'WWiSE' Consortium and Motorola Team for IEEE 802.11n

"Motorola believes the IEEE 802.11n standard is an important building block for offering connectivity to high bandwidth services in the home and enterprise environment," said Miguel Pellon, vice president technology- standards, Motorola, Inc. "We believe our experience in making applications such as mobile VoIP and mobile multimedia streaming operate in handheld devices and our expertise in power saving mechanisms strengthen the WWiSE proposal for 802.11n."

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Mobile voice over Wi-Fi at 80 miles per hour

The world's first highway Wi-Fi mobile voice network has been successfully tested on a US interstate highway – the Canamex Interstate Highway (I-19) from Rio Rico to a point south of Green Valley, Arizona. Wi-VOD deployed it using a Department of Homeland Security grant; the network is managed by the Arizona Telecommunications and Information Council. Get this: Wi-VOD claims it was able to make multi-party VoIP conference calls at speeds in excess of 130 kilometres per hour (80mph) sustained over the entire network.

Read additional Comments from MuniWireless.

Mesh Networks, who was recently acquired by Motorola can sustain broadband IP connectivity at speeds up to 250 miles per hour and should be able to support VOIP calls similar to what is mentioned in this article.

Broadband as a Public Utility

I am currently in Memphis Tennessee traveling for business and here in my residence Marriott hotel room I have high speed internet access, that is free but for $149.99 per night is it really free? Is internet access really becoming a utility like water, gas, electricity? A basic commodity that everyone relies on. I don't think so just yet. Most of the people that think it is have used the internet for many years, but I think there are still many sections of the population who still do not live to get online everyday. Unfortunately like I do!

Check out the free press community internet web site for some interesting details on many of the states who are aggressively moving to restrict open wireless and wired broadband network deployments.

Extra stuff to read.

Flying Meshbox

The South Witham mesh recently staged a pioneering experiment using a micro-light aircraft, testing the operation of the mesh in airborne environments. Showing that the mesh will work between a flying node and multiple ground stations lets mesh operators consider many more innovative applications for the mesh. The flying mesh achieves greater range and helps to communicate with remote ground-stations.

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Wi-Fi software enables on-the-go workgroups

Colligo Networks Inc. of Vancouver, British Columbia, has unveiled Colligo Workgroup Edition 4.0. The software can establish a virtual connection between several Wi-Fi devices without the need for a central server.

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Motorola Previews iRadio

Planned for launch later this year, Motorola iRadio will allow Internet broadcasters to extend their services to the places where people listen to and enjoy music the most, Motorola said, such as in the car or while jogging.

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New Cellular WLAN Architecture Extends VoIP Infrastructure

After reading a article about the new Family of Products from www.merunetworks.com that will deliver Toll-Quality wireless VoIP for Wi-Fi and Dual-Mode Cellular/Wi-Fi Handsets, reminds me of a paper I wrote two years ago for my graduates studies exploring the possibilities of using existing cellular infrastructure with WiFi access points. The continued evolution of VOIP and the convergence of voice and data will force the existing wireless carrier to embrace this move to a all VOIP infrastructure. Is it possible to have a all VOIP Wide Area infrastructure that would provide similar coverage to what Verizon Wireless offers now? I believe it is, it may take 20 years.

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Texas bill restricts municipal broadband and more

Very interesting bill being tossed around in Texas. I haven't had time to fully read the entire document, but this doens't sound good for wireless broadband systems in Texas. Read the bill

One blogger says that the language in the bill is so broad that it would prohibit free wireless access in parks and libraries. Read more.

Wireless Broadband @ 35,000 feet.

connexion by boeing

After flying a little more these days I wish Southwest would offer in flight net access. Connexion by Boeing provides real-time, high-speed Internet access to air travelers in flight. Each plane equipped with the Connexion by Boeing service offers either an Ethernet Local Area Network (LAN) connection or a wireless 802.11b network connection, or both.

Verizon to Buy MCI for $5.3 Billion

Verizon on Monday has announced it will acquire long-distance telephone company MCI for $5.3 billion to accelerate its efforts to serve multinational corporations, marking the latest in a series of telecommunications mergers.

MCI was formed as Microwave Communications Inc. in the 1960s and was acquired in 1998 by WorldCom, a Mississippi long-distance telephone reseller that acquired about 60 companies in the 1990s. It became a Wall Street darling with stock market capitalization of about $200 billion before buckling in bankruptcy in 2002 amid an accounting scandal.

WorldCom emerged from bankruptcy last year, using the name MCI.

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Mile-High Wi-Fi Gains Altitude

GoRemote Internet Communications, Inc., a leader of managed remote network solutions, today announced an agreement with Connexion by Boeing, a business unit of The Boeing Company, that will deliver secure, in-flight access solutions to GoRemote's enterprise customers. This agreement furthers GoRemote's goal of transforming Wi-Fi into a secure and valuable extension of the enterprise network.

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800 Rebanding will begin as Nextel, FCC Agree to Swap

As Glenn Fisherman puts it "This will give Nextel a contiguous chunk of spectrum that makes their system easier to operate while improving the public-safety bands near which Nextel equipment interoperates. It should make operations much simpler for everyone involved.

Nextel gets $2.06 billion in credit for the spectrum they give up and will pay at least $2.8 billion in migrating public-safety users’ equipment to newer spectrum and systems.

Who gets the public-safety contracts? Those will be interesting companies to follow with an infusion that large flooding the market over a short time period."

Check out Wall Street Journal article.

Nextel Turning Off The Lights On Flarion Trials

With Sprint now controling Nextel they have decided to officially end the, what I thought, a succesful trial.

It was known that they were also testing other technologies, including EV-DO, though, without as much fanfare. Nextel even admitted in the fall that the North Carolina Flarion trial had gone past the stage of being a technology trial, to a marketing trial, making many believe an official deal with Flarion was imminent.

Then came Sprint. As soon as Sprint and Nextel agreed to merge, people expected the talk of Nextel using Flarion to disappear quickly. Sprint was already hard at work deploying EV-DO, and it seemed likely that Nextel would leave Flarion behind and eventually move its own iDen customers to the combined EV-DO network once the two companies merged.

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Portable Hotspots

This category is starting to expand as manufacturers realize that once someone tastes Wi-Fi, they don’t want to back to no-Fi. Jesse Drucker, subbing for Walt Mossberg, writes in The Wall Street Journal about testing two different gateways on the road and at home. As is typical, the basic functions are fine and security settings are a bear.

Journal tests NetGear, D-Link portable gateways, read the full story.

The Myth of Municipal Wi-Fi Networks

The report from the NMRC is called “Not In The Public Interest - The Myth of Municipal Wi-Fi Networks — Why Municial Schemes to Provide Wi-Fi Broadband Services With Public Funds Are Ill-Advised.” has a very long title but may be worth reading.

Download the full Report

Why Muni Wi-Fi Is a False Hope

Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco are just three municipalities exploring the use of Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) technology to build wireless broadband networks with an eye toward providing “free” or substantially discounted wireless Internet access to businesses and individuals.

The theory goes like this: With widespread wireless Internet access available to anyone, local economies will boom and jobs will come to the city in droves. Though this classic something-for-nothing panacea may sound like a sure-fire winner, it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny: U.S. cities have a poor track record with telecommunications services. There also are other reasons that make it unlikely the promised municipal Wi-Fi utopia will ever materialize.

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SBC Makes $16 Billion Bid for AT&T

By now everyone has heard this big news. SBC Communications announced today its plans to purchase AT&T in a US$16 billion deal. If approved, the acquisition would create the largest communications firm in the U.S. with an estimated $70 billion in annual sales. I don't think AT&T is worth that much, but AT&T does have a great brand name that has been around a very long time. Bellsouth made a bid for AT&T severla years ago as well. The Baby Bells grow up to be larger than Ma Bell. How the times have changed.

Another very interesting twist to this news is AT&T might still relaunch AT&T Wireless. AT&T retained rights to the name after AT&T Wireless was gobbled up by Cingular. Even more confusingly, AT&T announced that they’ll be leasing capacity on Sprint’s network