Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) News

At Broadband Wireless World Forum 2003

San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, CA [I'm] sitting in on [the] High Frequency Gigabit Radio Pre Show Workshop. Funny quote from presenter Doug Lockie – “5 GHz; ah… high audio!” Light attendance likely because of the gas main break at San Jose International Airport in the late morning, snarling all street traffic into and out of the airport. Much being made of Cisco involvement in proposed 70 GHz plus bands – “… six months ago, this was science project. With Cisco’s involvement, it’s now a science experiment with a bulldozer company behind it.” Clarifying – Cisco not yet in the “Gigabit Wireless” business – just involved in the FCC proposals. Much coming and going of 802.11b access points, none seem to be hooked up to Internet yet, email is offline-only and no web access. Much dissing of other technologies – “… fiber can be tapped, easily cut, tough and expensive to install”, “FSO only good for 200m at most”. Peter ? of Cisco – no business case whatsoever for trenching fiber to new buildings. The proposed “Internet-based” licensing of 70 GHz links just seems way too fraught with peril and abuse and way too easy to lock up desirable paths, with essentially no enforcement of phantom links. Their scheme is predicated on manual coordination, dumb radios, and incumbent protection. What a waste… You’d think that Cisco would have leaned, with the abject failure of its Clarity Wireless acquisition (which was strongly biased towards [licensed] ITFS/MMDS spectrum, and the overwhelming success of its acquisition of Aironet which made equipment for license-exempt spectrum. Cisco thinks that these 70 GHz and up links will support 10 Gbps links as fiber extension, and that will sell more Gigabit Ethernet ports.

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.

Offering Service Level Agreements - Licensed Versus Unlicensed

Posting to Part-15.Org’s WISP mailing list, subject “Licensed vs Unlicensed” It's subject to debate whether you can or cannot offer SLAs with license-exempt spectrum. Heck... even the wireline guys can't offer unconditional SLAs - they have contingencies for "acts of God and Man" - fiber cuts, terrorism, etc. Using licensed spectrum is no guarantee that you won't suffer downtime; interference in licensed spectrum DOES happen... a LOT! All that a spectrum license allows you to do is find track down sources of interference to your licensed spectrum allocation and try to get it stopped... it DOESN'T mean that interference will never happen. Using very robust equipment in license-exempt spectrum, and good / very good engineering practices can go a long way towards being able to offer SLAs when using licensed spectrum.

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.

Ricochet Hits The Pricing Sweet Spot

Woo-Hoo! Ricochet service @ $29.95/month! www.ricochet.net/ServicePricing.aspx Denver only at the moment, but Ricochet pricing is finally trending in the right direction. For that price, you don’t get email, web pages, dialup access out of the area, etc. Of course, this merely brings Ricochet into pricing parity with T-Mobile HotSpot – www.t-mobile.com/hotspot/services_plans , which is $29.95/month for which you can get “T-1 speeds” at nearly any Starbucks. 2003 will be the make or break year for Aerie Networks and Ricochet service. If they can deploy a “greenfield” market – from scratch, not resurrecting one developed fully or partially by Metricom, then they’ve got a compelling story to tell.

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.

Monet Mobile Networks Honored At CTIA

I missed this when it came out on March 18, 2003; Monet Mobile Networks – www.monetmobile.com, about the only “Wireless Telephony” company that I think has a real clue about Broadband Wireless Internet Access –received two awards – www.monetmobile.com/showcontent.asp?contentname=about_pressrelease at the Cellular Telephony & Internet Association (CTIA) show last month. I think that Monet is to be congratulated for having the courage to:

1. Make[s] good use of otherwise badly underutilized PCS spectrum in Tier II/Tier III/Rural markets,
2. For a data-only service,
3. With flat-rate pricing,
4. Reasonable pricing - $39.95/month,
5. Full mobility,
6. Reasonable speeds (300-700 Kbps claimed).

Monet has deployed CDMA/1xEV-DO in four markets, and from all reports I’ve read, the user experience is quite good. Monet might well become a serious threat to Wireless ISPs if current PCS spectrum owners in such areas are enlightened enough to sell spectrum to Monet to offer a well-differentiated service rather than “yet another cellular (voice) vendor. Might… Fortunately for the WISPs there’s not much evidence that PCS spectrum owners are that enlightened, that making one of the six or nine PCS channels (varies by market) to use for data like Monet has done would actually raise the value of their spectrum overall.

Another Reason For Me To Cheer On Monet Networks
They’re one of the few “hometown” Broadband Wireless Internet Access companies headquartered here in the Seattle, WA area. I wish they could actually deploy their service in this area – they could really give Verizon’s IxRTT 144 Kbps @ $99/month service some competition. Then again… Seattle is one of NextWave Telecom’s – www.nextwavetel.com/company/overview markets in which they claim to be “… operating a mobile wireless data network”. It remains to be seen how good they are at applying their core competency – litigation and above-average knowledge of the nuances of corporate bankruptcy laws, to raising capital and deploying wireless data networks sufficient to offer services to the public.

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.

The Curious Case of Central Texas Communications

Central Texas Communications (CTC) – www.centex.net has petitioned the FCC to allow it to discontinue services it provides via its licensed Local Multipoint Distribution Service (LMDS) 28 – 31 GHz licensed spectrum on the basis that it’s not economical to continue such services using the equipment currently available. It was tough to find the source material for this story; the FCC’s usually-efficient search engine didn’t reference it, and several indexes didn’t reference this particular Public Notice. Eventually I guessed at the URL based on the URLs of other Public Notices, and finally found it - hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-03-865A1.pdf. In a word, CTC is right. Equipment at those frequencies is expensive, and there are fewer and fewer vendors of such equipment, and thus less competition and naturally higher prices. The problem is that there are few actual users of LMDS, and therefore the market is a limited one, with resulting low incentive to innovate. Conversely, CTC could be using equipment for license-exempt spectrum, which would be economical for their markets because it’s manufactured for a market of many more potential customers with resulting higher volume and resulting greater competition. But… shame on CTC for wanting to keep title to the LMDS spectrum without having systems deployed – them’s the rules under which they obtained the exclusive rights to that spectrum in particular service areas. Despite their protestations, such a request is tantamount to “spectrum warehousing”; and they all but admit that’s the case when they state that they hope use their LMDS spectrum in the future when “economical equipment becomes available.”

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.

Cool – Yet Another New BWIA Company (updated)

I’m still catching up on some of the news while I was away at WISPCON III – a brand new BWIA company has just uncloaked, offering 802.16a technology in licensed and license-exempt-exempt spectrum. Great to see some pressure being applied to the vendors that have been saying (for years, in some cases) “we’ll offer upgrades to make our products 802.16a compliant soon – real soon now”. Ahhh… “disruptive technology” at work, keeping the BWIA incumbents honest.

Update 2004-12-30 - Reading this as I repost it 20 months later... I wish I could remember which company I was referring to :-)

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.

Symantec To Acquire Nexland - RATS!

Say it Ain’t So! A company that I’ve tracked for some time is Nexland, Inc. – www.nexland.com which makes “more solid” consumer and small business routers for Broadband Internet Access. One of the best products they make is a “Dual WAN Port” router that provides failover if one source of Broadband Internet Access fails – perfect for a small office that uses DSL and Broadband Wireless Internet Access to whom Internet access is mission critical. I’ve just read that Nexland has signed a letter of intent - www.nexland.com/about/news.cfm?id=26 to be acquired by Symantec. Argh! I don’t know what’s gone wrong with Symantec, which used to be a well managed company with good products, but a significant portion of the hundred-plus spam messages I get daily are for Symantec products, and I can’t imagine that that practice bodes well for Nexland products.

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.

More On Clueful / Clueless Use Of Licensed Spectrum

First, yesterday’s comments mostly apply to the sorry state of licensed spectrum usage, or more accurately lack of usage, in the US. In other countries, usage of licensed spectrum is much saner, for reasons too numerous to discuss in this format, and less demand and availability of license-exempt spectrum.

Second, to be fair there are a number of examples of very clueful and well-executed… and yes, profitable use of licensed spectrum in the US to provide last mile(s) Broadband Internet Access. In particular, within a few hours after I wrote yesterday’s weblog entry, I began to be “haunted” in remembering discussions I’ve had with Norbert Lima, CEO of Prime Companies – www.primecompanies.com, with whom I’ve spoken on panel discussions at various BWIA-related trade shows on several occasions.

But my primary point remains – the very rapid evolution of technology for making effective use of license-exempt spectrum has, in many cases, eclipsed the need for licensed spectrum. There’s an amazing interplay at work in US licensed spectrum – the more highly valued it is, the less likely it is to actually be used… but that’s yet another long discussion that’s best deferred for now.

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.

Broadband Wireless World Forum 2003

Broadband Wireless World Forum 2003 – www.scievents.com/bwwf03/default.asp begins a week from tomorrow in San Jose, CA and I’m looking forward to attending. BWWF is a special event for me, as it was the first event I attended after beginning my professional writing career that specifically addressed the Broadband Wireless Internet Access industry. The fact that there was a trade show “just for” this industry was a primary factor in quitting my day job to try to make a full time job of writing about Broadband Wireless Internet Access. After attending BWWF, I received an offer to write for Shorecliff’s Broadband Wireless Business Magazine… and that was validation that I had made the right decision. If there are any readers that are attending BWWF 2003, I’d enjoy meeting up with you. Please send me email using the link at the top of the page.

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.