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Asia Opens Up to WLAN
enough2000 writes "As Unstrung reports: "Five of Asia's biggest carriers have given the public Wireless LAN market a hefty boost by announcing what they modestly claim is the world's first and largest wireless broadband alliance.
Korea Telecom, China Netcom Corp. Ltd., Maxis (Malaysia), StarHub (Singapore), and Telstra Corp.(Australia) have agreed to open up their networks to allow wireless LAN users to roam from one country to another. Tests begin in July, although no specific launch date has been set." Full article is here."
It is always great to hear about progress like this, even if it isn't in canada. It just means mass production and cheaper costs down the road
to heck with the influence of capitalism; wait til the Chinese go wireless!
China, Korea and Telstra have new WiFi link! Now they can spam the rest of world without having to leave the comfort of their armchairs...
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Conspicuous by their absense from this list, huh?
Ah well.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
http://reuters.feedroom.com
The ugly head of colonialism rises once again.
I always used to wonder how could the citizens of europe condone imperialism and colonialism.
How could anyone support such dispicable actions?
But now I see it happening in front of my eyes and I understand.
American scientists discovered a method of locating arbitrary countries on a map.
Interesting stuff, and pretty cool if you travel a lot in these countries, but does this ultimatively mean the end for 3G over there? I don't really know much about 3G activities in Eastern Asia (except for Inode in Japan), so it would be quite nice to see if the telecom companies will continue developing UMTS-like mobile networks. Any tips, comments?
-- Power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Isn't it redundant to say this is the first AND largest... If it is the first... it MUST BE the largest.
I don't believe in sigs.
My knee-jerk reaction to this was: OK, now Australians can't use Google anymore.
But of course, that only applies if they go to China.
And they can perhaps use a VPN connection to Australia to access all those blocked sites?
(Sort of an "ask Slashdot" question...)
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Now if they would only allow for political roaming too (tanks are not considered as such !), then Asia would not only be innovative, but it would suddenly become interesting too...
Hooo Boy! Now they can surf the three ALLOWED pages wirelessly... from anywhere censored internet access is available!
www.GamezCore.com For Hardcore PS2 Gamerz : By Hardcore PS2 Gamerz
Wireless LAN -- yet another way to avoid that large brown pollution cloud which hangs over much of asia!
I think you wanted to say I-Mode :)
I can't decide whether I want the establishment to embrace WiFi. I already have WiFi access at the main places I want it, for free. Once somebody tries to cash in on the trend, how long until conflict arises over the spectrum and we start hearing complaints about "pirate WiFi", akin to "pirate radio"?
I live/work in Korea...subscribe to KT, and travel to China several times a year. My iBook is Airport equipped, and this news means it will stay that way. Nice....
First, two quotations:
"'We will begin to see similar agreements in Europe very shortly,' she predicts. 'Mobile carriers will build up their own network first and then work together with other operators.'"
followed by:
"Richard McBride,... told Unstrung that the potential challenges the five carriers may face should not be underestimated. 'I think it could be pretty tight to sort this by July, because there are so many commercial pressures pulling in all directions,' he remarks. 'You cannot downplay the technical aspects required if they are looking for full interoperability between the networks.'"
It's a shame they couldn't choose a standard first and then build their own networks. (I know little about WiFi nets but it does seem counterproductive.)
and Telstra Corp.(Australia)
When was Australia downgraded from a continent and merged with Asia?
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
'ta
If they don't know enough discrete math to realize that they are being redundant, can we really trust their technical background?
ChicagoFan
I bet Australians and such will get their money's worth while traveling in China...
-- jimmycarter
I'm thinking it will be bogged down by all those relay spammers.
>> what they modestly claim is the world's first and largest wireless broadband alliance
Most of the time, the first (only) entry into a list is the largest. Also the smallest, the wierdest, or even the [insert your superlative here]. They should not so modest in their claim. It's true after all!
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Down with Slashdot!
And for that matter, how long before the idea catches on that, by working together, one ring of networks can try to encompass everyone, and WiFi pirates really WILL be the political protests of the future?
I mean this seriously. I don't know enough about this to know how much this is going to limit people's freedom of speech, and anywhere china gets involved, so does censorship. Which might, come to think of it, explain the conspicuous absence of japan from this group...
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
China Netcom is still waiting for the 3G license which everyone is guessing the Chinese government will require China Netcom as well as China telecom to adapt the home grown 3G standard calls TD-SCDMA . TD-SCDMA is the third UMT approved 3G standards along with WCDMA and CDMA2000.
Because of the delay in licensing, China Netcom and China Telecom has been deployed PHS system called XiaoLingTong all over China. PHS is basically a extension to their fixed line operation and there are already company producing PHS/WiFi boxs and cards. The living in China is quickly become an metropaliton and China's national agenda are to build large and crowded city. With that kind of future, PHS + WiFi does make more sense then expensive deployment of 3G. You would be covered most of the time and I don't think we really have data that emergen that you just can't wait for a couple minutes to get it. If your life depending on instance access to data to that degreee, you'd better just stay home and have redundent links.
When it comes down to it, 3G is all about data but 3G can't deliver data comparable to 802.11b for another couple years and by that time, WiFi would have advanced already. 3G suppose to deliver superior voice quality but with the price difference, I rather use IP phone.
Overall, 3G is a hype created by global telecom to harvest more money from individual to archive better ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) for their business. With some of the telecom in a protected region still enjoy 20~30% profit margin these days, they will do everything in their power to discredit WiFi. It's good to see some of the telecom actually recognize this and step into WiFi.
A stunning money maker for those involved if they cater to the traffic of consumer stats. Now "they" will be able to track not just your surfing but your travels too. I imagine the anti-terrorist folks would find this good too.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
So now that austrailia is part of asia, what will their accent sound like?
Of course, the G3 system, which currently runs at 384Kbps, is really expensive. NTT charges based on the number of packets instead of connection time, or even a flat rate, unlimited connection fee (unlike DDI Pocket, which I use and runs at 128KBpbs).
Anyway, I am looking forward to when J-phone and/or DDI Pocket start implementing their own G3 networks as they tend to have much better pricing options than NTT DoCoMo.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
The companies have so far invested more than $100,000 in the deal, excluding investments in the pilot roaming service.
Wow, they invested a whopping $100,000! Are they sure they can afford that much? With that amount of support, I'm sure the WLAN services will be everywhere in no time!
Maybe the author meant to write $100M.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Joe built a house, then Sally built a bigger house. See how this works? Joe's was first, but Sally's is bigger.
If they had said the "ONLY and largest", you might have a point.
Sean
Since when is "first & largest" redundant? First != only.
Sean
Why do people like this wireless shite? It's slow, unreliable, insecure and just too darn trendy to be anything but a major PITA.
They wire up one building (Suntec convention center not even all of Suntec) and all the sudden they are signing big deals allowing people to 'roam' in Singapore. This is complete PR bull. My own house's wifi has larger coverage, maybe I should make some deals.
And yes they have claimed the airport and Singapore Expo, just try and find real info on them at www.starhub.com.
Wow 20,000 hot spots and 3 of them in Singapore. What a great deal.
I think someone has been creative with the facts here. If you do a search on the Telstra web site for 'wifi hotspot' the only hit on their ENTIRE site is a speach by their MD (Go Ziggie !) made back in 2000 that they could do something.
Currently their WiFi infrastructure consists of hot air and vague intentions.
So if you ignore Telstra the facts don't change at all.
Now, if it made reference to the booming activity in hobbyist construction and deployment of WiFi Internet access that would be interesting.
I live in Hong Kong too. I receive more than -->100-- spam mails daily, and 99% of them are from the U.S, and that's because I run a mildly popular news site (with my e-mail on the front page) where 80% of my audiences are from the U.S. If you have no connection with them, then it is, well, not WORTH spamming you, that's why you only receive spams in Chinese.
So no, your stat is incorrect because of your geographical location and your native language. Thank you for your contribution.
I wouldn't go as far as to saying that the joke guy was a racist; but I don't think I agree with slashdot moderator's sense of humor here.
Personally, I think my choice in the mostest-superlative-computer wars has to
be the HP-48 series of calculators. They'll run almost anything. And if they
can't, while I'll just plug a Linux box into the serial port and load up the
HP-48 VT-100 emulator.
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