Everywhere! Broadband claims it will shortly be launching a broadband-by-satellite service in the UK (via Eutelsat) which will give consumers unable to get broadband via ADSL or cable access to download speeds of 1Mb/sec for £19.95 a month. SatDrive (also a Eutelsat partner) is already offering a similar deal for £14.99 a month. Alas, it isn’t quite as good as it seems:

• Charges don’t include the cost of your telephone, which will have to be connected as long as you are doing any “active surfing” (you can disconnect once you have requested a big download, however, and you will be notified of new email without needing to dial up).
• Files will arrive very quickly, but I am told that at least with existing satellite services there is often an annoying delay before any given file starts to be downloaded (this is because of the distance between you and the satellite). This also makes satellite Internet pretty hopeless for online gaming.
• In the case of Satdrive at least (for Everywhere it is not clear) the bandwidth on offer is shared, so if others on the same service are downloading large files your own download speeds may drop.
• Everywhere! installation costs “from £99”, and Satdrive’s installation costs £399+ (unless you already have the equipment).

Last but not least, one has to wonder how they can afford to offer this service for such low prices. But this is still unquestionably good news…

For less than £500 per person, two thousand people in a high rise tower block in Melbourne, Australia are being provided with computers, training and broadband access to email and community services.

It’s too early to tell, but I would hope that with the right community software and appropriate help this could turn out to be a crucial tool to building social capital on the estate and improving both people’s skills and their environment.

The scheme is already up for the Stockholm Challenge Award. The award is interesting in itself as it helps to make prominent examples of good practice from around the world.

An article from Telephony magazine in the US explains how local government engineers in the Appalachians are forming their own broadband carrier using wireless technology because the telco in the area wasn’t interested in providing it at a reasonable price.

Allegany County already had a complex broadband wireless network in place to serve its government offices and schools.

“Connecting the county’s sparse, widespread populace with fiber would have cost $180 million. By comparison, the radio buildout will cost the county between $2.9 million and $5 million, most of which the county plans to raise through state grants, Blank said. With that investment, Allconet will be able to offer 85% of the county’s population, 95% of its businesses and 100% of its business parks broadband access.

For consumers, each base station will transmit 360° on the 2.4 GHz unlicensed frequencies offering 3 Mb/s of capacity. For business customers, Allconet will transmit from the same base stations using the 5.8 GHz frequency to offer up to 60 Mb/s of capacity.”

…

“Allconet will be able to lease a DS-3 [44.736 Mbps] for $3500 per month, while its equivalent in the high-tech corridor of northern Virginia runs $14,500. ”

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Another company springs up in the US (to acclaim from the tech community) to encourage people to share their broadband using their wireless network equipment. Joltage’s idea is similar to what Sputnik wants to do (except unlike Sputnik it doesn’t seem to be open source). The key (to me) is in this para from this Wired report:

“At $50 per month, a DSL line — if shared by multiple users — could easily eat up several hundreds of dollars’ worth of wholesale network traffic at the back end.

“As ISPs realize this stuff is going on, they’re going to start looking closer at the heavy traffic users,” said Mike Durkin, president of Raw Bandwidth Communications, a Belmont, California, provider of home DSL service. “Think Napster and how ISPs and universities can block it.”

I think this is where the whole concept will come unglued unless the telcos also get a slice. If they do get a slice, though, it could be a good business, especially if standard antennas start offering greater range. It might also be a good way to encourage the development of community-wide networks run by not-for-profit organizations in depressed areas (a particular interest of mine).

A depressing side note – it is possible that 802.11a – the higher speed, incompatible upgrade due in November – may have a smaller range (60 feet vs 300 feet), so if people start migrating to that then the opportunities for neighborhood-wide sharing would be less. (Another publication says that the range should be the same).

Interesting piece on Sputnik which is trying to create an ad hoc commercial wireless network through “affiliates” who make their broadband connections available to Sputnik’s fee-paying members (presumably receiving some kick-back from Sputnik when they do so).

What isn’t mentioned in the article above is that to use Sputnik you have to dedicate a machine completely to acting as a server and you have to burn a CD-R with the software for the machine to boot from. My guess is that this will limit the user base to eager early adopters. If it were a Windows/Mac app that people could install and run in the background, then it might really take off…

Also not mentioned is what happens if DSL providers find large amounts of their bandwidth is being used by a bunch of people who are not only not paying the ISP any additional money but are paying some third party company. Sputnik itself asserts “Sputnik offers many benefits to ISPs” (without enumerating them) and they add, “Sputnik does not support any activities that violate an ISP’s acceptable usage policy”.

It remains to be seen whether they can resolve the underlying problems – but it is still good to see inventive people trying to create new solutions to the “last mile” problem!

P.S. Boingo Wireless is also offering wireless roaming, but with a more conventional business model.

Public wireless Internet hits Manchester. Of course, contrary to what the article was saying there have been plenty of public wireless Internet access points scattered around the world before now – particularly in the USA. This will probably be one of the first to use Bluetooth when the first 70 sites launch in September, but since Bluetooth is extremely rare at present its impact may be limited. You can buy Bluetooth PCMCIA cards for your laptop for around £125 if you are interested…

Access points are being placed in restaurants, pubs and coffee shops – so you will have to at least buy a coffee to use it. I would love to see it provided in public libraries etc…

I am… if not actually a fan of Microsoft then at least less of a detractor than many online it seems. However unless they back-pedal fast on their hassling a kid’s charity to pay for new licenses for software on recycled PCs they are going to lose a lot of my sympathy. Mind you, Microsoft isn’t actually threatening legal action at this point and I suspect this might just be an over-zealous copyright protection officer at work…ringtone free absolutelyz to a warringtonadult ringtones and logosdownloads free ringtone 3390 nokialancashire accringtonsong ringtones actual freeabsolutely for virgin free mobile ringtonesringtones free 6133 Map