Recent Mobile Observers | 2005 Mobile Observers | Mobile Observers Predating 2005
• April 18, 2007:
WiMAX Sweetspot: Hybrid Fixed-Mobile?; Wireless LAN Fast
Roaming
• April 4, 2007:
The Dual-Mode Choke Hold; The Next Wave of Enterprise
Smartphones
• March 28, 2007:
Let the Most Scalable Wireless Network Win; Cisco Routers
Get a 3G Boost
• March 7, 2007:
Air Time: Enterprise Wi-Fi Architecture: Proprietary from Edge to Core
• February 28, 2007:
The Wireless Edge: Disconnect!
• February 21, 2007:
When Wi-Fi Clients Meet Infrastructure; The Wireless
USB Standard Race
• February 14, 2007:
Mobile WiMAX: In Search of Markets
• February 7, 2007:
The Wireless Edge: EV-DO Rev A: Upping the Ante
• January 31, 2007:
Sprint Nextel and Embarq, once a single company serving both wireline and wireless services, now each has its own fixed-mobile convergence offering.
• January 24, 2007:
An old-school IT guy's philosophy still holds true: You want it fast? You want it cheap? You want it reliable? Pick any two out of the three.
• January 17, 2007:
IEEE 802.11n will bring huge performance gains for Wi-Fi. Unless you've planned carefully, however, deployment in the enterprise will not be as easy as just upgrading or swapping out access points.
• January 10, 2007:
The company already offers a fixed-mobile convergence service for consumers and SMEs and its enterprise version, Corporate Fusion, is only weeks away from launching. Here are some highlights of what BT is doing.
• January 3, 2007:
Forecasting developments is an important element of managing an IT organization or running a technology company, and mobility is no exception. To ring in the New Year, here are 10 mobility-related predictions.
• December 20, 2006:
Google has recently made available a number of well-designed mobile-oriented applications and services. The implications are far reaching, suggesting that the mobile Internet is finally arriving.
• December 13, 2006:
Wireless Propagator: Airgo(ne) to Qualcomm; Latest Wireless News and Updates
• December 6, 2006:
Are Cisco's allegations that Meru isn't playing by the rules of 802.11 true? The debate continues.
• November 29, 2006:
A variety of recent developments have improved VPN usage options with wireless networks, but make sure you choose the right approach based on your usage scenario.
• November 22, 2006:
Voice-based roaming as it relates to convergence platforms can address different scenarios, and not all vendors offer a solution for each one. We categorize the three most common scenarios and how each is usually accomplished.
• November 15, 2006:
Aruba is looking to overcome the numerous obstacles facing FMC through a five-phase plan aimed squarely at the enterprise.
• November 8, 2006:
New developments make it easier than ever for many individuals to substitute a smartphone for a laptop, especially for short trips. Longer term, phones could prove as disruptive to today's PC-centric computing model as PCs were to mainframes.
• November 1, 2006:
Mobile-to-mobile and fixed-to-mobile convergence solutions are leaving the labs and proof-of-concept stage and moving into the home and enterprise.
• October 25, 2006:
The notion that municipal wireless will have a significant positive impact on bridging the digital divide is only the latest example of "simplexity," the political art of advancing simple technology solutions to complex social problems.
• October 18, 2006:
Lost in the current debate of CDMA vs. OFDMA is that an overwhelming majority of users today utilize TDMA-based technology, which with advances such as Evolved EDGE will be with us for quite some time.
• October 11, 2006:
Despite a long delay in entering the 3G marketplace, T-Mobile rolled the die and won big in the AWS auction. The company also has vendors on deck to supply the necessary hardware.
• October 4, 2006:
As the dust settles on Mobile ESPN, which ends its run at year's end, it's a good time to reflect on the Mobile Virtual Network Operator market as a whole.
• September 20, 2006:
Network Chemistry's latest release of its enterprise product, RFprotect Distributed 6.0, adds features and functionality that fill in many of the gaps highlighted in an earlier review.
• September 13, 2006:
New announcements in the smartphone market show that converged mobile voice and data devices are taking center stage in businesses everywhere.
• September 6, 2006:
Assessing wireless network performance is not as easy as it may seem. There are quite a few considerations in both the test methodology and the interpretation of the results.
• August 29, 2006:
Metro Wi-Fi deployments are expensive. Although coverage over capacity remains a viable goal in this early stage of the market, anything an operator can do to reduce the number of nodes will drive those installation costs down. Cohda, Go Networks and Wavion each offers technologies to address those requirements.
• August 23, 2006:
With its relatively low-cost and easy-to-deploy wireless mesh router, Tropos has fueled interest in Metro Wi-Fi in large cities and made deployment a possibility for smaller communities.
• August 16, 2006:
Sprint Nextel's choice of WiMAX for its 2.5 GHz network helps legitimize the technology. However, WiMAX is not 4G, and Sprint Nextel will face a major challenge trying to make a consumer-oriented mobile broadband service profitable.
• August 9, 2006:
Wireless Propagator: A Wireless Repeater to Switch Transition? -- Part 3
We look at some non-metro Wi-Fi antenna and radio technologies as well as a few of the vendors offering these technologies to assist with performance and coverage.
• August 2, 2006:
802.11 history tells us it could take up to seven years for the 11n draft to be finalized. What does that mean for the companies using the already shipped millions of 11n chipsets?
• July 26, 2006:
Even though 3G cellular-data services are just now rolling out, standards bodies are developing a series of enhancements as well as entirely new network approaches. The results will be significant improvements in capability.
• July 20, 2006:
Xirrus, with its Wireless LAN Array, and Meru Networks, with its Radio Switch, both offer a poly-radio access point. Each has a distinctive design that results in different capabilities. Here's what you should know.
• July 13, 2006:
Established 3G cellular service providers, emerging metro Wi-Fi businesses and purveyors of mobile WiMAX all have some level of industry mindshare. Although it's tough to bet against the success of any of the three, it's a one-horse race in the short-term. So which technology wins?
• July 5, 2006:
Most IP-based networking applications work just fine over wide-area wireless networks, but those designed specifically for wireless can provide a significantly better user experience.
• June 28, 2006:
As wireless networks continue to spread and become more pervasive in organizations today, the wireless network manager needs to understand the caveats of a micro-cell infrastructure and some other options.
• June 21, 2006:
A number of fair comparisons exist between Ethernet and Wi-Fi. But fundamental differences also exist, and these should be of concern to IT professionals thinking about future needs.
• June 14, 2006:
Despite the learning curve involved, three developments in recent years have made tethering more practical.
• June 7, 2006:
Two companies, WiMetrics and Network Chemistry, have products available that take the wireless out of WIDS. Neither is perfect -- yet, but both are better than nothing when fighting rogue access points.
• May 31, 2006:
This newfound mobility-enabler can be just as bad as it is good. The key to Wi-Fi's future potential is finding a way to leverage it as a collaborative tool.
• May 24, 2006:
The Wireless Edge: Convergence Update: IMS and UMA
• May 17, 2006:
Even if WLAN and cellular networks do not roam seamlessly, there are other reasons why enterprises should still look seriously at mobile convergence.
• May 9, 2006:
As we begin a slow but deliberate march to 802.11n, we're experiencing the latest, and maybe the most important, transition yet. Will it be a smooth migration or will we repeat the mistakes of the past?
• May 2, 2006:
Despite impressive speed gains, wide-area wireless networks are not going to catch up with wireline. But that doesn't mean they aren't useful.
• April 26, 2006:
Ruckus Wireless has created a product that can reliably transmit multiple IP video streams.
• April 19, 2006:
One of the emerging battlegrounds in the world of wireless
networking is location-based services. The U.S. market for these
devices is projected to increase rapidly, and some interesting
questions will be tagging along for the ride.
• April 12, 2006:
What is the meaning of integrated voice and data, and why and where is it
important? Also, to what extent do the different cellular technologies support
this capability, and how will it evolve over time?
• April 5, 2006:
Several challenges arise from requiring home CPE. The first and most
obvious one is that wireless mesh provider must educate their subscribers
that they need to purchase a wireless bridge.
• March 29, 2006:
It's only through practical, real-world experience that IT professionals come to fully appreciate
the complexities associated with Wi-Fi.
• March 22, 2006:
The benefits of mobile middleware are quite clear, but which specific
solution to use can be much less obvious.
• March 15, 2006:
If you need to look into the unseen to resolve an outstanding but
recurring issue or if you want to take your Wi-Fi network to the next level, you
might consider investing in some kind of spectrum analysis tool.
• March 8, 2006:
11a or 11g: Which One Is Best for You? The answer is, it depends on whether
you're referring to a home Wi-Fi network or to an enterprise network. The
answer also is, it's complicated.
• March 1, 2006:
Here are some interesting observations and conclusions from a recent
meeting on municipal and mesh Wi-Fi developments.
• February 22, 2006:
As the RIM/NTP patent case continues to play out, customers, ISVs and
wireless carriers remain in a perpetual state of flux. It's a situation that has
gone on for much too long, but will hopefully end in the near term.
• February 15, 2006:
Has 3G finally arrived? The answer to that question is complex,
mostly because the value of 3G data services is tied as much to culture as
it is to technology.
• February 8, 2006:
Many eyes are fixed on Sprint Nextel as the company contemplates how to
take advantage of the large amount of spectrum it owns in the 2.5 GHz band.
• February 1, 2006:
In-building wireless systems can address the challenge of pervasive and
consistent Wi-Fi and cellular coverage by distributing the wireless signal to
remote locations from a central site.
• January 25, 2006:
Given the underlying complexity of this technology, the road to
802.11n will have a few potholes. But the future offerings of
Atheros, Broadcom, Marvel, Intel and Airgo will serve as the basis
for a whole new generation of product offerings that will have a
dramatic impact on both consumer and enterprise markets.
• January 18, 2006:
Palm's official unveiling of its Windows Mobile Treo smartphone, the Treo 700w,
at the beginning of this month made me contemplate the current status of
smartphones and their likely evolution. Overall, I'm enthusiastic about this
platform, but I have to confess that from a productivity point of view, it's
easy to invest just as much time working with these devices as any time you
will save from using them. That's the conundrum.
• January 11, 2006:
This guide should remove some of the guesswork in selecting an Extensible Authentication Protocol
type that is appropriate for your environment.
• January 4, 2006:
If you think of wireless technologies as stocks worth owning or
dumping, here are my 2006 buy/sell/hold recommendations for a range
of key wireless technologies.
Recent Mobile Observers | 2005 Mobile Observers | Mobile Observers Predating 2005
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