The battle over Cisco vs. Apple over the iPhone name is finally over (for now). The deadline for the law suit ended today with an official statement that both parties have reached an agreement. Within the terms of agreement, both companies will have the right to use the name.

Here is the Press Release from Cisco’s website:

Cisco® and Apple today announced that they have resolved their dispute involving the “iPhone” trademark. Under the agreement, both companies are free to use the “iPhone” trademark on their products throughout the world. Both companies acknowledge the trademark ownership rights that have been granted, and each side will dismiss any pending actions regarding the trademark. In addition, Cisco and Apple will explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications. Other terms of the agreement are confidential.

It seems like a vague statement without any financial settlement being discussed. It is a good assumption to think that Cisco has negotiated an agreement to get royalties of some sort from all proceeds of the Apple’s iPhone sales. However, it is hard to determine without further confirmation. Not sure what “Cisco and Apple will explore opportunities for interoperability” means… does that mean that we’ll see some sort of Cisco Apple collaboration or will the Apple iPhone have Cisco’s VoIP technology in the future?

It looks like eco friendly WiFi will soon become a reality - in Europe. Romanian free hotspot provider cfree wireless is proposing a certification standard that determines how eco friendly a hotspot provider is. It is currently free for anyone to join as long as several requirements are met:

1) All wireless equipment complies with RoHS (2002/95/EC) and WEEE (2002/96/EC) EU directives

2) There are no signal boosters over the default manufacturer settings

3) The hotspots will not interfere with the 2.4Ghz wave spectrum

Cert drafts and official requirements will soon be posted on their site.

Site [cfree.ro]

Whisher gives you the chance to be part of a community offering free WiFi services. Launched last month at Demo 2007, its main competitor is FON, and in fact, founder Ferran Moreno was part of FON until he left just before the official launch.

Where FON offers you the chance to share your WiFi with their own tweaked up router (Fonera), Whisher gives you the ability to use your current WiFi connection/ router by just installing their software application. With the Whisher software, you will have full control over your settings and it’ll even leave your current router settings alone. WiFi owners will have the ability to manage and see who is connected at any time with the ability to switch to a private mode (basically disabling the system) and to create a closed group of communities e.g. groups relating to friends and family. While on the same network, you chat locally or easily mark the files you want to share and initiate peer to peer transfers without any size limits.

I am personally not a big fan of sharing my WiFi network (that I pay monthly for) and I can’t see how it would market itself outside of residential areas. A large proportion of common public places have already been catered for by hotel and restaurant hotspots e.g. Starbucks, McDonalds etc. Yes some of them use T-mobile, AT&T or other networks and charge for them but I can’t see where Whisher can target it in cities or public establishments around these areas and whether those around them would even bother. My point is that most public places who would want to offer WiFi, would probably want to profit from it as well — therefore jumping on the established T-mobile and other big networks that may offer you a piece of the revenue. I can’t see many public places offering free WiFi (not yet anyway and not without a catch). It may be different in Europe or Asia and I can’t speak for them there although it would be interesting to see what the percentage of residential vs. public establishments have signed up for this.

I noticed one thing when I was browsing their site, security was not mentioned (or mentioned very obscurely). I do strongly suggest that they talk more about it as it does factor into how many will sign up for it. With security fraud and identity theft being a commonplace nowadays, it would comfort people to know that there is some sort of security mechanism in place (and how good it is).

The big question is … how reliable would the WiFi network be? I am a firm believer of “you get what you pay for”, and since you’ll be getting WiFi for free, the WiFi owner is in no obligation to give you support, nor a stable and secure network. With that, it would probably cut most of the business users out of the equation. Bandwidth or data quality may be an issue e.g. in a case where I would want to use VoIP while the owner or some other person using the network is currently downloading multiple files resulting in a poor connection.

As of date, there are 80 users within the USA, 10 in the United Kingdom and more worldwide. Although it does not take my fancy, it may still be useful for some. Other alternatives include Google Wifi, T-Mobile, AT&T and Boingo.

Product Page [Whisher]

Tired with mobile ad revenue to Google and Yahoo!, seven global cell phone operators have joined forces to create their own mobile search engine. The seven operators are Cingular, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and Vodafone.

Given the operators’ tendencies to create “walled garden” approaches to content, there’s doubt as to whether the operator consortium can pull off a victory. With seven different businesses participating in this project, it is unclear if they’ll develop one engine that is white-labeled to each brand or create an advertising clearinghouse that search services could use to access subscribers.

It remains to be seen how this would succeed as they will be looking to succeed where others have failed, like Microsoft. Some critics have questioned the necessity, as most phone and hand held devices have the ability to search directly from Google or Yahoo! pages. Google as the undisputed leader in the Internet search, has since announced plans to include ad links to all mobile searches, claiming to make their services profitable by 2008.

The Apple iPhone has some decent competition from LG. Announcements a few months ago emerged of an LG cell phone that would give the iPhone a run for it’s money. Originally called the KE850, LG has partnered with Prada to package the product a little more stylish.

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