more on MCI expands Wi-Fi footprint

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 07:13:05 -0800
From: Glenn Fleishman <glenn () glennf com>
Subject: Re: [IP] MCI expands Wi-Fi footprint
To: dave () farber net

>MCI, via its deal with Boingo, plans to add 2,000 hot spots worldwide by
>the end of March--bringing its total to 2,600 Wi-Fi locations. Next year,
>MCI also plans to add an additional 3,000 hot spots via Boingo and MCI's
>other partner, WayPort.

Oddly, Boingo's hotspot count includes the 600 Wayport (not WayPort or as 
originally noted in this
article before I sent a correction, WavePort) locations. So I'm not sure 
how MCI plans to go from 600
to 2,600 unless they count 600 twice.

Also, Boingo's software is proprietary: they control the front-end in order 
to talk to the many, many
different authentication systems on the backend. It's unclear if MCI is 
dropping their software to
adopt Boingo's; the article and press release contradicts this.

What's more fascinating, of course, is that you now have Verizon *and* 
Verizon Wireless (separately),
AT&T *and* AT&T Wireless (separately), SBC, Cingular (by 2005 via 
partnership with its major
stockholder SBC), T-Mobile, MCI, and Sprint PCS all fully moving towards 
including Wi-Fi as part of
their offerings or already having built out networks. T-Mobile is up to 
nearly 4,000 locations.

All of these telecoms have committed to or are already reselling service 
from existing wireless ISPs
(Wayport being the common denominator), and all have made noise about 
roaming across each other's
eventual networks.

T-Mobile's VP and general manager of their HotSpot division confirmed for 
me on Monday when they
announced their iPass partnership that the only thing keeping T-Mobile from 
signing more deals is
making sure that they can have the level of security and reliability on 
partner networks. Given that
T-Mobile will be the first provider to roll out secure 802.1X 
authentication -- in which access to a
wireless network requires encrypted exchange of credentials and assignment 
of a unique, rotating
Wi-Fi encryption key -- it's hard to dispute T-Mobile's statement.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Glenn Fleishman, Unsolicited Pundit: read my work at http://glennf.com
Senior editor of JIWIRE, your guide to Wi-Fi -  http://www.jiwire.com/
Macintosh columnist, The Seattle Times  http://seattletimes.com/ptech/
Contributing editor, TidBITS, -the- Mac newsletter  http://tidbits.com
Read daily wireless networking industry news at http://wifinetnews.com

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