Silicon Valley Wi-Fi Unfolds
496305
Ambitious municipal wireless project may include eight technologies and take longer than expected.
151064
A router and clients for both notebooks and desktops can provide Wi-Fi connectivity over either of two unlicensed radio bands.
440165
Municipalities that plan to use new Wi-Fi networks being built in their cities will likely drive future growth of the citywide Wi-Fi movement.
758874
Meraki Networks&#39; plan to cover San Francisco with free Wi-Fi, with residents&#39; help, could be a way around the political and business barriers some municipal wireless projects have run into.The startup, partly funded by Google, believes it will succeed&#160;where EarthLink and Google did not: Building Wi-Fi access throughout San Francisco at no cost to the city. It expects to finish by year&#39;s end, filling the whole city with 1Mbps coverage.The catch is that Meraki is footing the whole bill on this project so that&#160;it can learn how to roll out such networks for profit elsewhere. The good news, if the plan works, is that it could do so for less than $5 million, lower than the cost many other municipal wireless projects have run into. That&#39;s partly because of intelligence in access points and software, making the network more robust with fewer nodes, according to Meraki spokeswoman Erika Shaffer.Meraki will build the backbone of its network with solar-powered rooftop access points and fill out its coverage with smaller repeaters to sit in windows or on balconies. Both will be designed and built by Meraki and provided free to residents and businesses that agree to house the gear on their property in return for better coverage. All the nodes will be meshed, so Meraki won&#39;t have to get wired broadband links everywhere its access points go.The idea has potential in developing countries with little broadband, where Meraki sees its biggest market, but also in highly wired cities such as San Francisco, analysts said.A key advantage is that by asking users instead of the city for mounting rights for its gear, Meraki will bypass the rancorous political fights over contract terms like the one that slowed down EarthLink&#39;s initiative last year. But seeking volunteers also makes sure that however fully Meraki has actually covered the city by the end of the year, it is pretty sure to have coverage where people actually want it.&quot;You know exactly where your coverage needs to be, because someone just asked you for a repeater,&quot; said IDC analyst Godfrey Chua.Meraki believes it won&#39;t have any trouble getting people to host repeaters in their homes, based on its existing test networks in parts of San Francisco, Shaffer said. There are about 500 repeaters today, and about 40,000 people have used the network, she said.Another problem that would seem to solve itself, assuming the network and distribution system run smoothly, is the difficult issue of indoor coverage, said Craig Settles, an independent municipal network analyst at Successful.com. EarthLink&#39;s network was to be built largely on streetlights and electricity poles, which are well suited to mobile outdoor coverage, but not so good for providing home broadband to residents who can&#39;t afford wired alternatives, Settles said. Meraki&#39;s small repeaters are designed for indoor coverage in the home where they&#39;re located as well as to flesh out the whole network.On the San Francisco network, which Meraki will treat as a research and development cost, the company will test advertising as a possible revenue source for future deployments. When it approaches service providers that want to charge for access, it will also offer a billing system. Meraki has trials going on today with carriers in developing countries, Shaffer said.In places where most people don&#39;t yet have broadband, Meraki&#39;s approach could be an attractive low-cost alternative, analysts said. However, WiMax, which requires far fewer base stations than Wi-Fi because it has a longer range, also has relatively low costs and is already a competitor in those markets, Chua said.&quot;I doubt that Wi-Fi would be the dominant access medium in emerging markets,&quot; Chua said.
637846
Sleepy Spokane, Wash., has a secret: it's the wireless hot spot of the future
417282
Chip maker will being testing the emerging, high-speed wireless technology.
770271
A long-time wireless expert talks about a topics ranging from 802.11n and municipal Wi-Fi to the future of wireless technology.
582997
At virtually every turn, Intel Corp. executives are heaping praise on an emerging long-range wireless technology known as WiMAX, which can blanket entire cities with high-speed Internet access.
606307
A proposal to blanket 1,500 square miles of Silicon Valley with affordable wireless access to the Internet stepped closer to reality Tuesday after a joint task force selected Silicon Valley Metro Connect to build and operate the network.
86529
Philadelphia may spread the joy of wireless Internet access to its citizens.
23040
City-wide wi-fi networks are growing but how do councils and citizens get the most out of them?
617267
Meraki, a Silicon Valley startup, pledges to "free the net" and it will expand free Wi-Fi coverage beyond two San Francisco neighborhoods to an additional six communities within the city. With funding from Google and Sequoia Capital, and a lot of community volunteers, it might work.
378231
The wireless revolution is here and has the potential to leapfrog the  struggling wired world and take full advantage of innovative new Wifi,  WiMAX and other pervasive technologies and applications.  Don't Miss the Opportunity at this Year's  ITEXPO East 2007 in FT.
690340
Vendors in the WiMax forum are developing a variation that broadens the spectrum of the wireless technology.
483348
Hoping to accelerate the deployment of a new wireless technology, Intel Corp. announced Monday it&#39;s invested in a venture started by billionaire Craig McCaw to deliver high-speed Internet service over the airwaves.
636180
New component will help next generation of Intel's wireless chip reach full audience for Wi-Fi.
690152
A year ago, it seemed like just about every major U.S. city was drawing up ambitious plans to build wireless Internet networks so more people, both rich and poor, could have online access wherever they wanted.