August 17th, 2006
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In a recent issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine Bob Briscoe, Andrew Odlyzko, and Benjamin Tilly, three respected academics argued that the Metcalfe's Law - which states that the value of the network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system - is wrong and dangerous.
Bob Metcalfe doesn't think so, and defends the Law and in a long chat argues that as the networks evolve, so does the law. Download the 26-minute interview here, and the transcript is available after the turn.
Written by Om Malik and Niall Kennedy on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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There is a lot of talk about India’s growing dominance in the Indian media these days. The Financial Express says India is, “taking over the world wide web in a big way (and) outpacing the world.”
The recent surge in the growth of Internet connections might back that claim. New numbers from technology research firm comScore Networks that suggest India has 18.02 million Internet users over the age of 15. This makes India the ninth biggest country (up from the tenth in March) in terms of the total online population over the age of 15. India’s Internet users increased 7.8 percent since March and this is higher than the world online population growth of 2.7 per cent for the same period.
Another outfit, the Internet and Mobile Association (IAMAI) of India, is even bolder. They say the country has as many as 38.5 million users over the age of 12. “Our figure does include cyber cafes (in addition to homes and offices),” Subho Ray, president of IAMAI told GigaOM.
But even with those fat totals, the fact remains most of India’s billion people are denied access to the Internet–and not only because they don’t have a connection or a computer. The digital revolution is leaving them behind because they don’t speak English, the dominant language of the Web.
One expert says that the dearth of content in other Indian languages could limit the growth of the number of Internet users in the country. “Growth is almost saturating among English speaking users in India,” Deepak Maheshwari, secretary of the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) told gigaom. “It (growth) is a difficult issue to address within the limited domain of English language content,” he said, adding that he is basing his conclusions on estimates that between five and 10 percent of India’s population speaks English. (Estimates of the number of English speakers in India vary widely from 5 percent of the population, or 50 million people, all the way to more than 30 percent, or 350 million people.)
IAMAI’s Ray is more upbeat. “The English speaking population is certainly many times more than 40 million in India and it is in fact growing with an increasing emphasis on English language training in our country,” he says. Moreover, it doesn’t take an MA in literature to navigate the web. Activities like sending an email, uploading a resume, looking for property and booking a ticket among other things can be undertaken without any deep knowledge of English, according to Ray. “Most Indians in urban areas can understand simple instructions such as, “submit” ’send” etc in English,” he says.
Even if there is room for further growth among English-language users in India, far greater growth could be unleashed. Hindi is the world’s third or fourth most widely spoken language. Yet it is not even in the top 10 languages on the Internet, according to InternetWorldStats.com. A recent survey by New Delhi-based online research consultant JuxtConsult showed that 44 percent of the 30,000 odd people it polled preferred sites in Hindi and 25 percent wanted content in other local Indian languages.
Maheshwari believes that not only does there need to be content in local languages, that content must also have local context. “It isn’t enough that a Web site shows me the weather forecast for New York in Hindi. That is not relevant to me if I’m sitting in Kanpur,” he says, adding, that there is a “need to proliferate hosting in the country.” His rationale is that the time lag in accessing something that is on a server in the US is actually a deterrent to a new user who is still trying to figure out how to use the Internet. The challenges in increasing local content, he says, include the standardization of fonts and internationalized domain names, an issue the Indian government is already working on.
In some ways, the Internet content space is like the Indian cable television space of 15 years ago. India started with Star TV’s Star Plus, a channel that showed tripe like “The Bold and The Beautiful.” Now, another channel, Star World, still shows Indians cheesy stuff like Baywatch and the A Team (B&B is still going strong). But Star Plus, the former home of B&B, has shifted to all Hindi content, and most of its programs draw more viewers than B&B or any other U.S. television show. “Once the market push is there, it is not difficult for online businesses to provide services in local languages,” says Ray, adding that having local language software is a more difficult issue to solve.
Some small steps are being taken to increase local language content but it is too early to say whether they have in any way spurred Internet usage. Raftaar, a Hindi language search engine developed by Delhi-based research firm Indicus Analytics, debuted earlier this year, but there needs to be more content in Hindi for it to be of any use.
Local language newspapers have gone online, webduniya.com offers content in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam and a government-led project Vidyavahini, which aims to use the Internet to train teachers and provide educational materials on the Internet, plans to develop content in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Bengali, in addition to English. Also check out Alootechie’s interview with the founders of a Bhojpuri language site!
Photo via Flickr by gdStone.
Written by Shailaja Neelakantan on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Ted Wallingford says that others who will make money on VoIP are integrators/ consultants. [Note: Ted Wallingford's VoIP Weblog is moving over to Download Squad. You should also check out his (brief) thoughts about Adam Fisk's dislike of Skype's closed system. (Warning: Adam's article is of a fairly technical nature.)]
Or the money might be in VoIP-based phone booths. [via Andy Abramson's VoIP Watch] Of course, as Andy points out, with so many Municipal Wi-Fi projects going on, could something like payVoIP work?
According to a Synergy Research Group report, IP phones enjoyed a 50+ percent growth over the past year, and nearly 25% growth just from Q1 to Q1 2006. [via eWeek] This supports the idea that the money in VoIP is in the aftermarket. That's my stand and I'm sticking with it.
Written by ewriter on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Chris Lyman, my pal over at
Fonality (and their Founder/CEO) told me that Fonality will soon announce its position as "
the world's largest commercial Asterisk deployment." Them's some mighty BIG claims!
But I have no doubts it's true. Well, maybe a few doubts. I would have thought the Linux gurus that download and install Asterisk for free, would as a whole be the #1 commercial Asterisk deployment. Chris stated, "It is important to distinguish between free Asterisk downloads and the 1,000 companies that have actually purchased PBXtra to run their business," Chris Lyman said."There is no secret why Fonality is leading the Asterisk market: we've extended Asterisk far beyond its base feature set, added tons of stability code and provide our customers with 24-hour support."
Chris told me that more than 1,000 SMBs with 15,000 employees have purchased and deployed Fonality's PBXtra, an Asterisk-based
IP-PBX that began shipping in October 2004 and which is now averaging more than one million calls per week across its PBXtra platform.
PBXtra is less expensive and easier to deploy than all other major PBX offerings on the market today. The price advantage comes from open source technology and the deployment ease comes from an intuitive, web-based interface designed for the average business owner. PBXtra combines simplicity of installation with depth of features, providing SMBs with an enterprise-class PBX for 40 percent to 80 percent less than competitive offerings.
Fonality's PBXtra product line includes enterprise-class features such as telecommuting, branch office support, voicemail-to-email, click-to-call, VoIP, softphones, support for IP and analog phones, call recording, conferencing and advanced call center functionality. In addition to PBXtra Standard Edition and Call Center Edition, Fonality also offers PBXtra customers HUDpro, (Heads-up Display Professional) its real-time call control and presence management application.
PBXtra is available direct from Fonality or through a Fonality reseller. Pricing starts at $995 for the PBXtra Standard Edition server with unlimited licenses, or $2,935 with ten phones. PBXtra's Call Center Edition, which allows for distributed call centers, is $1,995. HUDpro is $995 for an unlimited seat licenses with support for Windows, Mac and Linux desktops. For more information about PBXtra, HUD or becoming a Fonality reseller, visit www.fonality.com.
See Also:
Fonality, an Asterisk solution passes 20 million callsFonality Asterisk-based IP-PBX breaks out of stealth mode
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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If you've ever done banking
online or by phone, you know that sometimes you run into problems and
need some help. But like the IVR (Interactive Voice Reponse) systems of
larger banks are not exactly a joy to interact with. A small bank in
Arlington, Massachusetts - Leader Bank - realized this and decided to
let customers text IM the local branch manager. [via CRM Buyer]
Leader Bank currently only supports AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) but may
be adding the Yahoo! and MSN Messenger clients as well. Okay, it's not
VoIP, but it's a good step forward in CRM (Customer Relationship Management), which should lead to happier customers. If VoIP support is added, then coupled with data applications, businesses could benefit from the resulting advanced CRM tools.
Written by ewriter on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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According to recent reports, our desire for storage continues to grow by leaps and bounds -- good thing we are storing 0's and 1's (digital data), not physical goods or we would all have to live in castles! (or at least very big houses).
(Look at that big analog storge pile!)
Hard drive manufacturers such as Seagate Technology, Western Digital and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies as well as flash memory providers, such as Samsung, are beefing up the technical capabilities of their products to meet consumers' growing storage needs.
Incredibly, flash memory capacity is doubling about every nine months, according to anaylst firm IDC (as captured by and the Associated Press), which forecasts that hard drive shipments will reach $41.5 billion in 2010.
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The Wall Street Journal got hold of a secret Cable Labs report, that essentially says that CableCos will not be able to withstand a bandwidth challenge from Verizon’s fiber network. They will have to spend money to upgrade and keep up with fiber. The cable industry executives are spinning the story and saying not quite true. Folks are more knowledgeable are rubbing their hands in glee and pointing out, I told you so!
Cynthia Brumfield, who is quite wise in the ways of cable companies writes a very good response to the WSJ report, and it is worth reading to get a full understanding of the issue. Andrew Schmitt has posted a good analysis as well. Here are my two cents on this issue:
It is Cable Labs job to be the canary in the coal mine, and if they don’t then why are they being funded by the cable companies to begin with. Moreover, this is a warning signal to the cable providers, telling them: Sure there is lot of headroom right now, but dudes’ don’t get too comfortable.
However, lets look at market reality. The cable companies can offer a semblance of real broadband: 6-to-10 megabits per second, right now. They have video, and they have just rolled out voice services. Some forecast that the cable companies will have 11 million voice customers by end of 2007, which are coming at Phone Companies’ expense. Now if you have these three services, you are making money, and building up a war-chest to fight the phone companies, even if it means spending on upgrades.
Upgrades are inherently cheaper than building a new network from ground up, including digging streets, and fighting the municipalities and city governments. In short, cable operators have time (and money) on their side. Phone companies in general, and Verizon in particular, is in bit of a financial bind. It is selling off its yellow pages, rural lines and what not!
Of course, will the phone companies ever make the bandwidth so freely available that it undermines their IPTV plans. Unclogging the tubes to handle higher capacities of data also means that phone companies could be reduced to the role of bit carriers. And we all know how much they hate that.
Sure technology might be in Verizon’s favor, but their incumbent thinking, and financial realities still give cable companies a bit of an advantage.
Written by Om Malik on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Forbes did a denouement of PubSub, the “prospective” search engine that has come apart at the seams. A public spat over ownership between PubSub founders Bob Wyman and Salim Ismail led to a proposed acquisition by KnowNow falling through. Now, Forbes says PubSub is too broke to even file for bankruptcy.
The PubSub-KnowNow deal was apparently so close to completion a few months ago, they had started telling the press about it. I did a pre-briefing call with the two companies, who at the time insisted it was a “merger.” The idea was that PubSub had the consumer product while KnowNow had enterprise chops. A couple days later, PR asked me to hold the story while “the lawyers figure things out.” What was really happening, it seems, was conflict between PubSub shareholders was killing the deal…and the company too.
Goodbye PubSub!
Written by Liz Gannes on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Granted, it's the year of video (YOV) given all the excitement about YouTube, etc. but you have to wonder whether some people are getting carried away. For example, Infonetics Research recently issued a report that suggests mobile video service revenue could soar to $5.6-billion by 2009 from a piddling $46.2-million in 2005 - a "staggering 11,997% jump". This is the kind of rah-rah enthusiasm that was alive and well during the dot-com boom when research firms fell over themselves forecasting how big the e-commerce market would become. Now, Infonetics does give themselves an out when it comes to the market's growth - it will explode "if mobile video providers are able to resolve a number of quality and content-related issues". This offers a lot of wiggle room if the $5.6-billion fails to materialize or show signs of reaching those heights. "The success of mobile video hinges on a number of factors, including the availability of handsets with reduced power consumption, value for the subscriber's money, ease of use, acceptable price points for multimedia handsets, and most importantly, the right selection of standard and unique channels, content, and services," said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband and IPTV with Infonetics. That's an awful long list, which makes you wonder why Infonetics is so optimistic about the market's potential. Call me a skeptic or pragmatic but I'm not convinced mobile video will be as huge as some people anticipate. There will definitely be a sweet spot for short clips such as sports highlights, breaking news and entertainment (music video, interviews, etc.) but it's unclear how much demand there will be and how much people are willing to pay for the convenience of mobile video.
For more views, check out Reiter's Mobile TV Report.
Written by Mark Evans on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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The AWS spectrum auction bids are still climbing. The auction, so far has brought in over $10 billion in total bids. At Round 22, and day seven, the bidding has reached a total of $10.75 billion, with the traditional wireless carriers dominating the board — T-Mobile, with $3.21 billion, Verizon Wireless, with $2.80 billion, and Cingular, with $685.75 million.
The news that the satellite consortium Wireless DBS had fallen out of the ranks was making headlines yesterday, which our intrepid readers pointed out on Tuesday, (Thanks Jesse and DG!). But the much-talked about cable group SpectrumCo is also still in the race with $1.42 billion in bids, ranking third for highest net bids, and temporarily winning 71 bids so far, and is one of the remaining media players that seems to still be moving aggressively. The company bid $468.18 million for some New York area spectrum, $166.80 million and $81.91 million for two pieces over LA/Orange County/Riverside, and $60.21 million for a Bay Area license.
Will the spectrum auction reach past the top prediction of $15 billion from analysts? It looks like it might get there by early next week, if the bids keep on coming.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Excerpt: Well, it's back-to-school time, and today we introduce the first free turnkey (aka preconfigured) Asterisk system. And it runs on the desktop of any Windows XP home or office computer. If you want a state-of-the-art phone system, look no further. Out of the box, it supports eight extensions and two lines with integrated voicemail and immediate email delivery of your incoming voicemail messages.
To add additional extensions takes about 5 seconds. This PBX is just the ticket for a small business or a school or even a fraternity or sorority house. It's also perfectly suited for your home. You get every imaginable PBX telephony feature including music on hold, call forwarding, and call transfer as well as a preconfigured AutoAttendant which lets your friends and colleagues direct an incoming call to any of your extensions or even your cellphone.
For those with the magic password, you can even dial in and get dialtone to make five hours of free calls each week to dozens of countries around the world including all of the U.S. and Canada, most of Europe, South and Central America, Australia and all your Far East favorites including China, Taiwan, Russia, and Japan. And the total cost: about $12.50 for each three months of service.
All incoming calls are free, and you even get your very own area code and phone number to pass out to your friends that are still chained to plain old telephones or cellphones. And, yes, all your favorite Nerd Vittles applications are preinstalled and ready to go including weather forecasts for 1,000 airports, MailCall for Asterisk to read you your email messages, NewsClips for Asterisk to read you the news, and the AsteriDex robodialer complete with a web interface to place your outbound calls and to serve up customized CallerID for your incoming calls.
Last but not least, you get all of the bundled TrixBox applications including freePBX, SugarCRM, Samba for Windows networking, FTP and SSH support, WebMin, PHP, MySQL, Perl, Apache, SendMail, integrated fax-to-email support, calling card billing, and more. It slices, it dices ... You get the idea.
Click Here for the Full Nerd
Written by Dal on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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InterNAP, the data center company which has been around for a while has been hit with a strange sort of a curse - curse of power outages. A few weeks ago, a power outage in LA caused one of their data centers to hit the deck, taking along with it MySpace, the social networking giant. John Cook of SeattlePI points to a story about InterNAP being hit by another power outage, this time in Seattle’s Fisher Plaza facility. One more such outage, and it will seem like a trend. Maybe InterNAP needs some divine intervention to prevent that from happening! On a more serious note, these two incidents go on to show the fragility of the modern web infrastructure!
Written by Om Malik on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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It's always nice to see VoIP being used in unique new ways, and that's exactly what InnovAlarm
is doing. Imagine home and security alarm systems, but which use Skype
or another soft client instead of regular phone lines. The service is
in pre-beta. [via Read/Write Web]
The
only drawback with this application is that your computer has to be
turned on. I'm wondering if there's a market for a similar solution
using phone2phone with a VoIP bridge, using hardware such as Digifone's plug'n'play adapter. Phone2phone VoIP calls generally seem to have better quality.
There's
obviously a perception that there is a market for InnovAlarm's method.
In fact, Read/Write Web reports that the company will be getting $10 M
of venture cap in Q4 2006.
Written by ewriter on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Is it a case of don’t trust the early adopters? Boeing’s Connexion “broadband in the sky” service received rave reviews from most of the early adopters who wrote long paeans about the service, and how they could Skype and work in the sky.
The mass market thought otherwise. Boeing today decided to shut down the service and is taking a $320 million charge, as it writes down the assets and pays termination fees to the customers. All Nippon Airlines, Japan Airlines, SAS, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa are three airlines with live Connexions. This should not come as a surprise, since the company has been shopping the service for a while. The decision is also bad news for Colubris Networks, one of the key equipment providers to Boeing.
“Over the last six years, we have invested substantial time, resources and technology in Connexion by Boeing,” said Boeing Chairman, President and CEO Jim McNerney. “Regrettably, the market for this service has not materialized as had been expected. We believe this decision best balances the long-term interests of all parties with a stake in Connexion by Boeing.”
One of the biggest problems Boeing faced was lack of traction in the key US market, where many routinely travel with laptops and want to stay connected. The service, which received internet signals from Satellites and distributed them via WiFi is also facing competition from other technologies. JetBlue, for instance has won special licenses that all allow it to deploy wireless broadband on its jets and offer communication services. It remains to be seen what happens to that service.
Written by Om Malik on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Tropos, the WiFi mesh hardware company behind GoogleFi, and Earthlink’s city-deployments, might have been smart in cornering the market on MuniFi networks, but it also realized that it needed to upgrade in order to meet the demands of heavily-used networks. It has faced competition from other start ups who have boasted of more advanced technology and better, more reliable connectivity.
Nevertheless, the company is trying to put those doubts to rest with a new range of routers, that use multiple radios over different slices of the spectrum. The first is the Tropos 5320, due out in October, which uses radios for both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, and an upgraded software, which can help boost bandwidth for users.
Other hardware will follow, the company says, and will be interoperable in the company’s existing deployments. WiFi Networking News has an indepth analysis of these upgrades. Companies like Strix, SkyPilot and BelAir Networks already have multi-radio nodes for outdoor mesh networks, and have been trying to battle Tropos for city contracts through faster more robust networks.
Sometimes technology isn’t always the key to success, and first-to-market, and major contract wins can bring a company farther. Tropos kinda knew that.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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TomTom One is a new portable GPS navigation unit launched for the North American market, that fits in your shirt pocket, making it easily transportable from car-to-car and to take on business and vacation trips. The TomTom ONE utilizes the Version 5 Navigator software, not TomTom Navigator 6, which
apparently is exclusive to the Treo smartphones at the moment. The one also features Bluetooth support for TomTom's PLUS Services.
I'm a huge fan of TomTom products. I've used TomTom Navigator 5 on a PocketPC for quite some time and they have one of the slickest looking interfaces of any GPS product.
TomTom ONE combines a color touch-screen, lightweight (only 5.6 ounces) and slim design (3.8 inches x 3.2 inches x 1.0 inch) with TomTom’s popular GPS software. At just $499, this is price-point that is lower than most portable GPS solutions.
In addition, users will have access to all TomTom PLUS services including real-time traffic and weather reports and updates on road conditions. Users can also take advantage of TomTom HOME, the software package that efficiently manages content between one’s PC or MAC and TomTom device. Via TomTom HOME users can easily plan routes, download voices and install maps to keep their TomTom up to date anytime. The only thing I wish TomTom's GPS software did better was a "pedestrian mode" for hiking, walking cities, and topographical information.
TomTom One with a cellphone and keys to demonstrate scaleThe new TomTom ONE provides is essentially an entry-level option to TomTom’s comprehensive product offering, which now includes:
·
TomTom GO 910: pre-installed maps of the US, Canada and Europe; optimized screen size, text-to-speech technology, hands-free calling via Bluetooth-enabled phones, and a 20GB hard drive enabling drivers to play music and view image
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TomTom GO 510: pre-installed maps of the US and Canada on an SD card, optimized screen size, and hands-free calling via Bluetooth-enabled phones
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TomTom ONE: TomTom’s newest entry level all-in-one portable navigation device
·
TomTom RIDER: the portable all-in-one navigation solution designed specifically for motorcycles and scooters
·
TomTom NAVIGATOR: navigation software for PDAs
The ONE is similar to the TomTom GO product, but differs in a few ways. First, the TomTom ONE uses the newer SiRFStarIII GPS chipset which is more sensitive than the earlier chipset used in the TomTom GO. Second, the ONE is much thinner and less bulky than the TomTom GO. The TomTom ONE has a smaller internal battery than the GO, thus the GO units offer about 5 hrs of battery life vs. 2 hrs on the TomTom ONE. For me, that's not a big deal, since in most cases the TomTom ONE will be connected to the car's accessory power outlet. Similar to the TomTom GO, the TomTom ONE has full support for .ov2 format POI's (points of interest) including safety cameras, speed traps, etc.
The bottom of the ONE features all the connectivity and memory options, including an SD card slot, Mini-USB, reset button, and the power connection. Interestingly enough there is a headphone port. I suppose that might be useful if you are blasting music and want to be sure to hear the navigation instructions. Though I know of no one that drives with headphones on. Actually you could connect the headphone jack to some car stereos and have the navigation instructions piped into your car speakers.
Specs:Processor: 380MHz ARM920T
Screen: 3.5" 320x240 colour TFT LCD
Memory: 32mb RAM
Battery: Internal Li-Ion
Memory Card: SD including software and maps
GPS Receiver: Built-In SiRFStarIII
Sound: Internal loud speaker
Power Supply : Cigarette lighter socket (included) or Universal Mains Adapter (optional accessory)
PC Connection: Via mini-USB cable
The TomTom ONE is a better choice than the TomTom GO 300 if you plan on taking the GPS unit with you wherever you go, since it fits right in your pocket. They run the exact same navigation software, so they are equivalent there. The TomTom GO's screen is slightly larger, but not by much. Price-wise the TomTom ONE is cheaper. So, the TomTom ONE is more portable, same features, and less money - sounds like a no-brainer to me.
The new TomTom ONE will be available at major retailers across the United States starting in late August 2006.
See Also:
TomTom Supports MapQuestTomTom Tracks other GPS usersTomTom Maps Update
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Much ado about Google's free local wi-fi network yesterday and even greater flap -- if possible -- about the company's lack of a national plan.
(Lots of print coverage and blog coverage all over the place.)
Why don't they do it? Would be a good way to spend down the corporate coffers ...
... And can't imagine they don't have an idea of how to make money with this type of model?
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So let's get something straight here: Google is making a big deal about a new and improved
Google Talk - a service that apparently
few people use (not an unusual situation for many of Google's new services - Google Spreadsheets, anyone?). Will file sharing, voice mail and music status change anything? Personally, I'm a Google Talk user but I only use it for instant messaging, which makes me a pretty rare breed.
More: For other views, check out
Ben Metcalfe, who is far from impressed, and
Inside Google.
Written by Mark Evans on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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For past few weeks, we have devoted a lot of coverage to Mountain View-based GoogleFi, but now it is time to move on, and turn our attention to other Silicon Valley cities. Like san Jose.
This morning, I went down to San Jose to conduct a panel on Broadband Video at the Building Blocks/Digital Hollywood conference. After finishing the panel, I decided to duck out for a quick nicotine fix, and a cup of coffee. Sitting outside the Tech Museum Cafe in Downtown San Jose, I decided to fire up the browser and catch up with the world at large.
Being an eternal broadband optimist, not for a minute did I think that I just might not have access. Apparently, broadband gods were listening. My MacBook Pro instantly found an MetroFi network, and within seconds I was redirected to a MetroFi login screen, with a handful of advertisements on the splash screen. In order to log into the network, all I had to do was just type in an email address - you could just make one up - and in less than 30 seconds was connected.
The connection was rock solid, and while not blazing fast, it was as fast if not more than the connection speeds one normally gets at T-Mobile HotSpots. Not bad, since it it is free! A big 768 x 60 banner took over the top part of my browser, but not in an annonying pop-up sort of a way. I was able to make Skype and Gizmo-based VoIP calls, without much problems. The biggest issue was with email, when my SMTP server refused to send out email.
A little tweaking would have done the trick, but since I was in a bit of a rush, I decided to use the webmail interface. The signal was strong enough for my Nokia E61 device, which after some fiddling with the browser and WLAN settings picked up the signal nice and clear. Of course, it wasn’t quite useful since my email client is married to the EDGE connection and VoIP is still MIA on the device.
If San Jose Network is any indication, then MetroFi’s chances as a municipal access provider are pretty good. The company has city of Portland, Oregon under its belt, and it has been actively bidding to build networks in other cities.
The Mountain View, California-based MetroFi has teamed up with AT&T to build and operate networks in different cities as well. (MetroFi needs to develop a decent advertising-based business. The ads on the San Jose Network’s landing page, well they are just not enough. )
GoogleFi and MetroFi networks are ‘Live’ examples of municipal wireless networks. There are challenges, yes, but there are live networks which show that if you build them… they just might actually show up. Like I did!
Written by Om Malik on August 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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