Tag: wireless

Free wireless for New Orleans!

Post ImageIt appears that New Orleans will be the next city to implement free, city-wide wireless Internet access. Yes, that New Orleans, the one that was completely submerged in water a few months ago courtesy Hurricane Katrina. Seems that the devastation of the city is what brought on the free WiFi:

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin has announced an unprecedented project wherein the entire city will be blanketed by free WiFi within a year. Due to the almost complete devastation of the city’s infrastructure, the free Internet access is one attempt to turn the city’s stagnant economy into one of growth and independence. Like in most large-scale networks, the New Orleans routers will be placed on top of street lights and provide citizens and businesses with 512 kbps download speeds until the city’s state of emergency has been lifted.

I think it’s sad that it takes the destruction of a city to get something like this off the ground, but I think New Orleans will be much better off for it in the long run. And yes there are probably a lot of other projects that require funding and effort to rebuild the city, but I think it’s good the people in charge there are looking beyond just “rebuilding”.

Read: Engadget

Hand-crank powered laptop

Post ImageThere are some very creative and serious efforts underway to bridge the so-called “digital divide.” One such effort is a hand-cranked laptop developed at MIT that will hopefully be available to schoolchildren in poorer countries a year from now:

In principle, the project seems simple: Design a laptop with built-in wireless and minimal power consumption, find manufacturers willing to build it for about $100, convince governments to buy it in quantities of at least 1 million as an initial order, and give it to schoolchildren to keep as their own property. (The goal is tens of millions produced and distributed within two years.)

But negotiating with governments has proved to be strenuous–Negroponte called it “very hard”–and the price quotes to build the machine remain closer to $110 than $100. “We’re not even going to promise they’re $100,” he said. “They may be $115. What we’re promising is that the price will float down.”

There are other concerns that must be overcome as well, such as the desire to resell the laptops. I hope it works out though, because it’s a very interesting project that would likely make a real difference. There are roughly six governments that have shown great interest thus far, including Brazil and Thailand.

Read: CNET News.com

Wireless Cities

Post ImageTime for an update on wireless everywhere! Unfortunately Edmonton isn’t much closer to being covered in wonderful wireless Internet access, but many other cities are. What was once a side project in a few townships has become a big deal for some major locales:

Vendors that build and manage wireless networks report unprecedented municipal interest over the last couple of years, with requests for proposals streaming out of city halls everywhere.

“Overall, I’d say it’s very active,” said Lee Tsao, director of the global solutions group for Pronto Networks, a wireless provisioning company in Pleasanton, California. “In the last four months, we’ve signed up about 10 cities.” Todd Myers, founder and vice president of corporate development for AirPath Wireless, a provisioning firm based in Waltham, Massachusetts, put it more simply: “We’re swamped. There are just so many RFPs out now.”

Some of the newer technology like WiMax has been slow out of the gate, so most of the cities pursuing wireless networks are building so-called “mesh networks”, which essentially consist of daisy-chained Wi-Fi antennas. Apparently it’s pretty cost effective.

Wireless networks in cities show no sign of slowing down either:

In late September, research firm MuniWireless.com forecast that U.S. cities and counties will spend nearly $700 million over the next three years to build municipal wireless broadband networks.

Municipal wireless has also finally received support from politicians and lawmakers, notably FTC member Jon Leibowitz who “enorsed the concept of municipal broadband networks, comparing them to public schools and libraries.” (For a PDF of his endorsement, click here.)

Bring on the wireless cities!

Read: Wired

More on Google Wifi

Post ImageI am sure we’ll continue to see lots of news emerge about Google and the plan to offer free wireless access to all of San Francisco, but this Reuters story already caught my eye:

San Francisco has received more than 24 separate proposals to provide free, wireless Internet services citywide from vendors including Web search company Google Inc., the city’s mayor said on Monday.

Chris Vein, director of telecommunication and information services for the City of San Francisco, said the proposals involved a range of different free or low-cost business models. Only one company Vein declined to name had proposed an advertising supported plan for free wireless access, he said.

That company appeared to be Google. A Google spokesman on Friday had confirmed that its Wi-Fi access proposal could be funded through online advertising.

That would certainly make sense wouldn’t it? Not rocket science or anything. I am not sure what I’d think of ad-supported wireless. I am sure if I had to choose between paying a monthly fee or putting up with some advertising, I’d take the advertising, though I wonder how they would implement it.

Read: Reuters

Google Wifi in San Francisco

Post ImageIt seems that Google has officially submitted a bid to the city of San Francisco to build a city-wide free wireless Internet service. Om Malik broke the story late yesterday, noting:

Google officials say San Francisco residents (and visitors) will enjoy a free 300 kilobits per second, always on connection anywhere in the city. As part of its proposal, the company says it will be offering wholesale access to other service providers, who will offer higher throughput connections to their customers. Google says it plans to use its own authentication services. (That explains the Google WiFi VPN client to some extent). The company is going to use San Diego-based WFI, a cellular network builder company to build out the WiFi network.

There have been rumblings about this for weeks, and people claim to have discovered test networks in other cities too. So upon hearing the news, the first thing I thought was that Google is going to fulfill my vision of wireless everywhere by building free wifi networks in cities around the world! Not so, according to a New York Times article on the story published earlier today:

“Offering a free service like this is a great way to support the Bay Area,” said Chris Sacca, a new-business development executive at Google. “We don’t have any plans outside of the Bay Area.”

While that kind of sucks, I am not holding my breath. I am sure if they see any value in providing the service at all, they’d reconsider opening it to other cities too. And even if that doesn’t turn out to be the case, perhaps other companies will take a cue from Google and build their own networks.

Read: CNET News.com

Google Wifi

Post ImageThe latest “confirmed” Google rumor is the infamous “wifi service” that has long been predicted. Not entirely certain why Google would want to get into the wireless business, but who knows, it probably falls into The Master Plan somehow. From John Battelle:

In any case, I think folks really want to believe that Google is about to offer something totally game changing here, and honestly, it’s hard not to want to believe this – it fits exactly our collective expectations for the company. But there are so many dots to connect in this idea, that I find a massive, one step roll out hard to fathom. On the one hand, if Google does pull this off, it’d be a coup. On the other, maybe this is just a speculative test, and it’s teaching us the power of the the Google Rorshach effect in real time….

For now, all we’ve got is this page, which is basically just a bunch of “scratching the surface” questions. If it were really a FAQ page, it would have something like “Are you planning to use Wifi as a tool for taking over the world?” That’s what I want to know anyway.

Read: John Battelle

Inukshuk Wireless Internet

Post ImageSay it with me now – wireless everywhere! Looks like it’ll be happening in Canada sooner than expected too, according to Om Malik:

The Canadians are taking a lead on the US, and are putting together a nationwide fixed wireless broadband network, according to Digital Home Canada. Two Canadian incumbents – Rogers Communications and Bell Canada have decided to pool all their licensed wireless broadband sepctrum into a new company – Inukshuk Internet – that will be equally owned and controlled by the cable guys and the phone company. They will also equally share transmission capacity and will work with other wireless broadband providers such as Clearwire to make sure that wireless broadband users can roam on other networks. Inukshuk will build and operate the network, that within three years should bring wireless broadband to two-thirds of Canadians. It is going to cost $200 million and will cover 40 cities and approximately 50 rural and remote communities across Canada.

This is a glimpse into the future my friends, mark my words. It won’t be long until we can walk anywhere and be connected to the Internet. And when a cable and a phone company team up, well you know it’s got to be important.

The Globe and Mail has more on the story:

“The promise of wireless broadband is here and Bell and Rogers have the expertise, resources and commitment to make it happen,” said Bob Berner, chief technology officer of Rogers. “This is a powerful tool for Canadian businesses and consumers — both of whom will benefit from the substantially increased and accelerated competition the network will bring.”

I think the name is particularly interesting, Inukshuk. An inukshuk, similar to the logo chosen for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, was historically important for navigating across the arctic tundra. As there were no natural landmarks (just endless seas of white) native peoples would build inukshuks to help them mark where they had been and to find their way to various locations. In that sense, inukshuks kind of connected the north. Wireless everywhere is going to connect the north again.

Read: Om Malik

Differences in CAB

So far this year I had been avoiding CAB (Central Academic Building) on campus like the plague. Today though, I decided to check it out. I have a lab Tuesdays at 2 PM, so I have a little time to kill between classes. Every other day I can just go to the office.

Anyway, as I’ve been sitting here, I’ve noticed a number of differences:

  • As Dickson noted, it seems the food services company Aramark has their own wireless network. Of course, it’s secured, but that’s okay because the ualbertawireless network works here (that’s what I’m connected to).
  • They are now speakers on the pillars playing what sounds like The Bounce (lots of hip hop whatever it is). This just adds to the noise, but I guess it would be worse.
  • Maybe I’m blind, but I don’t see the microwaves! Looks like they have disappeared.
  • The have big, plastic, funky napkin holders at the checkouts now that only let you take one napkin at a time. That didn’t prevent me from taking a stack anyway though!
  • There’s no one here anymore. Four years ago I could walk into CAB and be sure to find at least one table of “the group”. Now I’m hardpressed to find someone I know at all.

And as much as things change, the more they stay the same. I bought a slice of pizza, and purposefully used my debit card. And not surprisingly they still charge a 35 cent surcharge. Bastards.

I need to find a place on campus that is quite and has reliable wireless. Any suggestions?

Always On Wireless

Post ImageWhat’s my mantra? Wireless Everywhere! I look forward to the day when wireless is like oxygen; everywhere you go, it’s there. So it always makes me smile when I find an article that really nails the vision:

“If you ask someone what the (return on investment) on plumbing is, they couldn’t tell you, because it’s just part of what the building needs to survive,” Ed Cantwell, president and CEO of InnerWireless says. “Wireless is like that. People can debate if wireless is a utility, but I contend that it already is just like heating and cooling, lights, plumbing and electricity.”

I think that’s an excellent step, treating wireless access like water and having buildings designed with that in mind. That’s what happened at the University of Chicago hospital:

The pediatric hospital’s new wireless infrastructure aggregates two-way radio, public-safety radio, paging, Wi-Fi and cellular networks into one system that runs throughout the building, augmenting signals with antennas spread around each of its six floors.

There’s a whole host of startups providing such infrastructure. If I were to build a building, you can bet that an integrated wireless utility would be part of the specifications.

Read: CNET News.com

Back to School: Part 2

Today was my last “first class” for this semester. I had CMPUT 410 this morning, which is “Web Based Information Systems”. Here’s the description and objectives from the CS site:

Overview of Web technologies and applications. This course is project based and addresses issues such as web-based applications and databases design and implementation, XML data exchange and modeling, application component integration over the Web, security mechanisms, and Web Mining for intelligent web-based applications.

Expertise and skills in web technologies are very sought for in the current market place. This course is intended to present the students with the basic knowledge needed for professional web information systems development. This course will also introduce current advanced technologies used for web-application development.

So basically, stuff I do on an almost daily basis. The description the professor gave of DNS this morning wasn’t what I would consider “extensive”, so I think I’ll be okay in this class. It fulfills a requirement at least. One nice thing about Computing Sciences courses is that almost everything is online, including the outline, notes, assignments, solutions, exams, etc. If only all courses could be so forward-thinking!

After class I met Megan in CAB and we hightailed it over to the PowerPlant for a pint and pound of fries. Just like old times! And it really was too, as the service in the PowerPlant remains extremely slow, though our server was at least friendly this time. And Megan is right, the place smelled better when they allowed smoking inside. The funny thing about this year is I have this incredible urge to avoid CAB at all costs. Having spent every day there for the last four years must have made me hate the place, I don’t know.

We’re a long way from my vision of wireless everywhere. I really wish the University would just spend the money to blanket the entire campus with wireless access. I can’t get a connection in any of my classes this semester (as my CMPUT class is, very oddly, in the Civil Engineering building). For a list of buildings with wireless and wired access, check out Academic ICT (formerly CNS (not sure I like the name change)).