NetStumbler.com

In 2004, cities started treating wireless broadband like sewage and water, converged devices started flying off the shelves and the U.S. wireless industry got smaller.
Via [commsdesign.com]

U.S. airline travelers may be able to use their mobile telephones as well as get high-speed Internet service while in the air under plans launched by U.S. communications regulators on Wednesday.
Via [olympics.reuters.com]

One of three Michigan men who hacked into the national computer system of Lowe’s hardware stores and tried to steal customers’ credit card information was sentenced Wednesday to nine years in federal prison.
Via [freep.com]

A network of community computer centres, linked by wireless technology, is providing a helping hand for poor farmers in Peru.
Via [news.bbc.co.uk]

Atheros Communications has combined a network processor with an 802.11g wireless LAN radio, baseband and media access control to realize the first single-chip 802.11g access point.
Via [commsdesign.com]

T-Mobile has expanded its initial foothold in the UK’s major airports, extending the reach of its Wi-Fi hotspots to cover the whole of Heathrow, Gatwick and Glasgow airports, along with the international departure lounges at Stansted, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Southampton.
Via [theregister.co.uk]

Culminating two years of development and interoperability testing by the more than 100 member companies, the ZigBee Alliance said today its members have ratified the first ZigBee specification.
Via [reed-electronics.com]

The emerging WiMax wireless wide area networking technology has received a boost with the arrival of the first integrated circuit to comply with the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard.
Via [vnunet.com]

Last year a man in Canada was arrested for downloading child pornography onto his laptop, but he used someone else’s wireless access point to access the illegal material. That same year federal officials accused a man from Michigan of conspiring to steal credit card numbers from the Lowe’s chain of home improvement stores by taking advantage of an unsecured Wi-Fi network at a store in Detroit.
Via [theregister.co.uk]

The Radicati Group pegs the penetration of Wi-Fi in the enterprise at 50 percent by 2008. Cut that number in half and it’s still huge. So now that Wi-Fi is becoming a standard part of enterprise infrastructure, it’s time to get serious about security and management.
Via [techworld.com]

Ericsson announced that its has joined the WiMax Forum and that it plans to offer WiMAX as part of the Public Ethernet, as soon as the technology becomes available.
Via [tomshardware.com]

AT&T Corp. said Friday it has teamed up with chip giant Intel Corp. to work on research and development and produce products together.
Via [seattlepi.nwsource.com]

As the popularity of wireless local-area networks (LANs) continues to grow, vendors are adopting various approaches to help commercial and government systems sniff out and detect hackers and rogue wireless access points.
Via [fcw.com]

Atlanta’s ambitious plan to create the nation’s biggest citywide Wi-Fi network is no longer up in the air.
Via [msnbc.msn.com]

One reason for the relatively slow uptake of 5GHz 802.11a Wi-Fi, compared to its 2.4GHz cousin 802.11g, has been the complexity of licensing regulations affecting the 5GHz band – also an issue for WiMAX in the unlicensed spectrum. Two extensions to the 802.11 standard are easing the situation and should boost the adoption of the ‘a’ variant. One is the 802.11j specification, ratified last week, which supports the Japanese opening of the 4.9GHz band for Wi-Fi; the other is 802.11h, already finalized but mandatory in many areas from the start of 2005, which defines mechanisms to prevent WLans interfering with radar.
Via [theregister.co.uk]