The 66 UPS
Stores (formerly Mail Boxes Etc. before being purchased by United Parcel
Service) in Chicago are to be the subject of a hotspot pilot
program powered by Toshiba Systems Group (CSG)'s SurfHere
hotspot network running the company's $199 hotspot-in-a-box products.
Toshiba will also take care of the back-end billing (it is providing the network
for McDonald's locations in the Chicago area, as well.) The UPS pilot takes
advantage of broadband (DSL or cable) already installed at most of its locations.
If the package carrier sees high demand for the service, it will likely roll
it out to the 3,000 UPS Store locations in the United States. The pilot starts
on September 16.
The apartment and office complex of Carillon
Point on Lake Washington in Kirkland, Wash., will be using Wi-Fi services
from national ISP Fox Communications
to provide free Internet access to anyone associated with the location, from
visitors to residents. The service, called FoxSpot, will cover the entire
waterfront campus, marina, docks, restaurants and other common areas.
T-Mobile Hotspot -- already running
one of, if not the largest hotspot networks in the world -- continues to add
new locations to its foot print:
More than 40 Delta
Crown Room Clubs at airports will be getting T-Mobile Hotspot service
by the end of the year. Several are currently active in airports such as
Atlanta, Cincinnati, Denver, Nashville, Raleigh/Durham, Tampa, and Salt
Lake City. Any Delta SkyMiles members who sign up to use T-Mobile Hotspot
at $29.99 a month before the end of the year will get 3,000 bonus miles;
signing for the $39.99 a month unlimited plan earns 3,400 miles.
Not to be forgotten, the American Airline's
Admirals Club, which are also serviced by T-Mobile for Wi-Fi, opened up
a new club and Flagship Lounge in the Los Angeles airport this week, a 25,000
square foot area complete with wireless access.
Overseas, T-Mobile has launched public access
Wi-Fi in the Czech Republic in eight hotel locations, with work begun on
the Brno Airport. Another 14 locations are under way as well. Reportedly,
all these Czech locations are currently free as T-Mobile's billing system
apparently isn't in place yet.
Texaco stations in
the United Kingdom will also be joining the T-Mobile network. They two companies
have signed an agreement to put hotspots in 'several hundred' service stations
on major roads. The current T-Mobile service in the UK is at 56 Starbucks
around the islands.
Alvarion
and Starhome GmbH (a subsidiary of Comverse,
both companies from Israel, are starting a hotspot service. The new service
will use Alvarion's carrier-grade equipment and will be managed by Starhome,
which already manages 160 million cellular customers. The service will be
offered to mobile operators, such as the 45 cellular carriers that are already
Starhome customers.
Queensland, Australia, is going to offer government
backed Wi-Fi in a 12 month trial in 20 locations -- railway stations, sprots
venues, court rooms, and more -- along the Gold Coast and in Brisbane, to
gauge interest in Wi-Fi use. The service will be run by Hotspot Global of Sydney, which
will bring together a consortium of businesses to provide services. That includes
support from Intel. A key requirement for the trial was use of a "single
infrastructure" that could be used by multiple WISPs, thus providing
a single bill for customers. Rollout should be completed in October.
Look for WiFiPod's soon in the north western sections of Great Britain.
Nublu Technologies is launching this
hotspot service and is in a strategic partnership with PicoPoint to use the latter's roaming and
back office platform. The WiFiPod service will offer "connectivity packs"
with USB-based 802.11b adapters and manuals so users not currently equipped
with Wi-Fi can still get online through the locations. Nublue expects to have
100 WiFiPods operational in in the UK by the end of the year.
UK hotspots are hot this week: Inspired
Broadcast Network's "The Cloud"
is also getting a push, in a deal with NWP
Spectrum, a company which runs Internet kiosks and payphones. By partnering
to put access points in NWP Spectrum's equipment, the Cloud could grow from
the announced 3,000 sites to 7,000. Currently the Cloud has 1,800 locations
installed. One of the first NWP Spectrum sites to enter The Cloud will be
in London's Leicester Square.
Back in the U.S, namely Philadelphia, Pa., comes word from FTS
Wireless (a subsidiary of FTS Apparel) that it has
launched its first hotspot in the suburbs of that city. Based in Tampa, Florida,
FTS Wireless has a couple hotspots there as well.
The Parisian Brasserie La Coupole brewery in, of course, Paris, is getting
hotspot service in its public areas: conference rooms, restaurant, and night
club. The service will be from Adael Wireless.
September 19 and 20 will be "Wireless Lab Park Days" in Manhattan,
a two day event sponsored by Nycwireless
and The Downtown Alliance to promote
the fact that free Wi-Fi is available in lower Manhattan and to show how it
impacts arts and the community. It will be held each day from noon to 4pm
at City Hall Park.
Netherlands-based WinQ -- the first with a hotspot in Europe certified
as a Wi-Fi ZONE by the Wi-FI Alliance --
is partnered with TOGEWAnet to use its WeRoam
service for integrating WLAN and GSM access. Thus any customers of GSM operators
that subscribe to WeRoam -- which opens up the Wi-Fi to SIM/RADIUS based authentication
-- can also use WinQ's hotspots. The user simply needs a SIM card for authentication.
Fatport of Vancouver, British Columbia, is
now in a roaming agreement with Surf and
Sip of San Francisco, which has close to 500 hotpsots in the US, UK, and
Europe. Fatport subscribers can use the Surf and Sip sites at no extra charge.
Fatport is also in roaming agreement with Boingo Wireless.
McDonald's continues to embrace Wi-Fi faster
than you can scarf down an order of six-piece McNuggets. Now the company is
saying by mid-September it will have Wi-Fi service in all of its restaurants
in Guangzhou, China, which is in the Guangdong Province in the southern part
of the country. This, of course, is a pilot program (much like what its doing
in New York,
San Francisco,
and Chicago),
and the results will determine how the fast food chain deploys hotspots in
other areas of China. Most of the McDonald's restaurants in the country are
owned by the corporation, but they did just open their first franchise location
in the Tianjin Municipality in the north. In other parts of the world, 75%
of the locations are owned by franchisees.
StayOnline, which concentrates on providing
high-speed connections in hotel properties, is adding service to eleven locations
run by Pineapple Management Services over the next two months. These include
nine Fairfield Inn by Marriott locations in Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana,
Tennessee, and Texas; and the Courtyard by Marriott in Beaumont, Texas. All
together the hotels have 885 rooms, all of which will be covered by a Wi-Fi
connection. Lobbies, too. Pineapple is buying four more Marriotts soon and
those will also be covered in StayOnline's Wi-Fi service.
Gemtek Systems in the Netherlands, which
supplies Wi-Fi public access solutions for carriers, is teaming with Wificom Technologies, which provides back-end
billing and management. The Wificom SAB server will be made completely interoperable
with Gemtek's product line. Trial systems combining the two are already running
in Europe.
Verge Wireless Networks of installing
a wireless hotzone in downtown Baton Rouge, La., using equipment from Tropos
Networks. This Wi-Fi-based cloud will blanket the area for residents,
tourists, and businesses to take advantage of for wireless Internet access.
Access for the public will be free, and Verge plans to have pay-as-you go
services, such as VPN access for those who need it, like the state government
workers (Baton Rouge is the state capital). The Tropos products use a wireless
mesh system to communicate, so each access point does not need separate backhaul.
Add wi-fiplanet.com to your favorites Add wi-fiplanet.com to your browser search box IE 7 | Firefox 2.0 | Firefox 1.5.xReceive news via our XML/RSS feed
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
