When the Sunningdale Country Club in Scarsdale, NY, welcomed the crew
of The Sopranos for a location shoot this summer, a
quiet revolution was taking place in the mobile dressing rooms outside.
For the first time, The Sopranos had created a
roving Wi-Fi hot spot for its company.
With a new device called the Junxion Box, any production company can
set up a mobile multi-user Internet connection anywhere it gets cell
phone service. The box, about the size of a shoebox cover, uses a
cellular modem card from a wireless phone carrier to create a wi-fi hot
spot that lets dozens of people connect to the Internet.
Junxion Boxes, according to The New York Times, have
also been spotted on Google’s commuter buses for employees and on
Willie Nelson’s latest tour. “The Junxion Box is good for going down
the highway,” said David Anderson, Willie Nelson’s tour manager of 31
years. Noting that Nelson is “a computer geek” who likes to surf the
web and check his email while on the road, Anderson said “it was
frustrating in the older days. It’s finally the way it should be.”
The commercial version of the Junxion Box retails for $699. So far, the
company (www.junxion.com) has about 200 customers, many of whom are
testing the product. Considered a hot prospect for local production
crews, the box is being used on the rapper 50 Cent’s upcoming movie,
Get Rich or Die Tryin’.
So far there’s been no official position on bandwidth-sharing from the
phone companies who supply the broadband service used by the Junxion
Box. Cingular said it was evaluating the box, while Verizon recently
lowered the price of its wireless service from $80 to $60 a month.