Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) News

Good Day, BWIA - Tuesday, 2008-01-22

Good Day, BWIA is 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.).

Back home again   Ahhh... after my trip to Denver... and a bonus trip to Scotts Bluff Nebraska (thanks very much, Matt), it's good to be back in the Seattle area, with my wonderful family, coffee that doesn't masquerade as tea, weather that hints of snow and doesn't deliver same (thus, no shoveling, slipping, etc.), and (as pictured at right) incredibly fantastic views of snow-covered mountains in the early morning light.

BWIA-related events   As I mentioned, yesterday, I spent my writing time updating BWIA Calendar, what I consider to be the best overall listing of events related to Broadband Wireless Internet Access. Not that it's absolutely complete - there are events that I haven't heard about - yet. But when I do hear about them, I update BWIA Calendar as soon as possible. There are also other wireless-related events that I choose not to include because they're not, solely in my opinion, significantly (enough) related to Broadband Wireless Internet Access. Usually, that's a conference or trade show that deigns to include a wireless-related track, typically with a title like "The Future of Wireless" or "Will WiMAX Disrupt Cellular Momentem", etc. I also tend to exclude events that are a bit too tightly focused on aspects of wireless such as conferences that focus on tower siting, or antenna technology, or components, etc. So, if you know of an event that broadly relates to Broadband Wireless Internet Access, please let me know. One of the better ways to provide input is to use the comments at BWIA Calendar.
 

After shaking hands with McCaw, count your fingers

Excerpt from Good Day, BWIA - Tuesday, 2008-01-22 in Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) / WiMAX News:

Bell Canada must be smarting a bit today with Clearwire's announcement that Clearwire has chosen Nortel to provide voice services infrastructure for Clearwire. As I described in a March 8, 2005 article - Clearwire and Bell Canada announced that they have formed a partnership for Bell Canada to exclusively handle the VOIP telephony operations of Clearwire's US operations and be the "preferred" VOIP partner for Clearwire's operations outside the US. Announcements are coming fast and furious from Clearwire of late, and it's time I got busy again and rededicated myself to writing about Clearwire as the largest pure-play Broadband Wireless Internet Access Service Provider in the US on my Independent Clearwire Blog.

By Steve Stroh

This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).

Sprint Nextel reductions - you know there has to be a BWIA angle

Excerpt from Good Day, BWIA - Tuesday, 2008-01-22 in Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) / WiMAX News:

 While there was nothing stated about Broadband Wireless Internet Access in its announcement of significant cutbacks, Sprint Nextel's (expensive) commitment to deploy Mobile WiMAX services using its 2.5 GHz spectrum has to be weighing heavily on Sprint Nextel's new CEO Dan Hesse. It's going to be expensive for Xohm to get traction in its launch markets of Washington / Baltimore and Chicago. Not only does Xohm have to explain what it's service is, but why you really need it, especially given the aggressive competition for customers of such services by AT&T Mobility (nice that a name has finally settled out for AT&T's wireless services) and Verizon Wireless, soon-enough T-Mobile's (true) broadband services expected to launch this year... and, worst of all, Sprint's own 1xEV-DO Rev. A services on its CDMA network. And doing so in the midst of downsizing Sprint's workforce and possibly consolidating Virginia employees to Kansas (good luck!), stockholder angst that the reductions don't go far enough, and salvaging a viable business out the badly-damaged iDen service. My prediction stands that Sprint Nextel will essentially spin out Xohm and its 2.5 GHz spectrum into a joint venture with Clearwire, or dump it outright. There's simply too much corporate inertia at Sprint Nextel - invested careers and tribal knowledge, technological infrastructure built for "the core competency of a telephone company is to generate billable events", and the external pressures of "the good old days of the cellular business" for a Mobile WiMAX service, with its radical distillation of "telecommunications" into "Stupid Network", for Xohm to gain any significant traction within Sprint.

By Steve Stroh

This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).

Good Day, BWIA - Monday, 2008-01-21

Good Day, BWIA is 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.).

BWIA Calendar updated   Instead of working on a Good Day, BWIA daily compendium, I updated my calendar of BWIA-related events on BWIA Calendar. It will be fleshed out continuously as I learn of other BWIA-related events for 2008.

Good Day, BWIA will return tomorrow.

By Steve Stroh

Fine Print / Boilerplate / Acknowledgements / Credits / FAQs
(Last updated 2007-11-06)

This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).

No Good Day, BWIA Today

Apologies, but I won't have a Good Day, BWIA today.

Again, I'm traveling this week, attending EC-Expo 2008 / ECX 2008 in Denver, Colorado. Today is "exhibit" day, and for such a small show, I saw a surprising number of BWIA-related "new stuff"... at least new to me.  Back home to Seattle tonight from Denver.

Thanks,

Steve

By Steve Stroh

Fine Print / Boilerplate / Acknowledgements / Credits / FAQs
(Last updated 2007-11-06)

This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).

Good Day, BWIA - Thursday, 2008-01-17

Good Day, BWIA is 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.).

I'm traveling, attending EC-Expo 2008 / ECX 2008 in Denver, Colorado, yesterday through Friday   That's why postings have been a bit sparse this week. EC-Expo is a nice, informal, smaller show, focusing on Broadband Wireless Internet Access. This is the fourteenth EC-Expo, and probably the last of the "traditional" format of the show. Electro-Comm Distributing (now termed Hutton Broadband) was acquired by Hutton Communications about eighteen months ago, and they announced that they'll be making changes, one of which is that the event will now be called, simply, ECX (year). There aren't presentations per se at EC-Expo, but rather three-hour blocks of vendor training, with a six-hour Exhibit area on Friday. It'll be interesting to see if Hutton realizes the opportunity it has with the reputation of EC-Expo and its position in the industry to connect better to the Broadband Wireless Internet Access customers (service providers) with the demise of WISPCON, Broadband Wireless World, and other BWIA-related trade shows that are no longer significant.

Good Day, BWIA - Monday, 2008-01-14

Good Day, BWIA is 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.).

Apologies for GDBWIA being missing in action last week.

Summary of significant BWIA-related stories from last week (other than the Consumer Electronics Show - CES, which I'll cover separately):

• Frontline Wireless LLC apparently is out of business (and presumably won't be bidding at the upcoming US 700 MHz spectrum auctions); DailyWireless.ORG has a pretty good overview of Frontline's demise.
• Meraki proposed to expand its experimental Mesh Wi-Fi Network to cover all of San Francisco.
• Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile want television broadcast whitespaces to be used only for backhaul.

And that's about it for non-CES news, that I saw.

Good Day, BWIA - Thursday, 2008-01-03

Good Day, BWIA is 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.).

Today is yet another slow news day for Broadband Wireless Internet Access-related news as the US slowly returns to its usual frenetic pace after the Christmas / New Year holidays. But the drumbeat is increasing in preparation for the gigantic Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next week. One of the more interesting wireless-related announcements to filter out is that a new consortium, called WirelessHD, has been formed to standardize a wireless method of communicating between High Definition Video components within a household. Interesting because WirelessHD plans to use the little-known 60 GHz band which (in the US) spans from 57-64 GHz - a full 7 GHz of license-exempt spectrum.