Boingo Open Source Initiative Generates Widespread Industry Support; Company Releases Source Code for Adding Wi-Fi Connectivity to Mobile Devices to Rave Reviews from a Wide Range of Wi-Fi Ecosystem Participants

Business Wire, May 17, 2006

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- Boingo Wireless, the world's leading wholesale Wi-Fi aggregator, today announced the launch of its new open source Wi-Fi toolkit, which is garnering support from all levels of the Wi-Fi industry -- from chipset manufacturers to service providers.

The open source Boingo(R) Embedded Wi-Fi Toolkit is publicly available to developers who can port it to any device operating system with no license fees, as long as improvements to the core toolkit are available to the open source community. (See separate press release.) It is also available under a commercial license that eliminates the need to republish open source changes.

The following companies have expressed their support for Boingo's announcement:

Accton

"Boingo's embedded architecture toolkit is very powerful and versatile and enables Accton to easily customize our Wi-Fi solutions for different brands and Wi-Fi service operators, providing quick time to market," said Dr. Ken Lu, Accton's Senior Executive.

BridgePort Networks

"Providing seamless public hot spot authentication between the mobile and Wi-Fi worlds is a key element to the success of fixed-mobile convergence applications," said Sanjay Jhawar, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, BridgePort Networks. "By leveraging Boingo's Embedded Wi-Fi Toolkit, BridgePort Networks' MobileVoIP applications will be more rapidly deployed by service providers and embedded within new dual-mode devices, fostering greater adoption of FMC in mobile and IMS networks."

Broadcom

"Boingo's Wi-Fi Toolkit allows consumers to quickly and easily connect a Wi-Fi phone to a hot spot by eliminating the sign-on and payment step for hot spot connectivity," said Monika Gupta, Product Marketing Manager, Broadcom's Consumer VoIP Line of Business. "The open source nature of Boingo's toolkit allows Broadcom a great deal of flexibility in the development process, which will ultimately result in a better end product that is easy for consumers to use."

Devicescape

"Boingo's open source initiative is another step forward in making it more efficient to create digital multimedia devices that deliver voice and video services over Wi-Fi," said Glenn Flinchbaugh, Vice President of Marketing for Devicescape. "This contribution combined with Devicescape's recent Advanced Datapath Driver contribution to the Linux 2.6 kernel will continue to drive the proliferation of service-enabled devices that share entertainment and information wirelessly."

E28

"Using the open source license for porting the code to our smartphones allows us to enhance the feature set of our phones without adding incremental costs that we have to pass through to carrier customers," said Michael Chu, Vice President of Marketing and Chief Software Architect of E28 Limited, a pioneer in Linux-based smartphones.

GANAG

"Wireless VoIP is an exciting opportunity for our European hotels because it provides a valuable guest amenity that allows guests to cut their expensive long-distance cellular costs," said Achim Moehrlein, Chief Executive Officer of GANAG (GlobalAirNet AG, Munich, Germany), one of the leading WISPs in the hotel field. "We see great potential also for our other location partners (e.g., airports or hospitals), and customers in this technology and will work with Boingo to make it happen."

iBAHN

"Wireless VoIP provides a great complement to cell phones for business travelers staying at a hotel, who often complain that the cell signal is too weak inside their rooms," said Brett Molen, Chief Technology Officer of iBAHN. "iBAHN's unique network for high-end hotels facilitates the ability to prioritize voice traffic. We are collaborating with Boingo to enable the iBAHN network and Boingo-enabled handsets to work together to continue to improve the quality of the guest experience. As these handsets proliferate, the hotel operator can demonstrate increased value of the network and potentially improve guest satisfaction by supporting alternative communications technologies in the hotel."

Kineto

"The availability of Boingo's device software via open source licensing helps extend UMA service delivery to hot spots worldwide," said Ken Kolderup, Vice President of Marketing for Kineto. "Mobile operators deploying UMA to offer subscribers high-performance, low-cost voice, data and IMS services in homes and offices can now increase their opportunity by embracing the rapidly growing global market for public WLANs."

Kyocera Wireless Corp.

"Our BREW-based dual-mode prototype phone uses Boingo's toolkit to enable global Wi-Fi roaming. It makes for a very powerful demonstration to carrier customers looking for a flexible solution for capitalizing on Wi-Fi usage in a handset," said Tom Maguire, Vice President of Global Marketing at Kyocera Wireless Corp.

Microsoft

"Boingo's new Wi-Fi Toolkit can help developers enhance UMA and IMS applications on Windows Mobile-powered devices to easily find and connect to Boingo's worldwide network of hot spots," said Jonas Hasselberg, Group Product Manager in the Mobile and Embedded Devices Group at Microsoft. "Windows Mobile offers a consistent and flexible development platform and familiar tools to help developers take advantage of opportunities such as this to offer more options for an increasingly mobile workforce."