Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) News

Administrivia - Regarding AdWords Appearing On BWIA Weblog

First Things First. The primary sponsor of the BWIA Weblog is Steve Stroh, who writes a private-circulation (for pay) newsletter called FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access.

Like may weblog authors, I decided to try Google's AdSense program. We independent content producers can always use some additional revenue to help with the web hosting bills, the Internet access bills, etc.

Good news - Google AdWords work. They are in fact reasonably unobtrusive, they are contextual (likely you won't see ads for sports memorabilia here), and when clicked they provide the reader with more information on a product or service of interest to them.

Bad news - (After some consideration, much hard-won knowledge about how AdWords work was suppressed; I probably would have revealed more than Google wants made public.) Bottom line is that I don't have the ability to "filter" the AdWords that appear at the right to be topical to Broadband Wireless Internet Access. The only tools that Google offers are severely limited for that purpose, and when I tried to use them, I found that I was spending way too much time trying to micromanage the AdWords to be at least somewhat relevant to BWIA. That time is much better spent on improving the content of the BWIA Weblog.

So... from this point forward, the Google AdWords that appear on the BWIA Weblog won't necessarily be specifically relevant to Broadband Wireless Internet Access.

That said... I sincerely hope that Google will improve both the automatic AdWords targeting, and tools that let hosts target AdWords a bit more closely to the preferred subject matter of the host site.

Steve Stroh

Verizon Beats The Rush... Puts Upstate New York, Hawaii Operations Up For Sale

Verizon wants to (preferably... :-) sell its Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) operations in upstate New York and the state of Hawaii. This article states that such sales typically garner valuations in excess of US$3,000 per access line, but Verizon's Hawaii operations won't fetch that much. Food for thought, considering the much greater cost-effectiveness of VOIP over BWIA...

Steve Stroh

Broadband Wireless World 2004 Starts Tuesday

Broadband Wireless World 2004 is Tuesday and Wednesday this week in San Diego. BWW (it used to be called Broadband Wireless World Forum) was the first BWIA trade show that I attended, and its existence (and the affiliated Broadband Wireless Magazine) was a major factor in my decision to quit my day job and begin writing full time about BWIA. I wish I could attend; it's an excellent conference, and the list of speakers looks impressive, but cash flow of late doesn't permit it. 2004 is going to be a breakout year for BWIA, and all of the major conferences that touch BWIA will be worth attending. For example, one speaker at BWW will be from AOL...; imagine the value of hearing what AOL thinks of the prospects of BWIA!

There will be a number of announcements coming out of BWW this week, which I'll discuss in FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access.

Steve Stroh

Major Navini Deployment in Mexico

Mexico is trending towards ubiquitous BWIA coverage. Ultravision recently revealed that they plan to deploy Navini and Aperto Networks systems in their licensed 2.5-2.7 GHz spectrum. Combined with existing and planned 2.5-2.7 GHz deployments in Mexico by MVSNet (using NextNet Wireless and Aperto Networks systems), Mexico could well have national BWIA coverage in the next several years, with some healthy competition between two BWIA Service Providers. Two things are especially notable: 1) both use two different vendors, one of which offers self-installable Non-Line-Of-Sight systems, and 2) the second vendor in each case is Aperto Networks, who has been achieving a large number of notable deployements of late.

Steve Stroh

NextWeb and SkyPipeline To Merge - US$25M BWIA Deal

NextWeb and SkyPipeline will merge their operations in Northern and Southern California after an extended period as partners in a marketing and "roaming" agreement for BWIA services (with a third company SkyRiver Communications) called SkyWeb Alliance. The overall value of the merger is reported to be US$25M. This article states that the combined companies have 2,000 business customers in 120 cities. NextWeb itself is a creation of a number of mergers and acquisitions of smaller BWIA Service Providers. including Worldwide Wireless Networks, about which I wrote an influential Wireless Data Developments column in Boardwatch Magazine several years ago.

Steve Stroh

Catching Up On BWIA News

Lots of catching up to do...

Tropos Networks has apparently had a strategy of staying low-profile until a number of systems have been deployed, and only then publicizing them. The most recent Tropos deployement is in Lafayette, Louisiana with Synedo Communications Group. Tropos Networks makes outdoor 802.11b/Wi-Fi access points for mounting on "medium height" structures such as street lights to provide "saturation" outdoor 802.11b coverage.

AIR2LAN Expands Into New Orleans, Louisiana. AIR2LAN was one of the first "big" Wireless ISPs, which I now term BWIA Service Providers.

MeshNetworks will deploy a Dynamic Wireless Mesh Network in Medord, Oregon for municipal use.

Broadband Wireless Exchange Magazine (?!?!?!) Names Top Ten Wireless ISPs. I wouldn't put too much faith in this this particular top ten list. It misses several BWIA SPs that I'm aware of.

The very first "broadcast" of Wireless Tech Radio (see links) last Wednesday went very well. WTR's creater Jim Sutton and I interviewed Marlon Schafer of Odessa Office Equipment, a Wireless ISP based in Odessa, Washington (about 2/3 of the way between Seattle and Spokane in Eastern Washington.) Marlon, Jim, and I are the co-hosts of Wireless Tech Radio, which will "air" each Wednesday at 10:00 EST. One of the more interesting things that I heard on WTR was Timothy Downs of Shorecliff Communications state that the upcoming Broadband Wireless World show would be directed towards usage of license-exempt spectrum than licensed spectrum. I recommend Wireless Tech Radio; Jim Sutton wants to keep WTR directed towards "leading edge" in wireless (but not too much "bleeding edge"), with a very large component of Broadband Wireless Internet Access. For example, this week Bob Syputa will offer an introduction to Mesh Networking.

Steve Stroh

Administrivia - BWIA Weblog Now Hosted On www.bwianews.com

The BWIA Weblog now has a new home - its own domain at www.bwianews.com.

The reason I created a separate domain and web site was because it was needed, and because of my new web hosting arrangments (thanks Bill!) and much more reasonable domain registration fees at a new registrar, I'm able to do so.

For some time I've realized that it was somewhat awkward to find the BWIA Weblog as a sub-page of my www.strohpub.com page. Not to mention that "strohpub" wasn't the least bit inuitive when it came to Broadband Wireless Internet Access.

Now the BWIA Weblog has its own page, and it is the only content on the site. So, among other things, the Google AdSense bar at right will (hopefully) be a bit more targeted at BWIA, since that's the only topic that Google's spider will see when periodically crawling the site for relevent words for which it can match ads.

I expect that it will now be easier for referring links to be set up; www.bwianews.com instead of previously, and possibly easier for syndication to occur, dealing with a link at a top level instead of further down.

I'm somewhat pleased with my foresight when setting up my first iteration of the BWIA Weblog. When I promoted it, I always used www.strohpub.com/weblog, with an automatic redirect to (then) my Radio Userland page (still online at radio.weblogs.com/0101936 despite no payments from me for years now). I didn't anticipate that a large number of those who chose to link to it would use the Radio Userland URL because that's where the syndication link was. If I'd been a bit more confident in my abilities, I probably should have "rehosted" the Radio Userland version back on www.strohpub.com, but that's purely hindsight. Even then, with the Radio Userland page still there (not going away, allowing all those links to eventually exire), my last posting there was a link to www.strohpub.com/weblog, which, if clicked, brings a reader (though the magic of redirects) immediately to www.bwianews.com. Thanks to redirects all of the old links still work, despite four changes of where the BWIA Weblog has been hosted.

Steve Stroh

Comic Relief: Broadband Wireless International Corp. Settlement

Because I work hard to learn about all developments in Broadband Wireless (and, of late, Wireless Broadband - Thanks Patrick!) I hear a lot more about Broadband Wireless International Corporation than I'd like to. That's because they're one of those shell companies who keep morphing into whatever business seems hot at the moment where they can make a buck. For every niggling little development, a press release is pumped into the system, and it finds its way into my Inbox. Their current lines of business/investment are "timber and music"; nothing whatsoever to do with their namesake line of business, Broadband Wireless. It's telling that the top link in Google for them was a page on the Securities and Exchange Commission's site about the company.

In any case, it appears BB:BBAN has settled with one last "dissident" shareholder (can't imagine why he'd be dissident). Now perhaps they can move on... including changing their name into something more descriptive like "Whatever Makes A Buck Corp."

Steve Stroh

Wireless Tech Radio Debuts Wednesday

Wireless Tech Radio, an Internet streaming/archive talk show focused on Wireless technology will debut Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 10:00 EST at www.wirelesstechradio.com.

WTR's producer, Jim Sutton, has pulled together a lot of resources to make WTR happen and it looks like it will be a lot of fun and informative. I'll be one of the hosts in the opening segment, interviewing Wireless ISP Marlon Schafer of Odessa Office Equipment in Odessa, Washington. Future shows will allow interaction from listeners via Instant Messaging and telephone.

Steve Stroh

Cingular Wireless Wins The Bidding For AT&T Wireless

Thus begins the long overdue consolidation of the wireless telephony industry.

Overall, the acquisition of AT&T Wireless by Cingular Wireless is a good thing.

AT&T Wireless never did overcome the legacy of the chaos of the McCaw Cellular years, especially in its back-end systems. It has alienated its employees by layoffs and outsourcing IT jobs to India. Its customers, new and old, were getting fed up with cutbacks in analog and TDMA capacity, termination of CDPD services, and its overhyping of GSM coverage and capacity. In November 2003, AT&T Wireless was the only wireless telephony company that suffered significant problems implementing Wireless Number Portability (WNP).

AT&T Wireless had a promising "fixed wireless" broadand Internet access and telephony business in Project Angel (AT&T Wireless Broadband) that it inherited at the time of its spinout from AT&T. Once granted its freedom, AT&T Wireless waited a perfunctory few months and then terminated all Project Angel activities. It migrated customers to competitor's DSL and wireline voice services, and sold the Project Angel technology, where it's found new life after being adapted for use in overseas markets.

With the acquisition, Cingular inherits many, many technical headaches. Integration of back-end, roaming, and billing systems will be a monumental task. It faces ongoing challenges of consolidation of analog (still used extensively by, among other things, GM's OnStar systems), TDMA (used by both Cingular and AT&T Wireless), some use of CDMA, and consolidation into an all-GSM/GPRS system.

But, Cingular also inherits a bit of good news. AT&T Wireless (was) one of the principals of Cometa, and AT&T Wireless is the nominal provider of Wireless HotSpot service in a number of venues. That's a promising business if managed properly.

Most notably, Cingular will inherit AT&T Wireless' spectrum holdings, which include 800 MHz ("traditional cellular"), 1.9 GHz ("PCS"), and (little-known), a considerable amount of 2.3 GHz Wireless Communications Service (WCS) spectrum - a legacy of Project Angel. Cingular also has WCS spectrum, so perhaps a "more" national footprint of such spectrum could result in competitive Broadband Wireless services given the looming Broadband Wireless efforts of competitors Verizon and Nextel. Ironically, the Project Angel technology could be revived and dusted off and effectively implemented as a replacement for wireline telephony and broadband services... but Cingular's parent companies BellSouth and SBC view themselves as being "in the wireline telephony business" and won't likely actively encourage what is already a withering trend towards wireless telephones completely displacing wireline telephones. Any such effort for "Fixed" Broadband Wireless (of any scale; there may well be trials) will undoubtedly be pushed off into the future as Cingular wrestles with the more immediate financial, operational, and technical challenges of engulfing and devouring AT&T Wireless.

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had a good article which explores some of the issues of "Wi-Fi As Disruptive Technology" positioned against wireless telephony. Thanks for Wi-Fi Networking News (linked at right) for the link, and SFGate.com making the contents of the WSJ article available to those without a WSJ subscription at http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/02/13/financial0923EST0038.DTL or http://tinyurl.com/228kc

Steve Stroh