Welcome To Wireless In Seattle!
I started Wireless In Seattle because there are a tremendous number of interesting wireless stories to tell that are centered here in the Seattle area. As the titlebar says - The Seattle area has a vibrant Wireless industry with the rise of McCaw Cellular, then AT&T Wireless, then Cingular, now just AT&T-who-also-does-wireless, Western Wireless / Alltel, VoiceStream Wireless / T-Mobile, VC Ignition, and most recently, Clearwire. The Seattle area also has a few manufacturers of wireless systems and is a hotbed of Wi-Fi HotSpots.
In addition, there are a lot of people who are extremely influential in the Wireless industry(ies) that are based here in Seattle, and I hope to tap their knowledge in the coming months.
Just in the past week, Starbucks is much in the news for bringing AT&T in as their primary vendor for Wi-Fi HotSpot services, and both Starbucks and T-Mobile (the vendor that AT&T displaced) are located here in the Seattle area. Within the past month, Washington State Ferries - the largest ferry fleet in the nation, completed deployment of Wi-Fi on all of their routes. Boeing Commercial Airplanes is based here in the Seattle area, and Boeing's ill-fated Connexion service, the equivalent for airplanes of the Washington State Ferries Wi-Fi service was also here in the Seattle area. Seattle was one of the original three markets for the ill-fated Metricom service (and every day I drive by and look at many legacy Metricom radios hanging on streetlights). Seattle was where the ill-fated Advanced Radio Telecom service provider came into prominence, and faded out of existence, as did Terabeam with its innovative Free Space Optical 1 Gbps building-to-building-through-the-windows systems.
I don't think there would be much argument that Seattle is one of the centers of the Wireless industry, along with San Diego, Silicon Valley, and Dallas / Plano.
One minor disclaimer... in my writing here, I'll be gravitating towards wireless stories, companies, people that "generally" involve Internet Access. There's an absolute plethora of wireless telephony companies, services, etc. in the Seattle area that revolve around (old school - sorry, couldn't resist) voice and "services", and that's not where my interests are in general. There's still plenty, plenty of stories to tell in keeping to a general theme of (Broadband) Wireless Internet Access relating to the Seattle area.
In summary, there are many, many stories to tell about Wireless In Seattle, and this is where I'll be telling mine.
Thanks,
Steve
By Steve Stroh
This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).
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