Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

I’m on my way to the Bay Area for a week’s worth of meetings, meet up
and to also assist winemaker friend Sylvain Fadat of Domaine d’Aupilhac
on Monday at the annual Kermit Lynch Client event that starts tonight.

As I await my slightly delayed Southwest flight to SFO I ran a fast  speed test.

Download  14403kb/s
Upload 8359 kb/s

To
me, that rocks and shows that making pointed comments directly to the
airport management as I have really didn’t fall on deaf ears.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

I’m on my way to the Bay Area for a week’s worth of meetings, meet up
and to also assist winemaker friend Sylvain Fadat of Domaine d’Aupilhac
on Monday at the annual Kermit Lynch Client event that starts tonight.

As I await my slightly delayed Southwest flight to SFO I ran a fast speed test.

Download 14403kb/s
Upload 8359 kb/s

To
me, that rocks and shows that making pointed comments directly to the
airport management as I have really didn’t fall on deaf ears.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

I’m on my way to the Bay Area for a week’s worth of meetings, meet up and to also assist winemaker friend Sylvain Fadat of Domaine d’Aupilhac on Monday at the annual Kermit Lynch Client event that starts tonight.

As I await my slightly delayed Southwest flight to SFO I ran a fast speed test.

Download 14403kb/s
Upload 8359 kb/s

To me, that rocks and shows that making pointed comments directly to the airport management as I have really didn’t fall on deaf ears.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

I was picking some friends up at San Diego International Airport this past Thursday and took my Mac Book Air along as I knew they might be delayed. Having experienced their anemic speeds before in the East Terminal where SouthWest flies, and in the West Terminal when flying US Air and Jet Blue, I was expecting nothing more than at best a few hundred K speeds.

Wrong. They were blazing fast. I got speeds of over 10 megs down and close to 20 megs up, indicating that someone has taken the service offering way, way up. That’s smart, and being that’s it’s free, a very good move.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

A few months ago I reported that San Diego Airport made their WiFi free after not continuing with a pay for play supplier who at least delivered 300k to each user. The supplier is also the same who supplies the WiFi management at Panera Bakery, a national chain which uses WiFi as an amenity to keep their customers coming in who are able to fill the locations when they need a fill up.So when San Diego went free I tried it. My speeds were under 100k…..I called and complained and was told they had installed the equivalent of two T1s…That’s what I have in my house thanks to Covad and the Blogger Relations program, and I’m the only one on it. Compare that to what my wife now has in her Sacramento house, 50 megs. Okay I’m a speed freak who wants the Lamborghini Diablo affect, but whose okay with a Lexus SUV or an Infiniti G35 Coupe. That means I’ll accept 384 or higher free or even paid at an airport, which in the case of San Diego Airport was one of the big motivators for signing up for Boingo, as their service let me roam on the Wyse, then ICOA run hotspot there.My conversation with the IT lead was nothing less than a joke.First he viewed 3 megs as more than enough bandwidth for an airport the size of San Diego. WRONG. 100 people on at the same time means 30k a person (one way up or down.) Last week I again measured less than 60 K of speed, that’s dial up baby. What’s more anything that was Flash based never even could load, the pipe was so clogged and slow.Another thing he used as justification in not needing more bandwidth was the “growing number of people using data cards.” Well maybe, except in many parts of the airport the CDMA cards from Sprint only register 2.5g because of cell locations…specifically the gate areas.My view is simple. First if San Diego wants to be a great tourism and business convention location, they need to get a real handle on what the air traveler is really experiencing. Second they need to get someone who knows what kind of pipe an airport really needs. Lastly, they should look at WiFi as a profit center to help defray the costs of things that they need, instead of giving away something that no one can really use beyond a Yahoo or Google Mail account.Ironically, as I sit here and post from Sacramento Airport (another airport that dropped ICOA and went the free route) I’m getting 1.5 megs down and 512 up. Granted its Sunday, but I know I’m not the only person online….

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

Yesterday i wrote about the ridiculous approach companies like Earthlink took to bring WiFi to the communities that already have plenty of broadband.

Here’s an example of what I consider the right approach. Ramona, CA is in the deep suburbs of San Diego county. It’s a bucolic part of the county, more rural, than true suburbia and the people who live out there choose to for a very good quality of life.

Some smart technology folks banded together and started a wireless network for themselves. As time passed, demand increased to where now 400 users are on a shared 50 megabit pipe, but the service is delivering 3-4 megabits all the time. They don’t allow web servers to run, which is smart, and they seem to be growing.

It’s not WiFi. The technology they are using is very similar to what Covad is delivering now wirelessly in the Orange County, Los Angeles and Bay Area. It’s a combination of fixed point to point and point to multipoint spectrum. As the company adds more radios the coverage only increases. Once they reach a WiFi router the distribution works just like MuniWiFi. Add in some Meraki or FON access points and the community gets even more coverage in my view.

Way to go Sky Valley Networks. I need to take a drive to Ramona!