Topic: Wi-Fi

Although the number of Wi-Fi hotspots is exploding it's clamed that they will become obsolete in the near future.

As you would expect the claims come from the mobile industry, Ericsson's chief marketing officer to be precise, who was speaking to delegates at the European Computer Audit, Control and Security Conference in Stockholm.

While using mobile broadband maybe more convenient than having to find a hotspot, there are two flaws in his argument. The first is regards to the speed difference between a Wi-Fi connection and using a mobile device, but this a minor problem with carriers improving their networks.

The main problem is down to cost, using a Wi-Fi connection at say Starbucks, costs the user nothing and there is no commitment. A mobile connection on the other hand is likely much more expensive, even though Bergendahl says that it could be as low as €20 a month.

National Express has said that the number of Wi-Fi users on the East Coast railway has tripled during the first month since offering a free service.

Although it's been free for first class passengers for some time, unsurprisingly many 'normal' passengers didn't really want to fork out the £4.95 an hour to get connected. Now it's seen number of those connecting jump from 30,000 in December to a whopping 100,000 in January, with more that 85 per cent connecting using a laptop.

It seems that you need to watch out if you live in Berwick and decide to use someone's Wi-Fi connection.

Berwick police have arrested two men after they were caught sitting in a car and using laptops, it seems that they were piggybacking an unsecured wireless network, although it's not known what they were in the process of viewing at the time.
The men were charged under under the 2003 Communications Act with dishonestly obtaining a communications service and were bailed pending further enquiries.

Neighbourhood Inspector Sharon Stavers told the Berwick Advertiser that Wi-Fi users should ensure that there wireless networks are properly secured. "They should make sure that all the security systems are in place to keep their computers safe," she says.

Users of the popular Gmail service could be open to an attack via Wi-Fi according to claims by a security researcher.

Robert Graham, CEO of Errata Security says that because of the way that the Google handles secure SSL connections. When a user connects to Gmail it starts off using a secure SSL (HTTPS) connection, but if for some reason it fails then Gmail will resort to sending unencrypted data.
The claim is that an attacker can extract an unencrypted session ID which will allow them to again access to the account.

But if you use a free public email service for your highly sensitive data then what would you expect?

Islington Borough Council is extending its existing wireless network to provide free high-speed internet access for everyone.

The scheme is an extension of the area’s Wi-Fi Technology Mile which we first reported on back in 2005 and ran for nearly 2.5 miles along two main shopping streets. The council have been increasing this to serve local housing estates covering up to 10,000 homes in inner London.

The aim is to bridge the digital divide and allow those without internet access to  to boost their skills and broaden their prospects. It claims that the service is being widely used and has become the  UK’s most widely-used wireless network. The council have also equipped a learning bus with 15 PCs and a trainer and visits the Canonbury estate each week, offering residents help with writing CVs and job searching.

The council also uses the service for it's own mobile applications, including email and estate management.

While many got high-tech pressies getting them to work seems to have been more of a struggle for us Brits.

BT have said that nearly a third of the technical support calls it received on Christmas day were wireless-relate with punters confused over their new laptops, iPhones and other Wi-Fi devices. Things were not all wireless related with fifteen per cent of callers having problems with software, ten per cent with digital hardware and a further ten per cent were having trouble with new operating systems (i.e Vista).

Remember that Wi-Fi was revealed as a major heath hazard and users were digging out their tinfoil hats, well it seems (unsurprisingly) that things were a bit exaggerated.

Back in May on the Panorama programme Wi-fi: A Warning Signal, fears were raised that Wi-Fi was more dangerous than mobile phones and caused many schools to rethink their wireless policies.

Well after two complaints by viewers the beebs Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU)  decided to have a look at the claims, the results are that the programme had given an unbalanced impression of scientific opinion and that Wi-Fi installations give off a higher level of radiation than mobile phone masts was wrongly suggested.
Even one contributor to the show, Professor Michael Repacholi, said that the scientific issues had been presented in an unbalanced way and that the treatment of his own contribution had been unfair.

So it's safe to remove those hats now.

Nearly half of people questioned by security firm Sophos admitted that they had illegally connecting to someone else's Wi-Fi network.

Fifty-four per cent said they had 'piggybacked' an unsecured wireless router even though the practice is illegal and have seen a couple of prosecutions in the past.

He went on to stress the importance for having a correctly set-up Wi-Fi system.

Too many Brition leave there Wi-Fi connection unsecured according to a government sponsored safety campaign.

Get Safe Online claims that there are 19 million households in the UK have wireless networks, but of that number 7.8 million leave their connections totally unsecured. But although other can connect to their network 88 per cent of users had security software installed on their PCs and laptops, although the report doesn't mention if this was up-to-date or just part of bundled software installed when the PC was new. It also revealed that 35-44 year-olds are the most safety conscious age-group.

There doesn't seem to be a day that goes by without a free Wi-Fi service launching.

Commuters travelling on National Express coaches between Cambridge and London have been used to it's free service, and now it's being extended to include the route between Milton Keynes and Canary Wharf in London also targeting those who commute to the City.

It's also based on the Vodafone 3G network so can provide up to 3.6Mbps to each coach via the Moovera hardware installed.

McDonald's is offering free Wi-Fi for it's customers in every branch from next week.

While it has had access in many of it's restaurants for a time now, this has been restricted to those who have roaming contracts with a provider such as BTOpenzone or The Cloud. By allowing free access in it's 1,200 or so outlets it is hoping to attract workers who are unable to use the internet at work, or wish to browse without being 'watched'. Research cited by McDonald's suggests that one in four workers in the UK knows someone, or has themselves been disciplined for using the internet at work.

The only trouble is that to get access you might have to eat something!!

GNER who have offered Wi-Fi on trains since 2004 has now racked up it's millionth customer with internet access on the move.

The service is provided by Swedish company Icomera, and uses a combination of satellite and 3G technology linked to hotspots in each carriage. The service is only free to first-class passengers at the present, but when National Express takes over the tender at the end of the year connections will be free of charge to all passengers, so the number of users is expected to grow rapidly.

Travellers on the London to Scotland East-coast mainline will soon be able to use free Wi-Fi on the journey.

 National Express' £1.4bn winning bid to run the franchise from mid December includes free Wi-Fi access, the downside is that it's only free for first-class passengers, others will  have to pay either £2.95 per half hour or £9.95 for a full day's use. It has promised to extend the free service to standard passengers during it's contract term of seven years.

Wireless access points at at each end of a carriage and will connect main on-board satellite server which will use a combination of a satellite link and mobile 3G/GPRS so access is maintained even when going through tunnels. The 2Mbps satellite link can support around 40 simultaneous users in each carriage at one time.

13-miles of the River Thames has been turned into a free Wi-Fi hotspot, and according to those involved it's the largest free metropolitan Wi-Fi network in Europe.

The service has been provided by free-hotspot.com and MeshHopper and covers from Millbank right down to Greenwich, and also includes blanket coverage for St Katharine's Dock and St Mary's Quay. It also stretches into bars, restaurants and hotels that line the riverbank, which users may want to use rather than paying for access from BT or expensive hotel Wi-Fi.

The catch is that it's partially funded by advertising, but surfers are only required to w this should be enough atch 15-30 seconds of advertising to gain 15 minutes for free access. Although the download speed is only 256Kbps this should be ample unless people want to download large files, and then a faster paid service is available without adverts.

Homeowners are hesitant of setting up wireless networks at home due to fears over security and complexity of set-ups according to BroadbandChoices.co.uk.

In a survey it revealed that 44 percent of people are worried about dealing with the technicalities of wireless broadband and 27 percent think their bank details would be at risk.
The blame is put at the doors of ISPs as many offer wireless packages, but offer them them in a different way to their basic packages which leaves customer confused. This is seen in that although their ISP offered a wireless package a quarter of those surveyed thought that they didn't.

The number of Wi-Fi access points in London has rocketed this year dwarfing rises in other cities, according to a survey by RSA Security.

The number of access points has risen from 2,747 last year to 7,130 which is a massive 160 percent rise, compared to only a 57 percent rise last year, while New York only saw a 49 percent rise.
RSA especially looked at the security of these access points which shows that 81 percent of business in London have some form of encryption on their network, ahead of Paris with 80 percent and 76 percent in New York. While this included WEP security, which is considered weak by most experts, the good news is that over half have moved over to stronger WPA security.

So where is the world's Wi-Fi hotspot Mecca? The USA, Germany or even Japan? Well actually it's Wales!

Ofcom's recent 'Communications Market Report for the Nations and Regions of the UK' report shows that there are 193 hotspots per million people in Wales, but maybe that's due to the low population.

Another strange fact is that Scotland leads the UK in making VoIP calls and that having a landline available to every household almost as important as having an electricity supply.

The Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) has written to the education secretary, Alan Johnson,  to seek an immediate investigation into the possible health effects of Wi-Fi networks on students.

According to the PAT, networks within schools are one of the reasons that pupils are behaving badly and suffering from bad health, not social deprivation and bad diets as commonly thought. Other side effects which have been mentioned are cancer and premature senility

Around 80 percent of secondary and 50 percent of primary schools have Wi-Fi networks installed within their premises, but as nearly all children are subjected to stronger electromagnetic fields in the form of mobile phones, measuring the effect of lower radiation wireless networks could prove difficult.

And what about the dangers of Bluetooth.....

The square mile covering the city of London has had Wi-Fi  installed which will cover the entire financial district of London.

There are 127 nodes on lamp posts and other street furniture which will give internet access to 350,000 people. The project has been installed by The Cloud but is different to most municipal networks as it's not free, but the network is available through a number of providers.

One reason for using the network rather than any number which are already installed in bars and cafes is that a connection can be held between nodes, this is due to the mesh construction of the network.

The Cloud are also in the news as it is in the process of a widespread management shake-up, with it's joint founder and CEO George Polk resigning at the start of this year, but details have been kept under the carpet until now. In addition The Cloud's chief marketing officer James Saunders has also been replaced.

BT today announced that it now has the first of it's 12 Wireless City networks up and running across the UK, beating it's deadline of March 31st.

It also announced the next set of cities to be deployed, these are Sheffield, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Bristol, and Glasgow which join Birmingham, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, Cardiff and Westminster, which were named last year.

These networks provide access to all the broadband services normally available at home or in the office, but local authorities can work with BT to develop new mobile services for citizens, increase productivity for their own mobile workers and even provide information, such as available parking spaces and cinema listings.

Thinking of using one of London's free Wi-Fi hotspots to chatter over VoIP? Then forget it!

According to a survey by WLAN analysis specialist AirMagnet they are just not up to the job and can't support more that one call at a time with the hotspots and also suffer from dropped or poor quality calls.

Of the 15 hotspots it looked at around Oxford Street and the City 11 of them suffered from coverage problems with the most common being caused by being on the same channel as a neighbouring network, while other hotspots suffered interference from Bluetooth phones or a microwave oven.

Most of the problems could have been resolved by using WLAN analysis software and some tweaking or adding extra access points.

It seems that free Wi-Fi is coming to the whole of British cities, with two more free schemes announced today.

First off is Leicester Square in London which will allow both locals and visitors to surf wirelessly. The eight Mbps line will have a fair use policy designed to prevent one person from using all the bandwidth at once, so probably not best to connect at really busy times.

Next Manchester City Council has unveiled plans to provide free wireless internet access to 2.2 million people over an area of 400 square miles, covering 90 per cent of the Greater Manchester population.

Although no concrete plans have been made, the council is taking to  potential commercial partners to submit plans on how they might take part by January 8, these groups include The Cloud, Pipex, BT, easynet and Metronet.
They also hope to attract funding from the government to the tune of £3 million through the Government’s Digital Challenge Initiative, a scheme put in place to counter 'digital exclusion'.

How this will affect both paid Wi-Fi operators, of which Manchester has six, and users who use traditional broadband connections isn't known, although they can't be too pleased with the plans.

A spokesman for the council said "This will be a transparent debate on how best to replace our 19th-century infrastructure.", which makes you wonder what it was doing last century.

Westminster's wireless network should be started by the end of this year, with the project planned for a late 2008 completion.

The plan is to start with a square mile across Soho and the West End with the rest of the City of Westminster, which includes landmarks such as Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parliament following later.

Council workers will be able to use the network for free, but the public would be able to purchase connectivity, although no prices have been announced as yet.

The project was first announced way back in 2004 but seems to be heading for completion at last.

Newcastle will join Norwich and Milton Keynes in becoming a wireless city by the middle of next year.

BT will install Wireless City equipment on existing street furniture and lamp posts in the city centre which will enable enable people to communicate from laptops and Wi-fi enabled mobile devices.

BT will be responsible for funding the rollout of the Wireless Cities Network with all development and operational costs borne entirely by the company.

T-Mobile will be giving customers on-board wireless broadband access on Heathrow Express trains.

Users will be able to connect to the service via a WiMax backhaul, which claims greater range than standard Wi-Fi (802.11x) signals, with fixed repeaters anong the section of the line. This is similar to other Wi-Fi installations on previous installations of Wi-Fi, such as Virgin's and that of GNER.

The project should come online in early 2007 and will allow T-Mobile Wi-Fi users to move seamlessly between Heathrow and London. As the journey time is only 15 minutes access not expected to be purchased separately, but as part of the standard Wi-Fi service costing £5 for one hour.

We already know that UK hotels charge an excessive amount for Wi-Fi internet access, but it seems Europe is just as bad.

According to research by Webaroo some 5 star hotels across Europe can charge an average of £14.17 for one days internet access. That's nothing to the wireless rip-off captial (London to me and you) who charge an average of £19.70!

If you decide that this is just to expensive then you could surf at the airport, except that the average Europe wide cost for this is £12.82 for 24 hours, but this time the UK is not top of the list, with the 'honour' going to France with Paris, which charges €30 at the top, with Germany (€24.95) and Rome (€24.93), following up.

Some good news for the UK is revealed in the number of Wi-Fi access points with London having 1,928 Wi-Fi hotspots, more than in Berlin (813), Munich (376), Barcelona (213), Madrid (176), Ibiza (3) and Rome (109) put together.

Webaroo must be looking in the wrongs places, when I wrote the original article I was using free Wi-Fi in Holland, now writing this I'm using free Wi-Fi in Finland. Or maybe it's that I'm not staying in 5 star hotels!!

GNER's plan for offering passengers Wi-Fi access on all it's trains has finally come together.

It has been completed on schedule after being put back to May 2007 for a time, with increased passenger demand being the reason for the push to complete.
Now all 41 of GNER's electric and diesel trains offer the Wi-Fi service, which is free to those travelling on first class tickets. The rest of us will have to connect a PAYG basis, with prices ranging from £2.95 of 30 minutes and £9.95 for 24 hours worth.

Back in June we announced that residents of Milton Keynes would be able be able to enjoy free wireless broadband in the city centre from August.

Thing have slipped a bit, but later this month the pilot service launches which will cover Midsummer Boulevard between Grafton Gate and Saxon Gate in the city centre. Initially a 2 square kilometre area of the city will be covered but it hopes to extend to hundreds of square miles when the service eventually spreads to the whole of Milton Keynes.

Although it was planned to be the first Wi-Fi enabled city, it has been beaten by Norwich.

The Good Hotel Guide 2007 has named and shamed hotels in it's new guide who decide to charge users excessive prices for Wi-Fi access.

The 2007 edition of the guide reveals that some UK hotels charge as much as £5 an hour for Wi-Fi access, a Cambridge hotel is even identified as charging their guests £20 for one day's access! Which isn't a bad mark up when you think of how much a Wi-Fi network costs to install and maintain, even so, analysts think that it is value for money.

But even if some older UK hotels have reception problems the price of an access point isn't exactly going to break the bank.

It's been suggested that the first step towards tackling hotel Wi-Fi pricing in the UK should be transparency, as it is "not sufficiently clear when booking a hotel what type of broadband is available, what price it is — they normally just say 'Internet available'" say Fogg. The problem seems to be that UK hotels see it as a way of making money rather than absorbing the price in the room rates.

Just a note that this article was written in a Dutch hotel....on free Wi-Fi.

Users who share their broadband service through WiFi sharing service Fon.com could find their breeching the Terms and Conditions of their ISP according to a legal analysis by Out-Law.com.

Fon.com which offers wireless routers to users for as little as €5 (about £3.40) encourages users to share their broadband service to other Fon.com subscribers. In return, access to other Fon.com WiFi is available to you to use - free of charge. Users who do not let other Fon.com subscribers access their broadband service can make use of other Fon.com WiFi by way of a €3 (£2) per day charge of which the user who does share his/her broadband keeps 50% of the charge - Fon.com keeps the other 50%.

Out-Law examined the 10 biggest ISPs in the UK, including AOL, BT, NTL & Tiscali, and found specific clauses banning either the sharing of the broadband service for a charge (in the case of AOL) or even if done for free in over 70% of those ISPs examined.

The concern that ISPs have is the possibility of abuse by 3rd parties on their network, not just from illegal activities (Fon.com tries to get around that through ensuring that wireless users must authenticate with Fon.com) but also from bandwidth abuse. Clearly, the odd webpage would not amount to any serious increase in traffice, but heavy use of Peer2Peer or Bit-Torrent technologies would.

So, broadband subscribers - beware. If your considering the noble idea of Fon.com - check your ISPs T&C very carefully.

Virgin Trains are to offer it's passengers Wi-Fi broadband on it's West coast line.

Users would connect using 802.11c Wi-fi connections which would them be relayed using WiMax to trackside base stations every few miles along the route. Virgin chose WiMax as it offers speeds of up to 49Mbps and has less latency that satellite/3G/GPRS connections such as those used by GNER.  HSDPA would be used as a backup for any gaps in the WiMax service.

While all the talk of 49Mbps and low latency way sound like a good thing, there is a problem. The trackside WiMax stations will be connected with a 2Mbps ADSL connection to the internet, which when shared with other passengers isn't so great. So why not a DSLMax connection? We'll leave you to guess that one....

Finally the Wi-Fi phenomena seems to have caught on with wireless provider, iPass, reporting that it has seen a sharp rise in Wi-Fi usage in recent months.

The company reported that it has seen a 54 percent increase in the number of European Wi-Fi access connections initiated by its users between January and June 2006. iPass believes this shows that more firms in Europe are embracing mobile working, and giving their employees the tools to work remotely.

The post popular locations where iPass users connect is unsurprisingly airports, with hotels running second.

Remember broadband on planes? When it was first announced it seemed to be the business users dream (if they could take a laptop on board!).

Boeing are now ditching Connexion after failing to interest enough airlines in the scheme even though airlines such as Lufthansa, Japan Airlines, Korean Air, and Singapore Airlines took up the service.

Boeing reportedly spent an estimated $1bn developing the service, but post 9/11 security worries as well as the high costs of the service ($10 for the first hour or $27 for 24 hours) sounded it's death knell.

Lycos has launched an online database of UK's Wi-Fi hotspots and is also offering a free 'sniffer' to download to help find spots near you.

Users can search by postcode to find a internet connection in the UK, Sweden, Spain, Germany, France and Portugal making it easier to get connected.
The program, which can be updated from the web, or users can enter any hotspots they find, covers more than 10,000 Wi-Fi connections in more than 1,500 towns and covers almost 300 providers in the UK. Paid hotspots from T-Mobile, The Cloud and BT are also included with the free ones.

http://wifi.lycos.co.uk to download.

Lucky users in Norwich can surf wirelessly across the whole city thanks to the Norfolk Open Link.

The project, funded by the East of England Development Agency, provides free Wi-Fi over the city using 200 devices in a mesh network, with antennas being fixed to existing street furniture and the main transmitter located at County Hall.
It also plans to add another 28 hotspots in rural locations around the South Norfolk District, to provide both city and rural access.

One of the main reasons for the rollout was to provide public service workers with a secure 1Mbps connection over a 30Km area at a cost of £1.1 million of public money.
The upside of this is that the public 0.25Mbps is free, not lightening fast, but suitable for PDA's and general browsing.

The Norfolk Open Link website includes maps detailing coverage levels, and details of the service.

Passengers travelling on any of GNER's trains will be able to surf wirelessly by the end of the summer.

The roll-out of Wi-Fi access started back in 2004 and so far 30 of newer trains already have the service, which means that passengers  on the route which links London King's Cross with Leeds, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow can now connect to the internet and even view their progress along the journey online.

Passengers need a credit card to pay for the service but those on first class services can get it for free, both on the trains and in the station lounges. Prices range from £2.95 for 30 minutes to £9.95 for 24 hours access.

Ah Paris in the spring, and what could be better than a romantic trip with your PDA....

Well if that's your thing then you could look forward to city wide Wi-Fi coverage with plans by the citiy Mayor Bertrand Delanoe to install 400 free (yes free) access points across the French capital.
It's hoped be complete by next year, if it's approved by the city council, with private companies installing the necessary equipment on publicly owned property such as libraries and parks.

So you and the laptop still have time for a weekend break in Bognor.

We are used to seeing schemes to provide wireless hotspots across a city, but Somerset County Council has gone further and is aiming to create the first county-wide wireless broadband hotspot.

It is planning a 22Mbps wireless system to connect the towns and villages in it's area, it  says the new technology is vital to the area's future and will help open up a wealth of new opportunities for businesses and the general public.

Milton Keynes council have announced that the city will be the first in the UK to be totally wireless.

Launching in the 1st August 2006, initial coverage will be limited to around a one mile area (for the local Citizens this equates to the Milton Keynes train station upto the Center retail complex). Expanded availability covering the whole of the city is expected to launch some 3 to 6 months after that.

Speeds or other such aspects have not yet been released, except to say the service will be provided by wireless broadband provider BrightYellow

BT Group plans to set up wide-area Wi-Fi networks in 12 cities by the end of the year, providing a mesh of access points to give customers access to high-speed internet and telecoms services when they are out and about.

The lucky cities to benefit first are Leeds, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff and London's Westminster area, but BT is already looking at striking deals with others.

As part of it's plan BT hope to launch a Wi-Fi version of its BT Fusion mobile phone service this autumn, which will allow consumers to switch from a traditional mobile network to a cheaper Internet network when the phone comes within range of a Wi-Fi hotspot. It hopes that customers will be attracted away from more costly mobiles to embrace the new technology generating further sales.

Wi-Fi operator, The Cloud, has announce what it calls 'a radical new low pricing structure' for Wi-Fi access.

It is offering an unlimited tariff which will be available from July for £11.99 a month and will allow users to access 7,000 hotspots dotted around the UK.
The packing is available on either a 12 month contract or on a weekly basis with no contract, both are still at the same £11.99 pricing. While the yearly contract is of more use to business customers, a short contract may appeal to those who plan to use wireless extensively, but over a short period.

UltraWiFi is what The Clould have been building over the last year, and has put in place an open network architecture across its entire site estate, that allows it to support multiple service providers with seamless experiences.
Along with working with brands such as brands such as BT, O2, Skype, Vonage and Nintendo, it is hoping to make it's Wi-Fi products appeal to a broader audience than just the traditional laptop and PDA users.

GNER, the train operator, looks set to offer Wi-Fi networks on its rolling stock, after seeing strong demand for the service.

The company was planning to offer the service by May 2007, but due to public demand has put this forward to August, nine months ahead of the schedule. It has already enabled over half of it's 41 trains so far.

First class passengers will get the service for free, but all others will have to cough up, thirty minutes of access costs £2.95, an hour costs £4.95, and two hours costs £9.95.

Bus company National Express is trialling Wi-Fi hotspots installed on it's coaches running between London and Cambridge.
Travellers on it's 010 route will be able to access the internet on any 802.11b/g enabled device including laptops, PDA's at no extra charge above the usual ticket price.

The mSystem MobilAP-3G technology is supplied by Telabria and means that users can expect speeds of up to 300Kbps by routing through 3G networks where available. While this is not lightning fast broadband, using existing 3G means that coverage is more extensive than using a propriety system. Telabria is also planning to support HSDPA (High Speed Packet Download Access) during 2006 when phone operators upgrade, this will see download speeds increase to over 1.5 Mbps.

Although the trial will not charge customers, the mSystem MobilAP-3G system allows for operators to charge for access, although no pricing details, if any, have been released.

BT and Wi-Fi operator The Cloud have struck a deal to provide blanket Wi-Fi coverage of nine UK city centres.

The lucky cities will be covered by installing Wi-Fi kit in 500 of BT's payphones with the profits split between The cloud and BT. An estimated 4 million people in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Oxford, Camb