Thursday, Jul 31st, 2008
Categories: Media
Great article comparing bandwidth to oil, in the NYTimes:
“Americans today spend almost as much on bandwidth as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil.”
Interesting comparison. Read on at NYTimes.com.
How much do you spend on bandwidth (internet, mobile, cable tv,…)? I think I’ve been payment roughly the same amount for ten years now, though I do get more speed and data (and voice, sms…) allowance.
Laurel Papworth talked about “Social Network Telecommunications - the Consumer as ISP” at the Broadband Australia 2008 summit.
Social networks will want always on, ambient, mobile connectivity so that they can take advantage of these services.
She mentioned Fon, Meraki, Open-Mesh and Free Australia Wireless.
Check out her presentation on Slideshare.
We need more people, more often talking about these issues, so the industry (telco’s, isp’s,…) and government can’t no longer ignore this trend.
Monday, Jul 21st, 2008
Categories: Meraki
Sasha Meinrath ponders about what’s wrong with Meraki: “Black Box Technologies, Lock-In, & Hidden Costs“.
Hundreds of projects, organizations, and municipalities are rolling out Meraki-based networks, yet few seem to understand that they’re buying a bundled service not just a piece of hardware. Over time, these initiatives will end up paying an unknown amount of money to Meraki just to keep their system running.
Do check out the comments, as Sanjit Biswas (Meraki CEO) answers some of his concerns.
On the other hand, on GovTech.com Sanjit Biswas presents another use case of Meraki’s being deployed in a small town center. In early 2008, Prestonsburg lit up a free Wi-Fi hotzone over a 2-mile corridor running through its downtown core, using 48 outdoor units and 12 indoor units, for a total price of $8500 (including three DSL connections with two years worth of service for $2700). Not too shabby for a local municipality, I guess.
“For Prestonsburg and many other customers, Meraki includes three years of its data center services in the price of the hardware”, Biswas said, “Larger customers can opt for a plan that discounts the hardware, but adds a monthly fee for service”.
So apparently “three years, that’s how long most of our larger customers plan to wait before upgrading to newer radio devices” according to Biswas, but that’s not how I (and Sasha Meinrath) read it.