The State of Urban Wireless

mcabiling writes "Julian Priest has released an excellent study on the development of wireless broadband in London. The study analyzes freenetworks versus commercial hotspot services and home wifi usage. The paper is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license so you can also pick up from there and cover your city. There is one for Paris in the works. Does anyone have any other similar studies of wireless cities ?"

Comments

Korea

[Daengbo]

I just recently moved to Korea, and one of the stats I've heard from the gov't is that greatest rate of per capita wireless availablilty,

Austin hotspot

[bassmastergeneral]

The Austin Chronicle has a nice story on austin's free hotspots setup by, lessnetworks.com, austinfree
There seems to be a rather large push for free hotspots in Austin, TX. Its quite noticable that starbucks and TMobile have about the only pay hotspot in town. Its popping up in the strangest of places, for instance the dog and duck pub now offers wireless.

WiFi and Property rights

[G4from128k]

The June 8,2004, Wall Street Journal carried an article on "Airports Clash With Airlines Over Wi-Fi"(sorry, I don't have a link). Airlines want to use Wifi for both customer lounges and for wireless IT services -- think wireless data terminals for scanning and tracking baggage. But the airport terminal operators claim they own the airwaves and have the right control and sell wifi access.

This could impact regulation of WiFi in the U.S. As the article pointed out: If the FCC takes action, it could have broader implications for Wi-Fi's dissemination. That's because the airlines are asking the FCC a crucial question: whether a landlord has the right to bar tenants from setting up individual Wi-Fi networks. "This is about landlord-tenant rights and whether a landlord can dictate to a tenant how you use unlicensed frequencies," says Laura Smith, president of the Industrial Telecommunications Association, which has asked the FCC for guidance on behalf of the airlines.

I wonder if other building owners will outlaw tenant's wifi setups in favor of selling access to a landowner-run wifi networ.

Bluetooth Hotspots?

[dschuetz]

I don't own a laptop, but I do own a Palm Tungsten T3 with built-in bluetooth, and I've found recently that I wished hotspots spoke Bluetooth. Has anyone started seriously deploying public (free or pay) hotspots with BT?

I'd think that all the bluetooth-enabled phones out there would be a natural target for this kind of service, where people could get internet surfing for cheaper than the on-air data rates the cell phone companies charge.

Or are their technical reasons why this won't work in practice? I really don't want to wait for the next Tungsten rev (4? 5? 6?) to finally build-in 802.11.... (and I have no interest in filling my *1* slot with a wifi card, esp. if it's got an externally-protruding antenna).

Re:Bluetooth Hotspots?

[Jahf]

Bluetooth range is purposefully very short. Generally speaking more than 6' away and you're going to lose connection with most devices. Remember that it was meant to be a personal network protocol.

I'm sure with boosted signals you could broadcast -to- other Bluetooth devices over far greater distances, but don't forget that those devices have to transmit -back- to the signal source. It doesn't do much good to have a 1-way network connection (works for headphones, not for bi-directional data).

Also remember that bluetooth devices are kept low-power because they tend to be put against parts of the human body. If you look at the current 802.11b offerings, most are too strong to be in direct contact with a body part and some are coming out that are so strong they aren't legally allowed in your laptop (for instance, 300mW and 400mW PCMCIA cards for use in wireless ISP devices). Since bluetooth is usually meant for phones, and phones are meant for your ear, they have to obey the same transmission strength guidelines as the other parts of the phone.

One of the things that make 802.11* economical for hotspot usage is that a single piece of equipment can cover a fairly wide area. The number of bluetooth access points needed for the same area would be extremely costly and complicated.

I don't expect you'll see it Bluetooth access points in the same manner as WiFi. What you -might- eventually see is Bluetooth replaced in favor of low-power 802.11* or 802.16*. I could see a device that used those protocols with a low power to send to a headset and which also allowed you to go into a high-power mode where the phone was disabled (to keep you from sticking it next to your head) that allowed it to function as a full-power networking device.

Now what might be useful is a combination 802.11* and Bluetooth chipset, both utilizing the same antenna. That may have interference issues, but I know that I've seen boxes with dual 802.11b cards, so perhaps the Bluetooth and WiFi chips could work together to figure out optimal channel usage to minimize interference.

Or better yet, utilize a CTS protection mode on both devices so that only one was transmitting at the same time (your 802.11 data rate might suffer while on a continuous bluetooth headset call, but I think it would work, especially given the small amount of data that a voice broadcast requires).

I think Bluetooth was an interesting idea, but one that could be easily obsoleted by a standardize low power option for 802.11/802.16. Especially if/when the WiFi + Cellular phones ever come about.

i hate verizon...

[mattkime]

you know what sucks? someone putting up a commercial hotspot near your home or office. nyc is so dense to begin with, and now we have networks penetrating each other's walls. verizon is putting WiFi spots around the city - but only their own customers can use them. the 802.11b/g frequency range is limited - a couple people in one area setting up their own wifi networks quickly causes problems. luckily, i've only run into this at work, otherwise verizon would be having trouble keeping aluminum foil off a nearby hotspot.

Navini networks

[p0]

We have a NLOS setup running with Navini Networks. However technically advanced or challenging the implementation is, customers are not willing to accept interruptions to their feed. In a nlos implementation as such, the service totally depends on the multipath signals, and we have found out to be most annoying to the customers are, the varying 'strong' spots. Technically, these are caused by changes to the surroundings (reflection path), weather and the antenna power. These can be acceptable to someone with fair knowledge of radio networks, but for the average Joe, having to move his CPE, or even changing its orientation for that matter, becomes a headache. How well can a nlos setup be done in a tightly packed urban area?

Portland, Oregon

[Fanglord]

The Personal Telco Project in Portland, Oregon, is setting up free internet access points all over town (mostly in coffee shops), and invites home users to open their networks up, as well. There was a writeup about it in the most recent Willamette Week (weekly alternative newspaper based in Portland).