Google plans to spend more than $1 Billion on a fleet of satellites to bring internet access to unwired parts of the globe, according to the Wall Street Journal. The project will use small, high-capacity low-Earth orbit satellites that sit closer to the ground than traditional geostationary satellites, reducing lag times.

Internet services by satellite are widely available today from operators such as Astra and Eutelsat, operating in geostationary orbits at approximately 36,000 km altitude. At a rather lower level, the Iridium satellite network offers a global network from about 800km height, and is widely used for satellite phones and maritime services. Google is reported to be looking at orbits of only 160 km high, with the potential to remove any notable lag for the connection.

This project can be seen from several angles. At one level it is an altruistic effort to connect the digitally disenfranchised peoples of the globe, while other might describe it as a bid for first-mover advantage for the next wave of internet growth.

If you do any marine business at all, you realize one modern problem of yacht owners is how to stay connected with the internet. The tragic disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH-370 underlined for the public that there are still places on the high seas that are unreachable by what we think is our ubiquitous communications technology.

And that’s the wave that brings in Zinwave Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) technology. Their in-building wireless DAS also provides ubiquitous wireless coverage for super yachts, commercial vessels and cruise liners—and is already deployed by a number of ship building yards in the UK and Europe.

The irony is that their “in-building” wireless designed to solve connectivity issues inside the four walls of buildings is now on the horizon for many lovers of the open, fresh air of the high seas. Read more...

The Wifi Alliance plans to add Near Field Communication (NFC) to its Certified Protected Setup program, making connection setup as easy as tapping 2 devices together.

Such "tap-to-connect" capability will allow the connection of devices to the internet or networks by simply tapping a router. Users can set both traditional networks with an access point and Wifi Direct groups.

The first devices supporting the NFC option include the Broadcom Dual-Band 802.11ac access point, the Marvell Avastar 88W8787, the Mediatek NFConnected AP and NFConnected STA, the Qualcomm Dual-Band XSPAN 2-stream 802.11n WLAN adapter and the Nexus 10 tablet.

According to IDC the mature traditional enterprise WLAN market represents an opportunity in cloud-managed wifi hardware and software, a market set to grow from $653 million in 2014 to $2.5 billion in 2018.

"Enterprises are seeing the big picture and definitely considering cloud-managed wifi for their remote sites when upgrading their networks," the analyst says. "These upgraded network architectures can accommodate unique needs around bring your own device (BYOD), scalability, application visibility and management."

Driving cloud-managed wifi growth are increased midmarket and distributed enterprise adoption in verticals including retail and K-12 education. Cloud-managed wifi is attractive from a mainenance perspective (it allows for automated provisioning and configuration) and belies the "everything as a service" enterprise IT trend.