TeleCIS today announced its TCW 1620 WiMAX chip, said to enable both low-cost, indoor “self-installed” customer premises equipment (CPE) for fixed WiMAX services as well as “portable” services.

The TCW 1620 is based on the standard (IEEE 802.16-2004) for “fixed” WiMAX. TeleCIS says their chip will enable consumers to buy and install their own fixed indoor equipment, plus it offers portablity via PC cards and small USB devices.

Their fixed 802.16-2004 chip won’t have the handoff features of the evolving “mobile” WiMAX standard, but the draft 802.16e “Mobile WiMAX” standard was only approved last December. The infrastructure to support that isn’t expected for a year or so.

“The superior design and performance of the TCW 1620 will propel this chip into PC Cards and portable USB-based devices, as well as indoor CPE, in the second half of this year, and it provides a market opportunity no other fixed chip vendor can target,” said Sam Endy, CEO of TeleCIS Wireless.

TeleCIS Wireless added performance enhancements such as MIMO-based techniques including Diversity Combining space-time coding on a “one chip” design to boost signal gain while keeping power consumption low.

By incorporating the company’s portfolio of range extension techniques, Rx Technologies™, TeleCIS says it can provide up to 15dB over competing solutions. In addition, the tightly integrated ASIC has the built in ability to support a 2-antenna (Rx and Tx) MIMO consumer device with a single chip, delivering high performance in a non line-of-sight environment.

“Given the size of the laptop market and that of other portable devices, such as PDAs, the portable application could very well be the largest service supported by WiMAX 802.16-2004 standard networks,” said Caroline Gabriel, Research Director for Rethink Research.

Many WiMAX hardware companies plan to forgo fixed WiMax entirely and wait for mobile WiMax, says LightReading, even though products that support it are not due to hit the market until late this year at the earliest. Beceem’s Mobile WiMAX chipset, for example, has at least $40 million in venture funding, from companies like Intel.

The TeleCIS TCW 1620 will be available to customers in May. TeleCIS will be promoting the introduction later this week at the Broadband Wireless World Conference and Exhibition at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, April 26 – 28.

Chips, WiMAX News | No Comments »

Vint Cerf, the “father” of the Internet and currently Internet Evangelist at Google, kicked off the jam-packed Digital Cities Expo in Reston Virginia today (Agenda, Speakers and Sponsors), with a wide-ranging keynote speech, reports IP Democracy.

Cerf offered first a bird’s eye view of the development of the Internet, noting that there are currently more than a billion users on the Internet and more than 400 million machines running in server mode.

Despite this phenomenal presence, “when there are 6.5 billion people in the world, you realize we have a long way to go,” he said.

Cerf argued against the concept of a two-tiered Internet advocated by some broadband providers, telcos in particular. He recapped the idea that the Internet is built on an end-to-end principle, with one user paying for his access on one end and the other user paying for her access on the other end. Once each endpoint access is paid for, the two users are free to communicate back and forth.

“The reason that’s important is that the network allows people to do pretty much what they want to do. You don’t have to ask permission from the ISP,” Cerf said. “The permission-free way to the Internet has fostered all kinds of innovation.”

Opinions vary on whether the United States should put “net neutrality” into law. Om Malik thinks the issue is overblown. Savetheinternet.com believes legislation is vital.

More Americans would be forced to pay taxes subsidizing broadband service in “unserved” locales, and cities would be free to go into the Wi-Fi business under an upcoming U.S. Senate bill by Sen. Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican from sparsely populated Eastern Oregon. Smith’s bill would require the FCC to establish rules requiring that all companies “capable of supporting two-way voice communications” pay into the Universal Service Fund. Conspicuously absent from the bill, however, is any mention of Net neutrality, observes C/Net.

Sen Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat from urban Portland, has the opposite view - he proposed a bill that would put Net Neutrality into law.

Commentary, Municipal Wireless, Radio Policy News | No Comments »

Robert Price has the skinny on Nokia’s three new NSeries phones, the N72, the N73 and the N93. Nokia has a demo, specs and description.

• The N72 (pdf) has a 2 megapixel camera, integrated digital music player, integrated browser, FM radio and Visual Radio. It runs on the S60 2nd Edition Operating System.
• The N73 (pdf) has a 3.2 megapixel camera, auto focus, FM radio, integrated stereo speakers with 3D sound. It runs on the S60 3rd Edition Operating System.
• The N93 (pdf) has a 3.2 megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom, video capture, TV connection, integrated WiFi (b/g) and FM Radio. It runs on the S60 3rd Edition Operating System and features internal memory of up to 50 MB, which can be further expanded with a hot swap miniSD card of up to 2 GB, allowing users to capture up to 90 minutes of MPEG-4 VGA at 30 fps. It’s expected to be available in July 2006 with an unsubsidized price of 550 euros.

The new devices support direct uploading of photos to Flickr from the phone. The Flickr uploader can also be repointed to other services like Typepad. If it runs on the 2nd edition S60 platform (i.e. the N72), it may be back portable to the current 2nd edition phones out there. Time to keep an eye on the Nokia download sites incase it sneaks out there.

Nokia seems to be the only company that makes a decent camera phone. I understand that a tiny CCD/CMOS chip can’t compete with larger chips in digital cameras, but those lenses — gosh, what are they thinking?

Nokia’s Carl Zeiss lens make a big difference, enabling camphones (with MPEG-4 video) to be competitive with dedicated cameras. Another plus is the WiFi connection. It’s perfect for moblogging. Shoot and upload.

Nokia teamed with Six Apart so you can upload posts to your TypePad blog account. TypePad’s SplashBlog runs on a wide variety of camera phones and their Widgets provide flexibility. Nokia’s Lifeblog 2.0 comes in two parts; software that is loaded onto phones plus compatible software for PCs.

Nokia and Yahoo! announced a deal today to make it easy for mobile photographers to upload and add comments to Flickr. Consumers can connect to their online Flickr accounts without the need to download or install any additional applications. The Nokia N93, Nokia N73 and Nokia N72 are the first Nokia Nseries devices to support Flickr.

You can upload full size photos to Flickr directly from the camera or their image Gallery application. Once uploaded to Flickr, photos can be sent to your blog, as well as edited, organized, tagged and shared. SocialCanvas has a different approach. It enables multiple people to simultaneously zoom in and move around. Extremely high resolution photos are stored on-line, but they’re displayed fast in screen resolution.

Of course, WiFi enabled cameras are not standing still.

Kodak is upgrading their Wi-Fi camera this summer to work directly with hotspots and ISPs. The new 6 megapixel model will cost $299 with a $99 Wi-Fi card as an option. Their original 4 megapixel WiFi camera is now $399. Kodak also announced a dual lens BLUETOOTH camera ($449) with 6 megapixels and a 10X optical zoom (right). It shoots MPEG-4 videos at 640 x 480 and 320 x 240 @ 30fps.

EyeFilm combines storage and Wi-Fi into a single SD card and should cost around $99 for a 1 gig version. Whether it can effectively convert a non wireless camera into a wireless one remains to be seen.

You Tube and Google Video may soon allow similar mobile posting. Poynter explains; with a cellphone, you’re a journalist.

Want regime change? Talk to the Fins. They are instigating an open revolution.

Applications, Cellular News | 1 Comment »

The Desktop Linux Summit (Agenda), is being held April 24 & 25, in San Diego. The movement to bring Linux to the desktop is coming home, explains the AP:

In a move to make the freely distributed Linux operating system a stronger alternative to Microsoft’s Windows, a group of major Linux distributors announced Friday they have united on a standard set of components for desktop versions of Linux.

The standard created by the Free Standards Group (WikiPedia) should make it easier for developers to write applications that will work on Linux versions from different distributors.

Linux has a firm foothold as an operating system for servers — it’s popular for hosting Web sites, for instance — but has only a few percent of the desktop market.

That’s partly because, Linux, created in the early 90s by Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds, is really just the kernel, or core of an operating system. For a Linux computer to perform meaningful tasks, more software needs to be added that does things like presenting a graphical user interface.

Unfortunately, those added software libraries differ among Linux distributors, making it hard to know if an application like a word processor will function on a particular Linux computer.

“One of the big things that’s difficult is consistency, and that’s Window’s biggest strength,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Free Standards Group.

If you buy a Windows program, you know it will run on a Windows computer, and Linux needs to work the same way, Zemlin said.

It complements the work of the Portland Project, according to DesktopLinux.com. That sprang from an OSDL meeting in Oregon last fall to make Linux more prevalent on desktops.

Freespire is a community-driven, Linux-based operating system that combines free, open source software with proprietary codecs, drivers and applications. The new Freespire distro was announced Monday by Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony during his keynote address to Desktop Linux Summit attendees.

Freespire lets each individual user decide if they want to use OpenOffice (free, open source), StarOffice (purchased, commercial, proprietary), or any number of other office suite solutions.

Applications, Grass Roots Wireless | No Comments »

The National Association of Broadcasters holds their big Las Vegas show this week featuring more than 100,000 attendees, 1,400 exhibitors, hundreds of conferences and press releases and Monday Highlights.

“When you think of the National Association of Broadcasters you think of an organization that focuses on government representatives on behalf of over-the-air radio and TV broadcasters,” said Dennis Wharton, VP of corporate communications for the Washington DC lobby organization.

“But when it comes to the convention, you’re talking about much more,” he said. “This is far and away the largest electronics show in the world. Last year $30.4 billion in business was generated at this show”.

One new focus this year is mobility with “MoTV: Mobile, Video & TV Forum” on Tuesday and the “Web & Mobile Development Conference” on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Qualcomm will cover Las Vegas with MediaFLO. The demonstration will multicast 16 channels of QVGA (320×240) video, audio and data transmissions across the city using two high-powered FLO transmitters in the 700 Mhz band. The FloForum includes Qualcomm, Samsung, LG, Thompson and others. Verizon has committed to MediaFLO for mobile tv service. It will probably cost around $10/month.

Competitor Modeo (right), using the competing DVB-H standard (at 1.6 GHz), also has a live broadcast at the show. Their Mobile DTV Alliance includes Texas Instruments, Intel and others. Cingular, it has been rumored, will likely go with Modeo. Sprint has not (yet) made a committment. Maybe this week.

Or today. SES GLOBAL and Hiwire, a subsidiary of Aloha Partners, today announced they will deliver DVB-H mobile TV to consumers in Las Vegas this fall. Hiwire’s 12 MHz capacity of UHF spectrum in the 700 MHz band covers 60 percent of the U.S.. CEO Charles Townsend (see DW: The Smartest Guy in the Room, The 700 Club & The 700 Auction), has investment funding from cable veterans.

The trial service will deliver twice the channels than current mobile TV of MediaFLO and Modeo by using Hiwire’s 12 MHz capacity of UHF spectrum in the 700 MHz band. Hiwire will use UHF channels 54 and 59. Townsend says it will require one tenth the number of cell sites as higher frequencies such as 1600 MHz used by Modeo. It will be delivered over SES AMERICOM’s satellite backbone. AMERICOM’s IP-PRIME Broadcast Center in New Jersey, will aggregate and prepare content for distribution. SES struck similar deals last year with Crown Castle and MobiTV.

Sprint might be interested — HiWire offers a standard (DVB-H), it’s got penetration (700Mhz) and capacity (2X6 Mhz). Now maybe Sprint will dump iDen on the feds and buy up the last sliver of 700 Mhz for next-gen 2-way with tv everywhere. Interactive TV. Might beat the Free GoogleNet.

Podcasting and Compression are also hot topics. Mark “Jensen” Titterington of PodSqod.com will be Podcasting “live” from the convention floor. WhiteBlox is the exclusive online broadcaster for NAB2006.

Panasonic has committed to H.264. Apple and Panasonic have changed the economics of professional HD production with native support for HDV, DVCPRO HD and P2 (H.264 compliant solid-state memory) in Final Cut Pro. Sony’s $1,500 HDR-HC3, with 1080i, replaces last year’s HDR-HC1.

DirecTV and Dish Network are using MPEG-4 to deliver local HDTV channels to local markets using new spot beam satellites.

The ATSC standard uses MPEG-2 for HDTV, compressed to 19 Mbps, but MPEG-4 AVC enables bandwidths below 10 Mbps. Unfortunately, new compression schemes using H.264 won’t be compatible with ATSC. In a couple years, after consumers get spoiled by 1080p (over BluRay/HD DVDs), they could bail from ATSC before it gets off the ground. Nevermind the lack of multipath rejection compared to DVB-T (a real broadcast standard not a royalty agreement).

Feb. 17, 2009, is the drop dead date for the national conversion to digital TV — ending the era of analog broadcast television which spanned over 60 years. There will be 11.8 million holdout over-the-air TV households at year-end 2008 who will need DTV converters. Congress is setting aside nearly $1 billion to subsizize the cost of the converters which have been pegged at $60/each with the subsidies covering only $40. Kagan reviews The State of HDTV.

Satellites have about 30% of the television viewers in the United States. Cable has about 60% penetration while off-the-air broadcasters share the remaining 10-15%. News, now a profit center, has been expanded to compete with the crowded cable and satellite universe.

IPTV World at NAB 2006, looks at the competition from telecos, satellites and cable. SkyStream announced VOD and IPTV solutions, with support of Microsoft TV’s Picture-in-Picture (PiP) and Z-Band management software. Tandberg Television’s AdPoint allows operators to insert targeted advertising in VOD and broadcast programming, matching advertising with the appropriate programming type, geography, and viewer demographic data.

AT&T and Verizon plan an End Game, cherry picking subs and spending big on infrastructure (until the money runs out). AT&T’s Homezone service, on track for a summer debut, combines a set-top box with EchoStar satellite TV and DSL broadband.

Advertising revenue is always the bottom line.

The United States has 109 million U.S. tv households in contrast to 42.8 million broadband households. Pew Internet says the share of Americans who have broadband connections at home has now reached 42% (84 million), up from 29% (59 million) in January 2005. And they are transactional. AT&T and Verizon’s fiber to the home won’t grow the cable/satellite television market much beyond its current saturation of 109 million tv households, but they could affect the way advertising dollars are spent.

Overall (U.S.) internet advertising revenues for 2005 totaled $12.5 billion, a new annual record exceeding 2004 by 30%, reports the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, told Charlie Rose (Google Video - 12min) that the world advertising market is between $500-$700 billion, with half of that in the United States ($300 billion). Google has a market cap around $100 billion and made over $6 billion in 2005, almost all of it on internet advertising. It’s expected to make $9 billion this year.

Large-scale, free WiFi networks, include San Francisco (Google/Earthlink), Portland, Oregon (MetroFi), and Sunnyvale-SantaClara-Cupertino (MetroFi). They are advertising driven. Each must generate about $10/month from advertising click throughs. That’s $5 million a month (and potentially lots more) for each block of 500,000 users.

Firms like MetroFi are betting that a $10M investment in “city cloud” architecture will pay off in ad revenue.

Where is internet ad money coming from? The “old” media. Newspaper circulation is also down.

Group owners are ranked by the FCC’s calculation of coverage, which discounts by half the reach of UHF channels a particular group may own. Group owner coverage can’t exceed 39%. If a group owns more than one station in a market, the additional stations’ coverage is not counted in the group’s total.

U.S. cable operators have over 73 million TV subscribers, generating revenues of nearly $60 billion per annum, says Analysys, a research firm. DirecTV, the nation’s largest satellite broadcaster, has more than 15 million customers while EchoStar serves more than 11.71 million satellite TV customers through its DISH Network. DirecTV could go with WiNetworks for a WiMax triple play.

Will the remaining 15% of television viewers who rely on off the air television (some 15 million households), switch to cable, satellite, teleco TV or some form of Video on Demand service from Netflix, Akimbo, CinemaNow, MovieBeam, or something entirely different.

Mobile television isn’t likely to stay exclusively a two channel three channel universe (or a fee-based system) for long. XM satellite radio and DirecTV may be plotting ventures in the 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz band while free “city clouds” may be a delivery tool for “location-specific” advertising.

One thing is certain — broadcasting is going through a fundamental change. It’s entirely possible that backers of ATSC like Dennis Wharton may have sealed the fate of local television broadcasting. Broadcasters can never go back. A practical strategy for moving forward into mobility, the multichannel universe and internet distribution is now the challenge.

The huge number of exhibitors and attendees at NAB 2006 indicate there is optimism about the future — whatever it holds.

More news on NAB 2006 is available at Broadcasting and Cable, TV Week, Broadcast Engineering, BroadcastBuyer, TV Technology,and DTV News. Related DailyWireless stories include Cable Makes Its Move and PBS + MovieBeam.

Broadcasting & Cable, Mobile TV | No Comments »

Broadcom has named some of the companies to whom it has shipped production quantities of its draft-802.11n standard compliant Wi-Fi chips. They include Buffalo Technologies, Netgear, and US Robotics.

Broadcom says it has shipped Intensi-fi chipsets to other leading manufacturers of 802.11n equipment that it would not identify, says EE Times.

Eyebrows were raised in January 2006 when Broadcom said it was ready to start shipping the chip set for 802.11n gear just a day after the IEEE unveiled the compromise draft proposal for the standard.

Atheros followed a few days later saying it, too, would start sampling its XSpan family of parts for the same standard.

Broadband Reports says Linksys has unveilled a new wireless router (right), based on the 802.11n draft standard. The $150 WRT300N (Amazon) and the $120 card (WPC300N) should be available shortly.

Linksys says it has, “four times the range and up to 12 times the throughput of Wireless-G.” The earlier Linksys SRX400 is based on Airgo Gen3 True MIMO chips. It’s not clear (yet) what chip Linkys is using for their new WPC 300N. Broadcom didn’t mention Linksys in its press release.

E-Week says the Linksys WRT300N they tested was based on Broadcom’s Intensifi chip set:

However, Linksys officials said they typically move so many wireless products each month that chip-set availability is a problem, so they will also be releasing draft 802.11n products based on chip sets from Atheros and Marvell.

Perhaps most intriguing, LinksysInfo says the WRT 300 can be hacked:

Linksys has made available the GPL’s Source Code for the WRT300N 0.92.5 firmware release. Weighing in at a healthy 178MB, the download is available at the Linksys GPL Code Center.

Here’s your chance to download the WRT300N Source Code and produce the first 3rd party firmware for a (draft) 802.11n product!

Like “802.11n draft” routers from Netgear, D-Link, and Buffalo, the WRT300N and WPC300N provide mixed-mode operation and backward compatibility with 802.11g and 802.11b, a requirement in the draft N specification.

Leading 802.11n chip contenders include:

• Airgo says their current True MIMO products will work with 802.11n products. Well sure. But ratcheting down to standard IEEE 802.11a/b/g speeds is not what most people would define as compatible.
• Broadcom says their Intensi-fi technology incorporates all mandatory elements of the IEEE 802.11n draft specification and is designed to be software upgradable once the standard is finalized.
• Atheros says their XSPAN family including the AR5008, demonstrated at CES 2006, are the first to be based on the draft 802.11n specification.
• Marvell says their TopDog™ branded family of 802.11n IEEE draft compliant products are targeting consumer, enterprise, and mobile markets. They support multiple antenna configurations including 3×3, 2×3, 2×2 and 1×2; for applications like wireless streaming of HDTV and multimedia content throughout the home.

The Fairpoint Group cautioned against buying a draft 802.11n box. I tend to agree. DailyWireless has more on the new 802.11n chips and the 802.11n draft specification.

Chips, IEEE Standards, Wi-Fi News | No Comments »

Apple has unveiled a 17-inch, 1680×1050, 2.16GHz Core Duo MacBook Pro. The new model comes standard with 1GB of RAM, an 8X dual-layer burner and a 120GB 5400 RPM hard drive, along with a FireWire 800 port, for $2,799. Speculation was that it would cost over $3,000, so the price tag is a happy surprise.

Now the MacBook Pro line includes three, duocore laptops two 15 inchers; a 1.83GHz model with 80GB 5400-rpm HD ($1,999.00), the 2.0GHz model with 100GB 5400-rpm ($2,499.00) and the 17″ model with 2.16GHz with a 120GB 5400-rpm drive ($2,799.00).

Apple also offers a 100GB 7200 RPM drive as an option. Maximum RAM is 2GB. All models feature a DVD burner and a ATI Radeon graphics card. The new 17″ has an 8x double-layer SuperDrive

At the same time, Apple has removed the 17-inch PowerBook G4 from its lineup, leaving the 12-incher as the sole remaining option for customers willing to settle for last year’s model based on the PowerPC. The white $999 iBook with 12″ and 14″ screens and a G4 is also still around.

Gadgets | No Comments »

The AP warns that dead zones in city clouds can cause frustration

More than a month after St. Cloud launched what analysts say is the country’s first free citywide Wi-Fi network, Joe Lusardi and others in this 28,000-person Orlando suburb are still paying to use their own Internet service providers as dead spots and weak signals keep some residents offline and force engineers to retool the free system.

“Everybody’s happy they were going to have it, but I don’t know if they’re happy right now,” said Lusardi, a 66-year-old retired New York City transit worker.

The same troubles with the small town’s big Internet project could be lessons for municipalities from Philadelphia to San Francisco considering similar networks.

St. Cloud officials are spending more than $2 million on a network they see as a pioneering model for freeing local families, schools and businesses from monthly Internet bills. It also promises to help the city reduce cell-phone bills and let paramedics in an ambulance talk by voice and video to hospital doctors.

Instead, what they have so far is a work in progress.

Lusardi didn’t shell out the money for a signal-boosting device St. Cloud recommends for those having trouble connecting - City Hall sells them for $170.

Glenn Fleishman said the fact that others share Lusardi’s frustration is a crucial technical and public relations problem for the vanguard project. He said residents should understand many won’t be able to use the free network without additional equipment to strengthen the signal.

“It’s very large and it’s very ambitious, so they’re going to hit some of these problems before some of the marketing and technology is out there,” he said. “Products have to catch up to this new market.”

WiFi typically goes a couple hundred feet. Don’t expect it to reach indoors without some sort of external antenna. Simple, inexpensive options, are available.

I bought a $29, USB WiFi client and a $6 vegetable strainer as a reflector. It works great. It get me more than 1,000 feet. For longer distances, I use a 19db panel ($60) and a Lucent USB client ($40) that has an internal PC card with external antenna jack. I plug the antenna into the client and get more than a mile. No power is necessary for USB clients and I’ve strung 20 feet of USB cable without problems.

The St Cloud network will use approximately 300 Tropos 5210 mesh nodes connected wirelessly to a direct Ethernet connection at City Hall. Motorola’s Canopy in a “Pre WiMax” configuration, provides the backhaul.

Grass Roots Wireless, Municipal Wireless | No Comments »

Today is Earth Day. John McConnell, Founder of Earth Day, says it was established as an annual event to deepen reverence and care for life on our planet.

Yahoo has ten ways to celebrate while Google lists resources. We at DailyWireless have always been interested in the Ocean. Broadband satellite platforms from Inmarsat, and others are about to revolutionize the science of monitoring on, above and below the surface of the Earth and the Oceans.

First, let’s go down. Where no one has gone before.

Scientists have — for the first time — drilled through the Earth’s crust to reach a fossil magma chamber lying 1.4 kilometers beneath the seafloor. An international team of scientists, supported by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, aboard the research drilling ship JOIDES Resolution (journals) has recovered black rocks known as gabbros from inside the ocean crust.

“It will help explain whether ocean crust is formed from one high-level magma chamber or from a series of stacked magma lenses.” The scientists hope to drill deeper yet at the site, although actual penetration into the mantle remains elusive.

Earth’s layers are in descending order: crust, mantle and core. The Earth’s crust is some 18 miles thick under the continents, but only 3 miles (5 kilometers) thick under the oceans. It’s fractured into more than a dozen major tectonic plates. It is where most earthquakes originate.

Nobody has ever broken through the crust and into the Earth’s mantle.

Project MoHole, begun in the 1950s, aimed to drill all the way through the crust to the Earth’s mantle, but never made it. “Finding the right place to drill was probably key to our success,” says geophysicist Doug Wilson, University of California, Santa Barbara.

“By sampling a complete section of the upper oceanic crust, we’ve achieved a goal scientists have pursued for over 40 years, since the days of Project MoHole,” says Damon Teagle, National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, UK, and co-chief scientist of the drilling expedition. “Our accomplishment will ultimately help science answer the important question, ‘how is new ocean crust formed?’”

The research team identified a 15-million-year-old region of the Pacific Ocean that formed when the East Pacific Rise was spreading at a “superfast” rate (more than 200 millimeters per year), faster than any mid-ocean ridge on Earth today. The tectonic plates currently move about the same speed as your fingernails grow.

The Ocean Drilling Program has been arguably the the world’s biggest, most productive Big Science project. It has been collecting data since 1968 and has revolutionized geology.

John Delany’s NEPTUNE project (left), is Wiring the Deep Seafloor. The plans call for more than 30 seafloor instrument stations and some 3200 kilometers of optical cable, connected to shore in Victoria, British Columbia, and Nedonna Beach, Oregon.

Stations will have several kilowatts of power and bandwidth in the gigabits per second.

Wireless floaters, like the Argo program, have begun populating the world ocean with 3,000 identical untethered floats.

Argo builds on other upper-ocean ocean observing networks. Every 10 days they rise to the surface, taking a string of water measurements along the way, and make radio contact with a satellite.

The idealized map (below) shows some 3,000 Argo floaters and how they are being distributed around the world’s oceans.

The Argos satellite transmits the data, plus the position of the float, to a data center where it’s put on the Web. Argos receivers are carried on-board NOAA series satellites. Currently 6 NOAA satellites are in service with Argos instruments on polar, sun-synchronous, circular orbits providing full global coverage.

Satellite tagging also tracks animals. Endangered birds can also be tracked by satellite using similar technology. Transmitters can fit in the palm of your hand (or smaller).

Satellite phone providers such as Globalstar and Iridium have enabled transmitters to become ever smaller. Terrastar and Inmarsat are launching a new generation of giant geosychronous satellites. Their spot beams may bring a whole new dimension to wireless communications at sea.

Already autonomous submarines and “flying subs” are being developed and tested. Oregon Iron Works built SeaLion, which stands for SEAL Insertion, Observation and Neutralization and is currently working on an autonomous flying boat, an Airdroppable High Speed, Low Signature Craft, “deployable from US military aircraft and missiles or rockets and spacecraft“.

It would combine the extremely long endurance times of a surface vehicle with high speed air delivery. Boeing’s Insitu Group, just up the Columbia River, across from Hood River, also has an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAVs) that will benefit from broadband, anywhere, all the time.

Cloud Cap Technology specializes in hardware and software for small unmanned aircraft like the Silver Fox (left).

Manta UAVs, also built by Advanced Ceramics Research, recently completed 18 data-gathering missions over the Maldives (right).

Three UAVs flew in a vertical formation measuring pollution levels above, below, and inside the clouds simultaneously. The robot airplanes weigh 11 pounds and carry sensors to measure solar radiation, particle size and concentration, turbulence, humidity, and temperature.

The Deep is not exclusively populated by Black Smokers and Extremophiles.

Lurking off Virginia are tens of thousands of mustard gas shells and hundreds of tons of radioactive waste in at least five ocean dump zones created by the Army decades ago.

Google Earth has brought the world home to everyone with a broadband connection while Vexcel’s flyby software combines synthetic aperture radar (SAR), LIDAR, maps, GIS and photogrammetry.

The NGA and NASA have their own political agendas for The National Map. Will they let Microsoft compete with thematic maps and data?

Will planet Earth be better off once it’s monitored 24/7 by UAVs, satellites, sensor networks and broadband everywhere? Who can say for sure. And who controls the data?

We may soon find out.

Additional DailyWireless articles include Oceanographic Wireless, Oceanographic Dead Zone, Balloon Relays, Telepresence Now!, Mars and Venus Missions, Tsunami Monitoring, Global Tsunami System Announced, RadarSats Image Tsunami, Tsunami Mapping, Mobile Satellite Access, Tsunami Warning Ideas, Off shore data links, the Global Grid, Earthquake First Responders, Tagging Photos with GPS, Off Shore Data Links, Inmarsat Spot Beam Satellite, Inmarsat Plans Domestic Satphone, FCC Approves Big Mobile Sat, Katrina Telecomunications Report, Coast Guard Network Tested, Global Satellite Providers Now Three, Satellite Wi-Fi, WiFi Routers for Cars, Unwired Transportation, UAVs Expand Role, Wireless Recon Airplanes, 24hr UAV Coverage, On Mount St Helens, and Tracking Santa.

Applications, Commentary, Fiber Optics, GPS, Public Service, Society & Telecom, Space & Satellites | No Comments »

“Apparently, we all missed the news in January and March that progress was made on 802.11s,” sez WiFiNet News. But DailyWireless pointed that out more than a month ago.

Extreme Tech has an excellent review of recent developments in mesh standards. The Intel-and Firetide-led SEE Mesh draft and Nortel’s Wi-Mesh Alliance, resolved their differences and moved forward with a joint proposal for a draft 802.11s mesh standard, that could be approved by early next year by the IEEE, according to Electronic Engineering Times.

Strix and BelAir both have said that 802.11s may not cover outdoor mesh networking effectively. Tropos, the mesh market leader, uses a single radio with their patented Predictive Wireless Routing Protocol (PWRP) and may not feel compelled to jump in bed with the first mesh standard that comes down the pike.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Fleishman loves to criticize other people (John, You Ignorant Slut), but he often gets it wrong himself (or simply confuses the issue):

“Most metro-scale Wi-Fi and wireless will be charged at a fee, MetroFi and Google’s low-speed free offering in San Francisco notwithstanding”.

Yes, Google’s “free” 300Kbps San Francisco service is slower than Earthlink’s standard $19.95/month 1Mbps service. But no, MetroFi’s “free” service is not slower than their ad-free $19.95/mo service. MetroFi claims both deliver 1Mbps.

DailyWireless has more on Coming Soon: Mesh Standards?, Smart APs Get a Standard, Community Mesh Developments, Motorola’s MeshConnect, $100 Laptop, Srix Expands Mesh, Big City WiFi Clouds, Mesh Standards?, Mesh Standards Proposed, Mesh Standards, Taipei’s Mesh Cloud, Scaling City-wide Mesh, NASA/Nortel Mesh Shuttle Coverage, Securing the Cloud, Hotels Get Meshed, Mesh Projects & Gear, MetroFi Goes Long, Mesh: Baton Rouge Et Al Citywide Mesh, Mesh Goes Downtown, Aiirnet & Telerama, Strix and Air Magnet, San Jose Free Cloud, Meshing at Intel, Meshed Roofnets, Mesh ISP, City Mesh, Intel’s 802.11s for Home Mesh, Portland Chooses MetroFi, San Francisco Chooses Earthlink/Google, MetroFi Goes Free, and Rio Rancho Goes Free.

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