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.).
Apologies for GDBWIA being missing in action last week.
Summary of significant BWIA-related stories from last week (other than the Consumer Electronics Show - CES, which I'll cover separately):
- Frontline Wireless LLC apparently is out of business (and presumably won't be bidding at the upcoming US 700 MHz spectrum auctions); DailyWireless.ORG has a pretty good overview of Frontline's demise.
- Meraki proposed to expand its experimental Mesh Wi-Fi Network to cover all of San Francisco.
- Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile want television broadcast whitespaces to be used only for backhaul.
And that's about it for non-CES news, that I saw.
Clearwire Modem Weather Report - Hollywood Hill, Woodinville, Washington - Solid 4 Bars, nice quiet, chilly day today.
As for CES-related significant BWIA-related content... well, Mobile WiMAX was shown off to good effect. There were numerous Mobile WiMAX devices displayed and announced - too numerous to mention in this format. But I think that the biggest message from CES was that every significant electronic device in the home (remember, it's the Consumer Electronics Show) is slated to have a wireless connection into the household network. And yes, every home will have a (wireless) household network. A lot of devices, including video devices, used Wi-Fi (802.11n, typically). But there were other new wireless standards proposed, including WirelessHD which is refreshingly self-explanatory.
What I found interesting was that the "battle" of wireless device standards didn't seem to be between wireless telephony technology (CDMA / GSM and their associated data systems) and Mobile WiMAX for mobile devices... it seemed to be between Mobile WiMAX and Wi-Fi... with wireless telephony devices largely eclipsed.
I think what's happening is that the wireless telephony networks are being bypassed in favor of 1) the ubiquity, maturity, and low cost of Wi-Fi, and 2) the promise of the use of Mobile WiMAX in developing countries that don't yet have ubiquitous Broadband Internet Access, where, presumably, the take rate will be very rapid (and, of course, lucrative).
And yet... I spent most of last week working intensively on my laptop using Sprint Nextel's 1xEV-DO Rev. A service for my Internet connection... and it worked fine. It was fast enough, completely reliable, works where I need it, and is reasonably priced at $60/month. Every month that Mobile WiMAX service isn't available is another month that mobile telephony Broadband Internet Access systems become better established.
Apple might offer Mobile WiMAX in a new portable device It seems pretty certain, from Apple's huge banners that were being erected at Macworld Expo saying "2008 There's something in the air" that there will be a major wireless-related product unveiled at Steve Jobs' keynote on Tuesday morning. Glenn Fleishman, as good a source as there is on Mac developments, has his ideas. My guess is that Apple will come out with a new ultraportable laptop - smaller than the current Macbook, lighter, having no internal moving-parts-drives. No CD/DVD (easily used externally when needed) and best of all, no hard disk, instead relying on Flash Memory, which can be had increments of, say, 32 GB (which is plenty for almost any typical computing). I'll guess that they'll include HSPA for wide-area Broadband Internet Access, although perhaps they'll also include 1xEV-DO Rev. A given how ubiquitous Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless have made their networks in the US. Perhaps Apple will use Qualcomm's Gobi chip which does both and was created for exactly these kinds of situations? And I wouldn't discount that Apple could also include Mobile WiMAX - it's more than mature enough (any nagging minor inconsistencies can be addressed in Apple's regular, and painless, software updates) and Apple hasn't been afraid to go out on a limb to support various technologies in advance of wide acceptance (starting with the Mac's use of 3.5" hard plastic diskettes).
Apple's biggest win in including wide-area Broadband Wireless Internet Access in a portable device would be to make the entire process of getting online painless. Kind of like the Amazon Kindle. Once you've signed up, it should just work. You should be able to specify the circumstances when you want to be connected to a Wi-Fi network (home, work) and otherwise you're on the wide-area network - all the time, no external hardware, no logon and please-wait-and-wait, etc. Just open the lid, wait a (very) few seconds for things to turn on, and start computing and communicating.
I'll be eagerly awaiting the announcements from Apple tomorrow.
I'll be at EC Expo Wednesday through Friday I'll be attending EC Expo Wednesday through Friday in Denver, Colorado. I've wanted to attend for the last several years, and this should be a good chance to talk to a number of BWIA-related vendors and users, and at least one fan of Good Day, BWIA.
By Steve Stroh
Fine Print / Boilerplate / Acknowledgements / Credits / FAQs
(Last updated 2007-11-06)
This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).
Comments