Looking Back on 2007

Posted on December 26, 2007

2007 has been a remarkable year for Devicescape. Although we slyly turned on the service in December ’06, we were in stealth mode until our announcement at DEMO in February. Back then, we supported only three networks: T-Mobile (since there’s a Starbuck$ across the road serving as our test environment), FON (because we’re FON fans), and Google Mountain View (because resistance is futile they’re a useful model for muni installations). Over the course of 2007 we started adding networks, initially by visiting locations ourselves, but later by asking our members to report. Now, we have close to 1000 different networks in our system, and it’s growing rapidly. We have most of the big commercial networks, of course, but the great thing about Devicescape is being able to provide access where our members need it. It’s really exciting for us to see all the usage at local and community networks, especially universities, throughout the world. Similar to our network growth, we’ve also seen a widening of device support. The distribution on Nokia phones has been cool, swelling our membership along with surprising adoption on the iPhone and iPod Touch (big thanks to Null River for their installer application). It’s somewhat ironic…