Ho John Lee's Weblog

via Om Malik:

Google seems to have developed a secure WiFi VPN software tool – Google Secure Access Client. The information can be found here. Google Rumors has all the details. To sum it up, what they are doing is giving away a VPN tool that takes some of the security risks out of open WiFi. Companies like JiWire and Boingo also have these type of secure WiFi software solutions. While on paper this sounds like a perfectly good deal, Inside Google says not so fast, and writes, “Google Secure Access has the same benefits for Google as Web Accelerator did, with fewer of the things that scared away people the first time.” They dig deep into the GSA privacy policy …

Another take at Inside Google:

Located at wifi.google.com, GSA connects you to a Google-run Virtual Private Network. Your internet traffic becomes encrypted when you send it out, decrypted by Google, the requested data downloaded by Google, encrypted and sent to you, and decrypted on your machine. This has the effect of protecting your traffic data from others who may want to access it. GSA’s FAQ describes it as a Google engineer’s 20% project

Google Secure Access FAQ

Now that the 2.4GHz spectrum is approved for unlicensed outdoor use in India, a number of projects based on WiFi, 802.11, and related commodity wireless data networking technologies are emerging.

The Kuppam i-Community program in Andhra Pradesh, which I was involved with, also has a network based on 2.4GHz wireless radios. At the time we had to get experimental licenses, after many meetings and much paperwork, because the 2.4GHz band wasn’t approved for outdoor use in 2002 when the project was started.

From Times Of India (via ContentSutra):

Rural India has now some serious chances to go Wi-Fi, and that can be for as cheap as Rs 50 per person a year. United Villages Inc (UV), a US-based low-cost internet service provider, has asked the government for permission (foreign direct investment or FDI) to set up base in India. It will provide rural WiFi broadband, which has the potential to reach out to about 30 crore people living in the villages.

UV has developed a communication technology that provides internet access using mobile vehicles that connect to already set up hubs. As the vehicles drive through rural areas, wireless communication equipment within them automatically exchange data with access devices in each village. This unique low-cost communication concept for the developing countries is often called “internet-on-wheels”.

Using UV’s mobile internet technology, acronymed VAN (Village Area Network), people in the rural area can send and receive email and voicemail, and can also browse through cached information from the web and local intranets, the company said in its FIPB application.

Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, is one of the investors in United Villages.

See also: Cantennas deployed in Kuppam

Proxim has been struggling financially for a while, and today announced the sale of all assets to Moseley Associates.

Proxim is the current home of the former Lucent / Agere / Orinoco 802.11 product line, which were ubiquitous a few years ago as wireless LANs became popular and before “WiFi” was a marketing buzzword for a notebook computer feature. They also own the former Western Multiplex Tsunami point-to-point wireless product line, after merging with them a few years ago.

I’ve always liked their gear, but the WLAN market is totally commoditized now (Linksys, D-Link, and assorted white label manufacturers), the enterprise solutions seem to be moving toward solutions such as Aruba and Trango, and the longer haul point-to-point market hasn’t really taken off, partially due to all the noise about WiMax (which has yet to become a deployable solution).

Here’s what Proxim had to say to their customers about Moseley on their web site:

Moseley, the parent company of Microwave Data Systems (MDS), Axxcelera Broadband Wireless, CarrierComm, and Moseley Broadcast, provides industry-leading wireless solutions for both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint applications for the industrial (SCADA), broadcast, broadband enterprise and carrier marketplaces. Combining our product lines will enable us to offer a differentiated portfolio of products covering spectrum from 900 MHz to 38 GHz, bringing us much closer to number one position in the market with both licensed and unlicensed broadband, Wi-Fi, and WiMAX technology for an extremely broad spectrum range.

Well, that plus not totally going out of business. Hope they find a niche with some traction.

update 2005-07-20 15:47 Hmm. Terabeam is ending up with Proxim instead.