WiFi NEWS

December 15, 2006Ultrawideband (UWB) technology is now a-okay in Europe. InfoWorld says the European Commission’s Radio Spectrum Committee passed a ”positive regulatory opinion” on the technology with a 70% majority. That means it’s on the way to becoming law in the EU. Any restrictions will be published soon (the recommendation is to stay within 3.4-5 and 6-8.5 Gigahertz (GHz)); they’re likely to be in keeping with restrictions elsewhere in the world to
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December 13, 2006

Skype, EBay’s (Quote) Internet phone service, today announced anunlimited calling plan for SkypeOut users. The new option comes as ayear-long freeperiod nears an end.

Details of the flat-rate annual plan for calls within the U.S. and Canadainclude a $14.95 introductory rate until Jan. 31, 2007. After that, Skypeunlimited calling costs $29.95.

Skype-to-Skype calls remain free and calls outside of the U.S. and Canadaare 2.1 cents per minute.

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December 13, 2006It’s been two years since the initial specification for ZigBee was announced by the ZigBee Alliance, a consortium of companies all with big plans for the short-range, low-power, 2.4GHz (and 868/915MHz) radio frequency (RF) 802.15.4-based mesh technology. ZigBee will be used to deliver secure, wireless control of everything in a home, office, or warehouse, from the lights to the doors to the thermostats and beyond for years at a time.
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December 12, 2006UPDATED: Rival chipmakers Qualcomm (Quote) and Broadcom (Quote) were both declaring victory after an U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that even though Qualcomm violated Broadcom’s patent, it refused to ban U.S. imports of cell phones using Qualcomm chips.

Broadcom hailed the decision by the ITC court to uphold a ruling by administrative law judge Charles Bullock as a victory for patent rights. Qualcomm viewed the
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With Singapore poised to offer Wi-Fi nationwide, and with a free, low-speed versions being offered for a long initial period, it’s somewhat interesting that a youth was charged with (and admitted to) “wireless mooching.” He picked a bad time and place to get bored. The Straits Times reports that 17-year-old Garyl Tan Jia Luo said he was locked out of Internet access by his mother—who thought he was spending too much time online—and
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The company is aggregated 15,000 locations across the UK into a metered network. The tariff runs £4.80 per hour in intervals of 8p per minute; this is still cheaper than OpenZone’s £6 per hour walk-up rate, which is also the minimum time you can purchase from OpenZone.

in Germany, Scandinavia, and The Netherlands. They picked up GANAG in Germany (Munich’s airport provider), 802:WLAN (300 hotspots in Germany), Travelping (150 in Germany, Spain, UK), AWA (600 in Spain, with 4,000 coming), Mobilander (140 in The Netherlands, and Dutch Antilles), FORTHnet (72 in Greece), and Wjoy (240 in The Netherlands at business venues).

(PDF): It doesn’t matter whether you support or oppose the condition-free merger of AT&T and BellSouth. Robert McDowell shouldn’t vote on the matter, and he agrees. I was stunned when President Bush appointed McDowell to the FCC to one of its three Republican seats (the other two are held by Democrats) because McDowell was working for a group representing CLEC, or competitive local exchange carriers. CLECs stand in opposition to the former Baby Bells, the ILECs (incumbent local exchange carriers).

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The city may eventually have coverage from MetroFi, EarthLink, and the Wireless Silicon Valley project. EarthLink is offering 30 days of free use starting today to promote the 10-square-mile network. Thereafter, service runs $4 for an hour, $16 for a three-day pass, or $22 per month from EarthLink. The company will resell access to other providers. Their press release cites PeoplePC as a third-aprty reseller, but that firm is owned by EarthLink.

There aren’t any numbers in this piece about how frequent business travelers find gaining Internet access a hit-and-miss proposition—do 50 percent of travelers surveyed by firm X have trouble in most stays? We don’t know. But the stories presented are quite familiar. Although I haven’t traveled much in the last couple of years, I’ve found that regardless of what a hotel promises, the truth is often sketchier. Two of
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