2.4 Million Silicon Valley Residents to Go Wireless
678977
Silicon Valley Metro Connect, a collaboration among Azulstar Networks, Cisco Systems, IBM (NYSE: IBM), and Seakay, has been selected to build and operate Silicon Valley's regional wireless network that will serve 2.4 million people.
745938
T-Mobile's new Wi-Fi service for cell phones for the Seattle area requires one of two handsets.
183670
SBC is planning to offer a Wi-Fi service that will enable subscribers to receive high-speed wireless access to the Internet at 3,900 airports, hotels, restaurants and other so-called &quot;hot spots&quot; across the country.
526680
Distribution system could help businesses manage software upgrades on wireless devices.
572230
IT officials from three California cities detailed their experiences Monday with trying to set up municipal wireless networks, efforts that have yielded varying degrees of success.Speaking during the MuniWireless conference in Santa Clara, Calif., IT executives from Anaheim, San Francisco, and Los Angeles noted development plans for these networks, both for public services and to bridge the digital divide between those with Internet access and those without."Really, it?s been the applications that have been the driving force," said Robb McIntosh, information services manager for Anaheim.The city is in the process of building wireless links for public safety, public works, and other services. EDS runs the city's IT, McIntosh said. Meanwhile, Anaheim's citizen Wi-Fi network, intended for resident access to wireless capabilities, is 70 percent developed, McIntosh said.San Francisco's now-stalled efforts to build citywide wireless links were inspired by the digital divide, said Chris Vein, San Francisco CIO."[Bridging this divide] remains the driving force for us today," Vein said.Plans had called for a mesh network to cover all 49 square miles of the city. EarthLink was supposed to provide the system but that plan did not come to fruition. "Now, we're kind of stepping back, taking a big breath and looking at what we have to do next," Vein said.Anaheim's choice for paying for its citizen wireless network involves selling subscriptions. In San Francisco, payment options such as subscriptions or simply using taxpayer funds are still on the table."We're taking a look at everything," said Vein. "We haven't ruled anything out."Los Angeles also cited digital inclusion as its reason for seeking a wireless network, said Mark Wolf, assistant general manager for the city's Information Technology Agency.Wolf stressed the hurdles in having to provide wireless coverage to a city spanning 464 square miles and extending from the ocean to the mountains. Los Angeles has been doing Wi-Fi on a small basis and has been learning from cities such as Philadelphia and San Francisco. The plan is at a crossroads, Wolf said."It?s a good thing that it's at a crossroads and not cross hairs, in the sites of a gun," said Wolf.?Aside from the altruistic goal of digital inclusion, Los Angeles also is equipping its police force with sophisticated wireless equipment from Motorola. Video capabilities allow police to see a scene before arriving; other features include license plate-scanning, mobile digital cameras, and facial recognition systems.In other talks during Monday's general session at the conference, Padmarsee Warrior, CTO of Motorola, stressed that multiple wireless standards such as Wi-Fi and the newly approved WiMax standard will continue to coexist. While Wi-Fi is limited to covering hot spots, WiMax is good for covering large areas."The right kind of debate for the industry to have is what combination of these technologies provides true value to public safety, to governments, to municipalities, to consumers, to enterprise, to corporations, etc., as the world becomes mobile. And the world is becoming mobile," Warrior said.Speaker Esme Vos, co-founder of MuniWireless.com, emphasized applications for wireless. These included making wireless capabilities available on public transit so people can get their work done while commuting, traffic management, and energy management. Cities such as Riverside, Calif., Tuscon, Ariz., and Milpitas, Calif., are utilizing wireless to provide city services, she said.With cities doubling in size every five years but without the ability to double the number of municipal employees, cities are looking to leverage wireless, Vos said.
125623
By Kathryn Balint, The San Diego Union-Tribune  Sep. 10--Executives at San Diego-based Qualcomm these days are sounding  more like TV moguls than makers of wireless technology as they approach the  launch of an $800 million, nationwide network to deliver television to cell  phones.
730644
THE REGION Officials running Boston's wireless Internet program are expecting dozens of vendors, systems integrators, and service providers to respond by Friday to a request for information on how they could contribute to a citywide WiFi network, said Pam Reeve , chief executive of OpenAirBoston, the nonprofit corporation running the program. A pilot wireless program covering 1.1 square miles in ...
248623
Wireless networking startup Meraki plans to deliver free wireless Internet access, supported by advertising, across San Francisco by the end of the year, it announced Friday.An earlier&#160;attempt by Google and EarthLink&#160;to offer&#160;free city-wide Wi-Fi access in San Francisco&#160;foundered in August when&#160;EarthLink pulled out. They had planned a two-tier service, with faster, paid access provided by EarthLink and a more limited, advertising-funded service to be offered by Google. The search engine giant is also an investor in Meraki.Meraki will base the service on an existing project covering parts of the city, Free the Net, which has signed up 40,000 users over an area of 5 square kilometers since it began last March.To avoid the need for extensive cabling, Meraki will build the backbone of the network using a mesh network of solar-powered wireless repeaters installed on rooftops. The nodes will use some of their wireless capacity to offer Internet access to those nearby, and the rest to haul traffic back, via adjacent nodes, to the network&#39;s core.The company is looking for city residents willing to put a repeater on their roof. Those hosting a repeater will get free access to the service -- but so will their neighbors -- although for them, the signal may not be as strong. Although devices are shared, Meraki aims to deliver data rates of around 1Mbps&#160; to each user.Meraki will pay the cost of rolling out the service, and no public funds are involved, it said. Investors have offered the company an additional $20 million in venture capital to fund the move, it announced Friday.Ozone in Paris offers a similar wireless Internet service based on a network of wireless repeaters. Its service is only free for those who host repeaters, though: others must pay &#8364;18 ($26) a month.
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.
583742
Chip maker wants you to know about the benefits of a wireless network.
717200
(InfoWorld) - Silicon Valley will get a homegrown Wi-Fi network from Cisco Systems to provide Internet access in metropolitan areas spread across about 1,500 square miles. The Wireless Silicon Valley Task Force chose a group led by Cisco and IBM to build and operate the network, which will cover areas between the southern border of San Francisco and Santa Cruz, and from the Pacific inland to the opposite side of San Francisco Bay. Cisco will provide the infrastructure and IBM will be the master system integrator for the project. Their team, called Silicon Valley Metro Connect, also includes Azulstar Networks, which will be the service provider operating the network, and SeaKay, a nonprofit that will help get disadvantaged residents online. As municipalities around the world jump on the public Wi-Fi bandwagon, the Silicon Valley project takes a high profile because of both its location in a legendary high-tech region and its sheer size. Although Silicon Valley Metro Connect's current plans wouldn't cover the entire region, large parts of which are lightly populated or undeveloped, the project has gotten sign-in from 42 municipalities. A notable exception is Mountain View, which has its ownÂ city Wi-Fi networkÂ provided by hometown giant Google. Silicon Valley Metro Connect is now entering into negotiations with the task force, said Alan Cohen, senior director of mobility solutions at Cisco. There will probably be a wide variety of services and business models, including paid service, free Internet access and use of the network by government agencies, he said. The first parts of the network should be up and running in the fourth quarter, Cohen said, but he described the whole project as a "multi-year effort." The offering will focus initially on outdoor coverage in populated areas of cities, though some users may be able to reach the network from indoors. The company envisions a network that uses 802.11b/g to connect with users' notebook PCs and other devices and 802.11a, with directional antennas, for meshed backhaul links to wired networks. It will use a wireless LAN switch model with lightweight access points that are centrally controlled. Wider-range WiMax technology could come into play later, Cohen said. Cisco, IBM, and SeaKay also were behind a proposal for San Francisco's planned Wi-Fi network. There, theyÂ lost out to Google and EarthLinkÂ in April, but the group said it would compete for municipal wireless projects around the country under the Metro Connect banner.
417282
Chip maker will being testing the emerging, high-speed wireless technology.
544130
Backers of a massive wireless network for California&#39;s Silicon Valley have yet to build promised test networks or complete a model agreement for local governments, but at least one executive expects those to be finished by year&#39;s end.
52753
Since April, baseball fans attending San Francisco Giants home games at SBC Park have enjoyed wireless internet access if they bring a portable computer with them.
145033
Wireless broadband gets a boost with optimized EV-DO installations in several regions.
759619
Cisco Systems Inc. , IBM and two partners have been awarded the contract to build a public 802.11-based wireless mesh network intended to blanket most of Silicon Valley.
551377
Municipal Wi-Fi, full of promise and hype over the past two years, has hit the wall of reality in the U.S. because of economics, politics and even the technology.