Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) News

WTF 2004 - Where's The Fiber?

At the end of this week I'll be winging my way to David Isenberg's much-anticipated WTF 2004 Conference in Westchester County, NY. For those that aren't familiar with Isenberg... you should be! Stop now and check in at his web page (his free newsletter, SMART Letter is archived - also highly recommended) and his weblog.

Isenberg became notorious (er... widely known...) as the author of a seminal essay that he called "The Rise Of The Stupid Network" which, in the bigger picture, largely presaged the ultimate death of the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) that we're witnessing now under the assault of Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP).

Unimpressed with the pronouncement of the coming death of its technological corporate crown jewels, Isenberg was invited to pursue a career as an independent consultant [Prosultant - (SM)] and has gone on to author and co-author other seminal essays. Along the way he's picked up a number of like-minded thinkers that cut across a number of disciplines. I consider Isenberg's newsletter SMART Letter a "read it right this second" priority.

Isenberg's Stupid Network concept has shaped my thinking considerably about the evolution of Broadband Wireless Internet Access; apart from addressing the very real-world physical layer challenges of Wireless (for example, contention control and interference abatement), Wireless is absolutely subject to the issues discussed in TROTSN and another Isenberg co-authored essay "The Paradox Of The Best Network". This is one of the reasons that the Wireless Telephony service providers will ultimately be humbled under the onslaught of VOIP over Wireless, as discussed in a previous story.

So... in 2004 Isenberg has decided to do a conference. Isenberg called it "WTF!?!"... and then opened up a competition to decide what WTF represents. A phrase that Jeff Hoel and I submitted independently won the voting - Where's The Fiber!?!

That phrase, in a nutshell, sums up a central theme in my work advocating Broadband Wireless Internet Access.

1) Where's all that fiber that was promised by the Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs) in return for passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act? Answer... they made the very calculated decision that they could get away with calling DSL "broadband" and, at most, put in a very few "fiber feasibility tests". We the public simply won't ever see any significant fiber-to-the-premises deployments from the ILECs... and when they do, it won't be anything resembling open-access broadband. It's hugely instructive that the SBC and BellSouth "voted with their wallets" to the tune of US$41B to buy AT&T Wireless and merge it into their Cingular Wireless Telephony joint venture; obviously those two companies view the future as being wireless, not wireline.

2) Absent something happening like a huge boondoggle of a federal government program to get fiber to every home, or Microsoft deciding to its tens of billions of cash to put fiber to every home (don't laugh... they have enough money in the bank to really make this happen), we won't see widespread fiber deployments... ever.

3) Fiber's only of any use when it's possible for the customer to decide what the other end of the fiber is connected to; a good example of "fiber's not the end game" is US West offering the world's finest ISDN over fiber that it installed, and then connected to a Number 5 ESS telephone switch.

4) Where fiber is already installed, competitive, and reasonably priced... use it!

5) Where fiber isn't already installed, competitive, or reasonably priced, use Broadband Wireless Internet Access to "extend" the fiber... as the late and very lamented (under its original managment and vision) e-Xpedient showed how to do very, very well, and is now being done by TowerStream... and, of all companies... good old AT&T.

Isenberg has assembled an amazing set of participants for WTF 2004. This looks to be pure distilled wisdom.

Steve Stroh

Copyright (c) 2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on Corante / Broadband Wireless Internet Access.)

Wi-Fi As Infrastructure - LAN, Campus, and Metro

The hottest news from this week's CTIA Wireless 2004 Conference in Atlanta is the emergence from the Wireless Telephony (WT) handset vendors of "multimode" handsets that incorporate Wi-Fi capability.

The vendors are in a neverending race to differentiate their various products from one another and the first to incorporate Wi-Fi (the hottest trend in wireless) hope to win a new generation of customers - consumers, commercial users, and WT carriers.

But, if WT carriers could have their way, they wouldn't have Wi-Fi capability in their handsets at all, and if they did, they would maintain rigid control of the Wi-Fi mode, such as only allowing it to work at their Wi-Fi HotSpots or "unlocking" Wi-Fi only for corporate customers that use Wi-Fi as "internal" wireless infrastructure. But the WT carriers cannot stall the trend towards Wi-Fi in the WT handset, and that's yet another "beginning of the end" for the WT carriers.

What the handset vendors know, and what the Wireless Telephony carriers desperately want to ignore in hopes that the situation will "go away", is that Wi-Fi as infrastructure has rudely derailed their plans for total dominance of personal wireless communications.

Contrary to popular perception (even in "informed" technology and wireless trade press) "Wi-Fi as infrastructure" is not limited to enterprises, residences, or Wireless HotSpots. "Wi-Fi as infrastructure" has "escaped" such confines (agressive, entrepreneurial vendors have innovated) and Wi-Fi is now being used as "metropolitan" wireless infrastructure. Three announcements this week are representative of this trend (there are numerous such announcements):

BelAir Networks announced deployments of their BelAir 200 systems in West Des Moines, Iowa, Show Low, Arizona, and Lincoln, Nebraska for various public agencies to provide Broadband Wireless Internet Access;

Vivato will deploy its systems in Spokane, Washington to create what is claimed to be "the largest municipal network in the U.S."

Tropos Networks systems were used to create a "metro-scale" network in Cerritos, California.

Oops... if Wi-Fi can be used as the network... not merely to supplement the (Wireless Telephony) network... where does that leave Wireless Telephony carriers?

Some (primary, those with deep telephony backgrounds) argue (vigorously!) that there are numerous technical, reliability, and operational issues to be dealt with before handsets can be enabled to "cut over" between Wi-Fi and Wireless Telephony networks. They miss the point completely that the vast majority of Internet access, including Broadband Wireless Internet Access, is offered as "best effort"... and it seems to be good enough even for "sensitive" applications such as Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP).

All of this reinforces a point that I've been making for some time, but few in the Broadband Wireless Internet Access industry are willing to hear. That is... Wi-Fi is now the environment. It has become so ubiquitous, so dominant, so entrenched that it will be very hard for other BWIA systems to become established if they do not have a clear role in the "Wi-Fi environment". A case in point is the rosy predictions for WiMAX to displace Wi-Fi and other proprietary systems as the preferred system for last mile(s) Broadband Wireless Internet Access. It is possible that WiMAX could end up being the technologically superior, but ultimately niche-bound "Betamax" to Wi-Fi being impossible-to-dislodge, embedded-in-everything ("VHS").

Steve Stroh

Copyright (c) 2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on Corante.)

@CTIA Wireless 2004 This Week In Atlanta

The "biggest event in Wireless" - the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) Wireless trade show is this week at Atlanta's cavernous Georgia World Congress Center.

There's much to celebrate, and my Corante colleague Dana Blankenhorn says:
CTIA is coming to Atlanta in a few weeks, and we haven't partied here since 1999. The parties are going to be big and glorious. The liquor will flow. I expect to eat big shrimp in cocktail sauce. I have little doubt that the tchotscke (little gift) pickings will be lush. There will be toys, candy, maybe even t-shirts.

Mine is a highly contrarian view, but there are enormous challenges ahead of the Wireless Telephony industry, most which it barely recognizes.

The Wireless Telephony (WT) industry has much to celebrate. In the last few years, it has seen the resolution of the fight for additional "3G" spectrum, the sunsetting of the caps on allowable WT spectrum ownership, sunsetting of the requirement to maintain analog cellular coverage, and the elimination of the "wildcard" of AT&T Wireless, settling the Wireless Telephony industry into a comfortable oligopy in the highly-profitable metropolitan areas.

But the WT industry is in the early-to-mid stages of classic disruptive technology being rabidly applied against it, epitomized by Wi-Fi as wide-area infrastructure - mobility, entire metropolitan areas, campuses, buildings... and even Wireless HotSpots. Longer term, newer wireless technologies such as WiMAX, 802.16a, 802.16e, 802.20, dynamic wireless mesh networking, etc. will make for even greater challenges to WT.

Wireless Telephony faces the exact same challenge as its close cousin, "Wired" Telephony; its core technology is a network that's superbly optimized for centrally-controlled, circuit-switched voice (GSM/CDMA is the answer; what was the question?)... in a world rapidly moving to voice as yet another packet-switched application over an increasingly ubiquitous, tranport-agnostic, and application-agnostic Internet. (Obligatory homage to David Isenberg's Stupid Network.)

A case in point is the emergence of a curious category of devices - VOIP over Wi-Fi phones. Many angrily or laughingly deride such devices as horribly, needlessly complex, expensive, and unnecessary. For several years Symbol Technologies and Cisco have had their versions, optimized for their particular Wi-Fi infrastructure products, at price points of several hundred $US. Pulver (the Pulver - Jeff) Innovations recently announced that its WiSIP phone is now shipping, ZyXEL announced its VOIP over Wi-Fi phone... and Vonage is rumored to be close to announcing a VOIP over Wi-Fi phone. Yes... these are "baby steps" in competition against a gigantic Wireless Telephony industry, but that's merely a stage of a disruptive technology.

The WT industry is "fighting back" against the trend towards commoditization by offering products such as camera phones, push-to-talk ala' Nextel (ironically... by implementing parallel VOIP networks), "high-speed" Internet access, and (most laughably) their own Wireless HotSpots and plans for allowing customers to roam between WT networks and (highly selected) Wireless HotSpots. Most absurd, in my opinion, is the effort to make a customer's wireless telephone the primary device for network interaction and entertainment.

None of those plans will work in the end. Wi-Fi Internet access... very often free (yes... really!), will continue to spread through the efforts of municipalities and groups such as Austin City Wireless and many other such groups. Commodity digital cameras will rapidly evolve to include embedded Wi-Fi and a simplified user interface to upload selected pictures to a web site, via email, etc. whenever there's Wi-Fi connection available. VOIP over Wi-Fi phones will use cheap DSP and Wi-Fi chips to achieve the same price points as higher-grade cordless phones.

Party hard, Dana, and enjoy good times at CTIA Wireless while they last.

Steve Stroh

Copyright (c) 2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on Corante.

Administrivia - Change Of Venue

Effective Wednesday, March 24, 2004, I will begin publishing the Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog on Corante. The new address for the Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog will then be:

http://www.corante.com/bwia

There are a number of reasons for the change, among them a richer publishing environment, Corante's brand offers significantly greater exposure and recognition for my content than I could accomplish as a solo effort, and there is a possibility of additional revenue from my content.

With Corante / Broadband Wireless Internet Access, as with the Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog, my primary, in-depth, "best" writing will continue to be FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access.

We'll see how it goes - moving to Corante is, for the moment, a trial period. Corante came highly recommended from several Corante authors that I've been able to contact directly and, to date, the experience has been a very positive one.

See you on Corante!

Steve Stroh
[email protected]

ZyXEL Unveils VOIP Over Wi-Fi Phone

ZyXEL recently announced its Prestige 2000W Voice Over Internet Protocol Over 802.11b / Wi-Fi telephone. Notable... but regrettably optional (and thus won't achieve much traction):

Direct IP-to-IP Call and Ad-hoc Intercom Mode Support (Optional)
By configuring a remote IP address in the built-in phone book, the Prestige 2000W provides a direct IP-to-IP call feature when there is no intermediate SIP proxy server available in the network. The Prestige 2000W can also establish an 802.11 ad-hoc network (computer-to-computer network without Access Point), which allows users to use the handsets as wireless intercoms.

ZyXEL will be very serious competition for Pulver Innovations' WiSIP phone. While Symbol and Cisco already offer VOIP/Wi-Fi phones, but those products are somewhat proprietary and largely unavailable to consumers and small businesses.

Steve Stroh

Research And Markets Releases BWIA Study

Yet another BWIA study has been released, most recently from Research and Markets - WiMAX, NLOS and Broadband Wireless Access (Sub-11Ghz) Worldwide Market Analysis 2004-2008 (2nd Edition) was released February 2004 and costs EUR€ 3,205.00.

Steve Stroh

Excellent IEEE Spectrum Online Article - The End Of Spectrum Scarcity

The End Of Spectrum Scarcity by Gregory Staple and Kevin Wehrbach, IEEE Spectrum Online.

In this article, the authors explore, with a minimum of jargon, how new technologies are making it possible for a different paradigm of spectrum usage other than "exclusive use" allocations.

Steve Stroh

Amateur Radio Operaters Issue Cease And Desist Order to Wireless ISP

The following letter sent to a Wireless ISP in Wisconsin, who posted it to an open mailing list - [email protected] on Friday, March 12, 2004. The "laundering" to delete the names of those who sent the note was done by the ISP.

To: Jeremy & other Technicians that this may concern.

Below is a form letter that we have been sending out to the 802.11 regional Internet providers.

This should not affect your area at this time frame, but it is better to be aware of the on goings in the region.

Sincerely:

(NAME WITH HELD FROM PUBLIC LIST)

AOL Lends Its Good Name To Canadian BWIA Service Providers

As part of its "bring your own access" service, where AOL Canada customers can access AOL services over any Internet access option, AOL (Canada) will, for the first time, officially acknowlege that Broadband Wireless Internet Access is a viable "bring your own access" option. To date, AOL had acknowleged only cable modem and DSL broadband services for "bring your own access."

The occaison is a market test in Toronto, Ontario where AOL Canada will offer its service via a joint venture of three Canadian Broadband Wireless Internet Access companies.

I've expected this development for some time; it was entirely predictable given that AOL (and its primary competitors - MSN and Earthlink) don't own their own infrastructure, and they are all being increasingly marginalized in the broadband era when customers begin to question what they need "The Big Three" for when basic services - email, web hosting, are provided with their broadband accounts or are available free or inexpensively on the Internet. Endorsement of AOL, MSN, and Earthlink for Broadband Wireless Internet Access Service Providers, especially smaller ones operating in smaller markets would be a large boost to those Service Providers.

More details in the AOL Canada Press Release.

Steve Stroh

Two Great Wireless Conferences This Coming Week

Wireless Future Conference - Austin Texas, March 12-16, 2004. I'll be attending the entire conference - Friday through Tuesday Noon-ish. Wireless Future is held in conjunction with the well-known South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival. There are lots of notables attending that I'm very much looking forward to meeting in person for the first time. More at www.wirelessfuture.org and www.sxsw.com.

WISPCON 5 will be held in Chicago on March 15-17, 2004 on Wednesday, March 17 (with lots of educational sessions on Sunday March 14). I'm not able to attend. More information is at www.wispcon.info.

Because of travel preparations, I won't be blogging much until I'm comfortably in Austin, with good connectivity.

Steve Stroh