MuniWireless

Berlin, Germany has very ambitious plans to provide free Wi-Fi access throughout the city, starting with a pilot project around the city’s main streets, Unter den Linden, Friedrichstrasse, Kurfürstendamm and Tauentzienstrasse. If the city is pleased with the results (and Deutsche Telekom doesn’t get in the way, which is what all the European telecom incumbents have been doing to these types of projects), residents will get Wi-Fi access throughout the city center (35 square miles).

Read more about the Berlin citywide…

An article in the the Guardian pointed out a very interesting phenomenon at McDonald’s outlets in the UK: people in business attire working on laptops who order only drinks. The reason: they’re at McDonald’s for the free Wi-Fi. I’ve already written about how expensive Wi-Fi access can be in the UK and in Europe. So if you don’t feel like paying the outrageous rates or hunting around for free Wi-Fi access, McDonald’s, which is nearly ubiquitous, may be your answer…

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will begin holding meetings beginning on 2 March 2009 with interested parties to discuss the implementation of the Broadband Grant Programs under the Broadband Data Services Improvement Act and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).

The first big public meeting involving the NTIA, USDA, and the FCC, will be held on March 10, 2009, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Eastern Standard Time at the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications…

The Interactive Network for the Fox Cities (INFOCIS), a consortium of seven municipal organizations in the Fox Valley region of Wisconsin, is deploying several wide-area Wi-Fi networks, starting with the city of Appleton and the town of Grand Chute. If all goes as planned, the network will go live in June 2009.

INFOCIS is rolling out the first phase, a 7-mile corridor along College Avenue from Highway 441 to the outer edge of Outagamie County Regional Airport. The coverage area includes…

We’ve added another session to the agenda of the Freedom to Connect conference in Washington DC (March 30-31, 2009): “How to Get and Spend $7,200,000,000.00: What the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act or 2009 Means for Netheads.” This session will cover how to qualify for the Act’s $2.5 billion from Agriculture and $4.7 billion from Commerce. Disbursement begins in May. Most monies must be disbursed within 18 months. Local governments qualify, as do non-profits, coops, and other entities. Large telcos…

Meraki has just released a 3-radio 802.11n outdoor mesh product, the MR58, that provides more capacity and speed than 802.11b/g wireless nodes. The list price: $1500. In one bold move, Meraki has dropped the cost of outdoor Wi-Fi mesh equipment to $500 per radio. Meraki is the only outdoor mesh equipment vendor with an 802.11n product. None of the other vendors (Cisco, BelAir, Tropos and Firetide) has one.

I spoke to Sanjit Biswas yesterday about Meraki’s new 802.11n device. He says…