In what is proving to be yet another high-profile Metro Wi-Fi failure, MetroFi, a San Jose-based startup that raised over $15 million from Sevin Rosen and August Capital, is close to shutting down, according to WiFi NetNews and MuniWireless, two blogs that follow the MuniFi industry closely.

MetroFi is trying to sell its citywide Wi-Fi networks in Portland (Oregon), Aurora and Naperville (Illinois) and Santa Clara, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Foster City and Concord (California). MetroFi founder, Chuck Haas, says he is also exploring the sale of MetroFi itself to a third party.

MetroFi had started to offer ad-supported wireless access in many cities, except it couldn’t find any traction. I think with all the noise Google made, even that company has backed away from WiFi-access based on advertising. There were a few others that have found going really tough when it comes to MuniFi. The trials and tribulations of EarthLink are well known by now. Glenn Fleishman blames EarthLink for the current spate of industry problems. And he’s not far off the mark, though I think the sector became a victim of its overambition.

EarthLink was in many ways largely responsible for the mess that all Wi-Fi providers found themselves in last year by offering to build Philadelphia’s network back in 2005 at no cost to the city—in fact, paying the city and the local utility fees. That set the stage for nearly all the RFPs that followed where, if EarthLink were a bidder or the city was aware of the alternatives, the notion was that no city dollars would be spent, even if taxpayer money wasn’t “at risk”—that is, even if a city could save money by switching current line items in their telecom and data budget to a wireless network.

Finally, a wireless company makes a smart acquisition. Vodafone has acquired Danish wireless address book company Zyb, whose service I have often used to keep my growing array of mobile phones synchronized, for 31.5 million euros, or roughly $49 million. Zyb had raised around $4.7 million in VC funds, with Nordic Venture Partners the biggest investor. This deal is also another win for Morten Lund, who was an early investor not just in Zyb but in Skype.

Vodafone is making a lot of noise about using Zyb’s social networking abilities for its mobile platform, but this is utter rubbish, and distracts from what Zyb is really good for: backing up your address book — a crucial service these days, given how quickly people switch their phones.

Zyb is the smartest way to keep your contacts up-to-date; it’s even (in some cases) a decent option for syncing your calendars. This will help boost customer satisfaction, thanks to seamless switching between phones. I hope Vodafone keeps it free and doesn’t revert to the carrier philosophy of greed-before customer happiness.

While Zyb’s acquisition by Vodafone dovetails with my long-standing belief that the real social network is the address book on our mobile phones, as things currently stand, Zyb is not the answer to Vodafone’s prayers. The company has its issues: Zyb’s downtime, for example, is worse that my pre-January 2008 track record of going to a gym. The company recently bought social networking company, Imity, but how that works out remains to be seen. Sure, Zyb has some average sharing features that allow you to send messages and photos. But as I said, a great connected address book — nothing more, and nothing less.

P.S.: Does anyone else find something intriguing about two address books companies being snapped up by telcos/broadband providers, specifically Vodafone buying Zyb and Comcast snapping up Plaxo? If this is a trend, who is the next to go, and where? Let the speculation begin.

Qualcomm has spent 8.3 million pounds ($16.2 million) buying 40 MHz of L-band spectrum in the U.K., which the company could use for its MediaFLO mobile television or other two-way wireless data services. However, the wireless chipmaker’s overseas shopping spree might end at the borders of continental Europe.

That’s because the EU is encouraging its member countries to adopt the DVB-H standard. Lucky for Qualcomm, those cheeky Brits decided to keep the auction open to a variety of mobile standards. That gives Qualcomm a chance to keep selling pricey intellectual property licenses for its proprietary MediaFLO technology. With all the vendors choosing the open LTE standard, it has to find some way to goose those royalties.

Like me, Jawbone has gotten a little skinnier and lighter. And like me, it has a whole new wardrobe. About 50 percent lighter and smaller than the dorkier original Bluetooth version, Jawbone has the same useful noise elimination features as the predecessor. It is being co-sold with AT&T for now and will cost about $130 a pop.

After struggling for much of its early life, thanks to bad product decisions, Aliph, the maker of Jawbone, seems to have turned things around. Its noise-elimination headset has sold enough units for Plantronics to label them as a competitor in a recent conference call with Wall Street analysts. The company has raised VC funding from Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures.

I asked founder Hosein Rahman if he is doing a music headphone using his technology, considering how hot the music phones have become. No plans, he said, because of some issues with the A2DP technology. Jawbone 2.0 works nicely with the iPhone and Blackberry, two devices I tried it with, and there’s minimal set-up required. If you have one of those two, it might be worth taking a look. But before you do that, read Walt Mossberg’s big review over on AllthingsD.

Google continues to rev up its plans for Android, spending liberally on developers, but the other mobile Linux platform effort, LiMo, isn’t keeping quiet and is aggressively adding bulk to what is an unenviable line-up. Today, the foundation got eight new members, most notably carriers Verizon Wireless and SK Telecom, chip maker Infineon and Mozilla. No one should take LiMo lightly, despite the fact that it’s a crazy consortium of many vested parties. We have been following them closely for a while now. Here are some links from the recent past. #1, #2, and #3.

Nvidia has plans for a mobile chipset that will change the look and functionality of smartphones when it hits in mid-to-late 2009. While many of the big chip vendors are placing bets on the concept of a mobile Internet device that’s larger than a smartphone, but smaller than a laptop, Nvidia’s APX 2500 chips could enable devices that are so sexy, they might render the need for an MID obsolete.

However, I’m told the company will announce an expansion of the APX chips into MIDs soon, so I could be wrong on that last point. Nvidia launched the chips that will make a smartphone function like a PC (or an iPhone) at the Mobile World Congress in February, and I can’t believe I missed it.

This is Nvidia’s first move into making the “brains” of a mobile device, and it’s using its graphics expertise to turn the devices containing the chips into portable media players that can play 10 hours of HD video (on an external screen) and 100 hours of MP3s on a single charge. All while the 750 MHz processor consumes less than a watt of power.

In a demo at Nvidia headquarters two weeks ago, I saw a device slightly larger than an iPhone power an HD rendering of a Pixar short called “For the Birds” on a big-screen TV. It was connected via an HDMI cable and it looked good at 720p. I get that some people don’t mind watching movies or TV on their cell phone or iPod screens, but if I’m able to download that content and plug it into a TV, that’s an entirely new ballgame for travel and sharing. I want that device.

The demo I saw was powered by Nvidia’s chipset running on Windows Mobile, creating a chip/OS combo that mimics some of the visual pizazz of the iPhone, but on a more business-friendly operating system. Sure, as far as mobile operating systems go, Windows Mobile isn’t exactly tearing it up, but the integration of business and pleasure could make the current angst of choosing between a BlackBerry or an iPhone a thing of the past.

The chipset will first appear at the end of this year in personal navigation devices and personal media players, with a smartphone due out in the middle of 2009. Unfortunately, the APX 2500 contains an HSDPA RF chip, so it won’t be deployed on my network, but TMobile subscribers should keep their eyes open. Like the iPhone, the APX is modem agnostic, which means it’s not tied to any particular cellular network. There’s plenty of room for Nvidia to stumble, since it doesn’t have the experience designing for the mobile space, but I’m hoping it can succeed right about the time my current mobile contract is up.

Nimbuzz, a little-known mobile VoIP company out of the Netherlands, has released a mobile client that not only allows users to conduct VoIP calls, but to engage in IM conversations and share media such as photos, music and video. Nimbuzz, which claims to have received an undisclosed amount of funding from Skype’s original investors, Mangrove Capital Partners, seeks to utilize cellular data networks and provide users with an inclusive application for mobile IM and SMS communication.

With this service, Nimbuzz enters a market already dominated by established mobile VoIP clients Fring and TruPhone. Fring, like Nimbuzz, incorporates IM capability with multiple IM networks and VoIP calls. TruPhone allows you to make VoIP calls to TruPhone users and traditional phones, without the IM features of Fring and Nimbuzz. Back in January of 2007, we covered Nimbuzz and criticized the service for offering cumbersome (although cheap) VoIP-on-mobile minutes. With the addition of the desktop clients, social widgets and IM, however, Nimbuzz is a much more features-packed option.

To load Nimbuzz, download their client from their mobile web site, create an account and sign in. Signing in to additional networks such as Google or Yahoo is as easy as entering your username and password for those respective services.

Nimbuzz is very responsive and easy to use, featuring a great native Symbian user interface. A VoIP call originating from my Facebook page to Nimbuzz over a Wi-Fi connection sounded good — just as good as any call over the GSM network. And the laundry list of IM networks supported by Nimbuzz includes Skype, Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook and Jabber.

Nimbuzz has a Java version of their mobile client to accompany the newly released Symbian version as well, and an iPhone version is in the works. Outside of their mobile offerings, the company has a Windows desktop application for conferring with your Nimbuzz contacts and social widgets that can be embedded onto your Facebook, Orkut and MySpace pages. By clicking on your Numbuzz widget, friends can call/chat you for free, leave you a voice message, send you a text message, and share photos, music, and videos with you. One word of caution, however: If you do elect to use Nimbuzz, you’ll want to have an unlimited data plan on your mobile device.

For the past few days, I’ve been buried under a flurry of press releases coming out of O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference, currently under way just south of San Francisco. Many of the ideas/apps/startups are boring, a few are interesting, and a couple are, well, pretty good. I’ll write about them after I’ve had a chance to use them.

Meanwhile, one app that looks particularly interesting is the iPhone Plazer, from London-based social mapping startup Plazes, a company whose products I occasionally use. The app, which will be downloadable from the iPhone, will take coordinates from the “location library” and automatically “plaze” you, which is just a company-branded way of saying that it will geo-tag your location via the mobile device. So far, Plazer software has been available only on PCs and Mac.

Founder Felix Peterson has promised an early preview of the app once the iPhone opens up. I will update the post later; in the meantime, check out the screenshots.

Anyone questioning the need for more fiber or wireless backhaul, or even 4G wireless broadband, need only look at a recent survey from IDC that finds that a constant connection is becoming the expected norm for almost a fifth of the world’s population. Sure, the study was funded by Nortel Networks, a telecommunications gear maker, but I don’t doubt the general theme of hyperconnectivity at all.

Some findings include:

• 16 percent of the global workforce is hyperconnected today, a number that will grow to 40 percent in five years.
• 64 percent of the workforce in Latin America is either hyperconnected or increasingly connected, compared to 59 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, 50 percent in Europe, and 44 percent in North America
• Hyperconnectivity varies by industry, from 9 percent in health care to 25 percent in high tech and 21 percent in finance industries

Nortel CTO John Roese says improved capacity at the core of the Internet and an upgrade to 4G wireless will take care of the infrastructure requirements of hyperconencted individuals, but calls for software companies and enterprises to rethink enterprise software.

He envisions communications-from voice to social networking-built into always-on applications for the enterprise. While many companies may not view social networking or virtual worlds as integral to their corporate IT strategy, he points out that the younger generation of workers will demand this from employers.

As noted earlier, wireless industry experts believe that mobile backhaul networks represent a big opportunity, mostly because of the proliferation of 3G and 4G networks and the easy availablity of iPhone-type devices is going to boost mobile data and video use.

Infonetics Research has issued a report that forecasts 4.4 billion mobile subscribers worldwide by 2011, and estimates that their needs will push the demand for wireless backhaul equipment to over $10 billion by that year. Infonetics predicts that the big spending is going to happen on the IP/Ethernet portion of worldwide mobile backhaul equipment with triple-digit growth rates predicted from 2007 to 2011. No surprise: T-Mobile, Swisscom Mobile and Telecom Italia are all building IP/Ethernet based backhaul networks. Ironically, given the amount of money being spent on this sector there isn’t much startup activity in this space.

Love it or hate it, one has to admit that Apple’s iPhone has been quite a game changer forcing the wireless industry to get off its duff and start innovating. I think a lot of people forget that iPhone is not just a pretty face and sleek curves. Instead it is a device that is changing our behavior and the expectations we have of mobile devices. Most observations about iPhone have been personal and anecdotal.

Today, however, I got a chance to skim through a report put together by San Mateo, Calif.-based mobile advertising startup AdMob, about iPhone user behavior — both in the United States and worldwide — that provides metrics to match some of the theories around iPhone. Clearly, these numbers are not an absolute reflection of iPhone usage, but they do seem to indicative of broader iPhone trends. (Full report embedded below the fold.)

Today, telco gear maker Dilithium Networks launched a software product for carriers, content publishers and content delivery networks that can handle all of the transcoding necessary to take content formatted for one screen and move it to another in real time. The Dilithium Content Adapter is the first software product from the seven-year-old telecommunications gear maker. The company has focused on 3G video since its inception, and Dilithium says the product is already deployed with some operators and CDNs.

But Dilthium’s not alone in its focus on delivering faster video to mobile devices. In a few months, Limelight Networks will launch a mobile CDN product for its customers, and Dave Hatfield, an SVP of marketing sales at Limelight, says customers are testing such a product now. While it’s not a huge focus at Limelight right now, he says phones like the iPhone have changed the potential size of the market by making it easier for consumers to get mobile video — and that could spur market growth.

After the launch of of the iPhone, which opened the Internet to mobile users in ways that were previously cost prohibitive or downright impossible, mobile video may be inching closer to reality. I’m even inclined to shed my doubts about mobile video (although not mobile TV). As such, operators may have to worry about delivering everything from video ringtones to YouTube content on devices. And that could mean a new market for content delivery networks.

Delivering images and video over the Internet to a PC via a CDN is an established fact of doing business for content publishers, but adding mobile screens to the mix have a few gear and service providers seeing green. Such vendors are trying to capitalize on three opportunities in the mobile infrastructure to sell products.

First is some sort of transcoding service, through which content formatted for TVs or PCs is encoded and decoded in real time, or encoded in a variety of formats and stored for delivery to the appropriate device. The second is a sizing service that fits the content to the mobile screen on one of more than 5,000 different mobile devices out there. Finally, the third is any sort of tweak that can reduce the amount of space and time to deliver mobile video on a wireless network.

There are skeptics. Barrett Lyon, CTO of BitGravity, a P2P CDN, scoffs at the notion that any sort of specialized services need to be offered for delivering content to a mobile phone. He points out that CDNs are already delivering ringtones and other content to mobile devices. He may be right, which means Limelight may not find a huge market for its services.

However, I tend to believe that real-time transcoding and other ways of rendering content delivery across multiple devices seamlessly will propel sales of gear or software in the years ahead. Especially if mobile Interent devices take off like chip makers hope.

What used to be the purview of corporate and business development departments is now being replaced by venture capital. A fund to foster Facebook apps, the iFund to jump start the iPhone app revolution or the rumored $150 million fund to give Blackberry apps a boost - the increasing number of platform funds doesn’t ensure success. Remember the Java Fund, or the RSS Fund.

The news of the Blackberry Fund was first reported by Venturebeat, but that post has been taken down, so I am not sure if this is even happening or not. If it is indeed true, then it is clear that iPhone has delivered a swift kick in the pants to the Canadian company, and getting it to innovate faster. I don’t think an investment vehicle is the answer. Many developers I have talked to often complain about the challenges of working with Research In Motion (RIM.)

If Team Blackberry is looking to encourage development for their platform, then they should make it easier for folks to develop for their platform. One hair ball that comes with this so called Blackberry Fund: can a company that takes an investment from Research In Motion develop apps for iPhone or Google’s Android?

Simon Brocklehurst does a great job of deconstructing the Blackberry & iFunds, and I encourage you to read his analysis. “All the opportunities, though, probably need Apple and RIM to deliver significant growth in device sales, from where they are now,” he writes, in what is clearly an understatement. Brocklehurst points out that there is a whole lot of other platforms, and the developer are going to gravitate towards the largest market opportunities.

In comparison to the Blackberry Fund and the iFund, I like the approach taken by Google to foster an apps ecosystem for its Android platform. Instead of taking an equity in exchange of funding, Google is basically giving prize monies to winners of a developer contest. Fifty round one winners get $25,000 and go on to the next level. According to a Google Android blog post, the name of the winners are going to be announced shortly. Of course, I have been talking to other Android developers and will write about them some time soon.

My buddy Russell Beattie has sold his labor of love, Mowser, to dotMobi a few weeks after he announced that he was done with it. James Pearce explains why dotMobi, a consortium backed by leading mobile operators, network and device manufacturers, and Internet content providers bought Mowser’s assets. Russ and Mike Rowehl join Dublin-based dotMobi. “While we didn’t get rich on the deal by any stretch, I’ve been able to pay off a bunch of debts,” Russ writes. I think his adventure with Mowser makes him the real deal in my books.

There are enough signs that Apple’s iPhone, the fast-growing mobile device from the Cupertino-based consumer electronics and computing giant, will give the still-emerging business of mobile video a turbo boost. Here’s why:

Earlier it was reported that some NBC television shows could be streamed directly to iPhone via the browser. In addition, Orb, an Emeryville, Calif.-based startup announced that it had figured out how to stream live video to iPhone and iTouch, on the unlocked devices, often referred to as “jail broken.” (Watch video). But the real boost to Internet video on the iPhone will come later this year, when Move Networks, an American Fork, Utah-based company, will release an iPhone version of its player.

Move founder and CEO John Edwards (no, not that one) stopped by in our office yesterday to meet with Liz and me and give us an update on the state of his company. He coincidentally became the first CEO to have Crash, the GigaPuppy, sit in on the meeting. Even though I was obsessed with why he raised $46 million, towards the end of the conversation, I asked him about his iPhone plans. He said Move is working on the player, but it is still early days — though he did assure us that it would be made available around the time Apple opens up the iPhone sometime later this summer.

Move’s move could have a major impact on the mobile video business. Why? Move’s video technology is used by most major networks to stream shows from their web sites -– ABC, Fox, ESPN and CBS are all Move clients. So essentially what it means is, you could go to, say, the ABC web site and watch an ad-supported episode of Lost by streaming it to the iPhone.

Move’s player can adjust the quality of the video according to the bandwidth available to the client machine. With a 3G iPhone rumored to be launching in June, Move is smart to wait out the release of its client. Even its technology is not going to be able to overcome the lousy experience of watching streamed video over an EDGE network. (Yeah, I tried watching 30 Rock on my iPhone and it sucked.)

Easy access to popular TV content that can be played back over the air without paying for it will prompt a lot of people to give it a shot. And that could spark interest in mobile video, which has been a slow starter in the U.S. market, to put it mildly. Even with the availability of Verizon VCast, Mobi TV and now AT&T’s Media FLO network, a mere 4.5 percent of U.S. subscribers have watched mobile TV, according to research firm M:Metrics. In comparison, a M:Metrics survey shows that nearly 31 percent of iPhone users have watched video on their device, while 21 percent have watched on-demand video or TV programming on their device.
I suspect there is a correlation between the screen size and video watching habits. Using an example of one — in addition to my iPhone, I like watching side loaded video content like Digg Nation on LG Vu and Nokia N95 all the time, mostly because they have screens that don’t make me squint.

One of the reasons people have a lackadaisical attitude towards mobile video is because they don’t want to pay the $10-to-$15 monthly subscription fee. In other words, ad-supported video is the way forward. That is why I think Move’s iPhone-compatible player could do the trick.

Mobilkom austria recently made the fastest data call with a mobile device using the pioneering Internet High Speed Packet Access (I-HSPA) technology from Nokia Siemens Networks. Stelera Wireless, a small U.S. operator, launched data services in rural Texas using this technology as well.

During the trial, the data transmission downlink speed reached 10.1 Mbps. I-HSPA will be capable of data transmission rates over 10.1 Mbps, NSN claims. The I-HSPA functionality is designed for heavy data and rich multimedia usage over the wireless network. I-HSPA connects 3G base stations directly to the Internet, enables cost-efficient scaling of the network, works with all HSPA devices and improves end user experience by reducing latency. I-HSPA flat network architecture also enables smooth migration to LTE.