San Jose Mercury News reports Mountain View City Council last night approved a new five-year deal with Google that will see the company revamp its aging free WiFi network in the city:
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According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Google is now in the middle of a new project that will see the company develop wireless networks in emerging countries including sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Google plans on teaming up with local companies to develop the wireless networks, which are said to use airwaves normally reserved for TV, but will first have to get government approvals:
Some of those efforts revolve around using certain airwaves reserved for TV broadcasts to create wireless networks, but only if government regulators allowed it, these people said. Google has long been involved in public trials to prove the technology—which operates at lower frequencies than some cell networks, allowing signals to be more easily transmitted through buildings and other obstacles and across longer distances—can work. And it has begun talking to regulators in countries such as South Africa and Kenya about changing current rules to allow such networks to be built en masse.
The report mentions that Google is also “building an ecosystem of new microprocessors and low-cost smartphones powered by its Android mobile operating system to connect to the wireless networks,” although it didn’t offer up any other specific information on the devices.
It also points out a Google X project that takes advantage of “special balloons or blimps, known as high-altitude platforms, to transmit signals to an area of hundreds of square miles,” but it’s unclear whether or not the two projects are connected.
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Earlier this week we told you that the Defense Department was nearing a decision on approving the three major mobile platforms through new security approvals that would allow widespread use of devices by government agencies and the DoD networks. While the department is yet to grant approval to Apple’s iOS 6 for for nonclassified communications by military agencies, today the Wall Street Journal provides an update noting that both Samsung’s Knox security software and BlackBerry 10 have now received the approvals ahead of Apple:
RIM announced late Thursday that the Department of Defense approved smartphones and tablets running on BlackBerry 10, the company’s new operating system, for use throughout DOD networks…Samsung devices outfitted with Knox, the company’s new security software offering, also received Pentagon approval Thursday, according to a DOD spokesman. Apple’s approval is still expected in the “next few weeks,” according to the spokesman.
As of February, BlackBerry made up the majority of the 600,000 devices on the DoD’s networks. Currently the networks consist of around 470,000 BlackBerrys, 41,000 Apple products, and 8,700 Android devices, although that could quickly change thanks to the new security approvals allowing more government agencies to adopt Samsung and Apple devices.
The iPhone and iPad have already been cleared for use by a number of US government agencies, and in February the US Defense Department confirmed plans to open its networks to 100,000 new devices from Apple and Google by February of next year. Today, The Wall Street Journal reports the DoD is about to grant two more important security approvals that could increase the number of agencies allowed to deploy iPhone, iPads, and Samsung Galaxy devices:
The Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA, the agency that sanctions commercial technology for Pentagon use, is set to rule that Samsung’s Galaxy line of smartphones, preloaded with Samsung’s Knox security software, conforms with the Pentagon’s so-called Security Technology Implementation Guide, according to people familiar with the approval process. That would allow it to be used by some Pentagon agencies for things like sending and receiving internal emails, according to these people.
Separately, DISA is expected to rule that Apple’s latest operating system, iOS 6, conforms to a different security-requirement guide, these people said. That would allow iPhones and iPads to be used by military agencies for nonclassified communications, like email and Web browsing.
The report from WSJ explained Samsung has been steadily increasing its attempt to break into corporate and government markets by hiring a new team of security experts and former RIM employees to reach out to Western governments and corporations:
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