Good Day, BWIA (GDBWIA) is a light compendium of news, items of interest, irreverent commentary, and occasional light analysis relating to Broadband Wireless Internet Access (including WiMAX, public access Wi-Fi, etc.).
Things That Get Me Excited About BWIA Today? Open-Mesh! (Not quite sure what the organization / company's name is - Open-Mesh.com? They don't quite get around to saying...) What Meraki was and should have remained - a do-what-you-want-with-it-the-way-you-want low-cost Wi-Fi mesh network system. $49/node, cheaper if you buy a lot. A web-based hosted dashboard system if you want it, or put different / better firmware onto it if you want that. Meraki created the market of turnkey hardware, build-the-network-yourself Wi-Fi mesh networking, and then fumbled it tragically by forcing new terms and conditions on new purchasers by forcing ads, etc. DailyWireless.org's Sam Churchill said it very well - (Meraki) pissed off a lot of people. 
To paraphrase an old saw about the Internet treating censorship as damage and routing around it, open source treats stupidity like Meraki's onerous changes as "damage" and creates a new product to fill the void. I had personally not quite gotten around to buying into Meraki before they made the onerous changes (investing my "fun" Christmas-present-to-me funds into a OLPC XO [which has finally arrived]). One potential crossover is that both the OLPC XO and Open-Mesh use open software to achieve their meshing function... potentially, both systems' meshing technique could be brought together and made interoperable. Well, we can at least hope that those capable of doing this would see the wisdom, fun, and utility of that.
Jogging around the wonderful world of interesting and relevant BWIA / WiMAX news:
- Covad Wireless plans to use IDT 28 GHz spectrum in San Francisco . Good to see that IDT Spectrum is starting to achieve some customers and actual usage for its 28 and 39 GHz spectrum.
- Hardware production has begun for Aircell's Gogo Inflight Internet system. The NYT profiled Gogo in a brief story. One of the more interesting claims for Gogo is that the necessary hardware can be installed on a plane overnight. Put me down in the "a bit skeptical" column on that claim as it would seem that more time than that would be needed for the onboard hardware installation, fuselage antenna installation, cable routing, and most time-consuming, the necessary inspections and approvals. American Airlines and Virgin America will be launch customers for Gogo later this year.
- Bill Gates is starting to leverage his considerable tech "cred" and speaking out publicly that the FCC should approve license-exempt use of Television Broadcast "Whitespace" (television broadcast channels unused in a given area for television broadcasting). Predictably, television broadcasters are opposed to license-exempt use of "whitespace", using, among other Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) tactics like coflating the failure of a power supply in a prototype device irrational claims that such devices will degrade the "Digital Television experience"... for those 10% (and falling) viewers of broadcast television that actual receive their signal over-the-air instead of cable television or satellite.
- I have no idea who writes "Wireless Broadband Network" (it offers no authorship information whatsoever, and it's more than a bit heavy with AdSense ads, and thus suspect...). But, an article there claims that Clearwire's first four Mobile WiMAX markets are Atlanta, Georgia; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Portland, Oregon, and that all will offer voice services from the beginning.
By Steve Stroh
Fine Print / Boilerplate / Acknowledgements / Credits / FAQs
(Last updated 2008-02-25)
This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).
This article was started (yesterday) via Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA); Clearwire service using a NextNet Wireless / Motorola Expedience Residential Service Unit (RSU) and completed and posted via Sprint Mobile Broadband service using a Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem - 1xEV-DO Rev. A.
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