Today's big news wire article is InformationWeek > Wireless > Verizon Plans Wireless Access Via Pay Phones > May 9, 2003 This has been picked up all over the web. It tells a tale about how Verizon intend to turn their existing phone boxes into WiFi hotspots.

Now go back to 05-Jun-02 when BT asked Ecademy for suggestions on where it should put it's Openzone hotspots. 2 comments down we have

Q: Where does BT already have thousands of POP's available for use in public spaces?
A: Public telephone boxes....

Now I know this got to BT because several email summaries of all the Ecademist comments were sent.

Think about it. A public phone box has a locked case, power and a phone line. A WiFi AP with ADSL modem is about a 10cm cube and under 75 pounds in quantity at trade prices. The hardware is going to cost less than paying the engineer to install it.

So come on BT, why wasn't this press release about you? [from: JB Wifi]

Ben Hammersley.com: Loose Pieces : For example, although this new design looks quite plain, hitting the Save button will trigger my MT installation to query three RSS feeds, ping four ping-sites, and make around 45 or so web services calls to various sites. It is truly getting out of hand.

The bit I particularly like is the automatic paragraph generator that puts the piece in context by querying a bunch of news and weather sites.

eg.
This post was last changed at 01:33 PM May 10, 2003, at a time when the top BBC News headline was Ceremony honours Potters Bar victims, and The Guardian's top headline was Plan gives coalition control of oil . It was 52 degrees and Mostly Cloudy in New York and it was 57 degrees and Mostly Cloudy in London. The Number One single on the UK chart was Tomcraft - Loneliness. Technorati thinks I have 262 blogs linking to me, the latest of which being Pete's Weblog

I have to say that I find most of the business side of web services really boring, but this stuff is fun! The problem is trying to keep up when you don't use a tool where other people have done all the heavy lifting. [from: JB Ecademy]

I've added a new optional parameter to the RSS feeds. The default is that the RSS feed from the XML GIFs at the bottom of the page is the entries for the last 3 days with short descriptions rather than full text. eg
http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=blog&op=feed

You can now:-

Add &full=1 to receive the full text

Add &n=xx for the last xx entries

Add &uid=Your_Ecademy_ID for just your entries eg
http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=blog&op=feed&full=1&n=10&uid=1 would be a feed of my posts with the last 10 entries and with full text.

N is limited to 100. If you need to download your entire output to import it into a website say, you could use http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=blog&op=feed&full=1&n=9999&uid=yyyy but you'll need to talk to me first.

Please use this sparingly as it's potentially a large file. I really don't want to see anyone grabbing 100 entries every 5 minutes. It's generally felt to be bad form to poll RSS more than once an hour so please store the results locally. [from: JB Ecademy]

Joho points at isen.com: Face the Music -- SMART Letter #87 David Isenberg's letters are really entertaining.

Here's one factiod I've gleaned from a well argued article about the music industry.

28% of CDs worldwide are counterfeit

If this is real, and I have no reason to doubt it, why is the industry attacking it's most fantical fan base by going after people who share MP3s instead of after the 28% of revenue they're losing through counterfeits? This is real money being paid for real product that is not going to the record labels, whereas MP3 sharing is zero money for virtual product that mostly wouldn't have been bought anyway. In fact, MP3 sharing looks more and more like free marketing than piracy. [from: JB Ecademy]

big reflector.jpg ( Image)

It's not much good for anything other than detecting wireless networks from a
great distance. It really is a Wifi antenna -- the white 'bar' in the middle is a
6dBi, 2.4GHz omni. I hacked it together in a couple of days out of peg board and
1X2, so it's not designed to stay outside and with most radios it probably is not
legal because the overall gain is probably well above 24dBi. In use, the 'box'
would be set on its side. In the horizontal plane, the beam angle is VERY narrow.
In the vertical plane the beam angle is considerably more broad. [from: JB Wifi]

The videos of our recent WiFi event are now up.

Tony Fish:

David Hughes

Wei-Hai Chu

George Polk

Lindsey Annison

Q & A
[from: JB Wifi]

I've finally got round to writing up my notes from the recent WiFi event we put on. As an alternative to reading my notes, you can view the videos here.

Tony Fish:
David Hughes
Wei-Hai Chu
George Polk
Lindsey Annison
Q & A

David Hughes, BT Openzone
Wifi is a disuptive technology and the inheritor of the mobile data market. It will dominate the wireless data market because:-

millions of cheap devices

bandwidth

integration and innovation via TCP/IP

One of the key drivers of WiFi adoption is Broadband. In the home it's an alternative to cat5 wiring. The second driver is Bandwidth. When has email or internet usage ever gone down year on year?

The tradeoffs are:-

bandwidth vs ubiquity.

Suitable target devices. laptop, phone, or pda?

cost £1 per Mb or 10p per min? (to which I'd add "or free?").

BT's current rollout schedule is 400 sites by Aug 2003, 4000 by Aug 2005

Where next?

Bluetooth. BT is investigating the possibility of offering it in hotspots, but the consensus is that it's dead as a WLAN technology. It still has a place for replacing wires. But for WLANs they're not seeing demand. The need to offer it at every hotspot means that rollout is too expensive for them.

Voice over IP. Nortel are using VoIP from BT hotspots.

Session persistence, when roamning from one hotspot to another.

On train services. I think this is a major opportunity for business class inter city.

802.11a and/or g. Arguably G is not needed for hotspots until they are heavily loaded as the backhaul bandwidth is considerably less than the WiFi bandwidth. A is not ratified in the UK and EC yet.

White label offerings. I think Hughes was talking about both directions. BT offering Openzone on other people's networks as well as offering alternate providers on their own.

Wei-Hai Chu, Shell
For a corporate perspective Chu spoke about Shell's experiences. He saw three applications for wireless technology.

RFID. Particularly for tracking eqpt at drilling platforms.

Internal knowledge base and management. One example was a catalytic cracking area with 200 experts worldwide. Capturing the knowledge was difficult until they gave them wireless PDAs. then they could fill out the forms while actually working on site.

Shell as WISP? They've been experimenting with providing WiFi at petrol stations in Holland. There's real demand, but they don't know yet what the business model is.

George Polk, IBN
IBN are developing "The Cloud" a very large number of hotspots based around pubs and cafes that use their existing gaming equipment.

They didn't think they could acquire millions of customers but they could create an interesting network. They currently have a large network servicing gaming machines. They manage 108 minutes to be on site with engineers and have second largest coin collection after pay phones and so understand deployment. And they know about running a digital network.

So they've created a brand neutral business where they run the sites but sell the bandwidth wholesale to people who want to run WISPs and hotspots. To support that they have a captive portal that depends on who owns the customer.

They've placed a 21,000 DSL order with BT Wholesale and deployed 782 sites in 6 weeks. Target go live date is 1st July with 3000 sites by year end.

Originally they thought that 300 was ambitious but 10,000 sites came to them saying can we join your network. This includes smaller WISPS asking for help and who want to buy coverage without buying their own installation. The other surprise was enterprise hotspots. One chain has 4500 locations with 450 game machines. Their IT department wants a private network for their own use in every location. IBN said, why not allow public users too. This blurs the edges of corporate IT The big goal is to have 10-15,000 sites by the end of next year.

The business model is a revenue share with service providers. A similar model to Cometa and like them they have support from Intel.

One interesting viewpoint was that Wifi will drive GPRS, and 3G. Once people experience mobile internet access they'll want more of it. To that end you should keep an eye on crossover technology such as Ericssons combined WIFi and gprs card.


Lindsey Annison, Edenfaster
Lindsey is co-founder of ABC, a Broadband activist group and MD of Digital Dales a project to bring broadband to rural communities in the North of England.

They've found huge demand for broadband in rural areas as people try to find ways of making a living in the communities. The NW Development agency were offering support for this so they put togther a proposal to "Put X Eqpt on Y hill for Z people" In Nov 2002, they got 150k approved for 2 market towns and villages in between, covering 10,000 people. with minimal advertising they've got 400 people who want to sign up. Beyond the definite inquiries there appears to be massive support from the community.

The model needed to be sustainable and replicable. The grant has gone towards a broadband info centre. This has immediately generated 2 local jobs. Using Wifi the equipment costs are much lower than expected so the grant has gone twice as far as expected. They predict that they will be able to offer 2Mb access for £25 pm. But this ignores the local access. They're building a local "walled garden of Eden" via the security controls where links are at full WIFi speed. All of this is future proofed in the sense that when fibre is run into the network, the last mile is already in place. At the moment they're using WiFi technology for the point to point links but expect to move to 5.8Ghz later. The local distribution is being done using Locustworld Meshboxes.

While all this was going on, Annison received 2000 plus emails on "My exchange isnt going to be enabled what do I do". This led to the creation of ABC as a broadband activist group.

Quite apart from being interesting, this technology has generated all sorts of weird innovations and requests. Perhaps the strangest has been "The Lamb-Cam"!
[from: JB Wifi]

DailyWireless - Wireless Cable Infrastructure :

Cable operators are big fat pigs that threaten our future.
Let's take them out. [from: JB Wifi]

Two articles about Broadband and Wifi around the world.
Questions and Answers for Korea Telecom's Chief
IHT: Paris, the wireless wonder?

Two-thirds of all homes in Korea now have broadband. Typical speeds now are around 10Mbps. The major supplier has their sights set on 100Mbps. They typically have fibre to within 300m of the home and and anticipate fully fibre end to end connections to the home in the near future. They aim to convert their entire telephone system to VoIP by 2005.

Meanwhile Paris is intending to WiFi enable every metro station using existing fibre in the metro system. They're then reselling the bandwidth via people like T-Mobile. The aim is to turn the city into one big WiFi hotspot. They expect the whole project to cost E3m to E10m. Comparing prices with the typical US $10 per hour, a spokesman said "It must be much cheaper... The business model of trying to sell WiFi to people at these huge costs will fail".

Reading about these sort of things we really need to raise our sights in the UK. It's not about BT enabling exchanges in remote areas so we can have 512Kb or WiFi in half a dozen Starbucks any more. It's about getting real bandwidth (>10Mbps) available no matter where you are or what you're doing. We do actually know how to do all this. With 90% of all the fibre laid unlit or under-utilized, the backhaul bandwith actually already exists. It just takes the government and private enterprise to look beyond their current debt-ridden short term-ism and take the plunge.

Something happens when you switch from dial up to always on. Something happens again when you go from 50Kbps to 500 kbps. Does anyone want to speculate about what happens when you go to 5Mbps and 50Mbps? Or when this level of bandwidth is ubiquitous instead of being tied to a few sockets in the wall? Does anyone want to bet that these changes won't result in whole new market areas and some fairly radical social effects? [from: JB Ecademy]

Excellent FAQ on Wardriving. Well worth a read whther you want to play or not.

Has anyone got a good source for the Holux USB GPS in the UK? [from: JB Wifi]

DailyWireless - Long Haul 54G has a really comprehensive look at the US regs for power output and antenna gain. The contrast with the UK and EU is stark. [from: JB Wifi]

Buffalo Tech adds 3 for 11g

A cardbus card, a PCI card and a Bridge-Access point all running 802.11g. The cardbus card and PCI card are notable because they include MMX external antenna sockets. I think this is a first for G cards. [from: JB Wifi]

BBC NEWS | England | Devon | Man dies after drilling head

Let that be a warning to you all. Self-administered trepanning with an electric drill is dangerous! Can we now expect the obligatory safety warning on all Black and Decker products? "Do not attempt trepanning with this device except by qualified personnel" [from: JB Ecademy]

Wi-Fi Networking News: Blanketing Soho with Wi-Fi This is in the main Ecademy site rather than the WiFi SIG because we've already covered it there. One very interesting quote from a Westminster Council member as justification for the move. "For example, we could expand our CCTV coverage at a fraction of the current cost without the need for traditional connections. Not only that but officers would be able have access to CCTV and other data observation and collection points."

I've long thought that the answer to CCTV is to turn every camera into a webcam and give us all access. If Westminster start deploying WiFi enabled CCTV, this comes a step closer to reality. No matter how much encryption or security they put in place there's the potential for an enterprising hacker to turn them into webcams. Given this, they should just bite the bullet and make them easily accessible. [from: JB Ecademy]

DailyWireless - ORiNOCO Tri-Mode Card Supporting a/b/g, This should have Linux drivers available. However, it doesn't have an external antenna jack. So as far as I can tell there still isn't a single G card with an antenna jack. [from: JB Wifi]

One of the best sound bite analyses of the recent O'Reilly Emergent Tech conference. WERBLOG

1. Contrary to popular belief, innovation hasn't stopped. There are exceptionally exciting technologies and companies out there. Some are solving new problems, while others have new approaches for big old problems that haven't gone away. Why did we ever think the NASDAQ index was a proxy for the health of the technology industry?

2. The exciting innovations are inter-related, in ways we don't yet have words for. Social software, Weblogs, rich Internet applications, Web services, unlicensed wireless, grid computing, digital identity, broadband media. We keep seeing more connections pop up everywhere. I believe decentralization is the most useful prism with which to understand these developments, but it's not the only one.

3. We're experiencing a generational shift. "Yesterday" now means the emergence of the Web, not the PC industry. It's time for a new crop of innovators, leaders, and conferences. Of course, some of those who grew up in the prior era will make the transition and offer their valuable experience. But the reference points have changed.

My highlight. [from: JB Ecademy]

Quoted in it's entirety. Here's some antidote to the Register and Guy Kewney's downbeat comments about Westminster Council's plans to roll out WiFi across Soho, London.

Techdirt Wireless : In the US, it's always been good news when a local municipality tries to set up a "WiFi Zone" in order to attract more people or businesses. However, in the UK, it appears that people look at it differently. They complain that the Westminster council is being too aggressive in their rollout schedule and (even worse) are going to cause overlap problems between their own WiFi access points and those of other hotspot providers, like Starbucks. Of course, some of the complaining sounds like what you might expect from someone who feels that the government backed WiFi is going to compete with their own plans.

That last comment may be uncalled for, but in principle I think we should be celebrating this, not poking holes in it. [from: JB Wifi]

Revealed: How the road to war was paved with lies. Intelligence agencies accuse Bush and Blair of distorting and fabricating evidence in rush to war

The Independent is one of the few quality papers asking the hard questions about the Iraq War. Like where exactly are the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (tm) that were the main justification we were given for the war? [from: JB Ecademy]

A quick update on my experiments with WiFi antennas. I've been working my way through the designs here.

The first attempt was the Cantenna I've already talked about here. This worked well and was dead easy to make. Recommended.

The Double Quad was amazingly successful. It's a little fiddly bending the wire into a figure of 8 of exactly the right dimensions but it appears to have almost the same gain as the cantenna in a much more compact form. I used some sheet tin from an old oil can for the backplane and I've ended up putting the whole in a tupperware box. Recommended.

The next attempt was the Patch antenna. Again using the steel-tin sheet from an oil can. Very compact, very easy to build and with a 70 to 120 degree beamwidth. Recommended. It's so small that it can go in a laptop bag and be used for getting hotspot access when you're a little out of range.

The toothpick and 5db Omni were less successful. The omni was fiddly to get the coils right and doesn't appear to give enough gain over the built in card antenna to be really worth it. It does mean that you can have the laptop on the passenger seat of a car and still get coverage by putting the omni on the roof or dash. But the actual improvement in gain doesn't really help in getting extra distance.

The final attempt was putting a cone on the front of the cantenna. I did this with aluminum foil covered cardboard held together with duct tape. It's all huge and unwieldy but gave the most gain of all of them.

I've been doing my testing against a home AP run by a neighbour 3 or 4 streets away. I've no idea what he's running or even exactly where he is. I can't get a signal from the built in card, however using any of the antennas from our bedroom window on the 2nd floor I seem to have enough line of site to get a signal. The patch, quad, cantenna and coned cantenna can all get a useable signal. The coned cantenna is rock solid with a best of 25db SNR. While I've been doing this I've had DHCP turned off and tried to avoid associating fully. I tried it once and discovered that they're running on NTL and successfully sent and received email. There's a lesson here that I've stumbled across someone who has their AP set with all the defaults and no obvious security in place anywhere. If I could find exactly where they are I might say hello. But without walking the streets and pointing cans at houses, I can't work out exactly which house it's coming from. The NTL T&C specifically say you shouldn't share your connection outside your home and with PCs that you don't own. Purely from a wireless connection point of view this is clearly difficult as the signal leaks out to a few streets away. [from: JB Wifi]

Some more on Linux APs

I guess what I was hoping for was something with the power of Locustworld, but with the price of current APs and that was no harder to setup than current APs. The current combo boxes are so nearly there. But the manufacturers have created closed systems that cannot easily be extended or fixed by 3rd parties. Or even examined. They're also buggy and the firmware upgrade process is awkward.

I'm concerned that one of these days a major exploit is going to be found in say the dominant Linksys AP and an exploit does actually get written. If there are very large numbers of these being used as home firewalls this could be as nasty as Slammer. I've got considerably less faith in Linksys (or Dlink or) being able to cope with this compared with say, Microsoft or the Sendmail community.

That all leads me to wonder why these companies want to be in the software business selling critical systems that sit in that crucial position on the boundary between Internet and internal LANs. And to do it with closed, proprietary software where they can't get any help from the community at large.

But mostly, I want to see some stupid cheap, stupid easy APs that make it trivial to put up a safe WLAN for one's own use, while also giving guests some access that is safe for you and your ISP. I don't believe we have this yet from anyone (except of course the infamous "Default Linksys Community Network!).
[from: JB Wifi]