Communication Breakdown

One amusing episode from yesterday at the Wireless Event was Robert Lang of Fon, the Wi-Fi sharing "community", revealing that his company is encouraging Foneros (people with Fon routers) who live near a Starbucks to aim their signals straight into the beanshop. Seeing as Fon's access is somewhat cheaper than T-Mobile's (the operator with the Starbucks franchise), this makes for an interesting and possibly effective guerilla tactic. Hats off!

Just yesterday, this was a reputable PR for a mid-tier Wi-Fi vendor. Now, after two days' exposure to the Wireless Event in London, just look what happened to him. Honestly, what more proof do you need?



OK, so I have no idea how a stag beetle found its way into the conference centre (these events are usually thin on wildlife photography). But the whole daft Wi-Fi-danger thing has been popping up occasionally at this event, as you might expect. One potential victim of the hysteria would be femtocells, which are, all said and done, mini-base-stations for the home or office. I can see the Daily Mail headline now - "Would you want a mobile phone mast in your living room?" (well, probably snappier than that, but you get the point).

I asked William Franks of Ubiquisys, one of the companies trying to push this stuff, what he thought, and he agreed it would be a huge uphill PR battle. Nonetheless, he pointed out that femtocells emit about a hundredth of the wattage of Wi-Fi routers, and of course both of those become barely significant if you start comparing them to microwave ovens and, for that matter, TV masts. So, much ado about nothing then. We kind of knew that, but try telling the tabloids.

As far as I'm concerned, femtocell vendors are going to face a much bigger problem in convincing customers that they should pay extra to make up for the shortfall in 3G capacity. If you're already paying for a service, should you have to pay again so it works properly, when it should do that anyway? Exactly. So, that means the operators would have to subsidise the things heavily. There's big advantages for them in doing so, but there's a lot of whispering going on at the Wireless Event about operators moving away from the subsidy model... so I reckon femtocells may indeed make an impact, but only built into wireless routers or otherwise shuffled out of the customer's general awareness.

All very confusing, but things are definitely going to change soon.

66 buildings. Three square miles. More than 1,300 access points. That's some serious infrastructure. Cardiff University's wireless LAN, which uses Trapeze's technology, will service 30,000 students, 5,000 staff and guests, and will apparently be the largest WLAN in the country. Blimey!

On an unrelated note, some amusing/startling thoughts from the CIO of a very big power firm this morning at the Wireless Event. Enthusing perhaps a little too much about the wonders of flexible work/life balance etc etc, the CIO claimed that his "Martini workers" (daft management-speak for workers who can work from anywhere) "could be drinking real martinis - we don't care as long as they are doing their work".

I'll assume he was kidding, but the joke would be a lot funnier if if his company didn't run nuclear power stations.

Ah, Wi-Fi. It frees us all up from tangled cords and space constraints. "One day, son, all this will be wireless," they say. And where better to enjoy ubiquitous wireless coverage than the Wireless Event, currently underway in the sunny climes of west London.

Right? Wrong. I'll let you all in on a little secret: it is one of the immutable laws of technology journalism that, at any event that is in any way associated with the joys of W-Fi or other wireless variants, there is little or no Wi-Fi coverage. Ergo, no live blogging from seminars - none of this newfangled journalistic liberty, in fact. So here sits your humble reporter, in the press room again, because that's the only place he can get any Wi-Fi access. A story will be winging its way onto the news page soon enough, but not at the speed which should be possible.

Journalism 2.0? Almost, but not yet.

According to Skype, in some countries (they don't say which) 30 percent of its users are business users. As it would make sense that those are mostly small businesses (Nortel it ain't), the company has released a pack especially for them, bundling a Skype for Business CD, Skype for Windows (business edition), €50 of distributable Skype credit, 10 x 5-month subscriptions to Skype Pro (lets you call landlines for free etc) and a handy tips'n'tricks guide. All for €99+VAT.

Also included is a Windows installer for Skype so admins can manage the programme across multiple computers, and an online control panels so they can allocate Skype credits to individual users as well.