Tel Aviv, Israel, April 23, 2012 – Alvarion® Ltd. (NASDAQ: ALVR), a provider of optimized wireless broadband solutions addressing the connectivity, coverage and capacity challenges of public and private networks, today announced that HotSpot International (HSI) has selected Alvarion’s carrier-grade Wi-Fi solution for delivering wireless connectivity to hospitality customers across Mexico, and Central America, including AMResorts and the Casa Dorada Los Cabos, Resort & Spa.

“Whether for business or pleasure, travelers expect to have wireless connectivity at their fingertips no matter where they land in the world – from the airport to convention center, hotel grounds and even poolside,” said Eran Gorev, President and CEO of Alvarion. “At the same time, a proliferation of mobile devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets is putting enormous strain on legacy communications infrastructure. Alvarion easily and cost-effectively addresses these pain-points with its WBSn solution, a family of advanced Beamforming 802.11n Wi-Fi base stations. The WBSn solution, tagged “As Far As Wi-Fi Can Go”, is a combination of outdoor and indoor Wi-Fi coverage that provides excellent coverage and capacity everywhere.”

HotSpot International turned to Alvarion for wireless connectivity and bandwidth needs as part of its integrated high speed access solution for hotels and other hospitality industry clients. With Alvarion’s new carrier-grade Wi-Fi solution HotSpot can use one device to deliver two to three times as much capacity. For example, a single WBSn base station can cover 100 rooms, versus 30 to 40 using alternate solutions. Moreover, with a new indoor enhancement dual-zone repeater CPE, full coverage, including deep indoor blank spots, can be efficiently achieved.

“Alvarion’s technology allows us to more effectively and cost-efficiently deliver better high speed wireless connectivity solutions to our customers so that their guests can have a world-class experience,” stated Louis Miller, founder and CEO of Hotspot International. “HSI has already installed Alvarion’s technology across Mexico with customers including AMResorts and Casa Dorada Resort & Spa in Cabo San Lucas.”

“When you target the luxury leisure market, you need to be able to provide top-notch services, which includes high performance wireless broadband connectivity for visitors conducting business or connecting with family while on vacation,” said Ivonne Simon, Corporate IT Manager for AMResorts. “Our Internet service installed by HSI using Alvarion’s technology enables us to deliver an above and beyond experience for our guests, allowing us to differentiate our properties.”

“Installation was extremely easy and with one base station access point, we can cover more ground and connect more rooms to wireless access than ever before. At the same time, we get a more robust signal and stable service, even when the hotel is at full capacity,” said Javier Villalobos, IT manager, Casa Dorada Resort & Spa in Cabo San Lucas. “Before HSI installed Alvarion, we had to use ten access points to cover the resort area and now all we need is two. That represents a significant savings for our resort.”

Alvarion’s technology will also help HSI deliver more future-looking wireless services that can enhance the visitor experience including services that will seamlessly connect VoIP room extensions with visitors’ smartphones; monitor assets so items ordered via the wireless network can be delivered wherever guests are on the property; enable guests to change room controls remotely, such as temperature or lights; and allow international calling Wi-Fi hand-offs so guests can avoid costly international roaming charges.

About HotSpot International
With nearly 10 years serving the traveler and the Hospitality industry, HotSpot International (HSI) is a leader in the deployment of turnkey managed high-speed Internet access solutions in Mexico. HSI offers complete solutions or individual elements of solutions according to the needs and requirements of each hotel.

HSI has established agreements with some of the most prestigious hotel brands including A&M Resorts, Hilton, Marriott, Camino Real, Emporio, Accor, Sol Melia, Occidental, Sheraton, and others. HSI is a division of Miller International Marketing and Consulting, Inc. (MIMC) in the United States and a self-standing Mexican Corporation based in Mexico City. Since its inception nearly ten years ago, HSI has installed nearly 200 hotels in Mexico representing over 55,000 rooms.

About Alvarion
Alvarion Ltd. (NASDAQ:ALVR) provides optimized wireless broadband solutions addressing the connectivity, coverage and capacity challenges of telecom operators, smart cities, security, and enterprise customers. Our innovative solutions are based on multiple technologies across licensed and unlicensed spectrums. (www.alvarion.com).

But it’s not trying to be a metro-scale Wi-Fi operator. That would be foolish. Rather, Towerstream is building out a dense Wi-Fi zone, described by BusinessWeek as seven square miles of Manhattan. The firm is deploying 1,000 routers, and the backhaul is clearly its own building-top network. Being able to leverage its own backhaul is a distinct financial advantage, as it already has a business model that works for the point-to-multi-point service it offers today. This is icing on the cake.

Towerstream will sell access to the network to carriers looking to offload mobile 3G and 4G traffic from congested, expensive cellular networks to Wi-Fi. AT&T has built similar zones itself, although I doubt quite as dense or extensive. Towerstream could become a vendor-neutral cost-effective alternative to carriers building these “heat sinks” for high bandwidth usage themselves.

Phone users benefit from this offloading as well as carriers. You get a much faster rate of service from a dense, high-speed Wi-Fi network than the comparable 3G or even 4G service, and no carrier in the US bills by the byte for Wi-Fi: if it’s included, it’s free. Thus, you can use much more data without hitting limits or paying overages.

The BusinessWeek article has a serious flaw, however. It misstates the nature and reason for failure of municipally backed Wi-Fi networks. The writer, Peter Burrows, makes a variety of historical errors, including stating, “While most of the failed experiments of yore were based on taxpayer-funded municipal projects, this time there’s a clear business need for wireless carriers.” In fact, there wound up being built no taxpayer-funded municipal networks. All of the deals involved cities or counties bidding out the right to build a network, with access to public facilities (conduits, towers, building tops, etc.) as part of the carrot. Very little municipal money was spent, while private firms went through tens of millions in never-completed network buildouts. Minneapolis stands as a shining example of the only network that was completed and thrived. (The city purchases services from the network operator, but the network was funded and is run by US Internet.)

Burrows also describes the router that Towerstream will use somewhat incompletely. He talks about it being an antenna, for starters, and claiming the units run $800 each. That might be the unit cost, but installation and providing an electrical feed will run the installed price much higher. He notes, though, that Towerstream will pay $50 to $1,000 per month to the owner of the property at which a router is installed. Nice fees if you can get them.

There’s a great capper to this story: Towerstream’s quiet 3-month test of 200 routers in Manhattan: “Last year, Towerstream conducted a three-month test of a 200-device Wi-Fi network in Manhattan. Without any promotion, the network handled 20 million Web sessions by consumers who happened to spot Towerstream when trolling for a Wi-Fi connection.” That’s the kind of data that might get carriers to sign up.

Media servers on planes will be used to provide in-flight entertainment over Wi-Fi? Aircell said years ago that they had provisioned the ability to put media servers on planes, and were waiting for pieces to fall into place. Its public trial with American Airlines on a couple of 767-200s will start this summer.

It’s a logical connection that when you have people on a local, high-speed wireless network that you could deliver content to them for free and for a fee. Given that the majority sometimes entirety of people on a flight have some kind of device with a screen, why build in miles of wire and clunky seatback entertainment systems?

One of the best, Virgin American’s Red, is still slow, hard to navigate, and of poor quality relative to even the worst tablet or netbook. Alaska Airlines never installed such systems for reasons of cost, and rents its digEplayer instead—a portable tablet preloaded and precharged.

An airline that moves away from seat back systems and into passenger-provided hardware could also stock tablets for rental, now that there will be ready availability of a variety of sizes and capabilities that handle video playback well, and which cost relatively little compared to custom systems like the digEplayer.

This could also eliminate live satellite feeds by providing time-delayed playback on demand. Imagine that when a plane comes to a halt and the doors are opened that a system at each gate starts a high-speed 802.11n transfer of several hours of news and other recent sports, talk shows, and network programs. There’s something nice about “live,” but there’s also the reality of operational cost and antenna drag.

Aircell and American haven’t announced which programs and movies will be available nor the cost or other particulars.

A new mode in Eye-Fi X2 cards let you rely images through a smartphone using a neat trick: I’m a long-time fan of the Eye-Fi digital camera cards that pack a CPU, a Wi-Fi radio, and now up to 8 GB of storage into an SD or SDHC form factor. The Eye-Fi line is regularly updated to add features like transfer of RAW images or video files, or endless storage, in which images already wirelessly transferred to another location can be deleted when storage is needed. (I haven’t erased my Eye-Fi camera card since that feature came out. I simply don’t need to know what’s on the card any more.

Direct Mode is another in that array of improvements, and it requires a little explanation. Eye-Fi may be a bit breezy in describing the feature, which requires you to think a bit differently about how the card works.

In regular operation, an Eye-Fi card looks to a camera precisely like any memory card. Whenever the Eye-Fi recognizes a Wi-Fi network it knows about, it connects, and starts to carry out whatever operations were waiting for access, such as uploading files to a computer or sharing service. This works whether the network in question is a home network for which you’ve stored a password, a public network to which you have access through an Eye-Fi subscription, or a free network tied in via Eye-Fi’s relationship with Devicescape’s Easy WiFi service.

But in Direct Mode, the card will transform from a Wi-Fi client into a Wi-Fi hotspot, but not for just any device to connect. Rather, if you have a smartphone or tablet with the Eye-Fi software running (available for iOS and Android initially), the app connects to the card over Wi-Fi, and images are transferred over. You can use a 3G-equipped device to relay and upload images and movies, or transfer media and then connect via Wi-Fi to a network to upload that data from the app. The mobile app can copy media over the Internet to whatever computer with which you paired the Eye-Fi—the one to which over a local network the card sends files—as well as an online sharing or social-networking site you’ve picked from Eye-Fi’s partners.

Direct Mode was announced with more details alongside the release of the Mobile X2, part of a reshuffling of the Eye-Fi line up, which now comprises Connect X2, Mobile X2, and Pro X2. The Connect has 4 GB and costs $50, while the Mobile has 8 GB and costs $80. That’s their only difference. The Pro at $150 and with 8 GB of storage adds RAW file handling, and including a geotagging and a 1-year hotspot subscription. While RAW is restricted to the Pro model, you can add geotagging to Connect or Mobile for $30 (one-time fee), and hotspot access for $30/yr.

Direct Mode will be a firmware upgrade for all current and past X2 models in a few weeks, according to Eye-Fi.

French firm Wysips is focusing on a whole new solution which may cause cell phone touch screens to accomplish double duty as photo voltaic power panels to recharge mobile phones.

The idea is pretty interesting [1] mainly because it consists of laying an super thin transparent photo voltaic film layer together with the mobile phone screen. The film will take energy not just from the sun, but any nearby source of light.

Expected recharge times could be about six hours from sunlight and some moments longer from leaching electricity from indoors lights. Wysips is at work for the 2nd release of the technology, which looks to offer thirty minutes of talk-time after just 1 hour in the sunshine.

The issue with a solar battery charger is the fact that the sun moves continuously, and my practical experience have been that you must move the solar charger every couple of minutes to let it under the sun.

Actually most solar chargers for cellphones can be beneficial to individuals who spend lots of time out in the open, and should not readily make use of a car or wall charger for his or her devices. Backpackers, fishermen, etc, could possibly like this.

Otherwise, you are probably more satisfied picking something different. The top solar cellular phone chargers in the marketplace take too much time to charge – a single hour charge provides you with just enough to make a 5-10 minutes call. It requires something similar to 8-10 hours to obtain a full charge.

Another big problem with these chargers would be that the unit is only able to be charged approximately 500 times. This may equate to about 12 months in case you used it everyday. You will never go green with this particular thing, since you’d ought to change it every 12-18 months.

With more people today getting cellphones and ipads etc…., the drain on electrical power grids is increasing. So, incorporating the capacity for the cell phone to independently recharge from the sun rays suggests they might help pull their own weight, and you also wouldn’t must pack a different battery charger or move it around.

Another interesting truth is the opportunity to make use of this system to charge the cell phone while using indoor light… it is a real bonus. The product can be continuously charging as light falls on display screen, meaning it might be topping off it’s power as the cellular phone just sits inactive.

This progress is a lot more appealing than previous attempts to make solar chargers for smartphones, including Samsung’s Blue Earth mobile phone [2], which included a solar charger on its back. A few months ago Apple was awarded a patent [3] for a process to charge mobile gadgets using solar energy, an indication that this company considers solar powered energy worth exploring.

The solar efficiency from Wysips’ charger happens to be only 9 %, when compared to the best solar panels used elsewhere. That is a lot better than the 0 % smartphones offer now. The additional electricity gained coming from a solar charger for example Wysips’ could allow cellular phone designers to build up slimmer batteries for their devices, or allow for faster, stronger devices with satisfactory battery lives.

Footnotes:

[1] Wysips Official Website explains in greater detail the way the new solar charger works

[2] Official Samsung website where it’s posted the info about the Blue Earth Phone

[3] Techcrunch writes about the Apple’s patent on photovoltaic powered devices.

The author: Sophia S. Sheppard writes for the solar battery chargers blog, her non profits hobby website she uses to show the latest technology information about solar chargers for small systems.

AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile lets it build a truly national, robust network at the expense of competition: It’s a little dirty but barely a secret in modern mobile cell world that AT&T doesn’t really have national 2G coverage, much less 3G. AT&T leans on T-Mobile to roam customers in a large number of areas in which AT&T didn’t spend money to build out service. This stems from an agreement years ago when AT&T Wireless consolidated on GSM service, and T-Mobile was building out its initial GSM service. In 2004, the companies dissolved a cooperative agreement (when Cingular bought what was then AT&T Wireless), but roaming never disappeared.

This lack of coverage is why AT&T didn’t offer feature phone or smartphone service in large parts of the country outside urban areas. While these were mostlyra rural—such as Montana—you’d also find missing areas in adjacent cities in some markets. Because AT&T, like other carriers, only allows a fraction of one’s usage to be on domestic roaming, you had a lot of peeved would-be customers who now own a Verizon iPhone.

T-Mobile provided roaming 2G coverage in a lot of those areas, even though AT&T spent billions in 2009 to acquire licenses Verizon Wireless was obliged to sell to clear its deal for Alltel, the number five US carrier at the time. Still, AT&T will benefit from having consistent national service if the T-Mobile merger is approved by regulators. It’s not a done deal.

AT&T also gets the depth of T-Mobile’s spectrum portfolio in dense markets where AT&T clearly lacks the ability to deliver service to the level needed, such as New York City’s boroughs and San Francisco. It won’t be trivial to integrate the networks, but many carriers co-locate equipment with tower and building owners. And if they maintain the current deal and roaming is no longer a for-fee arrangement, AT&T can instantly get the benefit.

Both firms aligned across the same technology. Not just GSM, although they’re the only two national GSM in the US. But they both chose to push short term on faster HSPA: HSPA 7.2, which challenges EVDO Rev. A by a factor of two or more, and HSPA+ in a 21 Mbps flavor, which can challenge the low-end of Verizon’s 4G LTE rollout service—but nationally, not just in the one-third of the country to which Verizon expects to offer LTE by year’s end.

However, T-Mobile’s path was limited. While it extolled the virtues of HSPA+, which squeezes into 5 MHz channels, it had no real ability to acquire the additional spectrum needed for wider channels to exploit LTE. AT&T and Verizon collectively spent billions to lock down most of the sweet 700 MHz spectrum over which Verizon has already started its LTE deployment, and that AT&T will use starting mid-year for its own efforts.

On the Wi-Fi side, T-Mobile effectively exited the hotspot market in 2008, although most people didn’t notice. The firm was able to sign a reciprocal five-year agreement with AT&T for access, which allows T-Mobile customers to use AT&T’s network at no additional cost or fuss. That was more important when AT&T’s network was largely paid or required hoops to get free service. AT&T’s Wi-Fi network now comprises about 21,000 locations, of which about 20,000 are entirely free McDonald’s and Starbucks stores. Barnes & Noble is in there somewhere, too. The rest are hotels and a few airports.

The convergence of AT&T and T-Mobile’s interests are fairly obvious. Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile don’t line up because Verizon already has thorough national coverage with 2G and 3G (provably the best 3G coverage), and uses an incompatible 2G/3G technology in CDMA. While Verizon has a path to GSM in its 4G flavor, it will be using CDMA for 2G and 3G for many years to come.

Sprint Nextel is engaged in pursuing three separate standards. iDEN, used by Nextel, is still in use, despite the firm’s best efforts to migrate users to CDMA. Sprint’s core 2G/3G network is CDMA. Its 4G plan was to get WiMax deployed early and extensively, which was furthered when it acquired Clearwire with its separate spectrum licenses and operations. That didn’t pan out. WiMax needed a much faster deployment, and the money wasn’t there to do it. WiMax is an also-ran technology cell mobile; it will have great niche uses and might be the most appropriate technology in some countries. But LTE will rule the Asian, European, and North American markets. Sprint Nextel has also not completed a multi-billion-dollar requirement to migrate public-safety networks to new frequencies in exchange for new spectrum. They are far overdue, and that ugly situation shows no sign of completion.

The real question is whether the Justice Department, FCC, and FTC will allow a merger to take place. There’s no benefit to consumers from this merger, reducing competitors from four to three. Sprint Nextel arguably has no good plan for long-term viability, and a deal for Verizon to acquire it might be allowed to avoid bankruptcy, which wouldn’t benefit the market (although Sprint could shed massive debt, union contracts, and likely federal obligations which would prove what everyone said when the public-safety spectrum swap was allowed years ago under FCC chair Kevin Martin.)

T-Mobile’s plucky upstart nature has gained it over 30m customers, and allowed it to nip at the heels of the big three, likely saving customers billions of dollars a year collectively. The FCC and Congress never intended initially for a few carriers to win. Anti-regulatory and pro-incumbent fervor has led to a situation where there may be only two viable national carriers: AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

Boingo Wireless gives us a peek under the kimono: It’s rare to get hard, audited, under-threat-of-government-rules numbers in the Wi-Fi hotspot industry. Now we have some. Boingo fired up its operations in 2001, and has taken over nine years to reach profitability under accounting (GAAP) rules. The firm has nearly $35m on hand, which means that on a non-GAAP basis, they’ve been putting money into the bank for years.

The firm took in $46m in revenue in the first nine months of 2009 ($66m for the year), and $59m in the first nine months of 2010. In 2010 up to 30 September, Boingo made $5.3m after tax and before accounting munges. Boingo’s closest public competitor, iPass, saw $171m in revenue but a $13m loss in 2009; iPass’s revenue has declined slightly in each of the last several quarters, grossing $117m in the first nine months of 2010, losing $3m on that. iPass offers a suite of roaming and remote-office services, as well as hotspot aggregation.

But what I’m most interested in, of course, is subscribers and sessions. Page 31 has the detail. The company has 191,000 monthly subscribers, nearly 10 percent of which cancel a subscription each month. Boingo charges $10/mo in the US for laptops and $8/mo for mobile. The international subscription is much higher, but there’s no breakout between US and international accounts. A 24-hour pass is $8.

The filing reports 5.8 million sessions from Jan. to Sept. 2010 (all subsequent numbers I rely on use that period of time). The revenue from subscribers was $17m, making the average monthly subscription fee $7.50 ($17m/191K subscribers). That seems off and must be due to 30-day trial subscriptions and other promotions. It also indicates a low percentage of international subscribers, which would skew the number much higher.

Revenue from single-use sessions is $13m, which would indicate well over 150,000 yearly single purchases, most of which I’d suspect are in airports. Boingo operates paid Wi-Fi and most of the largest airports that charge for service; the company also gets fees for managing Wi-Fi at some airports.

The wholesale number is fairly staggering at $25m. This comes from outfits that resell Boingo’s service under their own name (so-called “white label” service), and mobile carriers like Verizon. Boingo, without mentioning Verizon, attributes $3m in this period from “a mid-2009″ acquired wholesale customers. Verizon is providing a reasonable, but not substantial amount of wholesale revenue.

The figures show for-fee Wi-Fi to be much more robust than I’d suspected. Many other firms have come and gone trying to make money selling Wi-Fi as aggregators, airport operators, and other incarnations. Wayport was bought by AT&T, and the majority of AT&T’s Wi-Fi is now at venues that charge nothing for the privilege.

The challenge for Boingo is to continue this expansion. Mobile service must be a large component of its growth based on average subscription price, and the clear necessity for mobile users to have easy mobile access. AT&T certainly gave Boingo a gift by switching from unlimited 3G plans for new subscribers as of last June to metered service plans. At $25/mo for 2GB with a smartphone or slate, and $10/GB for overage, an $8/mo hotspot plans sounds positively cheap as a cost-conservation measure.

Boingo will trade under WIFI on NASDAQ, a move that strikes me as slightly odd since the firm doesn’t own the trademark to that. Perhaps stock tickers are exempt from that issue.

Minneapolis, meanwhile, has a 59-square-mile network available to residents for as little as $15 a month. While several cities chose EarthLink, which quickly got out of the citywide Wi-Fi business leaving the municipalities stranded, Minneapolis rejected EarthLink’s bid, instead choosing a small and relatively unknown local firm, US Internet of Minnetonka. Four years later, US Internet’s Wi-Fi operations are profitable. But one of the key reasons for US Internet’s success a guaranteed $12.5 million, 10-year contract with the city of Minneapolis that made the city the network’s anchor tenant is now causing problems at City Hall. City departments a third of which don’t use the wireless service at all are now being charged for it. Department heads are grumbling that the contract is eating into their already tight budgets and they might need to cut back on services or forgo a hire. ”There’s some concerns about the appropriateness of the [rate] model and how it gets charged back,” said Steve Kotke, the city engineer and director of the Public Works department. His department, which is being charged nearly $372,000 for Wi-Fi, is only using it for street messaging signs but has plans for other new projects. This year the city will use only about 6 percent of the $1.25 million worth of the network capacity it’s paying for, said David Roth, project manager in the city’s information technology department. The city projects its Wi-Fi usage will grow to $175,000 next year, or 14 percent of its bill. Outside of the police and fire departments, which use some Wi-Fi now and will use more next year, about 90 city workers are testing Wi-Fi for their jobs, and about 80 city inspectors are to begin officially using Wi-Fi by March.

Model for Others

The city’s lagging use contrasts sharply with the success US Internet has had overall. Three years into offering service, the Minneapolis Wi-Fi network is showing a $1.2 million annual profit and has about 20,000 customers. ”The goal was to have 30,000 Minneapolis subscribers on the network in five years, which would have been 2012,” said Joe Caldwell, the CEO of USI Wireless, a wholly owned subsidiary of US Internet that runs the network. “I think we’re going to be a year off on that, but we’re going to hit it.” Technical issues, winter weather and a shortage of sturdy light poles on which to perch Wi-Fi radios caused the delay, he said.

That success compares to San Francisco, which had to fend for itself amid political squabbling after EarthLink dropped out of the Wi-Fi business three years ago. Philadelphia, also an EarthLink client, skimped on its network, so few customers signed up. Chicago decided that it couldn’t afford one. Meanwhile USI Wireless has expanded to Riverside, Calif., where it has taken over management of an existing city Wi-Fi network. It also hopes to build Wi-Fi networks for some Twin Cities suburbs, although no deals have been announced. ”The reason it works is the business model, with the city providing some money up front and being the anchor tenant,” said Beth Cousins, interim chief information officer for the city of Minneapolis. “No other city the size of Minneapolis — 59 square miles — has a network like this. It’s huge. USI Wireless is a trailblazer.” Besides the profit, the network provides continuous coverage an issue that has dogged other cities and relatively speedy access. ”Minneapolis is still the model for large-scale urban Wi-Fi deployments,” said Esme Vos, whose online service, MuniWireless, tracks city Wi-Fi projects. Even under independent testing, it is considered the best, she said. “USI Wireless is the only company that has proven it can do large-scale, citywide Wi-Fi in the U.S.”

Novarum, a San Francisco wireless consulting firm hired to test the Minneapolis network, found the service to be very good. “We know of no networks that are any better,” said Wayne Gartin, Novarum’s chief operating officer. Friday the National League of Cities gave Minneapolis an Award for Municipal Excellence for the network, noting that the city “has improved the quality of life for all citizens by developing a creative solution to a pressing local problem.”

Contributing to Society

While the city may not be getting the full value of its wireless service, it did write some benefits into the contract. USI Wireless provides free Wi-Fi access to 44 community centers, and it is the sole funder of the city’s Digital Inclusion Fund, designed to bridge the gap between those who can afford technology and those who can’t. So far it’s paid $563,000 into the fund, which among other things gave $24,676 in grants to four Minneapolis libraries to provide technology training in other languages, including Hmong, Somali and Spanish. There are other benefits as well. Wi-Fi connects the city with 35 electronic street signs that give drivers information, and with 30 street security cameras. By the end of the year, the city plans to install 50 Wi-Fi parking meters (one meter handles 10 parking spaces) downtown that will be able to accept and authenticate charge cards. Also this year, the city will use Wi-Fi to track the locations of 10 city garbage trucks to improve routing and about one-third of its salt and sanding trucks. The goal is to learn where the most salt is used, which can pinpoint spots where water is pooling on streets, Roth said.

The city also is still hoping to save money with Wi-Fi in the long run. Conversion of police and fire departments, which as of next year will be the city’s biggest Wi-Fi users, has been slow because of necessary cautions, Cousins said. ”We need to ensure that a public safety vehicle has smooth coverage while it’s moving, and that has been tricky for us to figure out,” she said, noting that they hired Novarum to do another round of tests. Ultimately the city plans to move police and fire vehicles to a dedicated public safety radio frequency of their own, Roth said. Next year the city will convert police cars, firetrucks and other public safety vehicles to Wi-Fi. That will involve a one-time $225,000 equipment upgrade (already in the budget), or between $800 and $1,000 per vehicle, Roth said.

The value of any unused services the past few years can be rolled into future years, should the city ever exceed its $1.25 million annual fee. Cousins, for one, thinks that charging departments will make them more motivated to use the service. ”It’s our goal to eventually use all of the $1.25 million each year,” Roth said.

Satellite Hylas 1, built by EADS Astrium for Avanti

Broadband services are now within the reach of tens of thousands of frustrated British customers in rural areas following the successful week-end launch of a £120m satellite in French Guyana by Avanti Communications. David Willetts, the science minister, said at the launch of the Government’s economic growth strategy that speeds of up to 8MB will be available in Britain “in three months time”.

The satellite Hylas 1, built by EADS Astrium for Avanti and financed by investors, the European Space Agency and the UK Space Agency, will provide broadband access to 24 European countries where service operators have been struggling to extend their coverage to remote areas. Entry costs for customers start at euro 25 (£21.11) a month.

Hylas 1 is the first superfast broadband satellite to be launched outside the United States and will be able to handle between 150,000 and 300,000 users at any one time through systems that automatically react to traffic demand by allocating varying amounts of power and bandwith to the different regions. It is estimated there are around 30m without an adequate broadband service in Europe.

David Williams, Avanti chief executive, said the launch of the satellite “means that access to broadband in remote areas is no longer on the distant horizon.” About 25pc of capacity has been sold but it is expected to be three years before the satellite fills up.

The coalition government has inherited Labour’s commitment to provide a universal broadband service to all parts of the country but to save money the project has been delayed until 2015.

BT has been attempting to fill some of the gaps with superfast fibre broadband. Eight Cornish villages and towns will have super broad band in less than five months as part of a £132m programme, funded by BT and the EU, creating 4,000 new jobs and safeguarding 2,000.

Avanti has beaten rival Eutelstat into space with satellite 36,000 miles above the earth’s surface. It is at an advanced stage in the development of a second, expected to be ready for launch in spring 20112, to provide further coverage across Europe as well as the Middle East and parts of Africa.

That leaves Verizon stuck at about 3 Mbps downstream with EVDO Rev. A. Verizon Wireless clearly and testably has the most robust and most thorough 2G and 3G network coverage in the US. That’s still an advantage and will remain one on the voice side and for a large number of users for whom consistency is more important than speed.

But its early launch of LTE is driven by a need to have a higher speed number to push to businesses and consumers while AT&T and T-Mobile complete rolling out HSPA 7.2 and HSPA+ (21 Mbps), respectively. These evolutionary 3G HSPA flavors provide most of the advantage of first-generation LTE, including somewhat reduced latency, while preserving full backwards compatibility all the way down to GSM rates.

AT&T CTO is pushing the message that moving from LTE speeds to EVDO Rev. A rates will be jarring to customers in terms of what’s possible. The difference is so huge that they are effectively different networks—this is a similar problem Clearwire and Sprint have with 3G/4G converged service plans.

However, Donovan doesn’t mention the three other advantages of LTE: capacity, coverage, and latency. Higher bandwidth doesn’t just mean that everyone gets greater speed; rather, it means that there’s more potential to serve simultaneous users at greater speeds. That’s often just as important as peak data rates. Coverage is a factor, because the 700 MHz networks can reach further and penetrate indoors better than 850, 1700, 1900, and 2100 MHz networks.

And latency is huge: lower latency makes networks appear faster because the time for each initial connection for every transaction is reduced. LTE promises very low latency, and HSPA delivers a decent part of that. Reduced latency equates to better video streaming, crisper phone calls, and more responsive Web browsing.

AT&T will benefit from the coverage and capacity issues, based on customer complaints, more than Verizon. But an early LTE deployment focused on speed doesn’t provide the full picture of LTE’s potential, and it hides the gap Verizon will have for at least three years, if not longer, between current 3G speeds and its LTE promise.

Update: Clearwire’s chief commercial office weighs in with a swipe on Verizon’s LTE pricing.