Dorian In the World

In the (uninformed?) press there is endless debate about what wireless technology will 'win' at the end of the day. Somehow it all seems obvious to me...but then again, it IS my brain...so it would seem obvious to me.

WiFi aka "Poor Man's Wireless"

Great for coffee shops and stealing it from (mostly) unsuspecting non-tech types who leave their home router unsecured. Also good for those cities that somehow believe blanketing their downtown or the entire city with WiFi will make their city more attractive and a better place to live (which in my opinion will result in class action lawsuits by taxpayers in jurisdictions where they may have footed a portion of the bill). Dailywireless reports that there are over 300 municipal wireless WiFi systems in the USA!

Continue reading "WiFi, 3G, WiMAX and Fixed Wireless..." »

Posted by Dorian Banks at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I can't take it any longer. What is up with these (crazy) cities all over the planet spearheading municipal WiFi projects?!? I have said for almost a year that if I was a tax payer in Philadelphia or countless other wreckless cities I would sue the local government for misuse of my tax dollars. I predict a class action lawsuit or the like against a US city within a year. I do understand that taxpayer money is not funding the rollouts...but who is funding the city employee's time working on these projects?

What is going through a politicians mind when they 'come up with the idea' that their city should have ubiquitous WiFi coverage for the masses? Maybe ubiquitious housing, education or medical aid is a more likely target?!? I'm telling you it makes me crazy. Why don't they start dealing in electricity, cable TV or countless other commercial services?!? Does WiFi makes their citizens smarter or something? I haven't seen such a study.

Continue reading "Muni WiFi - Stop the Insanity - You are Making Me (more) Insane" »

Posted by Dorian Banks at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes it -is- out there and it is called Sonos.

I have owned my two zone Sonos system plus controller for just over one year so I figured it was time to tell the internet world about how this amazing music system has completely 180'd how I own, manage and listen to music.

Sonos is made up of Zone Players that you place in each room where you would like to distribute music. Only one unit must be connected (somehow) to your LAN for access to wherever you store your MP3's. The storage area can literally be any drive map(s) or hard drive visible on the network. I started off story my MP3's on my PC but my collection quickly outgrew the hard drive space and I later migrated to a network hard drive (essentially a hard drive in a case with an ethernet port).

Continue reading "The Most Amazing Music System on the Planet" »

Posted by Dorian Banks at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well WiNOG 2006 seems to have been a terrific success. A big thanks goes out to Charles and the CWLab team for putting this industry event on each year. I cannot wait to see this conference in ten years time!

Personally I had some great discussions with many individuals that no doubt have spurred me to think (even more) about our industry and the global impact it is having and going to have on communications and information flow.

I was particularly excited chatting with Tony from CWLab. I told him about our equipment woes and what a strange time it is for our industry.

Continue reading "Notes from WiNOG 2006" »

Posted by Dorian Banks at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The OECD has released a lengthy report on the state of WiMAX (PDF).

It was interesting to see a close to comprehensive comparison between countries on various metrics regarding WiMAX. Clearly at odds with most of the other countries in the report was the United States.

I have been deploying last mile microwave since 2000 and last fall began deploying what WiLAN termed 'pre-WiMAX' equipment (recently WiLAN announced their exit from the hardware game to focus on their WiMAX patent portfolio).

Continue reading "Report on WiMAX" »

Posted by Dorian Banks at 9:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)