NetStumbler.com

A western US company has purchased 11 of GigaBeam’s WiFiber links with compound semiconductor chips, according to the Virginia-based broadband wireless access equipment vendor. According to GigaBeam chairman and CEO Lou Slaughter, the company’s client “is taking advantage of WiFiber, instead of terrestrial fiber, to build out a metropolitan network at a fraction of the cost of an equivalent terrestrial fiber network.” WiFiber products work in 71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz spectral bands, which the Federal Communications Commission are allowing for wireless point-to-point commercial use. GigaBeam is currently offering 1Gbit/s WiFiber and looks to unveil 2.7 GBit/s version later this year. In the works is a 10Gbit/s model.
Via [compoundsemiconductor.net]

T-Mobile USA is due to begin offering a new service for mobile phone users that will allow seamless switching between its cellular network and their home Wi-Fi networks. The company will use unlicensed mobile access or UMA to enable the new service. T-Mobile, several blogs reported, has performed a trial of the service in the Pacific Northwest for a month. Kineto Wireless, one of the companies developing software to support the new product, expects T-Mobile to offer the service to users in at least one major city initially and expand the coverage to include the firm’s 7,836 hot spots nationwide.
Via [news.zdnet.com]

The Wireless Silicon Valley Task Force has chosen Silicon Valley Metro Connect to build and run a wireless network that will stretch over 1,500 square miles of the region. Metro Connect is a consortium involving Cisco Systems and IBM. The project, however, still requires the approval of individual municipalities before the construction of the network can begin. It aims to provide free access to basic broadband Internet service but users wanting other features like Internet-based phone calls or streaming video will be charged a fee.
Via [linuxinsider.com]

In the past two months, Clearwire has received over $1.1 billion to develop a nationwide WiMax network. It won $900 million in investment from IntelCapital and Motorola Ventures for the project in July. It secured a further $100 million from two investors and $125 million in debt financing from Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and JP Morgan. Clearwire has gathered a total of $2 billion since the startup’s inception in 2003.
Via [redherring.com]

Intel is banking on WiMax to boost its declining sales. The company will provide the technology to Sprint Nextel Corp., which announced that it will spend $3 billion to create a new network based on the standard. Intel saw a 13 percent annual increase in sales due to its Centrino chips between 2003 and 2005. But profits in the past two quarters have been dropping and Chief executive officer Paul Otellini expects revenues to fall — the first time since 2001 — because of increasing market gains by Advanced Micro Devices, AMD.
Via [philly.com]

Wireless chipmaker CSR has developed a VoIP phone that may be sold for under $20 or just a tenth of the average cost of current models. The company plans to license UniVox to handset manufacturers and sees the release of the product by the second half of next year. The phone uses CSR’s UniFi tri-band Wi-Fi chip, which is intended for low-power embedded applications, and renders up to 20 hours of talk time. It supports SIP, IAX2 VoIP, WEP, WPA and 802.11i security.
Via [itweek.co.uk]

Mobiboo and Belkin are now offering handsets that can perform VoIP calls using connection to wireless networks, i.e., The Cloud for Mobiboo and Skype for the latter. Calls from a Mobiboo handset — either the £99 Mobiboo F1000 unit or the £179 Mobiboo F3000 model — to other Mobiboo users are free, those to UK landlines cost 2p a minute and those to non-VoIP mobiles will be charged 14p. Users of the Belkin model, which people can buy for £120, will be charged nothing if they call Skype clients. But subscribers will need to pay 1.4p a minute if they call landline users and 16.6p to other mobiles.
Via [technology.timesonline.co.uk]

Johnny Cache angered alot of Mac faithful with his Blackhat talk about wireless driver vulnerabilities in Mac’s. His recent silence has not helped things. However his silence has been lifted when talking about the vulnerability from the perspective of an Intel driver. The Mac faithful still claim he’s lying, but his attention to responsible disclosure and the possibility of legal threats will keep him silent for a little while longer.
Via [theinquirer.net]

3G is barely deployed and now there is talk about 4G. Sprint is aiming to use WiMax as thier 4G technology of choice, expecting to put $3 Billion into the technology in the next 2 years. Faster speeds are one factor for the choice of WiMax but chipset costs and availability have also influenced the decision.
Via [news.com.com]

Aruba CEO Dominic Orr expects wireless connectivity to become a standard segment of enterprise net infrastructure and will therefore be less interesting. Orr said: “‘WLAN’ is, if not dead, then uninteresting. Once it’s ’spec-able’ by the IEEE, most of the profit goes to the silicon makers. Eighteen months after 802.11n is standardized, the WLAN is no longer an interesting business. It’s a very small window, and it’s quickly being commoditized.” Orr believes, however, that such development brings challenges to traditional conventions and architectures for network authentication and security. “The security architecture for wired nets, based on using physical port-based conventions, won’t work. You need specific, user-oriented identification, content and location data [to secure the net],” he added.
Via [networkworld.com]

Tropos has increased the available bandwidth of municipal wireless installations with it’s dual band 5320 outdoor MetroMesh router. The new router boasts a multitude of different protocols and software improvements to allow cities to provide the best coverage possible.
Via [wirelessweek.com]

Google’s municipal WiFi project in Mountain View, CA. has a catch, no live tech support. The network is being provided for 5 years at a cost of millions as a ‘perk’ to the city, but as the saying goes; “you get what you pay for”. The free network will not have any live tech support available. While not a huge problem for some users, it may limit the amount of people who use the network.
Via [seattletimes.nwsource.com]

After Earthlink, Sky Dayton is now focusing on two new ventures, Boingo Wireless and Helio, both of which have tight connections with the pioneering Internet service provider. Earthlink, which won contracts to build WiFi networks in cities such as New Orleans, San Francisco, and Anaheim, California, pays for its clients’ use of Boingo software. The company, where Dayton remains a major shareholder after Earthlink’s marriage with MindSpring Enterprises in 2000, is one of Helio’s co-owners (the other being South Korean communications giant SK Telecom). The telephone operation business is targeting the under-30 group owning Internet-capable phones. Earthlink believes Helio will gain 3 million users by 2009.
Via [businessweek.com]

Minneapolis aims to create a citywide wireless network with the help of BelAir Networks and US Internet. Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak said the city “has chosen both a business model and a technology solution that ensure immediate, ongoing, and sustainable benefits.” Under the plan, the suppliers will develop a 54-squre-mile network that will initially support WiFi and can be be upgraded to WiMax and 3G later. According to BelAir spokeswoman Sheila Burpee Duncan, a one-mile-square WiFi pilot network is now operating in the city.
Via [informationweek.com]

Carleton University researcher Dr. Jeyanthi Hall has developed a new method that could end MAC address spoofing. Based on her radio frequency signal analysis for 15 devices, Hall found out that variations during the manufacturing process creates a unique signal for each of these devices. The signals were so distinct that she was able to attain a 95 percent detection rate with no false positives during the trial.
Via [arstechnica.com]