Wireless Internet Access Options
This is the area I'm very familiar with since I'm a Web Developer and depend on dependable, high speed Internet access to make a living. There are a few options available depending on your needs and budget.
WiFi Internet
WiFi stands for Wireless Fidelity. It is simply a wireless Internet access signal being broadcast by a WiFi provider which could be a bank, coffee shop, book store, RV park, etc. WiFi Hot Spots typically broadcast their signal anywhere from 300 to 1000 feet from the base station or from a repeater tower. It typically has a very limited signal broadcast range, however with the right amplification equipment you can receive WiFi signals from as far as 10 miles away or more.
Many RV parks now provide WiFi service, some provide it for FREE and others charge for it. You can expect to pay anywhere from $20 to $40 per month for a commercial WiFi service. The benefit of WiFi is speed and mobility. There are numerous FREE WiFi hot spots just about anywhere you go now adays and just about all laptops come equipped with a wireless adapter (equivalent to a wireless modem) built right into them which allows you to connect to any open WiFi Hotspot in range. You can also purchase Wireless adapter cards that plug into a desktop motherboard or USB port. The downside is WiFi signals typically have a limited range and the typical laptop computer's wireless adapter isn't very powerful so you have to be close to a Hot Spot unless you have an amplifyer of some sort.
This is one of the least expensive travelling Internet options available since it is provided FREE from many locations.
WWAN
WWAN stands for Wireless Wide Area Network. A WWAN, as the name implies, provides a Wide Area Internet signal. How wide? Well it could be across a state, a country or the world for that matter. The benefit of a WWAN over WiFi is availability. A good example of a WWAN is Verizon Wireless Internet. You simply plug a card into your laptop and you have high speed (Verizon is fast DSL equivalent) Internet almost anywhere you go in the US or Canada.
I've depended primarily on this service as a web developer since 2004. Verizon will cost you about $80 per month unless you also have your cell phone service with them, in which case you will get a significant discount for adding the Internet service. Recently I've also utilized WiFi wherever available because WiFi is typically faster than Verizon (WiFi is cable speed equivalent).
Cable Internet Access
You can get cable Internet service at any RV park that provides mainstream cable TV. It runs about $25 to $35 per month at the time of this writing. This is a nice, fast, easy option however impractical if you move around alot. If you want to save on the setup fees you will have to pick up and install the equipment yourself. However if you stay in one place for a few months at a time and are somewhat technically savvy, this is a good option.
Satellite Internet
If you tend to stay in one place for any period of time, this is the service of choice and offers the most benefit if you use it correctly. You can use satellite to:
- Broadcast a commercial WiFi Internet Signal to other RVers for pay
- Receive Internet TV Stations
- For VOIP Skype Phone Service
- ANYWHERE in the WORLD
In other words, if you set up your satellite Internet service effectively, you can enjoy high speed Internet access, watch TV and get cheap phone service. You can do all this for FREE or even get paid for using it if you broadcast a WiFi signal and charge a few of your neighbors to access it. How's that for a killer deal? The only downside if you travel alot, is you have to actuall set it up at each place you stop but this should take about a half hour or so.
Types of Satellite Internet Service
There are many options available. I will list the main ones by order of quality (and price) from most expensive to least.
DataStorm Internet
This is the most expensive and the cadillac of the line. If you have $5,000 or more to invest in having a system installed, you can get a roof mounted system that automatically locates, tracks and locks onto the signal with the flip of a switch. You can even get a system that allows you to surf the net as you drive. The DataStorm people were among the first to offer Mobile Satellite Internet Access to TV, Radio Stations, Government, Business and Emergency Services. This is a very high end product and frankly, it's too rich for many peoples pocketbooks. Once you have the system installed
Camping World
Actually you can get dome type roof mount systems for less through various places like camping world. They aren't as high tech as the DataStorms and you are still talking over $2000.00 in most cases to set the system up and then a monthly charge of between $70 and $100 or so, but they are not quite as expensive as their older brother.
DirecWay Tripod System
You can get into a nice system for about $1700.00 and as low as $40 per month. You can even have it shipped to the RV park you are staying in. This is probably the most economical option other than buying used off of Ebay.
WiFi News
WiFi News
Worcester Train-Fi: New Commuter Rail Wi-Fi Pilot
The train from Worcester through Framingham into Boston, Mass., adds Internet access via Wi-Fi in pilot project: A popular 45-mile commuter line will have at least one car per train with Internet service, with the intention of expanding access to all 13 commuter lines in Massachusetts. The line carries 18,000 passengers daily across 17 stations. This would be likely be the largest deployment of train-based Wi-Fi outside of Europe, where GNER in the UK and SJ in Sweden have a couple dozen trains on a small number of lines unwired. This trial uses Sprint's EVDO service through an external antenna mounted on each car; 45 coaches are currently set up for Wi-Fi. The authority has already received piles of enthusiastic comments. No word on which service provider (if any) is involved among the several companies that unwire trains. I've been predicting more train-Fi on commuter rail in the U.S. for a long time based on hard information from rail authorities. It's just harder than it looks. Unlike, say, bus Fi, where cell access is available along highways, or ferry Fi, where the ferries run fixed routes across water where you can point antennas, rail lines--even commuter rail--run along often highly variable terrain or inaccessible paths. It's just hard to get a constant signal. Most likely, most rail lines will need a combination of fixed, satellite, and cellular service--perhaps two or all three. There's really no substantial Wi-Fi on board trains in the U.S. now. ACE in California no longer even discusses the future of its Wi-Fi on its Web site, even though it was the pioneer, and has been saying for about two years that Wi-Fi was returning. CalTrain dropped its plan due to cost in the South Bay Area. Capitol Corridor (Sacramento to San Jose) has a plan underway that should result in service in 2009. Elsewhere, I hear rumblings about BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), Amtrak (Northeast Corridor), and other lines, but no public announcements. Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.
Business Flyers Indifferent to In-Flight Broadband, But They Haven't Tasted That Apple Yet
Orbitz's business service arm asked 640 business travelers about their interest in sky-hi Wi-Fi: The results are lackluster, but there's an important proviso. Orbitz found that only 8 percent of those surveyed thought Wi-Fi was important enough to take a "less convenient or more expensive" flight, while 56 percent didn't think Internet access was a necessity, and 36 percent said they'd look for a Wi-Fi-equipped flight but apparently not work hard for it. But that's before virtually any domestic business traveler has used in-flight broadband. My expectation is that as service becomes available, people start relying on it, just as they do with a cell phone. Few business people needed to make a call away from a landline or phone booth before cells were common and reliable, too. Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.
St. Louis Park Scraps Solar-Powered Network
The final curtain has fallen on the ambitious St. Louis Park, Minn., Wi-Fi network: The city claims the contractor did a terrible job in planning and deploying the network, especially since the vendor received the contract through a low bid based on using solar-powered nodes. The city found the nodes were placed poorly for charging, and that the company, Arinc, used "the wrong locations" and "the wrong materials," according to the CIO. It's a sad situation, the Star Tribune says, "that council and staff members said has 'sickened' them." The city owns the network, and had hired Arinc, which in turn contracted some local operations. Arinc is a large firm which has previously built Wi-Fi networks, but not using solar power. The city has spent to $800,000 on the network , but the story says the city might sue Arinc to recover this. It would cost $3m to build the rest of the network out, the city says, a far cry from the $1.7m that Arinc bid. Some small part of the additional cost had to do with a redesign of the tall poles on which solar panels were mounted after residents complained about the garish appearance. They're breathing a sigh of relief now that they know their reportedly pretty town won't be festooned with such stakes. Regarding the poles, the mayor had some choice language on the subject: " 'We're going to tell Arinc, "Come get your poles, take them out of the ground, stick them someplace where the solar panels won't work at all," ' Mayor Jeff Jacobs said." Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.
Southwest Plans Test of In-Flight Internet by Summer
Finally, airborne Wi-Fi is getting some legs with Southwest announcement: In the wake of a series of announcements and leaks last year, and today's formal plan by American Airlines to put AirCell service in all 15 of its domestic 767-200s, we're starting to see traction. Southwest will work with Row 44 to test in-flight broadband by this summer. Row 44 uses Ku-band satellites, the same as doomed Connexion by Boeing, but the company (and other similar operators not yet launched) argue that with modern antennas, more strategic transponder rental, and better signal processing, they can achieve far faster results than Boeing at a far lower cost. With Row 44 and AirCell set for near-term tests, JetBlue in an active trial, and OnAir finally launched in Europe with a single Air France aircraft (but loads of RyanAir planes to come), there's at last some momentum. What could scotch the momentum is if service turns out to be erratic, if passengers don't like the offering, or costs turn out higher to equip planes. None of those issues seems likely to come into play. The satellite operators are using well-known technology, and AirCell has been operating ground-station based telecom for general (private) aviation for many years. The cost for equipping planes is also well understood at this point. Passengers didn't flock to Connexion, and some argue that was because of its high cost (over $25 for the longest flights), but I think it was more likely that Boeing was on the rising curve of people carrying laptops with decent battery life with Wi-Fi chips that didn't suck power too rapidly (the Intel Core processors hadn't hit when Connexion was in its heydey), and there were enormously fewer handhelds with Wi-Fi. The iPhone, with 4m sold to date, changes the equation of what people will want to do in the air. Now, interestingly, there's room for a great partnership between Apple and all these various airline services. Why? Because Apple is now renting movies, which require an Internet connection to start watching after download. A colleague found that on his trip back from Macworld Expo, he couldn't watch the movies he'd downloaded before taking off because he didn't have a live connection in the air for the several thousand bytes needed to perform activation. Apple could partner with airlines and services to allow customers to activate rental movies in the air without paying for a connection. This would work even with JetBlue's limited bandwidth. Apple could also put cached movies in on-board servers--say the most popular 300 films--so that people could download the movies over the local network at 802.11g or 802.11n speeds (a few minutes) when boarding or in transit. That's a longer-term project, but it's something I've heard discussed for years now: media servers for cafes, hotels, trains, planes, and other venues. Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.
AT&T Gives Free Wi-fi to All DSL Customers
AT&T expands a previous free offer to premium DSL subscribers to almost all DSL subscribers: That's right: 10m AT&T DSL subscribers now qualify for free Wi-Fi at the 9,000 McDonald's and 1,000 other locations in AT&T's network (operated or resold by Wayport). Anyone with 1.5 Mbps DSL or greater, which is pretty much all of its subscribers, can sign up for free Wi-Fi at the AT&T Web site. This is another big win for Wayport, which has a few deals already for free access to its McDonald's locations: Nintendo for its DS2 player and Zipit for the Zipit Wireless Messenger 2. I've long thought it odd that AT&T was willing to charge even a nominal amount to its DSL subscribers for them to use Wi-Fi, because that set a bar that would keep people from using it. Because AT&T is clearly using Wi-Fi as a customer retention tool, not a real line of revenue, the $2 per month charge seemed a little silly--both too low and too high. I'm not sure if this puts any pressure on other locations or operators, because the kind of AT&T customer who would find this free access appealing is likely not paying for Wi-Fi elsewhere. And while McDonald's are convenient, it's not quite the same thing as, say, the mix of networks in Boingo's aggregated network or the comfort of Starbucks in T-Mobile's network. Of course, McDonald's is putting in coffee bars in its stores, and perhaps this is part of a strategy that involves the fast-food giant to get more customers that frequent Starbucks, thus increasing the average meal price. But McDonald's would need to put cushy chairs and sofas in meet the coffee retailer halfway. Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.
American Announces In-Flight Internet Pricing, Schedule
American Airlines provides Wall Street Journal with better sense of time, cost of upcoming in-flight Internet access: As previously was known, American will launch service on its 767-200 aircraft, but the plan is clearer that service will start this summer and expand across its fleet. Sounds like testing is going well. The service's rough price has been set at $10 for some time; this article clarifies two aspects to that. First, flights of over three hours will cost $12.95; shorter flights, $10. Second, that American doesn't quite expect to make money from the service, but views it as an amenity to "improve our customers' experience," which is marketing-speak for "poach customers." Update: The Journal article is more optimistic than American's press release, which says they're still testing and considering whether to expand to their entire fleet. AirCell will operate the service, as I've written about extensively for what seems like years, using ground-to-air technology. JetBlue is testing service on its own aircraft from ground station; Row 44 will test its satellite service with Alaska Air. Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.
MetroFi Stops Building in Aurora and Naperville, Ill.
We're long past the beginning of the end, and we're nearing the end of the end for the built-it-first, figure-revenue-later model of municipal Wi-Fi: For two years, MetroFi has had the contract for Aurora, Ill., among the first cities to electrify its streetlights (1881). Delays due to utility poles have kept the network from growing fast for some time. Now, according to local papers, MetroFi is requiring a $3.5m contract over five years to cover public safety wireless costs or it won't complete the ad-supported, free public access network. Only 20 percent of the network has been built, and no work has been done since June. MetroFi confirmed via email that the company won't build the networks out further, noting through a spokesperson, "Everyone involved has been aware of the change in the industry model for quite a while." MetroFi has lost a number of contracts over the last year as it shifted its model--a process they say began in late 2006--from public access funded through advertising to public access/public safety, with anchor tenancy required by a city. In some cases, cities claimed that MetroFi brought up the requirement after contracts were signed; in others, municipalities said that the discussion started during negotiations. In Portland, Ore., MetroFi apparently told the city in October that the company either needed a city commitment or additional capital to continue building the network. Nothing's been said since, and Portland pretty vehemently said that they wouldn't commit to any anchor tenant requirements. While the city had originally budgeted $5m for a Wi-Fi network and "other technology upgrades," the Beacon News reports, MetroFi came in with a no-cost proposal for the city. The newspaper says that the city will put out an RFI rather than sign a deal without bidding it out. Aurora and adjacent Naperville, which is in the same boat reports the Naperville Sun, will likely produce a joint proposal. The Naperville Sun article has the interesting additional fact that MetroFi built pilot 4.9 GHz public safety networks for the two cities to examine, and after tests, "both cities chose not to purchase additional services." Related to this, perhaps, is that little word has come from MetroFi's primary equipment supplier SkyPilot, since a report surfaced in Unstrung last summer of significant layoffs; the company didn't confirm or deny those reports at the time or since. MetroFi is the only metro-scale Wi-Fi firm in the U.S. to use SkyPilot's gear. Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.
Apple Adds iPhone Location over Wi-Fi, Base Station Backup, MacBook Air
Apple plays to my interests this morning with a set of new products and upgrades tied into wireless data: The news out of San Francisco--where I'm on site--is that Apple is rather keen on Wi-Fi. The company announced several upgrades and new products that take advantage of a lack of wires. The iPhone location update: The iPhone can now figure out your location by triangulating either the location of nearby cell towers or by fishing around for WI-Fi signals. The cell-tower system uses information from Google, which also provides the map data. Wi-Fi location details come from Skyhook Wireless, a firm I've tracked for years. Because the iPhone can make a connection over either EDGE or Wi-Fi, Skyhook confirmed for me that the iPhone can take its snapshot of the signals around it and transmit that to their servers over either Wi-Fi or EDGE. When connected to a Wi-Fi network, the query can go over Wi-Fi, of course, but could be coupled for better results with cell radio sniffing, too. The iPod touch also gets this Maps improvement, along with a handful of other additions, as a $20 upgrade for existing users; it has to be connected to a Wi-Fi network with Internet access to provide a location, however. Time Capsule: Apple has scored the much coveted double-win on backups here, by coupling an operating system based backup feature (Time Machine) with a network-attached storage system that requires no configuration. Time Capsule incorporates a full AirPort Extreme Base Station (with 802.11n) with an internal 500 GB or 1 TB hard drive for $299 or $499, respectively. The base station is $179 when purchased by itself. A home network could have one of these puppies and accomplish several related tasks. Backup is for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) only, which is a shame, but Apple would like people to upgrade to Leopard ($129) or buy new computers, so one can't precisely blame them. MacBook Air: The "Air" refers to the lack of connections on this starting-at-$1,799 3 lb, high-performance laptop with a 13.3-inch screen, 80 GB drive, and 2 GB RAM. The MacBook Air has very few connections: there's a USB port, along with a mini-DVI connector and headphone jack, hidden behind a latch, but there's no FireWire (IEEE 1394), no optical drive, and no Ethernet jack. A external optical drive is $99 or you can use another drive on the network (Windows or Mac) via some special software that mounts the drive without any networking hassles. It includes 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. Copyright ©2008 Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved. Please notify us if you find this content anywhere but at wifinetnews.com or wimaxnetnews.com. Reproduction of full articles from RSS feeds is prohibited without permission.