Sprint’s Airave signal booster in the wild, on sale nationwide this month?
Considering that the last time Sprint’s Airave was even relevant was when a smattering of folks bought one in Denver and Indianapolis, like, last September, here’s a quick refresher on what this thing does. Similar to T-Mobile @home, this box plugs into one’s broadband connection and essentially acts as a mini cell tower within your house, which will certainly make folks in a fringe zone with no option for Roam Only (feel our pain, Instinct owners?) quite happy. For whatever reason, the carrier has dilly-dallied around with this thing forever, and even if whispers prove true and it launches on July 15th for $99 (on top of a monthly fee for unlimited minutes, we hear), we have to wonder if anyone will even bite. Two more shots in the read link.
Although Alltel is busy courting Verizon’s amorous advances, it looks like the carrier is still serious about rolling with the big boys — it’s just announced a nationwide WiFi service powered by Boingo. Subscribers can opt for $20/mo or $4/day plans, and score access at over 25,000 hotspots in airports, hotels, bookstores, coffee shops and restaurants. Alltel wireless customers can also opt for the $70/mo Internet Anywhere bundle, which gives you unlimited EVDO and WiFi access. Of course, all these plans could change when the Verizon deal finally goes down, but we’ll see how that plays out in the future — at least you’re not being locked into a contract.
Chrysler had vaguely said that it would be bringing in-car WiFi to its 2009 lineup, and but some more details have been released today: the system will be part of the next-gen UConnect system, feature a 3G-to-WiFi router hidden within the car and require a monthly subscription fee to use the service. Chrysler says the system will run at 600-800kbps down and 200kbps up, and should work with game consoles in vehicles with rear-seat monitors. It’s still not clear whether Chrysler will run the service as its own MVNO or use another provider directly, but pricing is expected to be similar to WLAN PC cards, and there shouldn’t be any long-term contracts involved. Alright, BMW, your move.
If you haven’t made the leap to 802.11n (or, even better, 5GHz 802.11n), you might want to start holding on to that loose change — you’ll probably have enough by the end of the week to pick up D-Link’s new DIR-628 router, which has an official MSRP of $119, but will sell at Best Buy for just $79. The dual-band router obviously isn’t the most feature-packed unit out there, but in terms of straight connectivity, it’ll get the job done as long as the firmware is reasonably stable — and to be honest, that’s all we really want a router to do. Should be out now — we’re telling you, 5GHz is freaking amazing.
His preeminence, oh lordship, oh liege, (uh hem) Walt Mossberg, just returned from a US test flight on a small business jet equipped with Aircell’s new Gogo WiFi service. He tested multiple devices including Dell and Apple laptops, a Blackberry, iPhone, and WinMo-based cell and found them to all perform flawlessly, albeit, at speeds ranging from 266Kbps to about 1.4Mbps. Typical speeds clocked in at 500Kbps to 600Kbps — upload speeds were a more modest 250Kbps to 300Kbps. Aircell promises a similar experience on large commercial planes with multiple connected devices. These speeds were good enough for Walt to surf the Web and check email (both prioritized on Gogo’s network) as he would in the office but not quite fast enough to deliver smooth video streaming. Fortunately, (or unfortunately depending upon your opinion) the service blocks all VoIP services like Skype. Gogo WiFi will cost $12.95 for flights of three hours or longer, and $9.95 for shorter trips — free for limited access to AA’s website, Frommer’s online travel guides, and select articles from The Wall Street Journal. It’s scheduled to launch next month on American Airline flights between New York and LA, San Francisco, and Miami — it will then head to Virgin America and other airlines if things go well. See Walt’s head talk from the bowels of embedded video after the break.
Looks like that sale at Amazon’s turned into a full blown price cut — Dash has officially lowered the price on the Dash Express from $400 to $300 (not including service, of course). Of course, this can be interpreted one of two ways: they’re selling so well that economies of scale have kicked in, and everyone saves money buying the GPS — or, the fresh-faced company’s sole product isn’t doing very well in the marketplace, leading to this second price drop so far. We’re hope it’s not the latter though, we’re definitely stoked to see where else Dash can take us.
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse spoke at NXTcomm08 today, and he let it slip that Sprint is planning on launching its first commercially-available WiMAX network in Baltimore in September, and expanding the trial service currently operating in Chicago and DC by the end of the year. We’re assuming that means Clearwire and not Sprint itself, of course, but Hesse also touched on the carrier’s WiMAX-based 4G strategy, saying that consumers “can’t seem to get enough data” and that devices like digital cameras and GPS systems will eventually connect to WiMAX directly — allowing Sprint to “break free of wireless cellphone group think.” Sure, whatever — but let’s get that network lit up before we start counting chickens, shall we?
The first iPhone arrived at a time that suggested Apple needed to protect its iPod franchise — but Apple delivered something that was much more than an MP3 player that could make phone calls. You probably won’t be editing any iMovies on it for some time, but in the iPhone Apple has essentially delivered Macintosh 2.0. It’s portable. It’s affordable. It’s connected. And it runs OS X, complete with its own breakthrough pointing device, your finger. Whereas the first Mac came with productivity applications MacWrite and MacPaint, the iPhone came with applications for Web surfing, e-mail, and consuming media, the evolution of what much personal computing has become.