News.Com Why 3G should fear the wireless LAN

"To be sure, the technologies may be complementary, but might wireless LANs still whittle away at carriers' 3G revenue?

Wireless LAN operators in so-called hot zones can offer service more cheaply and won't be constrained by spectrum and infrastructure costs. As a result, it will be much easier for them to pass down lower costs to consumers. Cellular operators are trying their best to cut 3G launch costs, but they still don't have the ability to wage a mobile data price war--and won't be in any position to do so for the near future."

Unstrung Why 2.5G Plus WLAN Doesn't Equal 3G

"Now, don't get us wrong -- we here at Unstrung are very excited about the many, many applications of wireless LAN technology. But talk of a combination of 2.5G technology and wireless LAN public access points supplanting 3G is just plain wrong, especially on the old continent."

"However, if carriers do start to roll out WLAN services, Unstrung will make one last bold prediction: You can kiss the idea of WLAN services being cheap or even free goodbye. Despite the fact that WLAN bandwidth is cheaper, carriers won't be keen to eat their cellular margins by offering an inexpensive alternative."

redux [03.17.02]
MSNBC Welcome to your future Internet

"Have you ever checked your e-mail over a high-speed Internet connection, while waiting at a bus stop? Have you ever chatted with your pals on the Net, using high-definition television? How about hooking your car up to the Internet so that someone knows where you are at all times? These feats are no half-baked visions of the future. Somewhere in the world, they’re being done right now.

THE SAME KINDS of people who brought you the Internet three decades ago — academics and military types, corporate gurus and pony-tailed geeks — are doing it again."

ComputerWorld Wireless LANs gain over cellular

"A growing number of localities have already decided to sidestep emerging third-generation cellular technology in favor of making creative use of wireless LANs.

Greg Anderson, director of IT for the city and county of Broomfield, Colo., said he plans to cut off his Cellular Digital Packet Data service from Redmond, Wash.-based AT&T Wireless Services Inc. because it's too costly and the data rates are too slow. And he said he has no intention of using the more advanced 3G cellular once he completes his industry-standard 802.11 wireless LAN, or Wi-Fi, installation countywide later this year."

redux [03.04.02]

The New York Times The Corner Internet Network vs. the Cellular Giants
[requires 'free' registration]

"Mr. Pozar, a radio engineer, is a member of the Bay Area Wireless Users Group, an active band of hobbyists who have been building free networks in communities through the region. Mr. Pozar and some of his friends have quietly begun obtaining the rights to place $2,000 wireless network access stations on the mountains and hilltops that encircle San Francisco Bay. If he succeeds, the network will be a starting point for a wireless data network that could eventually spread all over the Bay Area.

Significantly, what will set Mr. Pozar's planned Sunset Network and those like it apart from the commercial cellular networks now being constructed at great expense is that they will "self assemble" — expanding from one neighborhood to the next as individuals and businesses join by buying their own cheap antennas that either attach to the wired Internet or pass a signal on to another wireless node."

The New York Times Good (or Unwitting) Neighbors Make for Good Internet Access
[requires 'free' registration]

"One of the site's supporters, a nonprofit group called nycwireless.org, recently persuaded the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation to jettison a plan to provide Internet cables in a small area of the park, in Midtown Manhattan. Instead, the restoration group will finance the installation of an 802.11 network designed to bathe the entire park in bandwidth this summer.

"We thought it would make people want to stay in the park," said Daniel A. Biederman, executive director of the restoration group, a private organization that oversees the park."

The Portland Business Journal 'Geeks' unite in a quest to make wireless world

""The goal is to facilitate the free exchange of information," said Shand. But since fast internet access is a powerful draw for many people, the idea of free high-speed access from anywhere is what gets most people interested. "Democratizing broadband," as Shand puts it, is a good way to facilitate the free exchange of information.

The obvious questions, though, are "Is it legal?" and "Won't the ISPs get mad?""

Salon Waiting for Wi-Fi

"Despite the buzz over unplugged coffeehouses, free community networks and war driving, jacking in to the wireless Net is still next to impossible. Even in cities like New York, Seattle and San Francisco where public wireless projects are prevalent, working access points are rare. Technology writer Mark Durham, currently in the process of mapping all available Wi-Fi nodes in San Francisco, says you're better off looking for a pay phone. "I've got about 105 listed," he says. "But that includes Starbucks."

If there's one technology that doesn't need evangelizing, it's wireless Net access. But while there are some start-ups out there, such as EarthLink founder Sky Dayton's Boingo, that may succeed in leading us to the promised wireless land, there are also plenty of prominent failures."

redux [02.12.02]
NPR: Morning Edition Wireless Internet

"NPR's John McChesney visits Aspen, Colorado, where entrepreneur Jim Selby has set up a wireless network that gives residents quick access to the Internet. Selby has put directional wireless antennas on about 40 homes in the hills surrounding Aspen, so nearly the whole town can receive signals that provide his free wireless Web connection. To form the network, he uses a WiFi (why-fy) transmitter. A new company called "Boingo" makes software that would enables wireless access to WiFi service providers across the country. (6:11)"

redux [11.27.01]
MIT Technology Review Unwiring the Web

"It’s an increasingly common scene: a telecommuter perched on a park bench, pecking away at a laptop. But a peek over her shoulder reveals a more startling sight: she’s surfing the Web, outdoors and cable free.

Anywhere, anytime Internet access is gaining ground across the United States as wireless networks owned and run by their users spring up in more cities each month—25 at last count."

News.Com Survey: Local wireless networks to nip 3G sales

"Wireless hotspots using public access local area networks in airports, hotels and even on Japanese trains may face temporary problems like the rest of the telecoms industry. But the mid-term predictions are for massive growth. And as Clive Couldwell point outs, they will not only be an increasing threat to mobile operators but also provide plenty of opportunity for fixed-line operators and isps to add some mobile services cheaply."

"Mobile operators should certainly be worried. The combination of no licence fees - because they operate in the unlicenced 2.4 ghz band - relatively cheap and easy installation, a wide and growing potential customer base and high-speed connectivity - offering data rates of up to 11 mbps to wireless-enabled laptops or handhelds within 50 metres of any access point - means that these wireless hotspots will spread ever faster across the world."

Total Telecom Hotspots mean business

"Fast Internet access over small wireless networks in restaurants, hotels and airports will soon start hurting telecommunications operators, a new survey found Monday.

More than 20 million Europeans will use some 90,000 open Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) by 2006, market research group Analysys said. Today there are up to 20,000 WLAN users, most in the United States."

redux [08.26.01]
Infoworld 'Parasitic grid' wireless movement may threaten telecom profits

"AN UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT to deploy free wireless access zones in metropolitan areas is taking hold. If it turns out to be successful, wireless network operators may be fighting against a grounds-up movement that could undermine their multibillion-dollar campaign to offer next-generation 3G (third-generation) wireless services in major metro areas.

The movement, called by some the "parasitic grid" and by others more simply the "free metro wireless data network," has already installed itself in New York; San Francisco; Seattle; Aspen, Colo., Portland, Ore., British Columbia; and London."

redux [04.14.01]
The Street Can You Kiss 3G Goodbye -- and Still Make a Buck?

"Permit me to throw a stick of dynamite in the room: Third generation, or 3G , wireless is dead before it was even born. And after billions wasted on 3G, it's going to be replaced by free wireless local area networks, or LANs.

A technology that the cell-phone industry is spending untold billions on, 3G promises to deliver high-speed data precisely where you don't need it -- on your phone. On the other hand, homes, offices, coffee shops, airports and hotels are building out cheap and grass-roots wireless local area networks that deliver even higher-speed access where you do need it -- your personal digital assistant and your laptop."

redux [09.09.01]
Infoworld Users reject notion of 'parasitic grid'

"Burton subscribes to the term "Open Network Access Point," believing the scale that could be achieved by widespread adoption of wireless access point would be amazing.

But as with many stories, there is a dark side. Both Burton and Pozer agree individual providers of these access points, which can cost as little as $150, must be aware of the legal implications."

""The Internet has always been revolutionary," Burton said. "What you're seeing now is the old school revolting.""

O'Reilly Network Weblogs: David Sims A "parasitic grid"? At these rates?

"That was funny. I laughed and laughed. It doesn't feel very parasitic every month when I pay my DSL bill. There's nothing parasitic about a community network. The bandwidth is paid for. People are taking their existing connections and letting other people share it. There's nothing new.

I think what has people scared is that, as I know and others know, bandwidth is significantly oversold. If everybody wanted to request their 384 kilobits or their 1.5 Mbps at the same time, you'd have the same thing happening that you had in the twenties with the run on the banks. The infrastructure can't support it, even though it's sold as such. I think that's where the fear is coming from on the telco side."

redux [08.15.01]
The Village Voice High Speed, Freed

""This is why I love New York," says Anthony Townsend, standing in the middle of Washington Square Park, holding his laptop computer like a butler's tray and scanning the adult playground the place becomes on hot summer evenings. Where else, he asks, can you walk around with a computer, surf the Web, and go utterly unnoticed?

As if to prove his invisibility, or perhaps to demonstrate that he belongs, he hoists his machine like some digital prayerbook and begins chanting: "Jesus! Jesus! Thank you!"

No one - not the guy playing the Ramones on acoustic guitar, not the tonguing teenage lovers - notices this modern miracle worker or the cybernet he has cast around them. Along with some 30 other volunteers in a group called NYCwireless, Townsend's on a crusade to set up wireless Internet access zones: small areas, often called free networks, where people can tap into high-speed connections, without cables or phone lines, at no cost"

redux [12.10.00]
Washington Post 'Free' Wireless Networks?

"With its meticulously preserved rows of army barracks and offices, San Francisco's Presidio neighborhood gives off the illusion that it's still the 1800s, when it was a bustling spit-and-shine military base.

The wireless Internet antennas sprouting everywhere suggest something else: Today's civilian community is home to a very unregimented attempt to build a homemade wireless Web that seeks to rival the expensive plans of telecommunication conglomerates and other corporations."

""I use it in bed, at the cafe, in the car, on the grassy fields," says Brewster Kahle, a 40-year-old high-tech entrepreneur who lives and works in the area. "I'm living a wireless existence."

Salon Unchaining the Net

"Matt Westervelt and three of his friends had tinkering on their minds when they started building their own high-speed wireless network in June. Climbing on the roofs of their Seattle homes, building antennas and trying to make them work with Ethernet protocols sounded like fun. Plus, if the whole shebang actually worked, they figured they'd be able to access their home computer files from the local cafe, play Net-based games while sitting on each other's couches and stream video onto their personal data assistants -- all at speeds of up to 11 megabits per second, far faster than what cellphone operators or other wireless providers offered."

"Call it "the free-network movement" -- a bubbled-up-from-the-underground effort to spread high-bandwidth wireless connectivity everywhere."