Cablevision Ups Broadband, Wi-Fi Ante

Cablevision doubles speed of Wi-Fi network, fires up 100 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0, too: The New York/New Jersey/Connecticut cable systems operator is now promising up to 3 Mbps (instead of 1.5 Mbps) over its Wi-Fi network, which is exclusively available to its broadband customer. The company also wants bragging rights, with a 101 Mbps/15 Mbps top-tier DOCSIS 3.0 broadband service for $100 per month. Verizon, Comcast, and others top out at 50 Mbps downstream (at the moment) for $30 to $60 more; many providers aren’t offering rates above 20 or 30 Mbps.

AT&T Offers Wi-Fi Hotspot Usage Stats

It’s rare for any Wi-Fi hotspot operator to disclose actual usage, but AT&T mostly gives its Wi-Fi away: The telecom giant, which acquired infrastructure builder Wayport in late 2008 to bring all its hotspot operations in house and swing a loop around McDonald’s service, reported 10.5m Wi-Fi connections in Q1 2009. The firm saw 20m in all of 2008, and just 3.4m in Q1 2008.

AT&T added more free users to its Wi-Fi network as 2008 progressed, even as it built the scale of its network. Several million iPhone subscribers had free Wi-Fi added to their accounts in 2008, for instance, while AT&T allowed even its lowest-tier DSL subscribers to have free access at hotspots, too. The company once charged from nominal ($2/mo.) to low ($10/mo.) to subscribers, but gradually phased out fees in favor of usage and the loyalty that results.

The company gained the contract for Starbucks in Feb. 2008, and very gradually switched service from T-Mobile (which still has roaming rights) to its own brand during the year. That added over 7,000 premium locations with a built-in user base.

Wi-Fi Patent Cases Settled

Australian tech agency CSIRO cuts deals with all firms it sued, that sued it: An Australian IT publications reports that the long-running patent lawsuits among government tech agency CSIRO, which had a broad patent covering some aspects of the OFDM part of Wi-Fi since 802.11g, have been settled. All the firms involved in litigation have cut licensing deals with CSIRO, the article says, although terms were not revealed.

CSIRO sued and won various judgments against Buffalo Technology, a Japanese-owned firm with worldwide sales, when Buffalo wouldn’t agree to pay royalty fees. The case has bounced around a bit, with Buffalo’s Wi-Fi products enjoined from the U.S. market for years, then allowed again after Buffalo won part of an appeal. It got rather complicated.

In the end, this apparent settlement with 14 firms, some of which CSIRO had sued and others had preemptively sued CSIRO, doesn’t mean too much for anyone. There were certainly issues as to whether CSIRO would be able to survive a full-on patent reexamination, as it was clear that some aspects of its patent could have been open to challenge, but there was no way to know whether any parts of the patent would have been struck down, nor whether those would have affected its overall ability to assert rights.

CSIRO reportedly was never asking for much. As a government agency designed to commercialize and promote national inventions, the scuttlebutt was that they wanted at most a few bucks per qualifying device. The settlement likely involves firms paying something for equipment already sold and agreeing on a fee schedule for future sales.

CSIRO reinvests proceeds of commercialization into research, so in many ways this is a win for everyone (except shareholders of firms in the settlement who will have an extremely diluted “loss”) as Australia is on the cutting edge of many interesting technologies funded by this agency. A talk with one researcher about photonic terabit switching blew my mind recently.

With billions of Wi-Fi devices to be sold in the coming few years and likely hundreds of millions, if not over a billion, in the market, CSIRO will see a huge winfall even at extremely modest rates for built-in Wi-Fi adapters, where costs are so low it’s likely the agency would get tens of cents instead of dollars.

For consumers, we’ll see almost no effect. With products price to end in $9 or $9.95 or $9.99, there’s little wiggle room to add a buck or two. More likely, manufacturers will simply absorb the cost and reduce their margin slightly, looking for cost savings elsewhere.

Starbucks Switches to BT for UK, Irish Hotspots

More than a year after Starbucks swapped out T-Mobile for AT&T as its Wi-Fi provider at U.S. locations, the coffee retailer opts for BT in the UK and Ireland: BT will fold about 650 hotspots into its OpenZone footprint, but, even better, it will also fold those locations into its roaming deals with aggregators like iPass and Boingo. All BT broadband customers will gain access as will O2 cell subscribers with iPhones.

Delta Wi-Fi Discount

At the end of a slow Wi-Fi week, a deal: Delta has over 100 aircraft equipped with Aircell Gogo Internet service. The 126SKY2 coupon code gets you 20 percent off on Gogo on Delta flights until 30 April (conditions apply; follow link for details).

Alaska Airlines Will Proceed with In-Flight Internet

As I noted on 6 April, when Alaska Airlines launched a new Web site that promised Internet service in the sky, it seemed its trial was going well: The company putout a press release today that said the test service (on a single plane) had 2,100 users over the last several weeks. Of those that used the service and filled out a survey, 96 percent would use it again, and 78 percent would be very or extremely likely to recommend it.

Alaska now says it’s working on the pricing model. The company has partnered with Row 44 for its satellite-backed Internet service over Wi-Fi.

Take Control of Your Wi-Fi Security

The latest edition of my co-authored book on Wi-Fi security is out: The title, which I and Adam Engst have been updating for several years, is now up to date on Wi-Fi Protected Setup, the latest issues with WPA/WPA2, and a host of other minor changes. The book is aimed at a general audience, not tech types, who want background on security topics coupled with specific, step-by-step advice for Mac OS X (Tiger and Leopard), Windows XP, and Windows Vista.

Included is details on setting up WPA/WPA2 Personal, troubleshooting network security problems, and how to encrypt and secure specific services like email or the contents of files and messages.

The immediate download book is 106 pages and costs $10. However, readers of Wi-Fi Networking News can follow the link above for a $3 discount (discount appears during checkout); you can also enter coupon code CPN71005WNN during checkout. You can download a sample that contains various parts of the book by following the link as well.

Neun-und-neunzig Luftzeuge

Delta hits 99 airplanes: Today’s in-flight Internet announcement that Delta has one shy of one hundred planes equipped with Wi-Fi is brought to you courtesy of the 1983 German hit,

Bluetooth 3.0 Standard Launches This Month

The Bluetooth SIG has approved its 3.0 spec with a 21 April launch date: I’ve written before about Bluetooth 3.0, which pairs the 3 Mbps low-power frequency hopping radio system of 2.1+EDR with high-speed transfers via 802.11 standards. The idea is that a properly integrated Bluetooth 3.0 system will have a bulk-transfer mode that two devices can swap into. (Note that the SIG is referencing 802.11, the generic standard, as it doesn’t have a specific program in place with the Wi-Fi Alliance–yet?–for cross-certifiation.)

For instance, if you had one of those ubiquitous BlackBerry or iPhone smartphones with Bluetooth 3.0 and Wi-Fi inside, you could start a sync session with your PC. For normal calendar data and other matter, the sync would use the Bluetooth radio system. To sync a large music or video file, the handset’s BT gear would talk with the computer’s, agree to switch to 802.11, and then make the bulk transfer. At the end, communication would return to the other radio.

This mode works in a quasi ad-hoc fashion, without requiring that a device join a Wi-Fi network, which is part of why the 802.11 label is being used. With the collapse of UWB as a near-term generic option for personal area networking (PAN)–it may wind up being important, but it’s not right now–802.11 standards will likely morph into WLAN/PAN systems. Intel has been working on this for a while, disclosing its Cliffside project a year ago as part of a larger effort to rethink mobile device functions.

Bluetooth 3.0 will get its formal unveiling later this month along with information about which chipmakers have products ready to sample. Because the SIG is a practical group, standards aren’t released until there are multiple vendors with interoperable prototype chips and hardware.

Happy Anniversary to WNN

Eight years ago, I launched this site: Hard to believe I’ve been pounding away at wireless data stories this long. It’s been quite enjoyable. Despite a severe drop in traffic in the last couple of years, I’m still finding enough to write about on a regular basis, and appreciate the loyal audience out there. I have a hard time believing this site will exist in this form in 2017, but I wouldn’t have imagined it would have lasted this long in more or less the same format when I launched it with zero fanfare in 2001.

You can see the first real post from 7 April 2001 (in the current design framing, of course).

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