First Certified White Space Radio
Posted on January 6, 2012
Today’s sixteen minute audio interview is with William Koos, Jr. who is the Chief Executive Officer of KTS Wireless. For the past 30 years his company has been a specialty-maker of high performance radios for both military and commercial markets. Presently, KTS produces the only TV Band White Space transceiver certified by the Federal Communications Commission.
“Billy” discusses the earlier trials that KTS did with White Spaces under experimental licenses. He also shares his thoughts regarding how the White Spaces market will evolve in both the United States and abroad.
Download 16-minute audio interview to iPod, iPhone, and iPad here.
One of his conclusions is that municipal Wi-Fi markets will benefit considerably from TV Band White Spaces. He reasons that the FCC envisions White Space technology as encompassing the best of both licensed and unlicensed networks. While they will be able to provide the interference protection of licensed networks they simultaneously offer the innovative free-market access characteristic of licensed-exempt networks. Read more…
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Future Unlicensed Wireless Networks
Posted on December 23, 2011
Today’s nineteen minute audio interview is with Lior Shemesh who is the Chief Financial Officer of Israel-based Alvarion. His company is a maker of WiMax and WiFi equipment.
Future unlicensed wireless Internet access networks will use a variety of standards to provide large zones of coverage. Such standards will include WiMax, WiFi, and White Spaces. As users, we won’t know, or care, which standard is being used. All we’ll care about is how well and how fast we are connected wirelessly to the Internet within a wireless coverage zone.
Download 19 minute audio interview to iPod, iPhone, or iPad here.
Wi-Max discussions can be confusing because there are two standards. Read more…
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Why Steve Jobs Wanted Apple’s Own National Wi-Fi Network
Posted on November 16, 2011
On Monday the Chairman of a prominent venture capital firm named Trilogy Partners disclosed that Steve Jobs initially wanted Apple to deploy its own national Wi-Fi network to service the iPhone.
The reasons are precisely those discussed in our blog post six months ago entitled, “Should Apple Become a Wireless ISP?”
Download three-minute audio to iPod, iPhone, or iPad here.
According to Trilogy’s John Stanton who spent a lot of time with Jobs during iPhone gestation, “(Jobs) wanted to replace carriers. He and I spent a lot of time examining whether a new carrier could be created synthetically with a national Wi-Fi network using unlicensed spectrum.”
Jobs eventually partnered with AT&T, partly because the carrier agreed to subsidize the cost of an iPhone for subscribers. Nonetheless, Stanton concluded, “If I were a carrier, I’d be concerned about the dramatic shift in power that occurred.” Read more…
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Watch iPhone-4s Internet-Video on Your TV
Posted on November 11, 2011
Any video on the new iPhone-4s, can simultaneously be displayed on your television. It’s a process known as “mirroring”, and it’s going to fundamentally change how we use our televisions. For example, through-out the day you may sample full length videos that you’d prefer to watch on a TV screen. Perhaps a friend told you about the video and showed you where to find it on the Internet. Perhaps she sent you a link via email. Whatever, the iPhone-4s lets you watch it on either the smartphone screen, or your television.
To download seven-minute instructional video click here, or watch stream above.
Here’s how it works.
First, you need an iPhone-4s. (Mirroring also works with an iPad-2 that has the IOS-5 operating system software.) Read more…
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Interview with Wireless ISP Owner
Posted on November 8, 2011
Today’s podcast is a thirty minute audio interview with Matt Larsen who is the owner of Vistabeam in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska.
The company provides broadband Internet service to 2,500 subscribers in western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming. Instead of connecting subscribers with cable or telephone lines, Vistabeam provides service through its network of fixed wireless base-stations linking to inexpensive transceivers typically mounted on subscriber rooftops. It sort-of echoes an earlier era when television was received that way instead of via cable, fiber, or satellite. In short, Vistabeam is a typical rural Wireless Internet Service Provider.
Download thirty minute audio interview to iPhone, iPad, or iPod here.
While the uninitiated may assume Wireless ISP service to be slow and unreliable, Vistabeam is actually competing quite effectively with DSL and cable. The company offers speeds of up to 12 mb/s. As Matt notes, the typical Wireless ISP base station a dozen years ago had a capacity of 1.5 mb/s, whereas stations commonly available today can handle 150 mb/s. As with landline providers, Vistabeam is witnessing a marked increased in Internet Video consumption from YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix, among other sources. Yet its wireless system can handle the increased demands. Read more…
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Sesquicentennial Ghost Haunts FCC
Posted on November 3, 2011
Driving to the YMCA the morning after Halloween for a workout and to drop-off surplus candy, I pondered goals for the remaining work week. Earlier I read the (almost) daily New York Times “Disunion” article coinciding with the four-year Sesquicentennial of the Civil War. It occurred to me that a 150 year-old bureaucratic ghost is haunting the Federal Communications Commission.
Download seven minute audio narration to iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
One hundred and fifty years ago next month the United States military took deliveries of its first repeating rifles. Manufactured by the Spencer Repeating Rifle Company of Boston, each seven shot weapon could fire at least three-times as many bullets per minute as the most proficient soldier armed with the standard muzzle-loading weapon.
Nonetheless, until the end of the war more than four years later, Union armies standardized on single shot muzzle-loaders like the Springfield and Enfield. By the end of the war only 65,000 Spencers were issued as compared to over a million muzzle-loaders. It was probably the war’s biggest mistake because it unnecessarily prolonged the fighting. Read more…
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Master-to-Slave Role Reversal for TVs
Posted on October 30, 2011
Download video to iPad, iPhone, and iPod here.
Future televisions will be nothing more than wireless display stations. No longer will they be the control center for our home video entertainment. In a Slave-to-Master role reversal, hand-held units shall become the gateways.
Let met explain.
In the future, we’ll access content on portable devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers, and choose to display programming on whatever screen is spontaneously most convenient. If we’re in a restaurant for lunch, we’ll likely select the smartphone screen. While sitting in a comfortable upholstered chair with a tablet computer, we’ll likely use the tablet screen. But if were in the TV room, we’ll simply instruct the applicable smartphone or tablet computer to display the video on the television screen.
It’s already happening for those with home Wi-Fi networks. Characteristically, Apple is leading the way. Read more…
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Now WiFi Networks Can Make Money
Posted on July 21, 2010
If you want to learn how your company can profit from potentially explosive growth for commercial WiFi networks, this video is for you.
Our eight minute PowerPoint explains the triggering factors, sizeable potential, and enough concrete information to get your company started.
Download video for iPad, iPhone, and iPod here.
First, AT&T Wireless’ decision to impose usage-sensitive data pricing on the iPad and iPhone will cause subscribers to seek WiFi hotspots. Read more…
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