 600 citizens will lose Internet access.

MSNBC Examines Free In-Flight Wi-Fi

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:40:12 -0800

The Well-Mannered Traveler, Harriet Baskas, gives an overview and some insight into in-flight Internet: Baskas provides a comprehensive listing of what airlines have free deals, and which flights (if particular ones are involved) are covered. This includes AirTran's Baltimore-to-Boston route, which the airline told Baskas was a competitive advantage. I suspect that Acela is a competitor on that route, among other airlines. (Acela will gain Wi-Fi in about six months.)

Is Verizon Being Unfair to AT&T in 3G Map Comparisons?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:42:57 -0800

AT&T is suing Verizon over a snarky campaign that compares Verizon's 3G coverage to AT&T's: Is this unfair? It's maybe impolite, but it doesn't appear unfair or incorrect. Is it actionable? AT&T says the ads will make customers believe AT&T has no coverage whatsoever, not just no 3G data coverage, in the white areas in the AT&T map displayed. And the map is from a few months ago, while AT&T has built out a bit more blue in that time. (AT&T isn't complaining about the accuracy of the map's depiction of 3G.)

Fundamentally, though, we're seeing a battle between the last advantages of the Qualcomm EVDO standard compared to the GSM evolved HSPA family of standards. When Verizon installed 3G, the company did it in a big way, upgrading a large majority of its 2G 1xRTT nodes to EVDO Rev. 0, and later pushing those to Rev. A for the current footprint and speed. Sprint did likewise.

Verizon had to, because AT&T and T-Mobile had intermediate 2.5G and 3G steps that would have left Sprint and Verizon at a competitive disadvantage. AT&T and T-Mobile pushed out EDGE, which is several times faster than 1xRTT (which runs at fast dial-up modem speeds), and did so relatively inexpensively. AT&T Wireless and Cingular, at the time separate entities, had distinct plans to test and deploy UMTS, the 384 Kbps low-end 3G standard on the road to HSPA. (GSM 3G HSPA standards are broken down into downlink and uplink and there are flavors and steps there, but it's nice to just say HSPA to encompass the realm.)

For AT&T, EDGE was good enough outside metro areas, because it competed effectively with 1xRTT before Verizon and Sprint had a full EVDO footprint (even with Rev. 0). The company then essentially stalled because of first the Cingular/AT&T Wireless merger, and then the 60-40 ownership split between what was then SBC and BellSouth. The two companies didn't see eye-to-eye on spending on 3G. AT&T's 3G plans really only took off after the BellSouth merger, which also gave it 100-percent control of the cellular division. Any rational wireless firm would have spent billions during the good times to get a competitive 3G footprint with the CDMA competitors.

If Verizon and Sprint had limited 3G upgrades just to major metropolitan areas, they would have been way behind the ball--and AT&T would be running ads now laughing at the companies' sub-EDGE speeds in the country, and slower than HSPA rates in the city. (T-Mobile dropped out of this speed war for a few years while it acquired 3G spectrum and deployed its HSPA offering. The firm intends to have the fastest 3G network while 4G networks are being built with a test of 21 Mbps HSPA already underway.)

Verizon has to be aggressive right now, because it's switching to LTE for its 4G network, a GSM-evolved standard. It will be years before it has a national footprint for 4G using LTE (over 700 MHz spectrum). During that time AT&T will have bumped its 3G network nationally to 7.2 Mbps HSPA, and potentially even going to 14.4 Mbps HSPA (that requires more hardware upgrades, so hard to tell), and also pushing out LTE over 700 MHz.

In a couple years, AT&T will have the bragging rights on speeds, will start having a better 3G and 4G map to compare with Verizon, and Verizon will seem like the sucker. At least briefly.

Starbucks Makes It Harder to Get Free Wi-Fi (Revised)

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:44:52 -0800

Starbucks is revising its stored-value affinity card programs, making it ~~easier~~ harder to get free Wi-Fi: I've noted before that Starbucks doesn't offer free Wi-Fi in the sense that an indie coffeeshop with an open access point does, nor like airports that provide Wi-Fi at no cost. Rather, Starbucks ties two consecutive hours per day of no-cost Wi-Fi to purchases made using a stored-value card. The firm announced changes last week to its affinity program that require some teasing out of the details; the Web site appears to have been updated today.

[Update: Starbucks hid a detail in a pop-down window that says the same requirement for regular purchases to use Wi-Fi applies. This article has been revised to reflect that.]

Under the current system, Starbucks has two tracks: a free card that stores value for purchases, and a membership card, that can optionally hold a dollar charge. The plain stored-value card exists mostly for convenience and usage tracking by Starbucks, but includes a few extras, one of which is the daily dose of Wi-Fi. To earn that benefit for 30 days, you either make a purchase with the card or add value (min. $5).

Starbucks's soon-to-be-defunct membership program costs $25/yr, includes a 10-percent discount, some free and discounted beverages, and has the precisely identical terms for accessing Wi-Fi.

Starbucks is merging the two programs into one that will have no fees and no discount, but which offers a free drink on your birthday as well as a free drink for every 15 transactions after your first 30 transactions. You can use multiple cards, but they must be registered to an account you set up, and then one or another used for each transaction to accrue and claim benefits.

In this new system, called My Starbucks Rewards, you get the birthday drink just by registering. After five transactions, you're boosted into the Green Level--green being Starbucks' corporate color--and you qualify for the daily Wi-Fi allotment ~~with no further purchases~~.

Update: I was mistaken. You must be at the Green Level simply in order to qualify to get free Wi-Fi for 30 days following a purchase on the card or adding additional value on the card. This change thus makes it harder for new card users after 26 December--existing customers are grandfathered if they register.

The new card program's FAQ says that you remain active at the green level for two years following your last transaction. ~~So those that want the two-hours-a-day Wi-Fi without purchasing drinks need only prime the pump lightly.~~ (The FAQ is insanely complicated. One would think the marketing department might have drilled this down into several bullet points, and then given the gory details later.)

Green Level patrons also get free brewed coffee refills, extras like syrup and soy milk, and advance marketing materials about new stuff. They also get gentle pats on the head. Good customer, good customer.

After 30 transactions, you get bumped into the Gold Level, at which plateau Howard Schultz personally thinks about you in his office for five seconds on your birthday. Also, you get a personalized gold card that says, "Hey, I spend a lot of money in this place." And that free drink every 15 transactions. And coupons. And a pony*. (*Pony not included.)

This program requires that you register a card, which is optional for stored-value usage, but obviously key to Starbucks understanding everything you do and when. Starbucks is foregoing the revenue from its hundreds of thousands of current paying gold card users in exchange for a vast increase in data collection.

Existing registered regular stored-value card users and Gold Card members are transitioned automatically into Green Level and Gold Level programs, respectively. Register before 26 December if you haven't already to preserve the benefits. This also offers a five-purchase bypass. Buy a Starbucks Card with $5 on it, register it, and you need make no additional purchases to get to the Green Level.

Gogo Offers $25 30-Day Airline Wi-Fi Pass for Three Airlines

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:23:06 -0800

Gogo keeps pushing deals for in-flight Internet during the holidays: A tweet from the Aircell service says that you can purchase a 30-day pass for access for $24.95 for AirTran, American, or Delta airlines on your next flight through 31 December 2009. This is usually priced at $50.

Atheros Offers Family of Three-Stream Chips

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:01:00 -0800

Atheros announced its 2010 family of three-stream, high-data-rate and rate-over-range chips: The AR9300 XSPAN line up has a three-stream, 3x3 format for up to 450 Mbps raw (300 Mbps TCP/IP) 802.11n traffic. But speed is critical only at close distances: the chips have been designed to keep data rates high as devices move further and further from an access point.

Pen Li, senior product marketing manager at Atheros, explained that the company's goal with what it's calling SST3 technology is to "maintain signal reliability across the entire link." To that end, it's employing four features.

At short ranges, maximum likelihood demodulation (MLD) employs a massive amount of calculation to figure out the best of a matrix of potential encoding systems to use. Li said this could effectively increase antenna gain by 6 dB over the current technique. "Up to this point, the industry has been using this sub-optimal scheme called zero forcing." That was because the necessary CPU cycles weren't available in earlier generations. Atheros says this extends higher rates (up to 200 Mbps of TCP/IP throughput) 100 percent further than current tech.

At medium distances, where maximum speeds can't be maintained, higher rates can still be ensured with transmit beamforming, a well-known technique of varying signal strength to steer a beam to a receiver based on its understood location. However, Li says Atheros takes this a step further by beamforming on each subcarrier of an OFDM signal. (OFDM breaks a channel into many subchannels each of which sends data much more slowly than a monolithic channel would. This allows better signal reconstruction, and allows subchannels to be interferred with without degrading other subchannels. It's fundamental to 802.11g, 802.11n, and, in a slightly modified form, WiMax.)

This transmit beamforming boost keeps rates higher--at around the 100 Mbps TCP/IP data rate--50 percent further.

For the longest distances, Atheros will use maximal ratio combining (MRC), which uses some magic to pull signals from different paths, relying on a certain amount of redundancy, to push range by 20 percent further than current systems. MRC in a more limited form was used in Atheros's SST technology. With a 3x3 antenna matrix, it can be used to greater advantage.

Across all three methods, Atheros will use low density parity check (LDPC), a binary forward error correction with very low overhead to reduce error rates. Forward error correction encodes additional data to allow a receiver to fix errant bits without asking for a packet retransmission.

Atheros is pusing this chip line-up as its flagship brand, with suggestions for applications for home and mobile computing (better range), media (set-top boxes, gaming, multiple HD streams), and business (better performance in dense environments or less expensive deployments with fewer APs).

The chips are slated to be sampled in the first quarter of 2010. Atheros didn't offer guidance about when its OEM partners would have products available based on the designs, but it's likely by the end of 2010 at least consumer devices would appear.

While three-stream devices are already on the market, there's only one piece of client hardware for laptops, meaning that only range and reliability can be improved with a three-stream device, not throughput.

AirTran Offers Buy 1, Get 1 Free Wi-Fi Sessions

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:24:07 -0800

From 1 November to 31 December, double your AirTran Wi-Fi fun: The airline is promoting its in-flight Wi-Fi by offering a 2-for-1 purchase: buy a session, and get the next free (must be used by 31 January 2010). AirTran has Wi-Fi on all its aircraft, and operates 700 flights a day.

This spate of free and sponsored deals would seem to indicate that Wi-Fi session use isn't high enough, because you don't give away a service that has a trajectory of adoption that you want. Instead, you use freebies to gain users who then find the service worthwhile enough to pay for routinely in the future.

Chinese iPhone Lacks Wi-Fi

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:29:53 -0800

It was earlier rumored that any iPhone releases in China would lack Wi-Fi; that's turned out to be true: I wrote back on 15 July 2009, in addressing what was a rumor at the time, why Apple couldn't release a Wi-Fi-enabled iPhone in China, because Apple would have to include WAPI, a proprietary government-backed non-disclosed Wi-Fi security spec. To use WAPI, non-Chinese firms have to partner with one of several in-country companies that are controlled by the military or government or both.

The AP notes, "Unicom's iPhones lack WiFi because it was temporarily banned by Beijing, which was promoting a rival Chinese system, according to BDA. The ban was relaxed in May after manufacturing had begun." That's incorrect. Wi-Fi wasn't banned, rather devices that used Wi-Fi with the internationally supported IEEE security standards that China doesn't like.

I have long maintained that China developed WAPI for two reasons: first, to provide an obvious back channel into encrypted communications that would allow the government to monitor as it desired; second, to provide access to foreign intellectual property by requiring companies to work with a local partner.

Free Delta Wi-Fi on Halloween for Breast Cancer Research

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:54:16 -0800

Aircell is giving $1 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation for each free session given away on Delta on 31 October: The Gogo Inflight Internet service will be free on Halloween on Delta, and Aircell will donate up to $10,000 to research. The company is also donating all its October proceeds from the Pink Plane, a specially decorated Delta plane, to the research group. Use the code GOPINK to get the free service.

Amtrak's Acela To Gain Free Wi-Fi

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:53:33 -0800

Amtrak will install free Wi-Fi on Acela trains: The quasi-governmental Amtrak national train operator noted in its five-year plan released today that it would be adding free Wi-Fi to its Northeast Corridor high-speed Acela trains. The report says the service should launch in the second quarter of its 2010 fiscal year, which puts it in first quarter of the 2010 calendar year. It will initially be free, but that may change. (The report's cover page is dated a month ago, but news accounts say it was released today.)

Adding Wi-Fi is expecting to drive $4.3m in additional revenue across the five-year plan. Other lines may also receive Internet access starting in subsequent years and likely in the northeast, with Amtrak budgeting $26.2m for that work.

Amtrak would join several regional and national railroads primarily in Europe and North America that offer Wi-Fi on some routes, typically on every train that covers that route. Earlier programs to expand Internet access haven't yet borne fruit, but with an increased interest in commuting without driving in the U.S., onboard Internet access may be a big carrot.

The first trains with Internet service appeared at least five years ago, if not longer, and until the last two years efforts were in fits and starts outside of a couple of lines in the UK and Sweden. Now, with robust 3G in many cases paralleling major commuter train routes, adding Internet service becomes less troublesome. The Washington State DOT in conjunction with Amtrak and trainmaker Talgo has been working on adding Internet service to the Seattle to Portland route.

Turn Windows 7 into a Hotspot

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:43:23 -0800

Clever use of built-in Windows 7 networking from Connectify: The beta version of Connectify for Windows 7 uses the OS's ability to create a software access point and a virtual Wi-Fi adapter while still remaining connected to an infrastructure Wi-Fi network. This Windows 7 feature virtualizes the Wi-Fi network connection, allowing a separate client and access point function to operate as separate virtual devices using the same radio channel and same hardware. Some advantages over ad hoc networking, just like with the upcoming Wi-Fi Direct technology, is the use of WPA2 Personal (AES-CCMP flavor) for securing the connection.

The work was originally developed by Microsoft Research, and is still apparently a little hidden in Windows 7, although available. Connectify apparently lets you take one or more WAN connections (like Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or 3G) and aggregate them into a single backhaul for the software AP, too.

Co-working as Alternative to Wi-Fi Squatting

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:17:20 -0800

Clever freelancer in Minneapolis finds combo of Wi-Fi, coffeeshop, and co-working: If life gives you 2% milk, make cream, apparently. A Minneapolis entrepreneur suggested to Crema Cafe's owner that she turn her shop into a co-working location--a place where people in unrelated, typically one-person businesses work together--one day a week. The cafe is closed on weekdays in the winter. With $40 paying for four Tuesdays, Cream's Carrie Gustafson will fire up the lights, heat, and Wi-Fi, and provide coffee and tea on an honor system. A couple dozen people will apparently be part of the experiment.

The co-owner of the shop doesn't expect to make money--24 people would bring in just $240 or about $30 per hour open. That has to cover one staffer, and utilities: remember that this is Minnesota, where nature tries to kill you, so heat may be a substantial expense. But it's a nifty idea.

This is co-working, not cow-orking, which I don't want to know about.

Lexus Sponsors Week of Free Wi-Fi on American Airlines

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:10:20 -0800

American Airlines passengers from 1 November to 7 November can use a code for free Wi-Fi: The airline has put service into well over 100 planes, with a target of 300 craft in 2010. Lexus is using free Wi-Fi to promote the 2010 Lexus LS: the coupon code is 2010LEXUSLS. American also has a code for first-time users on any flight until the end of the year: AATRYGOGO.

AT&T's Latest Hotspot Usage Statistics

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:33:15 -0800

AT&T may be crying uncle about how much bandwidth 3G smartphone consumers use, but the firm is proud of the level of Wi-Fi service it offers: Wi-Fi is vastly cheaper to provide than 3G, and AT&T knows it. That's why the company has been expanding coverage to its customers both for improving loyalty and decreasing costs. (It's why I expect AT&T may offer its 3G femtocell at no cost to many customers, too.)

AT&T's Q3 2009 hotspot connection numbers are just crazy: 25.4m sessions, up from 15m the quarter before, a 66 percent increase. Of those connections, 60 percent were from "integrated devices," meaning smartphones. That makes sense given the release of iPhone OS 3, which provided an automatic login to AT&T hotspots for U.S. iPhone subscribers. (That could result in sessions in which the iPhone user had no idea the phone connected and retrieved email or performed other tasks while ostensibly asleep.)

The company reports that 27m of its customers now have free access to its 20,000 hotspot U.S. network.