Wifi Trends

McDonald restaurants in the US have been WiFied some years back, now even the restaurants in UK will offer free WiFi to their British customers.

FON, Google and Sequoia Capital-backed community WiFi provider has signed an deal with UK broadband provider British Telecom to create the world’s largest community.

Sony is amid high spirits by introducing ‘X-OOM Media Center’. The X-OOM Media Center is a branch of Playstation 3 — the king of your entertainment center, X-OOM.

The X-OOM Media Center is aimed at the usage of wi-fi capabilities integrated into the console.

Media streaming from PC on to television is possible through the Wii. By this Wiimote an individual can watch movies, listen to music and browse photos by the push of single button.

Not yet over, the exiting features include accessing of web radio and television channels from all over the globe. The Wii comes with its own photo browsing capabilities, when memory devices are used.

Eager to get it! Import it, it is tagged with price of 29.99 Great British Pounds.

Do you want to control your WiiRider game from your mobile phone? To control a game through mobile phone is really big challenge for you due to those tiny buttons of mobile phones, which can be unmanageable or inaccurate for your game. Therefore designers have adapted the keyboard of mobile phones with limited possibilities.

If you are traveling through Japanese airspace with you wireless gaming device, beware! Japan has recently banned these WiFi gaming devices on board aircrafts. So no more in flight gaming for the kids as well as adults flying a Japanese airliner.

As a part of its plan to include WiMAX capabilities in mobile phones in the second half of 2008, handset manufacturer, Motorola has launched its first truly mobile WiMAX 802.16e compliant chipset.

The single most annoying thing about iPhone for me is that I can not connect my iPhone with a Wi-Fi connection. But, Devicescape has resolved my problem, as now I can easily connect my iPhone at Wi-Fi hotspots.

Most of the leading companies are making its presence in the WiMax Summit by launching their new products and applications in the summit. ApaceWave Technologies has just announced the new APW-2000 Mobile Station System-on-a-Chip (SoC) at the WiMAX Summit in Beijing.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has turned down a free WiFi plan put forward by M2Z Networks saying that the regulatory authority can not permit a single company to control a large segment of spectrum without overlooking the public interest.

Soon residents of Jordan will enjoy WiMax service through Umniah’s nationwide deployment of WiMax. A subsidiary of the Batelco Group, Umniah Mobile Company, has selected Airspan Networks Inc. for the nationwide deployment of WiMax.

The company has given this contract to Airspan as well as its distribution partner, InnoKAT. Airspan will supply its HiperMAX base stations, EasyST indoor and ProST outdoor subscriber terminals to Umniah. Airspan’s WiMax solution will enable Umniah to offer a bundle of voice, data and high speed Internet services in Jordan.

Anders Rendahl, Airspan’s Vice President of Sales and General Manager of EMEA, stated that the company has selected Airspan’s WiMAX technology to expand its market demand and provide wireless voice and data services to the subscriber base.

Umniah is developing a nationwide network to offer fixed and mobile WiMax services to commercial and residential customers. The company is aiming to offer high quality services in Jordan.

Image Credit: WiSpcon

Recently, Battle Creek International Airport (AZO) in Michigan has launched an enhanced Wi-Fi network in collaboration with Concourse Communications Group, a subsidiary of Boingo Wireless.

Now, travels at AZO can access the Internet using either an existing Wi-Fi account from their home provider or by purchasing from Boingo. Passengers can use Wi-Fi enabled laptops or PDAs and surf the web and e-mail while waiting for train.

According to Karen Wolff, AZO marketing coordinator, the network provides an enhanced system to better serve customer’s needs and also provides them more options.

Boingo Wireless offers Internet access services at the airport for $7.95 per day. While frequent travelers can choose the service for a $21.95 per month plan, which offers unlimited access to hot spots in North and South America. Now, the Boingo Roaming System includes 100,000 hot-spots in airports, hotels, cafes and other public places around the world.

Image Credit: Strasbourg
Via: Start up Beat

Now, the Raleigh Police Department will use the third generation wireless broadband solution, named BroadbandConnect from AT&T to deliver mission critical information to officers across the network, which includes more than 500 patrol cars.

Raleigh Police Department officers can access AT&T’s BroadbandConnect network throughout the city. The solution also supports hand-held devices for officers who uses bicycles and horseback. The BroadbandConnect network allows officers to access photography and databases, which are not available on their two-way radio systems.

AT&T’s BroadbandConnect network includes Sierra Wireless AC875 LaptopConnect cards for each vehicle and NetMotion Wireless’ Mobility XE, a mobile Virtual Private Network (VPN), which provides secure and encrypted access to law enforcement databases. The solution also maintains continuous connections to the Raleigh systems. The LaptopConnect cards dircetly fits into the officer’s onboard laptops, which uses AT&T BroadbandConnect network to connect with mission-critical information. The BroadbandConnect network is based on the global GSM standard, which uses High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) for providing mobile data connectivity at average download speeds of 400 to 700 Kbps.

The AT&T solution also tracks orders online with real time shipping status. The BroadbandConnect network allows officers to perform variety of office functions in the vehicle. Even officers can type accident reports and send memos from their onboard computers instead of writing notes on notepads.

Image Credit: Cardinal tracking

Via: Money CNN

Portland, Oregon based testing-systems vendor and the leader in wireless networking functional and performance analysis systems, VeriWave has launched a new product, which constitutes a brand new LAN testing concept in the 802.11 world, a suit of traffic simulations modeled on the actual traffic patterns of individual vertical market.

VeriWave’s WiMax Real World Traffic Tests eliminates guesswork, which is associated with predicting how specific equipment and network configuration will perform in live environments. It is available in variety of flavors like healthcare, education, office building, hot spot environments, government, and law enforcement. The new products allows equipment manufacturers, network integrators and service providers to offer solutions, which are specific to industries and IT managers to verify vendor claims and test network designs without compromising mission critical applications.

According to Eran Karoly, VeriWave’s vice president of marketing, using the WiMax, the product has ability to generate a wide variety of real world traffic mixes and, suppliers. Users are able to pre-qualify solutions for specific industries as well as their own individual business environments.

The company has gained the first-hand insights into traffic patterns representative in various businesses as well as the unique challenges of planning and meeting service level agreements within each industry.

Image Credit: MarketWire & WSD mag

Via: More RFID

Is Google going wireless? The search giant has clubbed up with Sprint Nextel in a WiMax deal to develop a new mobile internet portal to provide sophisticated web search and social networking services to the customers. However, the financial details of the deal are not revealed by the companies.

According to the recent agreement, Google will provide its email, chatting, social networking, calendaring and other such services to Sprint customers next year, who use company’s wireless broadband network.

Sprint Nextel would extend its open standard APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for programmers to make Google Web services accessible on WiMax-supported devices such as NBs and phones.

The WiMax service will be tested in Washington and Baltimore by the end of this year and large-scale rollout next year.

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Sprint has been working on deploying a WiMAX network across the nation. Sprint Nextel has partnered with the Clearwire to develop the single largest WiMAX network in the US. The high-speed WimAX service will allow customers to move between their networks and reduce the costs of wireless service.

The WiMAX is designed to deliver mobile broadband services in urban and rural markets. It is expected that the wireless service will enable each company to increase its capital efficiency and reduce overall network development and operating costs. Sprint will primarily focus on geographic areas under its network plan, which covers approximately 185 million people, including 75 percent of the people who are located in the 50 largest markets. While Clearwire will cover approximately 115 million people.

Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are planning to provide open access of Internet over a robust wireless broadband network, which is designed to deliver comparable speeds than the existing wireline broadband services. The service will also facilitate the Federal Government and public safety agencies, who are heavily rely on wireless networks during times of crisis.

According to Stanford Group analyst, Michael Nelson, WiMAX is an emerging wireless technology, in which Sprint and Clearwire have endorsed. They are planning to use WiMax to compete with rival wireless and wired broadband networks.

Sprint Nextel and Clearwire will market mobile WiMAX services under their common service brand name. While Clearwire will provide mobile WiMAX services through Sprint Nextel’s retail stores and through its own distribution channels.

Image Credit: Cell Net Wireless & Infinity

Via: Market Watch