First National 802.11b ISP

JScarpace writes "The chairman and founder of Earthlink, Sky Dayton, will introduce his newest company today, a wireless ISP called "Boingo" which will resell 802.11b access being provided by smaller ISPs around the country. Sky hopes to build up Boingo the same way he built up Earthlink -- by buying or partnering with enough smaller providers to offer a national service." An overdue idea and a stupid company name. Course it'll never get to me... the downside of living in the sticks. Those of you in real cities may be one step closer to the dream. update yup, another duplicate. Pre coffee story posting should be forbidden. Ah well, maybe the flamers will get it out of their system early ;)

Comments

Dream?

[saintlupus]

one step closer to the dream.

...of sniffing all of my neighbor's traffic, rather than just that of the ones with enough money to buy their own access point.

Security seems it would be an issue with this sort of setup. Anyone know how he's handling it?

--saint

Bring on the Acronyms

[Schpoonk]

B.O.I.N.G.O

Badly Overdue Implementation of Networking Given Out

Ok, so relevant ones are boring. Surrealism ahoy...

Big Orange Invincible Newborn Gibbon Observer
Butt out! I Now Gyrate Openly!
Bendy Octopus In Never-ending Girly Outburst

Doesn't *look* like a repeat ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fellas (-who-are-complaining-that-this-is-a-repeat):

There are 2 separate stories about wireless ISPs related to Earthlink. The previous story is about the announcement, by Earthlink, of a fixed wireless service that would use a roof-mounted dish to provide access. It's not clear it it would use 802.11b or something else. But the key seems to be that it's fixed.

The other story (i.e. this one) is about Sky Dayton's announcement of a new company that will be some sort of aggregator for 802.11b service from various ISPs around the country, and provide mobile service (a la Ricochet/Metricom, which Dayton derides in the little miniinterview/PR linked to above).

These certainly *seem* like different stories, don't they.

Small town != bad access

[Just Some Guy]

I currently live in a city of 250,000, and my broadband choices are ISDN and cable. Fortunately, I happen to live inside the small radius of digital-ready cable service, so I have decent connectivity.

I'm getting ready to move to a small city in Nebraska, and my access options are completely amazing (to me, at least). Fifty dollars will get me 512k wireless or 640/272k DSL, both with static IPs and unfiltered inbound traffic. I was afraid that I'd be stuck with a 26400 dialup, but I'm actually getting a good upgrade for less money.

Living in a small town doesn't have to mean losing service, as I'm pleasantly discovering.