Wireless providers gird themselves for battle

It’s been a year since Google started offer­ing free WiFi in Moun­tain View, Cal­i­for­nia. Their mesh net­work uses 400 access points scat­tered around the city to sup­port 15000 users each month. There’s more details in Google’s blog post.

Mean­while, there isn’t much news about Earthlink’s WiFi project in Chi­na­town, just a few steps away from my office. I dis­cussed this effort on May 26. The project was announced last sum­mer in sev­eral arti­cles, and Hawai­ian Elec­tric was a part­ner. HECO was con­sid­er­ing WiFi as one medium for smart elec­tric meters, which I dis­cussed on June 11.

If Ana­heim can build out a wire­less net­work for its res­i­dents, as dis­cussed in this Wired arti­cle, Hon­olulu could do the same. In the mean­time, Road Run­ner has been adding WiFi Speed Zones for its cus­tomers, and is allow­ing res­i­den­tial users to hook La Fon­era mesh routers to their exist­ing cable modem connections.

Mean­while, Clear­wire and the mobile tel­cos are still mar­ket­ing their lap­top data cards. These devices tap the mobile phone net­work to deliver a con­nec­tion in the 50–300 mbps range. It’s not as fast as WiFi, but these con­nec­tions tend to be more secure than a WiFi con­nec­tion through an unknown router.

This is all lead­ing up to a real­lo­ca­tion of the wire­less spec­trum in the US, as men­tioned in Going­WiMax. Rumors are pop­ping up again that Google is devel­op­ing its own mobile device or gPhone.

Given Google’s net-centric busi­ness model, a gPhone might need a fast wire­less con­nec­tion. Judg­ing from the pho­tos, it might also need some design work.

Tagged as: e-commerce, EarthLink, electricity, Google, gphone, hardware, Internet, mobile, network, Time-Warner-Cable, WiFi