Good Day, BWIA - Tuesday

It's Tuesday, Nobember 20, 2007, and welcome back to Good Day, BWIA, a light compendium of news, items of interest, irreverent commentary, and occasional light analysis relating to Broadband Wireless Internet Access (including WiMAX, public access Wi-Fi, etc.).

Verizon (Wireless), AT&T, Sprint, Clearwire, Wireless ISPs, and (most shamefully), Western US wireline telephony incumbent Qwest apparent no-shows in Pinal County, Arizona   A story in yesterday's Arizona Republic - Pinal officials want countywide Wi-Fi illustrates perfectly why Metropolitan Wi-Fi systems are continuing to be deployed despite the high-profile "failure" of much larger networks in "metropolis" cities, most recently related to EarthLink's decision not to invest further in deploying Metropolitan Wi-Fi networks. 1) To participate in the new Broadband Internet economy, people need access to Broadband Internet Access; 2) Citizens and business (apparently) cannot get it at the moment from the "usual suspects" named above*, 3) government officials are ready, willing, and able to do something about the lack of (ubiquitously) available and affordable Broadband Internet Access in their area; 3) They're apparently untroubled about the philosophical divide about whether commercial entities should be left to provide, or not, such services, 4) What they can deploy - immediately, economically are Metropolitan Wi-Fi systems that make use of license-exempt spectrum. While it would be great to have commercial entities provide state-of-the-art (Mobile WiMAX) systems using licensed spectrum by commercial entities at no cost to governments... such entities are, apparently no-shows. Governments such as Pinal County don't undertake such projects without considerable frustration and consideration that, essentially, they have no choice. I wrote about just such frustration experienced by government officials in Allegany County, Maryland that gave rise to a carrier-grade county-wide mostly-wireless telecommunications network called AllCoNet2 which is still, in my experience, one of the very best examples that public-access telecommunications networks are no longer the exclusive domain of... nor perhaps should be... of commercial entities. (Note that I'm no longer associated with CONXX, Inc. as stated in this story.) My thanks to MuniWireless.com for the pointer to this story, and reading their take on it. *I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that Yes, Broadband Internet Access via satellite is an option almost everywhere in the continental USA, especially with the emergence of WildBlue (which I hope to try for myself one of these days) and much-improved services from Hughes, but satellite "has issues" including high latency, no tolerance for anything resembling peer-to-peer, low transfer limits, etc.

Today's Clearwire Modem Weather Report - Hollywood Hill, Woodinville, Washington - Solid 4 Bars; no precipitation, but we're still pretty damp and chilly. I note for the first time in a week or so now that we have some real sunlight, that most of the deciduous foliage has dropped from the RF path.

Fiber optic network [and broadband wireless] will link rural hospitals  Interesting story from rural Florida relating to the FCC's telehealth initiative (PDF link), with this intriguing mention - The communication network will be extended to community health centers and clinics through broadband wireless technology... No further details about the wireless angle in this story, but it's easy to extrapolate. You can justify running fiber to a regional hospital as part of such an initiative, but how do you finish the job of extending that connectivity to all the facilities in a healthcare ecosystem, like all the various clinics and offices (private and otherwise) in an extended healthcare campus? Answer - use the hospital as a communications hub for a Broadband Wireless Internet Access network using secure, very high-bandwidth wireless systems such as those from BridgeWave Communications (RF) and fSONA Systems (free space optical) to extend the fiber capabilities.

FCC's push about to turn to shove regarding Sprint Nextel 800 MHz interference with public safety systems Wireless Week story that while not directly relating to Broadband Wireless Internet Access, is telling about how full Sprint Nextel's corporate hands are. That, trying to migrate legacy Nextel 800 MHz users to 1.9 GHz CDMA new Push-To-Talk systems, an exodus of customers, and irritated, vocal stockholders are some of the reasons I'm extremely skeptical that Sprint Nextel will willing or able to deploy Mobile WiMAX networks beyond initial or demonstration systems. My prediction for the new Sprint Nextel CEO (if it isn't Craig McCaw) is that they will decide to pull a Wag The Dog stunt like, say, merging with Alltel. It worked for Nextel before... for a few years, anyway.

Industry panel writes of WiMax, says HSPA is now broadband status quo   I was going to say something a bit snarky about this self-serving observation, but decided that I really couldn't improve on the comedic cluelessness documented in this CommsDay story - judge for yourself: A panel of executives from a diverse group of companies including Microsoft, Telstra, Ericsson and Qualcomm has cast doubt on market prospects for WiMax, with one boldly predicting that the HSPA “train” has “already left the station.” Speaking at the end of the GSM Association’s Asia Mobile Congress in Macau last week, the consensus was that the HSPA ecosystem, as it is being termed, has an unstoppable momentum. My thanks to Dewayne Hendricks for posting this gem to his mailing list.

One Laptop Per Child Give One Get One campaign - 7 days to go, expires on November 26. Mine's on order; I can't wait to start using what I consider to be the most sophisticated and elegantly-designed portable computing system I've ever seen (and yes, that includes my MacBook Pro and the iPhone / iPod Touch).

By Steve Stroh

Fine Print / Boilerplate / Acknowledgements / Credits / FAQs
(Last updated 2007-11-06)

This article is Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).

Comments

[David]

Steve,
Thanks for the article again, I enjoyed it.

I have a request:

I read my subscribed blogs from an aggregator as most people do these days. Aggregators (my choice is usually Google Reader or a widget for Windows live) only show the headlines so you can pick the topics you want to drill down on.

Your headline is always like the one above: "Good Day, BWIA - Tuesday". Unfortunately this doesn't tell me anything about the topic. The salutation is nice but since I already know what day it is I probably wont drill down. Nothing has caught my interest.

Can you please put some of the topics in the headline. It will help me and your readers know what presents are under the wrapping paper. It will likely boost your score, because you regularly have very worthy topics.

Thanks for the news,