Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) News

Alvarion In Negotiations To Acquire Ceragon

In a story today in Maariv International, Sophie Schulman reports that Alvarion is in negotiations to acquire Ceragon Networks, reportedly offering US$120MM and Ceragon reportedly planning to ask for US$150MM.

Should the acquisition be consummated, there would be some, perhaps considerable, overlap between the Ceragon and Floware product lines. (BreezeCOM and Floware merged to form Alvarion.)

Steve Stroh

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

Good USA Today Article About Wireless ISPs

The July 14th issue of USA Today features a good story on Wireless ISPs by Paul Davidson titled Inventive wireless providers go rural. I'm impressed with Davidson's writing; it's apparent that he really listened to his interview subjects. As a result, the article is refreshingly free of glaring errors and distortions as is the case with most other general press articles on BWIA or WISPs.

The article is also notable because it places WiMAX in the proper context, that it's an enhancement to current BWIA systems and capabilities mostly because it will offer vendor interoperability and eventually lower prices.

The article mentions a number of small, rural Wireless ISPs by name, including PDQLink and Roadstar Internet (which provides BWIA connectivity for the production of Wireless Tech Radio, which I co-host.) The article nicely illustrates how large a "niche" that WISPs do serve (my estimate is that there are thousands of WISPs), and the increased capabilities that WISPs will have in the near future with better equipment such as WiMAX.

Despite the "rural" focus of the article, Davidson mentions TowerStream (operating in the tiny burgs of Providence, Boston, Chicago... and New York City) to illustrate that "WISPs" (I use the term BWIA Service Provider for systems such as TowerStream's) aren't limited to operating in rural areas.

Davidson also quotes Craig McCaw of Clearwire (and commendably gets it right that Clearwire "isn't waiting" for WiMAX) and finally gets McCaw to reveal pricing info for Clearwire's services (the first hard numbers that Clearwire has disclosed, that I'm aware of):

[Clearwire] plans to beat phone-company prices by charging about $25 a month for broadband and $40 to $50 for a package that includes unlimited Internet-based phone service.

That whoosh you hear are shots being fired across the bow of the telcos and cablecos. With competitors like TowerStream and Clearwire in larger cities and WISPs in rural areas... the cozy cable/telco duopoly on broadband services is about to vanish.

Steve Stroh

Copyright © 2004 by Steve Stroh except for USA Today quote. This article originally appeared on Corante / Broadband Wireless Internet Access.

The Two Halves Of Verizon Wireless

Readers of Dana Blankenhorn's Moore's Lore weblog here on Corante many not know that Dana has another major outlet for his creative energies, his long-running newsletter A-Clue. (It's a mystery to me why Dana doesn't cross promote the two, except for occaisonal mentions.)

In the July 19, 2004 issue of A-Clue, Dana takes up the cause of Verizon Wireless' "walled garden" philosophy towards any content - software, media, etc. to be used on wireless telephones on its network. I agree with Dana that it's short-sighted of Verizon to be using a walled garden approach, but I depart with Dana that Verizon Wireless should be avoided.

If you want to make use of Verizon's excellent network (it's really your only choice at the moment if you want true nationwide, mobile, reasonable-speed Wireless Internet Access) you don't have to put up with the walled garden. Just subscribe to Verizon Wireless' BroadbandAccess service. What you get is a wireless modem card for your laptop, and always-on, whereever-you-go, all-you-can-eat Internet access. Nothing BUT Internet Access. No walled garden there.

Steve Stroh

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

Mobile Mesh Networking Moves To Corante!

I'm not sure if I'm the first (besides Hylton Jolliffe, Corante's chief "herder-of-cats") to publicly welcome Mark Cabiling's Mobile Mesh Networking Blog to Corante, but I'm probably one of the more enthusiastic in doing so.

As I mentioned a few postings back, Mark is writing good stuff about Wireless Mesh Networking (despite the title, Mark doesn't confine himself stricly to mobile) and Mesh is a branch of wireless that's 1) not well understood and below the RADAR of many/most analysts and press, and 2) growing quickly in functionality and deployments. In short, perfect material for a motivated blogger.

So, welcome to Corante, Mark!

Steve Stroh

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

More on Vivato - Thompson Amplifies and Rebuts

Jim Thompson read my weblog posting [Link re-pointed to re-posted article] about his comments on Vivato, and the other comments I made in that posting. Thompson has lots to say about what he feels was in error.

One mea culpa is in order. Thompson writes: First, Mr. Stroh doesn't get my title right. While I wore many hats at Vivato, including the "Director of Product Development" one, I was also at various points VP of Software and Systems, and Chief Architect,

My apologies on the errors in title(s); I did a bit of Googling and the title I referenced - "Director of Product Development" was found in a number of entries, including a press release from the Wireless Communications Alliance.

What I printed from my anonymous source was almost verbatim; I'm certainly not going to challenge Thompson's rebuttals of the source's statements; Thompson was there and the anonymous comments were from an external observer.

I agree with this statement by Thompson: The potential for WiFi (and WiMax, btw) is for situations where the interference can be controlled, either via deploying in licensed spectrum (and there are people who want to run WiFi as a service in 2.5GHz, btw) or by controling the deployment(s) such that interference is minimized.

But we part company as Thompson continues: Note that this doesn't (and never will) include attempting to provide a service in large metro-area deployments using unlicensed spectrum. Never.

Thompson's statement is in conflict with itself. He's that correct minimizing interference is key for BWIA... but that's also the key for effective use of license-exempt spectrum. The fact is that you can control the interference in license-exempt spectrum, but probably not the way that Thompson meant in his statement. I'll grant that one cannot control "RF pollution" from the soup of Wi-Fi signals and other transmissions in license-exempt spectrum... but you can control how your unit or system is impacted by such "pollution". If your unit or system can "shrug off" the "pollution", then you're not experiencing "interference"; IE the "pollution" is not "interfering" with your operations.

Put another way, the best definition that I've heard to date for "interference" as applied to wireless communications comes from Thomas Hazlett, a Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Hazlett and I cross swords regularly, but this statement of his is a real gem. Hazlett stated at a conference where I was in the audience: Interference is only meaningful when there is economic damage. If there's no economic damage experienced, then interference is of no consequence.

I feel that there are numerous license-exempt BWIA success stories in metro areas happening now (my current favorite example is TowerStream, but there are many others), and this trend will continue into the future in even greater frequency than in the past as the technology continues to improve.

Steve Stroh

Copyright © 2004 by Steve Stroh (except for excerpts from Jim Thompson). This article originally appeared on Corante / Broadband Wireless Internet Access.