Intel unveiled a new-look Wifi-enabled Classmate PC at IDF. It is designed to provide schools with a low-cost educational platform.
The company was accused last year of undermining the One Laptop Per Child project to produce $100 laptops for schools in poor countries by offering first-generation Classmate at below-cost price to gain market share. It later joined the project.
Elonex is selling an educational mobile in the UK for just £99.
More companies are begin bidding on a section of the 700MHz spectrum that had previously been used by analog TV. This auction, however, has engendered much more media interest than past FCC auctions, in part because of the spectrum’s features but also because of the companies participating in the sale.
The section of the 700MHz spectrum the FCC is auctioning off is composed of five different blocks. Of these, the A, B, and E blocks are further divided into smaller regional areas. These sections of the spectrum are of most interest to regional carriers hoping to fill out their networks. Unlike the other blocks, the D block is being sold as a single, nationwide license, however, there is one caveat: The spectrum must be given up to public safety officials in times of emergency. Allen Nogee, a principal analyst at In-Stat, explains that this makes the license most attractive to a big operator that can use other spectrum if the D block has to be given up.
The most attention, though, has been paid to the C block, which is divided into 12 regions. The C block is valuable because it has much stronger penetration than traditional cell signals and because of the FCC’s acceptance of open access rules that Google fought for, assuring that the spectrum will be open to essentially any type of device from any manufacturer.
Nogee believes only a handful of the 100-plus bidders are serious competitors for the C block. Of them, Verizon, Google, and AT&T are at the top of the heap, with Verizon having the best chance of winning. The company new policy of glasnost, after a long period of Soviet-style suppression of its network, going so far as to strip features from handheld devices, suggests a serious change in its business model.
Tags: 700Mhz
Atheros Shrinks Wi-Fi Wireless Networking Chips So They Can Fit In The Tiniest Applications
Atheros Communications said in the fall that its tiny Wi-Fi chips would be used in a range of exciting new applications. It revealed at the International Consumer Electronics Show in January that its chips are used in the award-winning Eye-Fi SD memory cards. The cards have a built-in wireless networking antenna that lets them automatically upload digital camera images to networked computers or even Internet photo sites such as Flickr. The Atheros ROCm mobile WLAN chips in the Eye-Fi cards are able to get wireless reception even through the metal casing of digital cameras. Eye-Fi cards will be used in a variety of cameras, including models from Nikon.
Tags: Atheros
If you visit Chicago and you want public Wi-Fi access, you’d better go to Starbucks. Once hailed as one of the pioneers of the citywide municipal Wi-Fi movement, Chicago reevaluated its original $18.5 million plan, citing market conditions, and will redeploy the project in the next year or two. On the heels of Chicago’s announcement, Philadelphia and New York have also reported problems getting their Wi-Fi programs off the ground. In fact, MuniWireless.com has downgraded its growth estimates for the industry from 108 percent to 35 percent. One cited reason is the difficulty of making wireless providers live up to the pricing promises the local government has made to its citizens.
Municipal wireless has become a political football,says Craig Mathias, a Wi-Fi expert at market research firm Farpoint Group. City governments have put a lot of constraints on vendors, in some cases requesting free access for every citizen.
One element that may have kept city residents away is how the pricing model was devised. For most cities, access is free at a very low bandwidth (often 500 kilobits per second). Then you pay a monthly fee for higher bandwidth, which subsidizes lower-income residents. Many residents already have home networks with faster connections and newer technologies, such as 802.11n.
But there is one emerging technology that could salvage municipal wireless: WiMAX. It’s a more robust technology that covers a larger area with relatively few towers, as opposed to the hundreds of access points municipal Wi-Fi requires. (Mountain View, California, has about 380 of them.) Analysts say WiMAX is coming, but there have been no successful rollouts in the U.S. yet, so costs are an unknown. Greg Goldman, CEO of Wireless Philadelphia, is not convinced that WiMAX is ready for prime time. WiMAX will encounter the same obstacles and challenges as Wi-Fi in a dense urban environment, he says. It’s still extremely new and is, today, cost-prohibitive.
Meanwhile, as the United States waits for WiMAX to achieve mass adoption, a few cities have already made good on the Wi-Fi promise. In Minneapolis, U.S. Networks built a public-safety network (with the city as a primary customer) and a public-access network covering 60 square miles. In August, when the I-35 bridge collapse killed seven people, cell service went AWOL, but Wi-Fi kept working. Nevertheless, signal reaches only about a third of the city and can be weak. It appears that even the cities that are ahead of the Wi-Fi game still have a long way to go
Tags: Municipal Wireless, Wireless
A chunk of the electromagnetic spectrum is opening up, and everyone wants a piece
In January 2008, a 60MHz band within the 700MHz range, currently reserved for analog television signals, will be auctioned off by the FCC to the highest bidder. Consumer advocates are calling for an open-access policy, noting that the availability of this spectrum has the potential to allow nationwide wireless broadband access. It’s a stance supported by at least one of the five FCC commissioners, as well as Google, which has pledged to bid at least $4.6 billion if the FCC commits to keeping the spectrum impartial to specific software and devices. Verizon, on the other hand, is opposed to such regulation, preferring, naturally, that the market sort things out. AT&T supports keeping 22MHz of the spectrum open to all, but, of course, has its own ideas about what to do with the rest.
Alaska Airlines plans to test a high-speed satellite wireless Internet service on some of its aircraft next year, making it the first U.S. carrier to offer such broadband service.
The broadband service provider relies on geosynchronous satellites to provide broadband to planes anywhere in the world. Customers will use Wi-Fi hotspots located in the aircraft cabin to access the service.
In the past, aircraft broadband services have struggled. Boeing pulled its Connexion option last year after failing to sign enough airlines onto the service. Though support from international airlines was strong, U.S. carriers hesitated to adopt the service following the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the subsequent industry downturn.
Meanwhile, American Airlines has announced plans to test a broadband service in 2008 that will rely on air-to-ground technology, rather than satellites. The test will focus on American’s Boeing 767 planes, primarily on transcontinental routes. Provider Air-Cell says that it will construct cellular towers throughout the United States to beam the signals to aircraft. American will offer its broadband service as an extra-cost option, but the airline won’t announce the exact fee until the service rolls out.
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