Good Day, BWIA - BWIA Predictions / Trends For 2008 (Part 3)

Good Day, BWIA is 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.).

Just a few snippets of semi-significant BWIA-related news today, but again, to do the predictions / trends, it's a short-shrift day for the news:

• Three Northern-most counties in New Hampshire to build a Broadband Wireless Internet Access network
• Wi-Fi access on Washington State Ferries completed on heavily-traveled routes
• "Colonel Dave" Hughes retires from providing Broadband Wireless Internet Access
• This slipped by me when it happened in November, but the Junxion Box, which I've written of before, has been updated (PDF link)

2007: Not a Typical Year for Wireless, by the ever-entertaining Andrew Seybold. Key quote - To my thinking, the saddest thing for wireless in 2007 was that the Internet community did not come any closer to understanding the bandwidth differences between the wired Internet and wireless high-speed networks. Their vision is still for the Internet as we know it to become wirelessly enabled. I believe that the wireless Internet should be a different type of Internet based on smart networks and smart devices and not nearly as dependent on browsers. Seybold doesn't get (in fairness, almost no one in the wireless telephony industry does get it) that it's the Internet "dog" wagging the wireless "tail"... by far, not the reverse. This is why Mobile WiMAX will succeed at the expense of the wireless telephony networks, because Mobile WiMAX will be able to deliver the "Internet, made mobile" experience that my daughter's generation wants to use.

Clearwire Modem Weather Report - Hollywood Hill, Woodinville, Washington - Alternating 3 and 4 Bars. Cold and damp alternating with widely scattered sunbreaks. It's about this time of year that those of us Pacific Northwetters who've been through this time of year more than seven times or so start thinking of cheap flights to Hawaii and points South to escape the gloom for at least a few days of badly-needed intense sunlight and letting our semi-webbed feet dry out a bit. The local lore is that Las Vegas is a popular destination because it's a relatively cheap, quick flight, it's sunny and warm, and we have lots of company there with others sharing our winter pallor.

2008 Predictions / Trends Part 1 (Wednesday, December 26, 2007) and Part 2 (Thursday, December 27, 2007); Part 3 (final installment) follows.

Wireline telephony companies finally notice the bite being taken out of their business by Fixed Broadband Wireless Internet Access   For brevity, this could be called the Towerstream industry or the Towerstream effect. There's a lot of others doing the same thing that Towerstream is; some better, some worse, some bigger, most smaller. But Towerstream is laser-focused on this type of business, it's publicly traded and so offers a degree of transparency that the others don't, and its growing and expanding. I think that 2008 is going to be the year that the wireline carriers finally notice that they're losing signficant business, especially in the most lucrative "T-3 / fiber" categories. The trouble is... without going into exactly the same business - Fixed Broadband Wireless Internet Access, the wireline carriers don't have very effective competitive products. They can't exactly offer fiber connectivity as a loss leader - fiber takes too long and costs too much to install compared to Fixed Broadband Wireless Internet Access.

Success of the Kindle   My personal sense is that the Kindle's going to be, initially, a modest success, and eventually a significant success for Amazon. It just makes too much sense in so many ways, and with Amazon developing an ecosystem for content where there's a real way for independent authors to release electronic content and be paid for it, I think that the Kindle will be a success. I also think that the Kindle's innovative use of Broadband Wireless Internet Access will prove to be a success; the business model of not charging for actual usage of a network but rather recovering the costs of user access, even for non-revenue activities like browsing, with the price of purchasing media will be a success. I think that having Amazon and the Kindle as customers will prove to be lucrative for Sprint. The Kindle deal for connectivity will pave the way for other innovative uses of Broadband Wireless Internet Access.

Better technology for Wireless Internet Service Providers   In 2008, small, entrepreneurial Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs), most operating in non-urban areas, finally have a portion of spectrum in the new 3.65 GHz band that allows them to offer carrier-grade Broadband Internet Access without the fantastic cost associated with purchasing or leasing licensed spectrum.  I hope that many WISPs will come around to seeing the value of Metropolitan Wi-Fi Network systems for providing connectivity to customers in "denser" areas (like cities - of any size) in their service area, without the need to provide them with Customer Premise Equipment or a technician visit. They're going to have to learn how to do this, because that's the experience that Clearwire offers right now, and the wireless telephony companies are starting to offer. Last year the WISPs also got access to an additional 255 MHz of spectrum at 5 GHz, good for relatively short-range, high-bandwidth connectivity.

At least a couple of BWIA-related books from Steve Stroh   It's very high on my agenda - at the very top, for me to release at least two books relating to Broadband Wireless Internet Access in 2008. One issue I simply don't have to deal with at all is how to produce them - Lulu.com, by all the accounts I've read, makes the production of independent books mine mostly a non-issue, handily answering all the issues in dealing with other self-publications services. I'll also be writing a lot more in 2008 now that my nagging health issues are behind me. While the fate of Wireless Tech Radio is still uncertain, I'm going to try mightily to get FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access published monthly, and write more content on our other Stroh Publications blogs and Tech Republic's Mobile and Wireless blog. I've had some interesting inquiries about consultation that I'm looking forward to exploring, and plan to attend at least a few of the larger wireless-related conferences.

Thanks for reading!

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

[Drew]

I remember about 6 years ago Andy Seybold keynoting a small show in Reno referring to everyone doing wireless broadband as "internet interlopers" who were imposing on his spectrum. haha. Eat it Seybold, here we come to interlope all over your airwaves!!