Boingo Extends Roaming to Gogo's Inflight Service

Boingo Wireless announced a roaming partnership with Gogo, which provides inflight connectivity. The deal means that Boingo customers can now log in to Gogo using their existing Boingo account. This access includes more than 1,100 planes from nine carriers, providing robust Internet access above 10,000 feet.


"The Boingo Roaming Network now extends six miles above the Earth thanks to the expansive fleet of Gogo equipped airplanes," said Luis Serrano, senior vice president of business and corporate development for Boingo Wireless. "Gogo's inflight network is a key addition to our roaming portfolio, especially since inflight access is one of the most requested service enhancements we receive through our customer feedback channels."http://www.boingo.com

Read More

FCC Releases 15th Annual Wireless Competition Report

The total service revenue generated by the mobile wireless industry reached approximately $154.7 billion in 2009, according to the FCC's newly released Annual Report and Analysis of Competitive Market Conditions With Respect to Mobile Wireless.

The report provides a look at competition across the entire mobile wireless ecosystem, including an analysis of the "upstream" and "downstream" market segments, such as spectrum, infrastructure, devices, and applications. It makes no formal finding as to whether there is, or is not, effective competition in the industry. Data is presented through the end of 2009.


Some key findings:

• At the end of 2009, there were 274.3 million subscribers to mobile telephone, or voice, service, up nearly five percent from 261.3 million at the end of 2008.



• At the end of 2009, there were 55.8 million subscribers to mobile Internet access services at speeds exceeding 200 kbps in at least one direction – which is more than double the number at the end of 2008.



• Two measures of pricing for wireless services – the Cellular Consumer Price Index (CPI) and unit price (revenue per user per month divided by average unit consumption per month) – show that the price level remained generally flat during 2009. After declining every year since 1997, the annual Cellular CPI was unchanged during 2009, while the overall CPI decreased by 0.4 percent. In addition, average voice revenue per minute (RPM), rounded to the nearest cent, remained at $0.05 for the third straight year.



• The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), which is calculated by summing the squared market shares of all
  firms in any given market, is a commonly used measure of industry concentration. In the mobile wireless services industry, the weighted average of HHIs (weighted by population across the 172 Economic Areas in the United States) was 2811 at the end of 2009, compared to 2842 at the end of 2008.



• Most of the spectrum below 1 GHz suitable for the provision of mobile broadband is held by the two largest mobile wireless service providers. Verizon Wireless and AT&T together hold approximately 90 percent of Cellular spectrum based on megahertz-POPs (MHz-POPs),18 which was the first band to be licensed for commercial mobile services and has the most extensive network buildout. Verizon Wireless holds 45 percent of the MHz-POPs of Cellular and 700 MHz spectrum combined, while AT&T holds approximately 33 percent. In the Broadband PCS (PCS) and Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum between 1 GHz and 2.5 GHz, no licensee holds more than 23 percent of the MHz-POPs, with TMobile holding the most. In the 2.5 GHz band (which include the Broadband Radio Service (BRS) and Educational Broadband Service (EBS)), Clearwire holds the majority of the spectrum.

In his remarks on the report, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps noted darkening clouds over the state
of mobile competition. In his words, "It also appears that consumers are no longer enjoying falling prices, according to the CPI for cellular services. We know there is a looming spectrum crunch and a growing need for backhaul. There is no doubt that the mobile market is an American success story, and there are many ways to measure industry health. But it would be foolish and decidedly not in the public interest to ignore the facts
this Report reveals. If we want Americans to continue to enjoy innovation, affordability and improved mobile coverage, we must heed these facts and continue to examine areas where the Commission can act to encourage mobile competition."


The full 300 page report is online.
http://www.fcc.gov

Read More

Nirvanix Hires Former Head of Google Worldwide Data Center Infrastructure

Nirvanix announced the appointment of Paul Froutan as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), effective immediately. Froutan most recently served at Google as Head of Global Data Center Infrastructure, responsible for designing, building and managing the extremely high levels of reliability and efficiency present in Google's worldwide green data center operations. Prior to Google, Froutan was Vice President of Product Development at Rackspace Hosting, where he led the team that pioneered the launch of Rackspace Cloud and other key managed services.


Nirvanix provides enterprise-class cloud storage services. The company offers cloud storage solutions designed specifically for customers with expectations of extreme security, reliability and redundancy levels. http://www.nirvanix.com

Read More

ABRY Partners to Acquire Masergy

ABRY Partners, a private equity firm that has completed over $27 billion of leveraged transactions to date, will acquire Masergy Communications for an undisclosed sum. Masergy provides managed, secure virtualized network services to enterprises worldwide. The company leverages advanced transport technologies to deliver global Ethernet services across a native MPLS network.
http://www.masergy.com

• Masergy, which is based in Plano, Texas is headed by Royce Holland, who previously was CEO of McLeodUSA, a competitive local exchange carrier that was sold to PAETEC in January 2008. Mr. Holland was also previously Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Allegiance Telecom Inc., from 1997 until its 2004 acquisition by XO Communications Inc. Prior to Allegiance, he served as President and Co-founder of MFS Communications.

Read More

Sprint Launches 4G Enterprise Access to MPLS

Sprint introduced a fixed 4G Enterprise WAN access solution that provides speed, reliability and secure wireless connectivity to the Sprint Global MPLS network. The 4G service can enable businesses to replace or improve on traditional "wired" options with a solution that is cost-effective, fast and flexible to deploy without compromising bandwidth and network reliability, available within all Sprint 4G markets.


Using professionally installed business-class outdoor modems, Sprint 4G Enterprise WAN provides secure 4G and 3G wireless access as primary and secondary network connectivity, backed by a 99.95 percent availability service level agreement (SLA).


Sprint 4G is currently available in 71 markets across the country, including Atlanta, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York City.
http://www.sprint.com/convergence

Read More

Ixia to Acquire VeriWave for Wireless Testing

Ixia agreed to acquire VeriWave, a performance testing company for wireless LAN (WLAN) and Wi-Fi enabled smart devices, for an undisclosed sum.


VeriWave wireless test solutions validate Wi-Fi networks, smart devices, and applications by benchmarking and measuring speed, quality, interoperability, compliance, and other pivotal aspects of wireless performance.


Investors in VeriWave include US Venture Partners, Montlake Capital, TL Ventures, Woodside Fund and Alloy Ventures.
http://www.ixiacom.com
http://www.veriwave.com

• The VeriWave team is headed by Christopher DeMonico, Chief Executive Officer, who previously was Vice President of AT&T’s- Microelectronics Group and Vice President of Lucent Technologies- IC Group. In addition he was also a Vice President and Corporate Officer at PMC-Sierra. The VeriWave technical team is headed by
  Dr. Thomas Alexander, Chief Technology Officer, who most recently was the chief architect for Ethernet products for PMC-Sierra. He is active in communications standards being the editor for the IEEE 802.3ae 10G Ethernet standard, the Chief Editor, IEEE 802.17 and the technical editor, 802.11T.

Read More

UNH-IOL Expands 40G/100G Test Capabilities

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) ha expanded the capabilities of its 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet testing services.



Members of the UNH-IOL's 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium now have devices available that are ready for testing, and the enhancements to the testing services will allow members to prepare their products for market in advance of widespread industry adoption.



"Like all new technologies, repeated multi-vendor testing is imperative to speeding the development of 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet devices, as well as driving industry acceptance of the technology," said Jeff Lapak, senior engineer for the UNH-IOL. "Our members are leading the market with these devices, and rely on the lab's experience in offering reliable interoperability testing results that can get working products to the market quickly."http://www.iol.unh.edu/services/testing/ethernet/

Read More