Sometimes I wish I could go back to college again, especially now that a growing number of campuses offer wireless access.
According to a new study from the Campus Computing Project, over a third (35.9%) of all U.S. college campuses have WiFi, and many more schools are planning to implement it in the very near future.
Of course, when you see the money generated from these schools just from tuition costs, it's easy to see where the funding for wireless access comes from. Nevertheless, wireless access gives students the opportunity to tap into all of the resources available within their respective campuses from virtually any location.
In a bid to offer more services to its existing customers as well as a draw to bring in more users, Helio has announced its Helio Hybrid service, which allows laptop users to connect to free and commercial WiFi hotspots (provided by Boingo) along with access to a nationwide 3G network, provided by Sprint Nextel.
According to the company, the service is designed for people who want to stay connected at virtually any time. Plus, it gives them a choice as to how they wish to be connected.
However, the service is not cheap. The Helio Hybrid card and Hybrid Connector software are free with a two-year subscription, and it's $85 a month to subscribe. But, if people are so inclined to pay to be connected wirelessly 24/7, then it probably is worth it.
As we say goodbye to the summer and head into the fall, why not dive into the Top 5 stories we've been working on this week at The Wireless Report? Enjoy!
The debate continues over kids bringing cellphones to school There's quite a bit of discussion and debate over whether kids should be allowed to bring and/or use their cellphones while in school. It seems there is no clearcut answer, one way or the other.
The Wireless Report Podcast, Special Edition -- September 20, 2006 We are pleased to bring you a special edition of the The Wireless Report Podcast. I recently spoke with Peter Cannistra from Sprint Nextel and Gary Koerper from Motorola. Both gentlemen are personally and deeply involved with the WiMAX standard and rollout recently announced by Sprint Nextel and had some great insight into this rather-important WiMAX announcement.
Mobile TV has captured the "industry's" attention -- what about the consumer? In yet another interesting line about the mobile industry preaching the effects of mobile television, it still bugs me that the *industry* won't really ask their specific customers exactly what *they* want. After all, the *industry* can harp about mobile TV all day long -- but at the end of the day, if consumers don't bit, then the entire effort has been wasted.
The city of Helsinki, Finland has been in the process of setting up wireless internet access over the summer and hopes to have up to 85 base stations installed by the end of December.
Access will be free to all users at locations including the downtown area as well as city libraries and cultural centers.
The plan to outfit 10 New York City parks with wireless access, including Central Park, Battery Park, and Washington Square Park, has sprung into high gear with an end of September deadline set by city's Department of Parks and Recreation.
WiFi Salon, in partnership with Nokia, will provide wireless services in all 10 parks. The City Council originally mandated a late summer start for the networks, so it is imperative that these hotspots become available while people can still enjoy the access during relatively warm weather.
The summer season may be in the home stretch, but the stories just keep getting hotter at The Wireless Report. Check out our Top 5 scorchers for the week! Enjoy!
Motorola has highest marketshare in 5 years Looks like Motorola is indeed taking on a new mission -- to capture as much marketshare as possible. Whether it's by design or not, the American wireless handset maker has just posted its highest global marketshare in over five years, with 21.9% of all phones sold worldwide.
Half of British wireless phones have cameras Looks like the British are attacking -- with cellphone cameras, that is. Half of all UK-based wireless handsets in use now feature a built-in camera, according to the Mobile Data Association.
Wireless system to be installed at Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. says it will be deploying a Common Wireless Access System that will allow for greater cellphone coverage in all of its museums and for free wireless access to come to the entire National Mall by 2008.
TracFone handsets being used in illegal activities With huge numbers of TracFone prepaid handsets being sold at many places, authorities are wondering why. Well, last week's arrest of a man for buying TracFone handsets and then modifying them to be used with any carrier and recent concerns that terrorists may be using these units for communications, has made TracFone be under the microscope at many retailers.
It may be the dog days of summer, but we certainly aren't chasing our tails here at The Wireless Report! Lap up our top 5 stories of the week! Enjoy!
Boeing to ground Connexion in-flight WiFi service Boeing has officially announced that it will be grounding its Connexion in-flight WiFi service by the end of this year. The company says that the service never really took off with passengers in the six years of its availability, so it finally decided to shut it down and take a $320 million charge to cover the costs of putting it in mothballs.
Cingular experiments with blue RAZR Cingular Wireless is playing with the Motorola RAZR, this time back in blue. Cingular has released the original RAZRs in silver, black and pink, so is the market ready for the same old deal, just in another color? With the RAZR becoming aged but still selling like hotcakes, perhaps there is a new market for a blue RAZR. Perhaps people whose favorite color is blue?
Small WiFi access providers feeling the strain from citywide wireless networks Every day seems to bring news of another citywide wireless network in development. Cities big and small in size (and between) are getting into the muni WiFi game, and providers such as EarthLink, MobilePro, and MetroFi are poised to rake in some hefty profits if these networks perform up to expectations.
Mobile Internet usage on the rise -- sees over 34 million June visits With almost every wireless phone on the planet in the last few years being capable of accessing the mobile Internet from a built-in web browser, it stands to reason that usage would be increasing, even as carriers -- in my opinion -- market the service horribly.
Google's Mountain View wireless network launches Google officially gets into the wireless network pool today with the launch of a citywide wireless network in its hometown, Mountain View, California. According to the company, the network provides coverage to about 90 percent of the 12-square-mile city at speeds up to 1 megabit per second.
Every day seems to bring news of another citywide wireless network in development. Cities big and small in size (and between) are getting into the muni WiFi game, and providers such as EarthLink, MobilePro, and MetroFi are poised to rake in some hefty profits if these networks perform up to expectations.
Lost in the shuffle are the companies who have been providing WiFi access in hotels, restaurants, and airports for quite some time. Some analysts believe companies such as Wayport and Boingo will eventually lose business as the spate of muni WiFi networks continues to grow.
However, there may be a silver lining. Many of these muni networks have both a free and fee-paid service, and the free portion may not provide the speed desired by its users. The hotspot providers say they can fill that breach and offer faster speeds. However, their pricing plans of up to $10 a day for access will certainly have to come down significantly for them to compete in the marketplace.
The New York Times has a good overview of WiFi phones and whether they will prove effective in the marketplace over the long haul. Obviously, users will save big bucks with them, however, as we all know, WiFi has its limitations, and these phones may not be so useful when you find yourself out of range of a hotspot. As the story puts it, these WiFi phones will become more of a supplement to cellphones rather than total replacements. But is it worth it for consumers to have so many phones and phone services at one time?
Let's not forget that the traditional phone companies as well as the cellular providers will have to compete with the rising tide of WiFi handsets. In addtition, businesses are leveraging these phones to offset costs, especially with more employees working out of the office and on the road.
It'll be interesting to see how deep these WiFi phones penetrate into the marketplace for the rest of this year going into 2007. Companies like Skype, EarthLink, Cingular Wireless, and Fon are making big investments in them, and time will tell if consumers will catch on.
With the line blurring out of control regarding traditional voice telecommunications, Skype just threw more mud into the pond by announcing new WiFi handsets meant to be used on any WiFi network and will allow Skype calls in and out to be performed. No phone line or company needed.
So, the next time you have one of the four different models of a Skype WiFi phone on your person and you're at your wireless-enabled home or out at Starbuck's having a latte, feel free to make and receive voice calls all day long over Skype, and tell your telco to bite the dust as so many of us have already done.
Boingo Wireless, one of the largest WiFi providers in municipalities, airports, restaurants and hospitality areas around the globe, has completed its purchase of Concourse Communications. This purchase will greatly expand Boingo's WiFi reach into many airports among other areas.
Boingo now has WiFi presence in airports within the top 100 locations in the U.S. in Canada, including airports in Chicago, New York, Ottawa, Detroit, Oklahoma City and Nashville.
The plan to install a number of wireless hotspots in downtown Springfield, Illinois will have to be put on hold until next year, primarily due to an incomplete business plan and technical issues that still need to be worked out.
In addition, there are some here in the state capital who feel that WiMax technology would serve the community better than establishing a bunch of hotspots. However, others feel that the city should not fall further behind and work to get something going as soon as reasonably possible.
Fifteen new free hotspots have been launched in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana. According to Mayor Graham Richard, the hotspots are intended to attract visitors, residents, and busness people, and it is hoped this wireless access will make the city more competitive technologically. The hotspots are provided by a partnership between the city and the Indiana Data Center.
As we posted here a few weeks ago, New York City's Central Park will be introducing free WiFi access in a number of hotspots located throughout the area to parkgoers. The City Parks Department will be launching similar service in at least 10 other parks. In other parks, WiFi is available through partnerships between nonprofit organizations.
While this is all well and good and certainly meets a need for city residents, it still is a mystery as to why the Bloomberg Administration is taking its sweet time investigating the possibility of unwiring the entire city. There currently is a task force "researching" the idea, but as other big (and small) cities move swiftly toward municipal wireless access, New York City seems to be falling further behind.
Will a plan be in place by tbe end of the year for NYC to have a wireless network? Place your bets...
Well, we've talked about this before, and here's yet another story that mentions how grotesquely inadequate security is on most home wireless computer networks. A study in home WiFi networks in Indianapolis found that a staggering 46 percent of the networks tested did not have any form of encryption turned on. That's almost half -- ripe for the hacking and taking.
This is a serious problem, one that is probably being under-reported. If identity theft was an issue before, it could explode by drive-by WiFi hackers to say the least. Manufacturers -- why of why can't you make it easier to -- by default -- have a mandatory wizard upon router setup that makes WEP, or better yet, WPA encryption, part of the required router setup?
It's true that customers should be responsible for setting this up, but with the unreal amount of techno-babble in most HTML-based home router setups I've seen, it's no wonder customers don't know how to setup WiFi security on their routers.
Sometimes I wish I could go back to college again, especially now that a growing number of campuses offer wireless access.
In a bid to offer more services to its existing customers as well as a draw to bring in more users, 
As we say goodbye to the summer and head into the fall, why not dive into the Top 5 stories we've been working on this week at The Wireless Report? Enjoy!
The city of 
The plan to outfit 10 New York City parks with wireless access, including Central Park, Battery Park, and Washington Square Park, has sprung into high gear with an end of September deadline set by city's Department of Parks and Recreation.
The summer season may be in the home stretch, but the stories just keep getting hotter at The Wireless Report. Check out our Top 5 scorchers for the week! Enjoy!
Every day seems to bring news of another citywide wireless network in development. Cities big and small in size (and between) are getting into the muni WiFi game, and providers such as EarthLink, MobilePro, and MetroFi are poised to rake in some hefty profits if these networks perform up to expectations.
The New York Times has a good overview of WiFi phones and whether they will prove effective in the marketplace over the long haul. Obviously, users will save big bucks with them, however, as we all know, WiFi has its limitations, and these phones may not be so useful when you find yourself out of range of a hotspot. As the story puts it, these WiFi phones will become more of a supplement to cellphones rather than total replacements. But is it worth it for consumers to have so many phones and phone services at one time?
With the line blurring out of control regarding traditional voice telecommunications, Skype just threw more mud into the pond by announcing new WiFi handsets meant to be used on any WiFi network and will allow Skype calls in and out to be performed. No phone line or company needed.
Boingo Wireless, one of the largest WiFi providers in municipalities, airports, restaurants and hospitality areas around the globe, has completed its purchase of Concourse Communications. This purchase will greatly expand Boingo's WiFi reach into many airports among other areas.
The plan to install a number of wireless hotspots in downtown 
As we posted here 
Well, we've talked about this before, and here's 
