Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) News

Verizon Wireless Hammers First Chunks Out Of Its Walled Garden

Tuesday on Good Day, BWIA I wrote:

Verizon Wireless hammers the first chunks out of its walled garden   It's shocking, at first glance, that Verizon Wireless has announced that in 2008 it will (finally) offer a "bring your own"  option for devices not sold by, or designed for Verizon Wireless to operate on its network. But seen in the bigger context of seismic changes roiling the wireless telephony industry, Verizon really had no choice. One of Verizon Wireless' previous marketing phrases was "It's The Network", but they're slowly coming to realize is that, from the customer's perspective, It's Not The Network, but rather What You Can Do / What Devices Can You Use... On (A) Network, that matters the most. This development rates a dedicated article, which I'll post later today.

To its credit, Verizon Wireless (VW) has invested heavily in continuous upgrades to its networks, especially moving from 1xRTT (dialup-speed) to 1xEV-DO Revision A (DSL-speed) to offer Broadband Internet Access and services such as V Cast and downloads. But despite those upgrades, my subjective analysis is that the upgrades and the 1xEV-DO Rev. A services haven't turned out that well overall for VW. VW may well have thought "build it and they will come", or that frustrations with poor overall wireless network quality would drive customers to defect from other US wireless telephony networks. While that's a reasonable strategy, it could be that the average wireless telephony customer perceives that wireless telephony networks overall have improved and that VW's claims are merely marketing puffery. But another likely explanation is that people have gotten used to wireless telephony networks not being that reliable overall - they've simply come to expect that calls will sometimes... or often... be cut off.

Good Day, BWIA - Tuesday

It's Tuesday, November 27, 2007, the day the wireless walled gardens began crumbling. Welcome back to Good Day, BWIA, a light compendium of news, items of interest, irreverent commentary, and occasional light analysis relating to Broadband Wireless Internet Access (including WiMAX, public access Wi-Fi, etc.).

Verizon Wireless hammers the first chunks out of its walled garden   It's shocking, at first glance, that Verizon Wireless has announced that in 2008 it will (finally) offer a "bring your own"  option for devices not sold by, or designed for Verizon Wireless to operate on its network. But seen in the bigger context of seismic changes roiling the wireless telephony industry, Verizon really had no choice. One of Verizon Wireless' previous marketing phrases was "It's The Network", but they're slowly coming to realize is that, from the customer's perspective, It's Not The Network, but rather What You Can Do / What Devices Can You Use... On (A) Network, that matters the most. This development rates a dedicated article, which I'll post later today, err.. Wednesday.

Good Day, BWIA - Monday

It's Monday, November 26, 2007 - a good day for asteroid-spotting. Welcome back to Good Day, BWIA, a light compendium of news, items of interest, irreverent commentary, and occasional light analysis relating to Broadband Wireless Internet Access (including WiMAX, public access Wi-Fi, etc.).

NextPhase and GigaBeam to unwire Los Angeles county and Orange County for 1 Gbps communications   Well, if you're going to build a brand-new network, might as well build it for real speed. If you factor in that moviemaking and media are one of the primary businesses in this area, this makes a lot of sense as video production, including movies, have now shifted entirely to digital and high-definition digital, so moving those files around with conventional telecom "pipes" can take a while. Covad (which acquired NextWeb, Inc. in 2005)  and Towerstream are dominant Broadband Wireless Internet Access providers in the Los Angeles area, both with better scale and deeper pockets than NextPhase, not to mention (precious, expensive, time-consuming-to-negotiate) roof rights and fiber access. So, NextPhase starting its network buildout at a minimum of 1 Gbps makes a lot of sense... but there's nothing to prevent Covad or Towerstream from doing the same. Towerstream already has done some 1 Gbps links, but Covad executives are probably trying to figure out why they would need 1 Gbps links to service its VOIP  telephony customers. It's amusing to watch efforts such as this one continue to siphon off lucrative business customers for T-1-and-up services in major markets from incumbent wireline carriers AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest; they're standing still in comparison.

Good Day, BWIA - Friday

It's Friday, November 23, 2007, and welcome back to Good Day, BWIA, a light compendium of news, items of interest, irreverent commentary, and occasional light analysis relating to Broadband Wireless Internet Access (including WiMAX, public access Wi-Fi, etc.).

Alaska Airlines - BWIA Service Provider   Another example of why Alaska Airlines is my favorite airline - the Tacoma News Tribune reports that Alaska Airlines is seriously considering adding satellite-backhaul in-flight Broadband Internet Access via Wi-Fi to their entire fleet (hopefully, just the 737s and finally retire the old and tired MD-80s). Here's the "favorite airline" part - they're not considering it as revenue enhancement, but rather as a service differentiator from other airlines. Doing  would make sense purely for the "Nerd Bird" flights (named for the nearly 100% use of laptops on certain Seattle - San Jose flights), but Alaska Airlines is thinking of some of its other routes where in-flight Internet access would be welcome, such as their routes to Mexico and Hawaii, and (not mentioned) their transcontinental routes such as Seattle-Boston and Seattle-DC. Alaska Airlines was the first I saw to go to sane electronic ticketing and their web site was one of the first genuinely useful to get etickets on. If you've never flown on Alaska Airlines, you should consider them, but I'm completely prejudiced living in the Seattle area which is Alaska's hub. I used to work in Alaska; my early career was Marine Doodlebugger (a separate breed from "muddy" Doodlebuggers) working aboard the M/V Western Glacier and M/V Western Anchorage. There's something really special about an airline that flies to some of the most remote areas of the US, including the oasis of civilization in the Aleutians that is Dutch Harbor.

Amazon Kindle Do-Over

The following story seems to be a rare departure from my writing about "pure" Broadband Wireless Internet Access. But, it's not entirely so because without Broadband Wireless Internet Access, the Kindle would simply not be a compelling product; BWIA is completely integral to the Kindle's business model. Without BWIA, and the use of BWIA in a radically new way (paid for by content downloads, not a recurring or metered fee), Kindle would not be anywhere near the potential success I now believe it is going to be.

In initial post about the Kindle... Wow... I got an amazing number of things wrong, and completely overlooked a number of compelling features of the Kindle. My wakeup call about the worst of my goofs was Tom Evslin's Kindle – Free Internet Browsing for Just $400. So numerous are the goofs, omissions, and new info that it rated this rare dedicated post. The text of the original post is in italics, with the errors in strikethrough. I think that the result is one of the more definitive discussions technical details of the Kindle. Of course there is the "signature" Newsweek (which, ironically deliciously, isn't available as a Kindle subscription) cover story - The Future Of Reading. If you're at all interested in the Kindle, I highly recommend taking the time to read the entire seven browser pages of it.

(Almost...) all conceivable questions about the Kindle can be answered authoritatively by reading:

• Kindle Product Page
• Kindle User's Guide (PDF)
• About Your Kindle (PDF)

 

Good Day, BWIA - Tuesday

It's Tuesday, Nobember 20, 2007, and welcome back to Good Day, BWIA, a light compendium of news, items of interest, irreverent commentary, and occasional light analysis relating to Broadband Wireless Internet Access (including WiMAX, public access Wi-Fi, etc.).

Verizon (Wireless), AT&T, Sprint, Clearwire, Wireless ISPs, and (most shamefully), Western US wireline telephony incumbent Qwest apparent no-shows in Pinal County, Arizona   A story in yesterday's Arizona Republic - Pinal officials want countywide Wi-Fi illustrates perfectly why Metropolitan Wi-Fi systems are continuing to be deployed despite the high-profile "failure" of much larger networks in "metropolis" cities, most recently related to EarthLink's decision not to invest further in deploying Metropolitan Wi-Fi networks. 1) To participate in the new Broadband Internet economy, people need access to Broadband Internet Access; 2) Citizens and business (apparently) cannot get it at the moment from the "usual suspects" named above*, 3) government officials are ready, willing, and able to do something about the lack of (ubiquitously) available and affordable Broadband Internet Access in their area; 3) They're apparently untroubled about the philosophical divide about whether commercial entities should be left to provide, or not, such services, 4) What they can deploy - immediately, economically are Metropolitan Wi-Fi systems that make use of license-exempt spectrum. While it would be great to have commercial entities provide state-of-the-art (Mobile WiMAX) systems using licensed spectrum by commercial entities at no cost to governments... such entities are, apparently no-shows. Governments such as Pinal County don't undertake such projects without considerable frustration and consideration that, essentially, they have no choice. I wrote about just such frustration experienced by government officials in Allegany County, Maryland that gave rise to a carrier-grade county-wide mostly-wireless telecommunications network called AllCoNet2 which is still, in my experience, one of the very best examples that public-access telecommunications networks are no longer the exclusive domain of... nor perhaps should be... of commercial entities. (Note that I'm no longer associated with CONXX, Inc. as stated in this story.) My thanks to MuniWireless.com for the pointer to this story, and reading their take on it. *I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that Yes, Broadband Internet Access via satellite is an option almost everywhere in the continental USA, especially with the emergence of WildBlue (which I hope to try for myself one of these days) and much-improved services from Hughes, but satellite "has issues" including high latency, no tolerance for anything resembling peer-to-peer, low transfer limits, etc.

Good Day, BWIA - Monday

It's Monday, November 19, 2007, and welcome back to Good Day, BWIA, a light compendium of news, items of interest, irreverent commentary, and occasional light analysis relating to Broadband Wireless Internet Access (including WiMAX, public access Wi-Fi, etc.).

EarthLink will be redirecting their efforts from the Metropolitan Wi-Fi business... into... what, exactly... the dialup business?   My colleague and friend Ken DiPietro neatly turned a phrase to describe this new strategy for EarthLink: The stupid is powerful with this one. :-) OK, I get that Earthlink has some challenges, and they've sunk a lot of money into various rathole businesses like Helio. But, short of selling out completely... how, exactly, are they going to actually maximize shareholder value considering that they're not growing their customer base any more - it's rapidly shrinking because they only thing that they offer now where they get to keep most of the profit is dialup. I agree with DiPietro that current EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff is simply shuffling the deck chairs of a sinking ship in preparation for selling EarthLink. My snarky elaboration on DiPietro's speculation - some private equity fund should buy EarthLink, buy NetZero, buy AOL out of Time Warner, maybe even the MSN access business out of Microsoft, consolidate them all  into some uber-dialup company... and it still wouldn't be that significant any more. I'll say it again; Metropolitan Wi-Fi networks are viable with the right business model and the right technology. EarthLink had some of the former, and none of the latter. Now that the right technology is finally here, it will take  some vision (Craig Settles has it, keep reading MuniWireless.com) and some capital, but it's a more-than-viable business.

Good Day, BWIA - Friday

It's Friday, November 16, 2007, and welcome back to Good Day, BWIA, a light compendium of news, items of interest, irreverent commentary, and occasional light analysis relating to Broadband Wireless Internet Access (including WiMAX, public access Wi-Fi, etc.).

Google's $4.6B burning a hole in its pocket   Google's pledge to bid at least $4.6B in the upcoming US 700 MHz spectrum auctions is much in the news this morning. At their current valuation of around $622/share, that pledge increasingly looks like a just good business to follow through on. But I, like a lot of knowledgeable observers of the wireless industry view the... (what can only be described as, to us) hysteria about the 700 MHz auctions as, at best, misguided, and at worst, totally clueless. Here's just one daunting factoid... it will be expensive to deploy a nationwide 700 MHz network because a significant part of the necessary tower and rooftop infrastructure simply isn't adequate for the much larger antennas that will be needed for 700 MHz. Much of the current tower and rooftop infrastructure is set up for 1.9 GHz used for wireless telephony; 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz antennas are even smaller. The recently-auctioned Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) band at 1.7 GHz / 2.1 GHz - close enough that the antennas are the same approximate form factor as those for 1.9 GHz. Those are "bolt-on" additions to towers and rooftops. 700 MHz antennas- think reengineering the tower or rooftop to insure that it's adequate for the increased wind load. For those that think I'm being a bit too alarmist given that legacy Nextel and commercial and public safety two-way radio operate at spectral neighbor 800 MHz... think about it. What's being proposed for 700 MHz are high-bandwidth, intensive-use applications. That means there's going to have to be pretty intense sectorization to insure adequate spectral reuse.

700 MHz definitely isn't the be-all-and-end-all in Broadband Wireless Internet Access. It simply makes more sense for Google to buy Clearwire and Sprint's 2.5 GHz spectrum and get on with building out a nationwide Mobile WiMAX network on 2.5 GHz. Google has the cash to easily handle the purchases and support building such a new network, Mobile WiMAX technology and systems are mature enough for there to be systems and expertise available off-the-shelf, and the 2.5 GHz spectrum is "virgin-enough" to support a new, truly-built-for-Internet Broadband Wireless Internet Access network. Here's something to think about... much of the investment in building a wireless network has been in the infrastructure... not just the systems on rooftops and towers, but the switching and backhaul. Imagine if Google did build a Mobile WiMAX network as described above. It already has all the back-end infrastructure it needs! The "Googleplex" has enough raw, distributed computing power to handle the two core functions of a network - billing, and switching/routing. Not to mention incredible content generation. It has an email system in GMail, it has news in Google News, it has a billing / payment system in place, it already does VOIP in Google Chat; it even now has interoperability with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) from its acquisition of GrandCentral.

Unfortunately, and I say this with a heavy heart, while Google could really ignite competitive Broadband Internet Access in the US with the wireless strategy outlined above (remember, it's one of the chief proponents of Network Neutrality...), despite its awesome capabilities, Google hasn't exhibited much cluefulness in any of its wireless strategy to date. Like with the compromises Apple had to make for the iPhone to be minimally acceptable to wireless telephony carriers, trying to effect change by working "within the system" of wireless telephony will be, at best, half-measures. It's a real shame that Google isn't listening to ideas such as outlined above, at least at the executive level that can implement real change.

Good Evening, BWIA - Thursday

It's (still, Pacific time) Thursday, November 15 (already?!?!?!?!), 2007, and welcome back to Good Day... er, Evening, BWIA, a light compendium of news, items of interest, irreverent commentary, and occasional light analysis relating to Broadband Wireless Internet Access (including WiMAX, public access Wi-Fi, etc.).

FCC opens 3.65 GHz band for registration   While I saw some info posted a bit earlier on a WISPA list, it wasn't for public consumption. Michael Anderson, Chairman of Part-15.org broke the news for public consumption this morning on on a number of his organization's mailing lists:
Today, the FCC’s website began accepting registrations for the 3650-3700 band. See the PART-15.ORG website for more details later this afternoon. Additionally, Redline Communications received their FCC equipment certification approval for their AN-100AU. More to follow later today on the P15 website. Michael
This is a pretty big deal for the smaller Broadband Wireless Internet Access Service Providers (who often call themselves Wireless Internet Service Providers, or WISPs) because the license-lite nature of this band will give them some protection from interference (not to mention they're not sharing this band with all manner of other devices like baby monitors, cordless phones, etc.) and allow them to use some of the good WiMAX gear that's been coming out of late. The combination of license-lite promising some remedy for interference, the use of (real) WiMAX equipment might mean that WISPs can go after better financing options from local bankers and investors.

Glenn Fleishman does a good review of the Motorola Expedience PC Card

From Good Evening, BWIA - Thursday in Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) / WiMAX News:

I was impressed with Fleishman's pretty thorough review of the Expedience PC Card as used on Clearwire's Seattle-area Expedience network. I was surprised that Glenn reported no problems using it while actually mobile (street speeds, not freeway speeds). I know that Glenn knew better than to call Expedience "WiMAX", and he did a good job explaining that Expedience and Clearwire-to-date isn't WiMAX to his readers.

By Steve Stroh

This article is Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).