MuniWireless

The second PC World 3G Wireless Performance test shows AT&T leading the other cellular carriers in download speeds. In contrast to AT&T’s poor performance last spring, this time around AT&T seems to have made noticeable improvements in its network across the 13 cities where Novarum conducted its tests:

“AT&T’s network turned in download speeds that were 72 percent better than the numbers from eight months ago; in our latest tests, AT&T’s download speeds were 67 percent faster on average than those…

A post by Stephen Rayment, CTO of BelAir Networks, in the Financial Times urges mobile operators to use Wi-Fi to offload traffic from their overcrowded 3G networks. The CTO of a company that makes Wi-Fi base stations would obviously say this, but it is something that many others have been wondering about for a long time. If the iPad becomes as successful as the iPhone, expect your mobile phone service to get even worse.

But I wonder if the operators will go…

Last Friday in Paris, the French regulator ARCEP held a press conference to announce that Iliad-Free will be the new mobile operator in France. It has taken five years for the French government to bring a fourth operator market because of strong opposition from the other incumbents, France Télécom-Orange,  SFR and Bouygues.  ARCEP had no other choice because Iliad-Free was the company to respond to the second RFP which was issued on 3 August 2009 (two years after the first…

Mobile operators in Europe love borders, in fact, the more, the better because it’s awfully profitable. Check out this post from Benoit Felten (Your phone bill this month is 46,000 Euros), a story originally published in Le Monde about a French guy who bought a 3G dongle and 95 EUR per month data plan from mobile operator, Orange (France), only to end up with a mobile phone bill that resembles a receipt for a brand new automobile: “The guy lives in…

Steve Kimatian, a Republican candidate for mayor in Syracuse, NY, wants the city to have Wi-Fi everywhere for free or a very low price. According to Kimatian, the city can fund the costs of deployment partially through federal funds. While the article discussing Kimatian’s plan does point out that there have been some successes and some failures among municipal wireless deployments, it cites Thomas Hazlett’s argument against muni Wi-Fi:

Municipal Wi-Fi projects often run into problems because the unlicensed radio frequencies…

AT&T is finally launching multimedia messaging service (MMS) on the iPhone tomorrow. That’s a welcome announcement for some iPhone users, but many fear that the added data traffic will cause even more breakdowns in the network. Customers of AT&T have been critical about the operator’s poor cellular service which has been suffering from the success of the iPhone.

Recently, the FCC has proposed rules that would make it more difficult for service providers, including wireless operators, to discriminate against certain types…