C/Net’s Marguerite Reardon says Sprint’s new 4G network could be heading down the same doomed path as EarthLink’s citywide Wi-Fi networks.

It may only be a test bed for future WiMax deployments, but I think the business model Sprint is using in Baltimore looks eerily similar to what EarthLink attempted to do with its citywide Wi-Fi business.

Like EarthLink, Sprint is targeting incumbent cable and DSL providers with its service. The big difference is that it’s also offering mobility. But…most people subscribing to the service will likely only be as mobile as they can be with an air card plugged into their laptop.

And even though Sprint is competing directly with fixed broadband providers, it is not offering customers a huge discount. The home service, which requires users buy a $79 WiMax modem, costs $25 initially, but will eventually be priced at $35 per month. It’s also offering a mobile only service, which requires users buy a $59 WiMax wireless card for their laptop. This service starts at $30 and will increase to $45 after six months.

These prices are not drastically different from other broadband options. In Baltimore, Comcast offers a 6Mbps download service for about $43. Verizon Communications offers a 3Mbps DSL service for about $30 a month.

This was the same conundrum that many EarthLink customers faced. And in the end, most consumers didn’t see enough differentiation to switch to Wi-Fi. I expect the same thing will happen with WiMax.

Reardon overlooks three things:

• Value: Twice the speed of cellular at half the cost.
• Convenience: No 2-year “contracts”, with day passes available.
• Bandwidth: Cellular companies won’t have 120MHz available, now or in the future.

A “pick two for life” WiMAX option covers two different WiMax devices for $50 a month — for the life of your service. Cellular costs $60/mo (with a 2-year contract) for half the speed.

What Intel did with Centrino in 2003, they’re doing with WiMAX in 2008. Clearwire plans on covering 16 million people next year, 140 million POPs by 2010 (pdf) and should be cash positive in 2011-2012.

WiMAX was engineered for this job, unlike “city clouds” built using unlicensed Wi-Fi. AT&T won’t have LTE for 5 years, according to AT&T’s Hank Kafka, VP of Architecture. And where will it get spectrum?

WiMAX penetration rates are based on real-world developments that result in an order of magnitude cost reduction over cellular. After an expensive, system-wide forklift upgrade to LTE, cellcos will remain bandwidth constrained and without indoor penetration. Integrated WiMAX/Wi-Fi chipsets, on hundreds of millions of laptops and handhelds, will go indoors seamlessly. Cheaper. Faster. Better.

WiMAX may have the biggest impact outside the United States.

BSNL has deployed WiMAX across 10 cities in India, with the help of SOMA Networks, and aims to cover 16,000 to 18,000 rural villages by the end of 2009 while Indian telco Tata is rolling out a $1 billion WiMAX network in 15 major cities. By 2012, the Indian government hopes to link 500m citizens to the internet via more than 100m broadband connections and devices, the bulk of them wireless. Some analysts predict 21 million WiMAX subscribers in India by 2014, about the same as the predicted number of U.S. WiMAX subscribers at that time.

More than half the 6.6 billion people on Earth use cell phones, a billion or so connect to the Internet, but only 400 million people have broadband connections. WiMAX expects to thrive in developing nations while U.S. 3G subscribers have grown 80 percent to 64.2 million during the past year. WiMAX expects to get a big piece of that growth and has a 3-5 year technology lead.

Clearwire, Sprint, Cable and Google are going for the kill. I believe they will succeed. I don’t own any tech or telecom stocks, but I think WiMAX was the best move Sprint (and Intel) ever made.

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Nokia has just released its 5800 Express Music phone, an “iPhone killer” previously known as “Tube”. The 5800 will be available from a range of telcos, in contrast to the iPhone. It will only be available in Europe, at first.

The Nokia 5800 Express Music phone costs about $390, simfree. Nokia will test the waters in Europe, and early next year T-Mobile or AT&T, may carry it in the United States, says PC World. But if you travel to Europe this winter, you can snap up an unlocked one from there - as the Tube is compatible with North American HSDPA (GSM) carriers.

Nokia’s iPhone killer will feature the Comes with Music bundle which allows users to freely download an unlimited number of songs — over a year after the initial purchase — from Nokia’s Music Store. The program builds on Nokia’s existing, iTunes-like music store, with a catalog that now includes EMI Music, Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and Warner Music.

Users of the service get to keep their downloaded music for as long as they own their device — even after their yearlong subscription ends. But they cannot transfer it to other devices, Nokia says.

It features a 3.2-megapixel camera, with autofocus Carl Zeiss optics and a dual LED flash, compared to iPhone’s 2-megapixel-no flash camera. Tube also records videos at VGA quality (640X480px) and has a frontal camera for video calls, something that the iPhone can’t do at all.

It comes with an 8GB memory card and supports up to 16GB cards (iPhone’s memory is built in and cannot be expanded). Also included; GPS, Wi-Fi and a 3.5mm jack so you can plug in any headphone you like. It will also support Adobe Flash, something that iPhone is still lacking.

When tilted on its side, the 5800 has a full-screen QWERTY keyboard plus a mini-QWERTY one. The 5800 is also equipped with handwriting recognition, which will recognize 60 languages.

Nokia will include an introductory subscription to voice navigation in the price. “It’s increasingly about the combination of services that come with the product,” says Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s executive vice-president for markets.

Symbian’s new S60 5th edition OS, with touch input, now supports Adobe Flash Lite 3, as well as Web browsing via touch or a stylus. Nokia changed pretty much everything about interacting with the Series 60 OS. In the browser, for instance, you now drag with your finger and double-tap to zoom. It also syncs with the phone’s sensor technology, and supports photo imaging tools that enable users to erase red-eye, adjust image quality and add text and graphics to pictures.

Nokia owns 40% of the global handset market and has shipped 180 million S60 devices as of the end of this June. Apple hopes to ship 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. But Apple has sold more than 160 million iPods and their iTunes store has sold over 5 billion songs. The store is now the country’s largest music retailer, topping Walmart.

Cellular News, EV-DO/HSDPA, Gadgets, Location Services, Market Metrics, Wi-Fi News | No Comments »

About half of National Public Radio’s mobile visitors (about 700,000 to 800,000 per month) use iPhones, writes American Journalism Review. NPR Mobile, on the iPhone, provides new user-friendly options for listeners. “We’re thinking ahead to certain kinds of experiences we would design specifically for iPhone users,” says Associate Producer and blogger Lee R. Hill.

They’re distributing their content in another ambitious way: multimedia and audio slide shows, often utilizing the flash-based SoundSlides program. They appear, often exclusively, on NPR’s Web site. Soundslides, a rapid production tool for still image and audio web presentations, has a large forum of active users and hundreds of great productions

Adobe has reportedly confirmed it’s planning a version of the ubiquitous Flash player for use on Apple’s iPhone that could be available “in a very short time.”

NPR management is reimagining the company, and its journalists are learning to reimagine their stories.

NPR has an intense, seven-week training course in multimedia journalism that encouraged reporters to expand their repertoire of reporting and storytelling skills. As of October, NPR will have started or completed the training of about 40 editorial staffers in three groups, and aims to bring the other 410 up to speed in multimedia by next fall.

This summer, NPR launched an open application program interface (API), a set of programming tools that lets Web sites more easily interact and share content. The API will also let member stations choose NPR content focused on their regions and display it alongside their own local reporting. Web developers have already used the API to create widgets that showcase NPR content, including an NPR podcast player, on Facebook and an interactive world map that links to NPR stories.

Traditionally, customers have found NPR’s content through its member stations. Today, it must also serve audiences using digital devices that are station-agnostic.

“Back in the days that there was just radio, your station was the only point of entry to all this content,” says Robert Spier, director of content development for NPR Digital Media.

“You couldn’t get NPR except through your station because it was only available on radio, and radio was time and geographically bound.” Today, of course, “the user expects to be in control of his or her experience.”

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WiFi Planet says the investors who acquired Philadelphia’s Wi-Fi network from Earthlink now count over 100,000 users per month, each of them averaging about four hours of usage per day.

“For the time being, we have turned the service wide open for residential and small commercial use,” said Derek Pew, founder, CEO, and director of Network Acquisition Company (NAC), the Philadelphia organization which is now running the show.

Wi-Fi service will remain free to anyone who can access it in the city, but NAC plans to start monetizing residential accounts through advertising and transaction processing, such as taking a cut of ticket sales or delivering coupons. A pay tier would be available to businesses and government institutions.

“Our view of what the Wi-Fi network should be used for is entirely different from what EarthLink was trying to do,” says Pew.

“The reason we jumped into this was because we believed that there’s a mind problem right now. We have people who are very negative on Wi-Fi because of what appears to be a market exit by EarthLink and other similar companies. Someone needed to step in and hold onto this asset, improve on it and reposition it, and begin to show people what it actually should have been used for, what it can be used for, as opposed to what EarthLink was trying to do with it in the first place”, said the charitable Pew.

MetroFi has been down the “free” road — without much success.

Pew looks to Tucson, Arizona and Oklahoma City as models for implementing a wireless network. Both of those systems use Tropos gear. Network Acquisition Company, it should be noted, is largely funded by Tropos founder Dave Hanna. Tropos bet the company on Philadelphia.

DailyWireless has more than 650 related Municipal Wireless stories including; Wireless Philadelphia: Born Again?, Earthlink to Philly: We’re Outta Here, Philadelphia WiFi Network To Shut Down June 12, MetroFi Vs Portland, EarthLink’s Old Milpitas Network Now Free, Minneapolis WiFi Breaks Even, MuniFi Roundup, Muni-Fi’s Got Trouble, Who the MuniFi MAN?, Municipal WiFi: What Would You Do?, Wireless Silicon Valley: Would You Believe a Dozen Hotspots in San Carlos?, Free Grass Roots Wi-Fi: It Works in Portland, Starbucks Adds AT&T Wi-Fi.

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Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook ($349-$449) has been hacked with a version of OSX customized for the MSI Wind. The Eee PC has also been doing this trick, says Gizmodo.

The wireless card, Ethernet and sound didn’t work initially but were fixed after the download of a few additional files. UneasySilence has the not quite step-by-step instructions.

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Hitachi has prototyped a digital camcorder that can stream HD video over Wi-Fi networks. Video being shot live, or recorded on its internal hard drive, transmits the HD video compressed in the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 through an 802.11g module in an SD card.

It’s delivered to a TV via an access point. Video selection, playback, stop and other operations can be done using the TV’s remote control. Video being shot live is transmitted using the camcorder’s IPTV server capability. It compresses the video into H.264 format in real time and delivers it via a wireless LAN.

Broadcasting & Cable, Gadgets, VoIP & IP-TV, Wi-Fi News | No Comments »

Dailywireless asked our friend, Joe Christenson, what’s new and exciting in streaming media.

We got an earful. Joe is developing a streaming media business, and attended the Streaming Media West 2008 conference last week. Here’s what he had to say about the show:

Streaming Media West 2008 was held at the San Jose Convention Center. It is the premier conference for all aspects of the video streaming industry.

The industry has been on a bit of a tear over the last year. Americans now stream 11.4 billion videos online per month. 75% of US Internet users are viewing video online (source: Jordan Hoffner, Director of Content Partnerships, YouTube). The wireless industry is enabling streaming video content to be produced anywhere and viewed anywhere.

User Generated:
Qik.com is a live video streaming service that allows anyone to stream video directly from their cell phone. Currently they support phones with the Symbian OS, Windows Mobile, and Jail-broken iphones. The video stream is viewable on Qik.com and via an embeddable player.

While streaming, viewers may interact through the chat window which is sent to the mobile phone in real time. Viewers may ask questions and receive feedback or direct the action.

Professionally Generated:
The professional live broadcaster requires higher quality and increased reliability in their broadcast uplink. The tried and true satellite dish option is being offered by a new division of IP Access International, Todocast.tv. A .96 meter satellite dish can be mounted onto a car for an uplink with speeds up to 5 Mbps. At these speeds an event producer will be able to stream HD quality in real time from anywhere. Satellite Bandwidth is sold on a per day basis.

Todocast.tv put together a package of equipment and services that allow any videographer to stream live to a world audience at a cost that has never been available before.

LiveU:
An industry changing technology is being introduced by LiveU. Their technology multiplexes all available internet connections to provide a large enough data rate to support the demands of broadcast video. This allows the live event broadcaster to utilize AT&T, Sprint, & Verizon at the same time to deliver the necessary bandwidth to a location. The equipment easily fits in a backpack.

Instead of relying on just one carrier to get the word out, you can spread your bet across all available wireless providers (including wifi, and soon wimax).

Both LiveU and Todocast.tv will find a healthy customer base that have different needs.

Viewed Anywhere:
The Olympics were showcased as an example of the evolving mobile media industry.

With the time difference between Beijing and America, the live events were happening at hours where many Americans where away from their desks and TV programing was delayed for the evening prime time window. NBC encouraged users to sign up for text messages of breaking news from Beijing.

Text messages included the latest news and a link to view the video. This call to action through text message was the key to bringing in a significant mobile video audience. How to make money was still an unanswered question.

[ - Joe Christensen (joe@blazestreaming.com) writes from Portland, OR. He is in the early stages of building a video streaming service for local events.]

Joe may not have long to wait for an answer to the revenue question.

eMarketer recently issued a revised forecast of $550 million for Web video ad spending in 2008, up from $324 million last year. The category is expected to hit $5.8 billion in ad dollars by 2013.

IDC predicts internet advertising revenue will surpass newspapers, cable and broadcast TV by 2012. IDC predicts overall Internet advertising revenue will double by 2012, from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion. The Internet, says IDC, will move from the number 5 medium to the number 2 slot in just 5 years, second only to direct marketing.

I’m really curious if Mobile WiMAX will change the video landscape. Instead of $250,000 television trucks, it seems like anyone with access to a 2 Mbps WiMAX upstream channel will now be able to do broadcast quality work from almost any event. At any convention center. Any week.

Live — and with all the reach, interactivity and marketing power that the internet can now deliver.

Related Dailywireless articles include; Live Mobile Coverage, Qik Goes Live — Everywhere, 2008 Summer Olympics: On Demand, Olympics: Monday Morning Analysis, WiMAX for TV Remote Feeds, Mobile WiMAX: Live in Idaho Falls, NBC Not Dumping Silverlight, Meraki Nets in SF and Portland, Mobile Livecasting, Webcasting Concerts, Emergency Communications Applications, Emergency Communications SimDay, Eye-Fi Now Geotags, Cellular Photosharing Software, CNN’s News Bureau in a Bus, WiFi Camera Adapters, Geocoding Content, Minneapolis Bridge Collapse & Emergency Communications, Kyocera KR2 Mobile Router, and Mobile Mashup.

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McCain may have invented the Blackberry, but today, Obama owns the iPhone, say Portland’s Rick Turoczy who runs Portland’ must read blog, Silicon Florest, a TechCrunch-like website that chronicles the Portland tech scene.

Creating this free iPhone app was a wholly volunteer effort, writes Turoczy.

The application has a “Call Your Friends” tool that helps you organize your contacts by key battleground states — a feature we’re hoping will generate thousands of additional personal contacts. You can also easily mark reminder notes to yourself on which friends you have called, who they are supporting and who wants a reminder call on Election Day.

The information does not leave your phone (so your friends’ and your own privacy are protected) but the total amount of calls the application makes are tallied, so you can keep track of your progress as we close in on November 4th.

While the application is an impressive feat for a volunteer effort what I think may be even more interesting—and [Raven] Zachary, arguably the premiere consultant for all things iPhone, agrees—is the underlying story about mobile app development in general—a development effort that, more and more, seems to be centered around talent right here in the Silicon Forest.

“This speaks to a growing trend in Portland toward mobile app development,” said Raven Zachary. “We’ve really got something starting here.”

[Jason] Grigsby echoes a similar sentiment about the creation of the Obama iPhone app:

“I’m terribly proud of this application. I’m also honored to have been part of making it happen. It’s not simply that we built something that we believe will empower people to bring change to Washington, but it is also the fact that we assembled an exceptional team”.

Lyza Gardner adds, “The amount of energy that went into this was fun to be around. Raven Zachary and Jason Grigsby’s strategy genius, Jonathan Wight’s very powerful development fu, Mike Lee and Tristan O’Tierney’s hacking support, Louie Manta’s visual-zing-wow aesthetics, Aileen Jeffries and John Keith’s many-faceted support, and Dom Sagolla’s tireless testing work. Phew. That’s the lot of us.”

Visit the Obama iPhone app page or to download it for yourself, head over to the App Store.

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Nokia’s “Apple iPhone killer” touch-screen phone is expected to be unveiled today. Nokia’s “Tube” will feature a sleeker design than the T-Mobile G1 device and is expected to be packed with a variety of services and applications supplied by Nokia.

Analysts say the market has been waiting for Nokia to respond to Apple for 18 months. Nokia shares have tumbled 50 per cent this year, partly because of its slow introduction of touch-screen phones.

Nokia is also expected to unveil more details of its ‘Comes with Music‘ package at an analyst and media event in London today.

“‘Comes with Music‘ could potentially bring free music to millions of consumers, radically changing the music industry, and offering a significant threat to Apple’s dominance,” Strategy Analytics’ David MacQueen said in a research report.

Instead of buying individual songs (like iTunes) or paying a subscription (like Rhapsody, the Zune Pass, and others), the cost of downloading music will be built into the price of the phone.

‘After your free year expires you then have to pay a monthly subscription fee to retain the service. Or buy a new Nokia phone, costing $200-$600. You will be able keep all downloaded tracks after the year is over.

Sony Ericsson’s PlayNow Plus is a challenger to Nokia’s ‘Comes With Music’ service. They have already secured music catalogues from the ‘big four’ record labels; EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner Music Group. ‘PlayNow Plus‘ will use the Sony Ericsson W902 Walkman which will ship with 1,000 songs preloaded and will cost Telenor subscribers SEK99 (US$15) a month.

On Tuesday, Nokia announced it will buy Oz Communications for an undisclosed amount. The company’s IM, e-mail, and social-networking technologies are used by several mobile operators, including Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, Alltel, and Rogers Wireless. With just 220 employees, Oz claims to have 5.5 million monthly paid users using its products.

The acquisition adds to the other mobile social media and communication buys Nokia has made over the past couple of years, including Twango, Plazes, Enpocket, and Navteq.

Nokia just officially launched its Ovi platform, which serves as a hub for many of its services. The company is facing competition from Apple’s iPhone, and Google’s new Android operating system which are also emphasizing services and applications as way to differentiate their products.

Nokia hopes to integrate devices and services, selling phones with navigation, mapping, and music. The idea is that the services will help differentiate the handsets from others on the market and also provide the company with additional revenue.

According to Informa Telecoms, about 50 million people, or about 2.3 percent of all mobile users, already use the mobile phone for social networking, from chat services to multimedia sharing. The company forecasts that penetration will mushroom to at least 12.5 percent in five years.

Nielsen Mobile says the typical U.S. mobile subscriber sends and receives more text messages than phone calls. During the second quarter of this year, Nielsen found domestic wireless subscribers sent or received an average of 357 text messages each month, compared with an average of 204 phone calls placed or received.

Worldwide smartphone sales totaled 32.2 million units in the second quarter of 2008, a 15.7 per cent increase from the second quarter of 2007, according to market researcher Gartner. Smartphones’ share remained stable at 11 per cent. Nokia held the No. 1 position with a 47.5 per cent market share in the second quarter of 2008, a year-over-year growth about half of the market average. Nokia faced increased competition from Apple, HTC and others.

In related news, a federal panel today will decide if Apple, Amazon and the like should pay higher royalties to music publishers, notes Business Week. But 99¢ songs likely aren’t going anywhere.

A contentious battle between Apple and part of the music industry is set be decided today (Oct. 2), when a panel of judges appointed by Congress is expected to rule whether online music distributors should pay higher royalty fees to music publishers.

The ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board affects not only Apple’s iTunes but also Amazon.com, EMusic, RealNetworks’ Rhapsody, and Best Buy’s Napster. Music publishers, who represent creators of song lyrics and sheet music, want an increase in royalty payments while Apple and the other companies are pushing for a reduction.

Apple has sold more than 160 million iPods and iTunes has sold over 5 billion songs. The store is now the country’s largest music retailer, topping Walmart.

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According to the U.S. State Department, the United States stopped issuing passports without RFID chips in August 2007. Close to four dozen other countries also issue e-passports, which are designed around an open international standard.

The information on the chips - name, date of birth, passport number, photo, etc. - is designed to be readable by a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader.

But in a demo given to The Times Online, Jeroen van Beek, a security researcher at the University of Amsterdam, showed how his tool could be used to clone and manipulate the data chips so that they could be planted inside a fake or stolen passport to mask the identity of the passport holder.

This week he released the tool that allows anyone to manipulate data on the passport chips, reports the Washington Post.

From that Times story:

Building on research from the UK, Germany and New Zealand, Mr van Beek has developed a method of reading, cloning and altering microchips so that they are accepted as genuine by Golden Reader, the standard software used by the International Civil Aviation Organisation to test them. It is also the software recommended for use at airports.

A baby boy’s passport chip was altered to contain an image of Osama bin Laden, and the passport of a 36-year-old woman was changed to feature a picture of Hiba Darghmeh, a Palestinian suicide bomber who killed three people in 2003. The unlikely identities were chosen so that there could be no suggestion that either Mr van Beek or The Times was faking viable travel documents.

Conceivably, a terrorist or wanted criminal seeking to travel under another name could use van Beek’s tools and method to forge documents because of a widespread lack of security checks needed to enforce the international e-passport standard.

The data encoded on the e-passport chips is signed with cryptographic keys held by the issuing country - thus allowing the issuing country to tell if a citizen had altered the data on the device. The problem is that only 10 of the 45 countries that issue e-passports have agreed to share the public keys that are needed to test the integrity of the data on one another’s passport chips. Worse still, only five countries are actively sharing the data.

As a result, someone who has changed the name or swapped in a new photo on an e-passport chip can simply sign the information using his own personal cryptographic key, and relatively few countries would be able to detect the manipulation, said Adam Laurie, a freelance security researcher with RFIDiot.org, a site that hosts software and research designed to expose holes in RFID technology.

“This is the big problem with the whole thing: It relies on checking the digital signatures of the content on the passport, but if nobody’s checking those signatures, you can’t tell if the data is legitimate,” Laurie said.

“It’s like my giving you an ID card and saying it’s valid only because I say it’s valid”.

For its part, the State Department says the e-passports will be supplemented by other security technologies. For example, the inclusion of the digital photograph on the e-passport chip enables biometric comparison, through the use of facial recognition technology at international borders, the government says.

But in an op-ed published in The Washington Post, Bruce Schneier, a cryptography expert who serves as chief security technology officer for the British telecommunications, warned that researchers would likely discover even more security weaknesses that could be used to defeat the security of the e-passport system.

Credit card skimming works by retrofitting a perfectly legitimate ATM with a camouflaged counterfeit card reader. The counterfeit reader records all of your card’s information as it passes through. Security expert and Cisco Subnet blogger Jamey Heary shows you what to look for before you swipe your card.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an Anti-Skimming RFID Measure this week, but nixed a bill about RFID cards for school kids, reports RFID Journal. California is considering integrating RFID tags into driver’s licenses.

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