Does the press get public broadband?
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Blog: Industry leaders are worried that evolving technology may be getting a bad rap.
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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.
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Cities that try to set up their own broadband networks are facing staunch opposition from cable and phone companies, who see publicly funded fiber-optic networks as a threat to their own bottom line. By John Gartner.
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More phone and cable companies promise high-speed Internet access, but how is a consumer to know?
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With the rise of user-driven content sites, Internet users have a say in what is news. A new study examines the differences between what editors think is newsworthy and what the public does.
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Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42359) announces the addition of Screen Digest's new report European Broadband Cable 2006 to their offering.
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Big media sure could use a champion against the &quot;Web 2.0&quot; revolution. Newspaper revenues are plummeting as readers flock to the Internet for information, and advertisers head to Craigslist instead of classifieds or Yahoo Autos instead of the car section.
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MOBILE phones giant Vodafone is expected to announce this week that it has struck a deal with BT allowing it to sell residential broadband access to its British customers.   BT will supply fixed-line broadband access wholesale to Vodafone, which will then repackage it under its own brand.
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Call it Pandora's inbox. Late last year, Prime Minister Tony Blair invited the public to post petitions directly on his official Web site, hoping a dose of cyber-savvy would attract disenchanted voters.Comment
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By Kroll, Morgan  A New Zealand woman e-mailed IUT country's largest public company. Telecom, to see if she could get broadband from its Internet provider, Xtra.
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NEW YORK Broadband growth in the U.S. slowed last year, as nearly half of American adults now have a high-speed Internet connection at home, according to new research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Forty-seven percent of those consumers--seven out of 10 home Internet users--have broadband as compared to 23 percent who still rely on dial-up.
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Media & professional: The BBC, Channel 4 and ITV are developing a video downloads service that will 'do for broadband what Freeview did for digital TV'.
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An Ethernet jack on the TV will let Sharp customers get some Web sites on their TV for free. But will they go for it?
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Delivery of broadband service over power lines could catch on in areas with limited phone, cable outlets, says research firm.
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Federal regulators adopt rules aimed at enticing utilities to offer internet service over power lines. But experts say it'll be several years before many people will get broadband from their electrical outlets. Michael Grebb reports from Washington.
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Is the newspaper publisher's interest in the online magazine a stab at building a pay product?
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By Dan Brannan, The Telegraph, Alton, Ill.  Feb. 18--Newspapers around the country, including The Telegraph, slowly but surely are embracing the World Wide Web.   Each week, The Telegraph adds components to its Web site (www.thetelegraph.com) to supplement the daily news product.