Author Archives: Eliza Villarino

Intel Plugs WiMax In The Jungle

Intel has brought WiMax to Parintins, an isolated city of 114,000 on an Amazon Basin island in Brazil. According to the company, the new network, which covers two schools, a hospital, a community center and a university, is expected to serve about 1,500 students and 10,000 community residents. Prior to this project, users can onlyContinue Reading

Local Shops On Track To Add WiFi Access To Their Offerings

Mission Hill in Roxbury will host the third WiFi access point in Boston Main Streets districts. The first two hotspots are located in Roslindale and Washington Gateway Main Streets. According to Mission Hill Main Streets director Maggie Cohn, the project benefits small businesses in two ways: they will have free access to the Internet andContinue Reading

Wi-Fi Gives Kids Access To Unchaperoned Net

New portable gaming devices with wireless capabilities like Sony’s PSP (PlayStation portable system) and Nintendo DS are raising concerns among parents. Parents have less control on these gadgets unlike with PCs, which allow them a number of options to restrict or monitor their kids’ activities, such as installing Net Nanny, a program to block pornographyContinue Reading

Ready For WiMAX?

WiMax is expected to enjoy extensive adoption, particularly with the development of chips and equipment based on IEEE’s 802.16 standard. Adaptix recently unveiled its BX-3000 Micro basestation and SX-300 mobile terminals while Aperto already received WiMAX Forum certification for its PacketMAX 100 and 300 customer-premise-equipment (CPE) units. Though only few services exist, more and moreContinue Reading

Q&A: Wi-Fi Alliance Exec Explains About-face On 802.11n Standard

The Wi-Fi Alliance has repealed its earlier decision not to perform interoperability testing of 100+Mbit/s wireless LAN gear through final ratification of the 802.11n standard. Instead, according to WFA Managing Director Frank Hanzlik, the group will undertake a two-phase certification for 802.11n — the first leg will involve certification of products based on the standard’sContinue Reading

GigaBeam Gains From US City Wireless Build-out

A western US company has purchased 11 of GigaBeam’s WiFiber links with compound semiconductor chips, according to the Virginia-based broadband wireless access equipment vendor. According to GigaBeam chairman and CEO Lou Slaughter, the company’s client “is taking advantage of WiFiber, instead of terrestrial fiber, to build out a metropolitan network at a fraction of theContinue Reading

Switching From Cell To Wi-Fi, Seamlessly

T-Mobile USA is due to begin offering a new service for mobile phone users that will allow seamless switching between its cellular network and their home Wi-Fi networks. The company will use unlicensed mobile access or UMA to enable the new service. T-Mobile, several blogs reported, has performed a trial of the service in theContinue Reading

Silicon Valley Wireless Project Moves Forward

The Wireless Silicon Valley Task Force has chosen Silicon Valley Metro Connect to build and run a wireless network that will stretch over 1,500 square miles of the region. Metro Connect is a consortium involving Cisco Systems and IBM. The project, however, still requires the approval of individual municipalities before the construction of the networkContinue Reading

Clearwire Gets More Dough

In the past two months, Clearwire has received over $1.1 billion to develop a nationwide WiMax network. It won $900 million in investment from IntelCapital and Motorola Ventures for the project in July. It secured a further $100 million from two investors and $125 million in debt financing from Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and JPContinue Reading

Intel Hopes New WiMax Will Reverse Drop In Sales

Intel is banking on WiMax to boost its declining sales. The company will provide the technology to Sprint Nextel Corp., which announced that it will spend $3 billion to create a new network based on the standard. Intel saw a 13 percent annual increase in sales due to its Centrino chips between 2003 and 2005.Continue Reading

CSR Design For £11 Wi-Fi Phones

Wireless chipmaker CSR has developed a VoIP phone that may be sold for under $20 or just a tenth of the average cost of current models. The company plans to license UniVox to handset manufacturers and sees the release of the product by the second half of next year. The phone uses CSR’s UniFi tri-bandContinue Reading

Wi-Fi Mobiles Offer Free Calls – All Over The World

Mobiboo and Belkin are now offering handsets that can perform VoIP calls using connection to wireless networks, i.e., The Cloud for Mobiboo and Skype for the latter. Calls from a Mobiboo handset — either the £99 Mobiboo F1000 unit or the £179 Mobiboo F3000 model — to other Mobiboo users are free, those to UKContinue Reading

WLANs Break The Enterprise Security Model

Aruba CEO Dominic Orr expects wireless connectivity to become a standard segment of enterprise net infrastructure and will therefore be less interesting. Orr said: “‘WLAN’ is, if not dead, then uninteresting. Once it’s ‘spec-able’ by the IEEE, most of the profit goes to the silicon makers. Eighteen months after 802.11n is standardized, the WLAN isContinue Reading

A Net Pioneer’s Wireless Wager

After Earthlink, Sky Dayton is now focusing on two new ventures, Boingo Wireless and Helio, both of which have tight connections with the pioneering Internet service provider. Earthlink, which won contracts to build WiFi networks in cities such as New Orleans, San Francisco, and Anaheim, California, pays for its clients’ use of Boingo software. TheContinue Reading

Minneapolis Goes Wi-Fi, With WiMax To Follow

Minneapolis aims to create a citywide wireless network with the help of BelAir Networks and US Internet. Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak said the city “has chosen both a business model and a technology solution that ensure immediate, ongoing, and sustainable benefits.” Under the plan, the suppliers will develop a 54-squre-mile network that will initiallyContinue Reading