Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) News

SR Telecom Acquiring Netro

SR Telecom – www.srtelecom.com is acquiring long-suffering Netro – www.netro.com. Looks like a good fit, and once again, the “Project Angel” Wireless Local Loop (WLL) / Broadband Wireless Internet Access technology originated by McCaw Cellular, perfected for the US market by AT&T, killed by AT&T Wireless, internationalized and cost-reduced by Netro, has been saved from oblivion. I have a particular interest in the Project Angel technology as it was the first topic I wrote about in my debut Wireless Data Developments column in Boardwatch, April 1997, which began my professional writing career.

Steve Stroh

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my second Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on www.strohpub.com/weblog.

Administrivia - Ordering Of Weblog Entries (updated)

[This posting is for historical interest only. By its structure, Blogger encourages "one-off" postings which are easier to find and index in RSS. As I've "ported" the content of the Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog that's been hosted elsewhere and in other formats, each individual subject has been posted individually.]

OK, I give up – though it’s more “inherently” logical to organize “last item posted” to the top, it’s much harder to read it that way. So, while the date headings will remain “most recent at top”, the sub-items under the date will be ordered earliest entry at top, latest entry at bottom. Today’s items were chronologically dependent, and just didn’t make sense being read, naturally top to bottom, which is reverse chronological order. That ordering has long-since been decided upon in weblog software, so I had to re-learn it while I’m in DIY Weblog mode.

Steve Stroh

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my second Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on www.strohpub.com/weblog.

Linksys To Build Ricochet Router

Linksys - www.linksys.com is now making a router for Aerie Networks’ - www.aerienetworks.com Ricochet Wireless Internet Access system which is once again operational in Denver and San Diego. It’s pretty easy – Linksys has lots of experience building inexpensive router boxes at this point, and all that was required was to integrate the drivers for a Ricochet PC Card into Linux running on the Linksys box. Bill Vodall, an astute observer of such things, notes “This is an encouraging sign of life for Ricochet” and he’s right. Good story at biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030331/lam011_1. Once Cisco takes control of Linksys, I doubt that such small market niches like the Ricochet router opportunity will be addressed. This was a semi-funny “back to the future” moment for me as I wrote about the “Ricochet modem feeding a LAN” combo a number of times in my Boardwatch column, using my long-since-discontinued WebRamp M3 connected to one or more Ricochet modems to provide always-on Internet service to my household.

Steve Stroh

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my second Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on www.strohpub.com/weblog.

Nucentrix Having A Rough Time

Nucentrix – www.nucentrix.com sounds like it’s having a rough time - www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/cb_headline.cgi?&story_file=bw.032503/230845533, squeezed between low demand for television services in competition with satellite television and BWIA service providers using less-expensive license-exempt equipment. I talked to one SP recently who said that Nucentrix doesn’t have a realistic idea of the relative worth of their spectrum. Basically, the economics of licensed spectrum, when lower-performance, higher-cost equipment and other factors are taken into account, simply don’t work.

Steve Stroh

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my second Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on www.strohpub.com/weblog.

Medinah Broadband - Wireless Internet Access Co-Op

A good illustration of the problems of service providers like Nucentrix that use licensed spectrum are having is Medinah Broadband – www.medinah.net. MB isn’t a Wireless ISP… it’s not a government project… it’s not a telco, power company, water utility, grain co-op… it’s a group of residents in Medinah, IL tired of not having access to broadband, and so are taking matters into their own hands and deciding to build their own “Broadband Wireless Cooperative.” It’s only possible for them to consider this undertaking because they’ve chosen to use license-exempt spectrum (902-928 MHz ISM band) and equipment (WaveRider) whose prices are gradually trending downward because of steadily increasing volume. Those trends are precisely what is not happening in the use of licensed spectrum.

Soon enough, Medinah Broadband and similar services will be providing all the telecommunications to their respective customers, including primary line telephone service. It’s simply inevitable – the incremental cost to the system and the user for carrying low-bitrate voice is pretty low. Not being able to dial 911 is one downside to having VOIP service, and it looks like Vonage is well its way to solving the problem - www.vonage.com/corporate/releases/pr_03_25_03.

Steve Stroh

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my second Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on www.strohpub.com/weblog.

WISPCON III Went By Fast

WISPCON III – www.wispcon.info continued through Tuesday and Wednesday, but so much was happening, so fast, that I couldn’t keep up with the blog. Suffice it to say that there is no brighter segment of the computer/telecom/Internet industry than Broadband Wireless Internet Access, and few places better to witness that rapid evolution than the WISPCON conferences.

Steve Stroh

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my second Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on www.strohpub.com/weblog.

Good essay by Clay Shirky

Good essay by Clay Shirky - www.shirky.com/writings/permanet on some of the reasons that 3G is going down to ruin in the face of "competition” by Public Wi-Fi access. I’ve used Verizon’s “2.5G” data service (~144 Kbps peak) and it’s pretty reasonable. I think it would get a good take rate if it was priced considerably less than the $99/month now being charged.

Steve Stroh

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my second Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on www.strohpub.com/weblog.

BWIA Weblog Has Moved

[Reposted for historical purposes only. The BWIA Weblog is again, as of 1/1/2005, found at http://www.bwianews.com.]

The BWIA Weblog Has Moved!

If you're reading this, you're accessing it via a URL of

http://radio.weblogs.com/0101936

That address will soon be invalid. The Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) Weblog is now found (and has, since its inception, with a redirect to Radio Userland) is found at http://www.strohpub.com/weblog

Updates should be more frequent because I'm no longer dealing with the vagaries of Radio Userland.

Thanks,
Steve Stroh

Steve Stroh

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my original Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on Radio Userland.

WISPCON III Day 1

Dr. Robert Pepper, FCC Keynote giving the Opening Keynote

• Really enthusiastic to be at WISPCON
• Reminds him of the early days of ISPCON when Jack Rickard was running it.
• Broadband Wireless is “Holy Grail” of 3rd platform to the home
• Unlicensed- BIG DEAL
• Disruptive technology
• Bottom up and edge technology like Internet
• New technology / new business models
• What could the WISPs do with the $5B that Winstar burned through? (lots of cheering)
• He was at CTIA last week – he personally logged 200 Wi-Fi APs; was later told there were 300
• Discussed Spectrum Policy Task Force activities
• One goal of SPTF was “increase the public benefits derived from use of radio spectrum”
• For first time, re-examined 90 years of “command and control” spectrum policy
• SPTF is influencing spectrum management futures in Europe and Asia
• Old/current assumptions – unregulated radio interference will lead to chaos; spectrum is scarce, government “command and control” is the only way to avoid chaos; “public interest” should be driven by industrial policy rather than consumer policy (giving spectrum to specific industries/companies)
• Resulted in dependent “Mother, May I?” attitude with FCC
• Conclusion of SPTF is that spectrum access is real problem; spectrum scarcity is not real – doesn’t factor in time dimension
• Technology is able to tolerate/manage interference order of magnitudes better than “old”/analog systems
• FCC feels that there is still a role for exclusively licensed spectrum, but wants to make more spectrum available for use under license-exempt / commons allocation model
• Developed new, controversial “interference temperature” – maximum allowable RF saturation on a band-for-band basis; below that threshold, anything goes
• Want to promote increased access to spectrum, but sensitive to licensed incumbents fears of interference.
• FCC is open to comments from anyone – despite popular conception, FCC invites visits, technology demonstrations – no lawyers needed

Adam Krinsky presentation on license-exempt spectrum regulatory update

• Intro to session by Andrew Kreig, President of the Wireless Communications Association (WCA)
• Speaking on behalf of the License Exempt Alliance of the Wireless Communications Association (http://www.wcai.com)
• FCC clearly recognizes value that LE services provide to consumers
• FCC is searching for ways to make more spectrum available to LE services
• FCC is looking for LE industry’s participation in regulatory reform
• Job 1 of LEA is protection of existing LE spectrum
• 902-928 LE usage is being challenged by Location and Monitoring Service to remove “safe harbor” rules that allow LE users
• 2.4 “potential interference” to satellite radio has been beaten back… but they haven’t gotten the message and will probably be back. Pepper mentioned this specific issue in his talk this morning, said that the FCC has no sympathy for satellite radio’s “way too sensitive” consumer-grade receivers.
• 5 GHz ISM/UNII – Wi-Fi Alliance has requested use of additional 255 MHz to the 5 GHz band. Government (DOD – military RADAR) and industry reached agreement in January with the specification of a “spectrum etiquette” (WLAN usage would shut down in the presence of a DOD RADAR system.) With agreement in place, US will go forward at World Radio Conference 2003 to harmonize this spectrum worldwide.
• All the trends indicate that the FCC wants license-exempt to be a success… but they need LOTS more ammunition in the form of formal comments from those who are out there DOING… and the WISPs are too busy building their businesses and earning customers.
• Kreig speaking again to concerns that the WCA is dominated by telco interests (Sprint); Kreig states that it’s simply a matter of numbers of “those who are doing”, “those who have opened their wallets”.

Spent a fascinating hour with a brand new fiber backbone provider… with a CLUE !!! (finally… what a relief!) about to make effective and complimenary use of fiber and license-exempt wireless. If they can execute… they’ll truly kick butt and take names and upset several entire tiers of the Internet backbone market. The full story will be in FOCUS.

Steve Stroh

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my second Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on www.strohpub.com/weblog.

WISPCON III Sunday Pre-show

Flight from Seattle to Chicago was uneventful. It was nice to escape the downpour of the last few days in Seattle. When I came to WISPCON II last Fall, I flew on ATA and had an entire aisle to myself both to and from. Very nice that it was direct from Seattle to Chicago. This flight was pretty full (apparently the word is out about ATA), but then they have to pay for their new planes. The Seattle-Chicago flight was on a brand-new 737-800, which the pilot informed us cost $40M. The Seattle economy thanks ATA for their business. Interesting that ATA hubs from Chicago Midway airport… a really refreshing change than the monstrous O’Hare International.

At WISPCON, sitting in the Alvarion seminar in the Oak Brook Hills Amphitheatre… with no Wireless Internet Access :-(… most of the rest of the hotel has good 802.11b coverage, and free (very enlightened). At WISPCON II last year the large number of WISPs, almost all of which brought their laptop equipped with 802.11b / Wi-Fi, completely saturated the hotel’s T-1. For the conference areas one of the vendors did a 45 Mbps point-to-point link back to downtown Chicago (if memory serves, ~35 miles) to demonstrate some new equipment, and that helps. A mention on a mailing list said that for the duration of WISPCON, the hotel’s wireless coverage was cut over to another high-bandwidth link.

The Alvarion rep is in ad-hoc mode, filling time while there’s a scramble to find a replacement for a dead projector. He’s saying some interesting things. One was that the 900 MHz product coming soon will quickly get a firmware upgrade for adherence to “802.16”. Interesting on a couple of levels – 802.16 is for “above 11 GHz”, and even 802.16a is for “2-11 GHz”.

The WISPCON Staff was on hand at the reception to hand out name badges and books (complete with paper copies of the presentations, plus a CD.) Argh! There’s no good list of exhibitors in the book or in the March / Conference edition of the WISP’ers newspaper. Guess I’ll just have to take some good notes on who actually ended up as exhibitors… and who was so clueless as to not exhibit at WISPCON III. The conclusion that this is a crowd of “those that do” is inescapable and pervasive… this is the place to be if you have a new product or service that relates to Broadband Wireless Internet Access. The peer-to-peer knowledge that’s being exchanged within my hearing today is literally priceless; formal access to this much knowledge on a consulting basis costs (and is worth) thousands of dollars. Again, more about WISPCON III at http://www.wispcon.info.

Hope this is OK to make public… but Part-15.Org won the court fight to be able to use the name WISPCON for this conference (that they started!) The Golden Group and Jupiter Media sued Part-15.Org for trademark infringement on “ISPCON” and then tried to portray that “WISPCON” is a part of ISPCON… not so, and shame on them for trying that stunt. It’s not like word wouldn’t get out about which conference is the real WISPCON… this is an industry focused on effective one-to-many communications after all. Doubly sad, because WISPCON has the same energy, the same intense focus on the technical and business aspects of a startup industry that ISPCON had in its formative years, but has long since lost. I stand by my prediction to Michael Anderson (Bullit), made at the first WISPCON that by its fifth year, WISPCON will be using (and likely filling) the Las Vegas Convention Center as ISPCON once did because it will have outgrown its current venue.

Many, many neat discussions and learned about a number of new products and the conference hasn’t even opened. (Sorry… FOCUS subscribers get to hear the good stuff first.) Kudos to Telex for sponsoring a very nice reception – lots of mingling, introductions, and good conversations. Dr. Robert Pepper of the FCC will be the keynote speaker as WISPCON III formally opens Monday morning, and I’m really looking forward to hearing his speech. I got to spend some time with him this evening. I learned a lot, and I think I was able to tell him a few interesting stories about Broadband Wireless Internet Access.

Steve Stroh

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my second Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on www.strohpub.com/weblog.