Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops

Ultra-portable XP devices have been getting a whole lot of interesting lately. Now Samsung just upped the ante with this — the SPH-P9000 Deluxe MITs — at the Mobile WiMax Summit 2006 in South Korea. Measuring in at chubby 143 × 94.3 × 29.75-mm / 580-g (5.6 × 3.7 × 1.17-inches / 1.28-pounds) when folded, this Windows XP device unfolds (dare we say) origami-like to reveal a 1GHz Transmeta CPU and both Mobile WiMAX (AKA, WiBro which is already launched in Korea) and EV-DO for data connectivity. No WiFi apparently, this all about Mobile WiMAX kids, with Internet speeds of 2-3 Mbps even when travelling up 120-KPH (75-MPH). The SPH-P9000 packs a 5-inch 854×480 (WVGA) LCD, 30GB disk, 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, and apparently ships with both an internal 2980mAh and 7200mAh external extended-battery. People who have played with a prototype on display at the show complained about the screen being too small (in DMB-cellphone crazed Korea!?) and of excessive heating. Well, they can at least work on the latter before the scheduled Korean launch in the first half of 2007. No pricing yet but we’ve got plenty more pics after the break.

[Via AVING and The Korea Herald]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

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Filed under: Wireless

WiMax is really springing up all over, and the latest target of its wily wireless ways is the city of Milton Keynes in Britain, known especially for its concrete cows (pictured). Telecom Pipex is teaming up with Intel for the rollout, the UK’s first, and they’re going to announce their exact plans for the service in four weeks. The rollout will be gradual, but once they’re done using Milton Keynes for a guinea pig cow, they’re hoping to land WiMax in eight UK cities by 2008, including London and Manchester. No word on how much the network will cost when its all said and done, but the new choices it will offer should be good news for consumers currently getting milked on 3G data costs.

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Filed under: Wireless

As the historic federal auction for wireless spectrum heats up and the proverbial wheat begins separating from the chaff, the first major victim of the escalating bidding war seems to be the satellite TV consortium composed of DirecTV and DISH-parent EchoStar. Combining their resources in the Advanced Wireless Services auction as a limited liability corporation known as Wireless DBS, the two companies were hoping to pick up a chunk of spectrum that they could use to offer WiMax broadband services to customers and compete directly with telcos offering so-called “triple-play” packages; currently, the two sat TV providers have only been able to offer Internet service through partnerships with established broadband carriers. Apparently the billion dollars that Wireless DBS was willing to spend ended up not being enough to cover the requisite regional licenses they would need to offer nationwide service, as the cost for such such complete coverage is now anticipated to be at least $4 billion. The next move for the satellite providers could involve either partnering up once again with a company like Clearwire, or waiting until next year to bid in the 700MHz auction — but that auction could see even higher bids, and the resulting spectrum would be unavailable for use until 2009. Sorry guys, we know how badly you wanted this one, but when you come to a gun fight equipped with nothing but a pocketknife, well, things are bound to end pretty poorly.

[Via Techdirt]

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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

It wasn’t too hard to tell who Motorola was giving the wink and nudge to with their “Harmony” project to mix iDEN with WiMAX, but now the word is out that Sprint is indeed going to go with WiMAX for 4G service. Sprint has been planning a new network for a while, but they’ve been on the fence in regards to tech. WiMAX seems a pretty sensible choice these days, with handset heft from Moto and Samsung, Intel’s backing, and even a bit of friendly competition and roaming partnership potential from Clearwire. Sprint, who hasn’t exactly confirmed this report, is said to be thinking of having the network built out by 2008, at a cost somewhere between $1 billion and $4 billion. We’ll be standing by for Sprint to give all these information leaks their stamp of approval, but really Sprint, it wasn’t too hard to guess.

[Via dailywireless]

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Filed under: Wireless

It looks like Mexico is the latest country to get bathed in sweet, sweet WiMax, with Ultranet2go announcing that it’s covered a large chunk of the country with the mobile broadband wireless service. Using Navini Networks’ Ripwave MX gear, the company says that some 3.2 million POPs (Points of Presence) will be covered once the roll-out is complete, encompassing areas from Puebla to Veracruz to Aguascalientes. Ultranet2go says that Tampico, Matamoros, Xalapa, Coatzacoalcos, Cuernavaca, Chilpancingo, and Iguala could also be covered eventually. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any word on what the service will actually cost.

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Filed under: Transportation, Wireless

WiFi trains aren’t anything new, and even WiMAX has made an appearance across the pond, bringing sweet, sweet Internets to those lucky commuters. Well now we’re getting our own taste of the action, and the specs couldn’t be sexier. The Caltrain commuter rail service has hooked up 16 miles of their track between Millbrae and Palo Alto, using WiMAX backbone from Redline, connectivity from Nomad and in-train WiFi routers from Sensoria to provide speedy connections to commuters while traveling at 79 mph. Tests of the system seemed to work dandy, with several commuters watching streamed video, pulling large file downloads and even answering email simultaneously. Now that the tech has been successfully demonstrated, they’re planning on building it out across the rest of their line. The future is indeed nigh.

[Via dailywireless]

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Filed under: Wireless, Networking

Hot on the heels of last week’s WiBro rollout in South Korea, Colombian long-distance operator Orbitel has teamed up with hardware manufacturer Siemens to deploy Latin America’s first WiMax network in the city of Cali. The long-range wireless network, which will be duplicated in fourteen other cities in the upcoming months, employs Siemens’ WayMax@dvantage (that’s not a typo) system of base stations, modems, and monitoring and control gear to ensure interoperability with future devices based on the IEEE’s 802.16e-2005 standard. WiMax is a particularly attractive option in countries whose wired infrastructures are still rather limited, allowing service providers to essentially leapfrog right over current broadband solutions and offer high-speed connections with considerably less capital expenditure. Orbitel is currently selling several service packages ranging from $39 to $325 per month, which supposedly buys you download speeds in the range of 2Mbps.

[Via GigaOm]

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Filed under: Wireless, Networking

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Laptops, Wireless, Networking

Filed under: Wireless

In what can only be described as extreme paranoia or as an extreme health risk, a Swedish town had a bit of a health scare upon the activation of a WiMAX base-station a few weeks ago. According to Sweden’s SVT, which reported on the incident, the local hospital emergency room was flooded with calls regarding various symptoms such as headaches, difficulty breathing, blurry vision and even two cases of heart arrhythmia. All of this was mere hours after the base station was activated, and the symptoms went away once the station was deactivated, or if the sufferer moved away from that radio tower of death. Apparently Sweden was the first country to recognise electromagnetic hypersensitivity as a valid medical condition, and there are already talks of getting the government to shut down the nation’s WiMAX networks while the claims are investigated. The UN recognises EHS as a “real and sometimes disabling condition,” and say that around 3% of the world’s population is effected by high frequency magnetic radiation in such ways. We’ll wait for a few more studies to come through and completely conflict with each other so we can go on with our happily ignorant mobile lifestyles.

[Via The Inquirer]

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Filed under: Handhelds, Wireless

When a manufacturer takes styling cues from a number of popular devices — in this case, the RAZR, the Wizard, and the gone-but-not-forgotten Clie — and throws in a number of high end features whose acronyms make us a little weak-kneed, the resulting products are bound to be pretty sexy. Such is the case with a trio of WiBro-capable PDAs being marketed under the Flyvo brand by POSDATA, all of which run Windows CE 5.0 Professional Plus on an ARM processor and let you get your ‘net on with WiFi as well in case you have to travel outside of Korea. Introduced at this year’s Wireless Broadband World Forum, these upcoming devices (which frustratingly lack either names or model numbers) also feature either 512MB or 1GB of flash RAM, with two of them adding T-DMB and VoIP capabilities, and the high-end model throwing in a little GPS action to boot. Lucky Koreans will be able to pick these up — and possibly even drop their cellphone services altogether — sometime early next year.

Read- The one that resembles a Wizard
Read- The one that resembles a PSP
Read- The one that resembles a Clie

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Filed under: Wireless

Probably further annoying the Vonage users that it supposedly cut-off last year, WiMax "class" wireless broadband provider Clearwire has just announced its own Bell Canada-powered VoIP service for that works with regular telephones, or for more sophisticated call control, over a user's PC. The new service, which is currently limited to Clearwire subscribers in the Stockton, California market, and further restricted to those residents who are "e911 capable," requires a $15 Internet adapter if you want to use a regular corded or cordless phone, and costs $30-a-month for unlimited calling within the US and Canada (international calls are supposedly "competitively priced"). That thirty bucks also gets you browser-configurable call forwarding, "Find Me Follow Me" enhanced call forwarding, caller ID, voice mail, voice mail-to-email capabilities, and caller blocking, as well as the semi-useful ability to get your mobile VoIP on anywhere Clearwire has coverage (currently 200 US/international cities that most people don't live in), if you don't mind toting your laptop and modem around.

[Via dailywireless]