Free Newsletter

Get the latest news on WiFi, WiMAX, muni WiFi and other hot wireless broadband topics and technologies.

FierceWiFi brings wireless broadband news to over 48,000 wireless industry insiders. Sign up for the free FierceWiFi weekly email briefing.
 *   *
 
 *

Editor

news

802.11n not likely to be approved before 2008

They say about the horizon that the closer you appear to get to it, the farther away from you it gets. It's not quite the same with the 802.11n standard, but it's still similar. The reason: The sheer number of public comments on the standard. When an IEEE standard working group requests public comments about the first draft of a soon-to-be-ratified standard, it typically receives 2,000-2,500 such comments. After the 802.11n group issued the first draft in January 2006, it received more …

Read more...

802.16e sales to surpass fixed WiMAX's by 2008

It won't be long now: ABI Research says that, by 2008, mobile WiMAX sales will surpass the sales of fixed WiMAX. This may surprise some, as 802.16-2004-based solutions have been adopted more and more during the past year. Still, the research group says that the mobile version, 802.16-2005, will arrive sooner than expected, and will likely be adopted at a faster clip than anticipated. ABI's Alan Varghese says, though, that in order to be technically and economically viable, mobile WiMAX …

Read more...

UK embraces digital age

"There will always be an England," English soldiers sang as they marched to the muddy trenches of the First World War, but it will not be the same England. A just-published Ofcom report says that U.K. citizens adopt the digital age wholeheartedly, as evidenced by the increasing popularity of broadband access, VoIP services and cellular phones.

Ofcom, the British communication regulator, says that more than 10 million British households now have broadband, and that nearly two …

Read more...

WifiTastic offers new hot spot business model

It is possible to design a better mousetrap. In evidence: WifiTastic, founded in September 2005 by David Sidrane of SmartPhoneTools.com and TreoBits.com and Rob Jonson of HobbyistSoftware.com. They take the public WiFi hot spot model and tweak it a bit to offer the operators of these hot spots a more compelling business proposition.

The company helps venue owners to set up a commercial hotspot, suggesting to these owners that they then can earn money by charging people who happen …

Read more...

New personal electronic companion gains favor

There is an on-going debate among evolutionary biologists about whether the process of evolution is linear and steady (the technical name is "phyletic gradualism"--a theory stating that most evolution occurs uniformly and by the steady and gradual transformation of whole lineages), or whether evolution is characterized more by what the late Stephen Jay Gould called "punctuated equilibrium": Most species will show little to no evolutionary change throughout their history, and when …

Read more...

SPOTLIGHT: e-Passports are here


There are twenty-seven countries in the U.S. visa-waver program, that is, their citizens do not need an entry visa to enter the U.S. Following 9/11, the U.S. government instructed these countries that if they want to retain their visa-waver status, they will have to issue new passports to their citizens--passports which contain biometric information and which are equipped with RFID technology. The deadline for these countries to comply is the last day of October. In the meantime, the …

Read more...

ALSO NOTED: Free WiFi in Dubai; Dublin businesses love wireless; and much more...

> WiFi comes to the Gulf: Dubai's Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) has launched free wireless Internet service at Dubai International Airport yesterday. Report

> It may be the case that in Seattle and Boston some businesses question whether or not offering free WiFi is good for their bottom line, but in Dublin more and more establishments firmly believe it is. …

Read more...