The Federal Communications Commission is considering a new plan that would require winners of an upcoming spectrum auction to provide free wireless Internet services.
Visitors and people working at most Crown courts in England and Wales can now gain internet access via BT Openzone wi-fi hotspots.
Mobile TeleSystems OJSC , the largest mobile phone operator in Russia and the CIS, today announced the appointment of Mr.
San Jose International Airport now provides free WiFi. It’s available in all public areas of both Terminal A and Terminal C. Later, free Wi-Fi will be included in the new Terminal B and North Concourse.
SJC is the first airport in the Bay Area to offer air passengers free WiFi, reports KCBS. The service was launched Friday morning. The goal of the service is to make San Jose the choice for Silicon Valley business air passengers. The WiFi is being paid for through online advertising and sponsorships.
“The revenue we get from advertising and sponsors will pay for the actual operation and installation,” explained airport spokesman David Vossbrink. “It has the potential for giving a little extra revenue over time.” They are partnering with Beaverton, Ore.-based Airport Marketing Income and AnchorFree, a Sunnyvale-based company, providing the advertising network (below).
The network, called SJCfreewifi, will compete with the airport’s fee-based Wi-Fi networks T-Mobile and Wayport. The airport’s cut of the profits from those networks is $139,000 a year, said communications director David Vossbrink, and that sum will decline if passengers opt to use the free service.
The airport spent $90,000 for the hardware, folding the Wi-Fi installation into the current airport renovation. The annual cost for broadband will be $41,000. The airport gets about 30,000 passengers each day, so officials estimate at least 1,000 people a day will use the free Wi-Fi.
Let’s estimate some (very gross) income:
If the 1000 daily users (X 350 days/yr) = 350,000 users/year, then perhaps they view (collectively) 1 million advertising impressions. If each of the 1 million impressions cost 10 cents each, then it might generate annual income of $100K/year.
Viewed another way, $100/day equals $36,500/year. So revenue would need to be approximately $250/day, or around $60-$80/day for 3-4 advertisers. That seems high to me. Perhaps half that fee seems more realistic.
Perhaps that’s why Microsoft’s Sideguide (left), with constantly changing ads and with context and historically aware insertion, was preferred by MetroFi.
It still seems like a legitimate model to me. If not for an entire city, then for downtown cores or high traffic areas. Newspapers ought to move right now.
Mobile WiMAX is more cost/effective — and could make it work. This year, baby. This year.
"The demo was very impressive in terms of showing off yet again a completely new user interface than what we've seen previously," said Avi Greengart, a wireless analyst at Current Analysis. "There are some nice innovations, such as a bar at the top which could be expanded to give you control over the notifications. You can touch the notification bar and jump to whatever you were being notified about."
Speeding Up Smartphone Innovation
The Open Handset Alliance promises Android will deliver a complete set of software for mobile devices: an operating system, middleware and key mobile applications. The alliance's 34 companies first released an Android software development kit last November.
The alliance is betting Android will better position developers, wireless operators and handset manufacturers to bring to market innovative new products faster and at a much lower cost. The end result, the group pledged, will be a mobile platform that makes way for wireless operators and manufacturers to give their customers better, more personal and more flexible mobile experiences.
One of the platform innovations that could live up to that promise is a new way to unlock phones by drawing a specific shape on the touchscreen. That would do away with the need to enter a password. Android also makes room for bookmarks for favorite Web sites on the device's home page. And a compass tool automatically roams with the phone's user.
"For all practical purposes they showed a live view of the mapping engine tied to what direction you are actually standing in, and that was really cool," Greengart said....
In particular, Nano paves the way for notebook manufacturers to deploy Via's chips in computer designs optimized for Blu-ray Disc video playback and more demanding PC games. Moreover, Nano offers aggressive power and thermal management capabilities that Via Technologies CEO Wenchi Chen said are critical requirements for OEMs designing thin and light laptops as well as mini-notebooks.
"'Small is Beautiful' is more than a design strategy; it's our vision of where the PC market is heading, and our new processors will help the market realize that dream," Chen said. "Via Nano processors represent the next generation of x86 technology, providing the fundamental building blocks for a new genre of optimized computing solutions."
Aimed at Emerging Markets
The new Nano processors are pin-compatible with existing VIA C7 processors, which means they will provide OEMs an easy upgrade path, noted Matthew Wilkins, a principal analyst at research firm iSuppli.
"That's certainly an advantage for OEMs in terms of the motherboard design and the layout," Wilkins noted. "It cuts down on the amount of effort that some of Via's OEM partners in Taiwan will have to make to bring new products more quickly to market."
Wilkins also said it is significant that Via is targeting lower power consumption with the launch of its latest chip family. "It fits in very well with the low-cost PCs that are getting a lot of attention right now," he said.
For example, Asus now offers a mobile computer called the Eee PC that is quite significantly lower in price than other similar products. "It has received enthusiastic reception with the press and tends to sell out very quickly in...
At 34nm, the 32-gigabit multilevel chip is the smallest NAND available. The companies said the new NAND chip is the only monolithic device of this density that will fit into a standard 48-lead thin, small-outline package (TSOP), which means it could provide higher densities for existing devices.
Smaller Than a Thumbnail
The new chips will be manufactured on 300-millimeter wafers, which each yield about 1.6 terabytes of NAND each. The chip was developed and will be manufactured by IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture of Micron and Intel. The two companies announced in February a new flash-memory technology that offered data-transfer speeds as much as 500 percent greater than conventional NAND technology.
Customer samples will begin shipping in June, and the chips will begin mass production later this year.
Pete Hazen, directory of marketing at Intel NAND Products, said the new chip and the introduction of 34nm technology "will expand the value proposition and accelerate the adoption of solid-state drive (SSD) solutions in computing platforms."
The new chip, less than the size of an average thumbnail, can enable high-density solid-state storage in small form factors. A 32Gbit chip, for instance, could hold more than 2,000 high-resolution digital photos or up to 1,000 songs on a portable music player. If utilized in two, eight-die stacked packages, the storage could reach 64GB, enough space to record up to 40 hours of high-definition, digital video.
SSDs Larger Than 256GB
The new chip was specifically designed for SSDs, whose disadvantages compared to conventional hard-disk drives have included a higher per-gigabyte cost and lower overall storage capacity.
With the 34nm 32Gbit chip, Intel and Micron said more cost-effective SSDs are possible, with storage capacities that could double the current...
Dan Lyons, the man behind “The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs,” began his online experiment as the alter ego of Apple’s CEO mostly because he hated his job at Forbes, reports RCR Wireless News.
“My job sucked. It was so bad,” he said to raucous laughter during a 30-minute keynote here at the Mobile Entertainment Forum conference. “Covering IBM is like sticking your head in a meat grinder every day.”
So Lyons figured why not give this blogging thing a go. “I’m not old enough to retire and I don’t have enough money to retire, so I started freaking out, like really freaking out,” he said. “I thought I better get some online experience.”
When Lyons’ editors at Forbes rejected his request for a new blog or a job on the dot-com side of the operation, he struck out on his own in his free time.
His site grew to 90,000 unique visits and he’d sold a book all before anyone figured out who this anonymous Steve Jobs wannabe was.
A manhunt quickly got underway, brought on largely by a column from — wait for it — his editor at Forbes who set up a quasi-contest to out the Fake Steve Jobs.
“Finally he started writing to me trying to hire me at Forbes,” he said. “You mean the same assholes that wouldn’t hire me before?”
“I’m like, dude I work for you,” Lyons said to a now enthralled audience.
Ladies and gentlemen… I’ve traveled over half our state to be here tonight. I couldn’t get away sooner because my new well was coming in at Coyote Hills and I had to see about it. That well is now flowing at two thousand barrels and it’s paying me an income of five thousand dollars a week. I have two others drilling and I have sixteen producing at Antelope. So, ladies and gentlemen… if I say I’m an oil man you will agree. — There Will Be Blood
MetroFi is hoping to sell all their municipal wireless systems, including their largest system in Portland, Oregon, now about 20% complete. In all, MetroFi had about 30,000 subscribers on its nine networks, which were funded primarily by advertising.
Last fall MetroFi told the city it would stop building the network unless the city bought “anchor tenant” services from them. The city’s contract with MetroFi never included a promise to buy services — and the city isn’t budging.
If MetroFi can’t find a buyer, they have threatened to stop service this June, and will dismantle the system.
Apparently it was no idle threat.
Last week, Foster City officials were told that MetroFi would cut off wireless services June 20. Yesterday, MetroFi sent the following email message to former users in the Sunnyvale area:
It is with great regret that we notify you of our need to discontinue the MetroFi FREE and MetroFi Premium services effective June 20, 2008 in Sunnyvale. It has been our pleasure to be your provider of Internet access and we have appreciated your support.
So that you do not find yourself without access to the Internet, please find another service provider as soon as possible.
The somber letter advised that ex-users check Wi-Fi Free Spot for alternative wi-fi hotspots.
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MetroFi’s “free” service was enabled by Microsoft advertising technology, called SideGuide, which ran permanently on the left side of the browser.
Pundits are quick to call ad-funded municipal networks a failure. They say cities need to become “anchor tenants” for municipal wireless services.
But if that’s true, why is the FCC planning to auction off the 2150-2180 GHz band for “free” nationwide wireless services? To the cable-less box.
The only one who called it correctly (in 2005) was John Dvorak. Related DailyWireless articles include $99 Settop = Free Triple Play?.
It's finally happened: After years of go-go growth, the number of people signing up for cell phone service in the United States is finally slowing.
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