Good Day, BWIA (GDBWIA) 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.).
Things That Get Me Excited About BWIA Today? Well, amused, and slightly sad more than excited. Sam Churchill of DailyWireless.org writes about Intel-funded research into wireless technologies that could be effective in providing connectivity to rural areas of lesser-developed countries.
This is the part that leapt out at me from Churchill's article: A key component of this solution is a variation on IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) technology. While the 802.11 Media Access Control (MAC) protocol was not designed for long-distance communications, researchers believe that modifying the MAC layer should resolve the problem, without the need for hardware or driver modifications. Sad, because this is in no way, shape, or form "news" or even significant "research" because such modifications of the 802.11 MAC for outdoor, long-range links have been in use in the Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP), industry since I've been writing about it, more than ten years now.
What Churchill's article doesn't state is that when you do make changes to the 802.11 MAC, such changes render the unit incompatible with "typical" 802.11 / Wi-Fi units. But, on a point-to-point link, or where you're only trying to communicate with units under your control (such as the situation with a WISP, where they install both the base station and the Customer Premise Equipment - CPE) radios... you don't care about compatibility with 802.11 / Wi-Fi.
The first vendor that I was aware of that made significant changes to the 802.11 MAC for more reliable long-distance links was Karlnet, the corporate corpse of which is buried somewhere deep in the current incarnation of Proxim. The state-of-the-art in "tweaking" 802.11 off-the-shelf devices that I'm aware of is hardware - Atheros chipsets and radio modules, and software / firmware - Star-OS. (Valemont Networks makes some amazing bang-for-the-buck radio units based on Star-OS.)
What really makes me sad is that if Intel really wanted to make a difference, it wouldn't be throwing this "research" money at academics (not that supporting academic research is a bad thing...) and asking them to solve this problem, but rather to venture out of their corporate tower (mindset, mostly) and check out what's happening in the real world of wireless communications. If they did, they'd quickly discover the "down in the trenches" part of the Broadband Wireless Internet Access where the WISPs are already delivering cost-effective Broadband Internet Access to rural areas, in ways and using systems that are ideal for developing areas. In fact, all the "big" vendors in the WISP industry that build 802.11-based systems, such as Valemont and MikroTik, have, for years now, shipped a lot (perhaps most) of their systems and firmware into developing countries where WISPs (including not-for-profit groups operating as WISPs) are already providing the kind of connectivity that Intel thinks is needed. Another "it's happening in the real world, folks" technology the WISPs have been using for a half-decade or so is Wireless Mesh Networks based on 802.11 / Wi-Fi by vendors such as Qorvus Systems, and, of course, Meraki. If anyone from Intel reads this, and could withstand a considerable ear-bending on what's really going on with WISPs and BWIA, let me know.
Clearwire Modem Weather Report - Hollywood Hill, Woodinville, Washington - Solid 4 Bars - yet another non-rainy, but damp, chilly day, overcast that's so... numbingly... typical at this time of the year in the Seattle area. It's weeks like this that I start wondering wistfully about doing some "research" somewhere with serious sun for a week or so, like Southern California, Arizona, Las Vegas, Florida, etc.(I write about my experiences as a Clearwire user, and about Clearwire the company and as a bellwether for the overall Broadband Wireless Internet Access / WiMAX industry in the Independent Clearwire Blog.
Singapore launches Maritime mobile WiMAX Network - A consortium of organizations led by the port of Singapore has developed WISEPORT, a Mobile WiMAX network for maritime usage out to ten miles offshore from Singapore. This is a very cool application of Mobile WiMAX, detailed in a good article in WiMAX Day by (someone...?) (I first saw mention of this article on WiMAX.com.) Prediction - Within a year, expect the major ports of the world to hammer out common technology, authentication, and billing to allow major ships to be fitted with Mobile WiMAX systems and operate at any major port much like they can do with WISEPORT in Singapore. There's just too much demand for Broadband Internet Access, better faster, cheaper than satellite, for this not to happen quickly.
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From the When Will They Get This??? Dept. - NextWave’s latest effort: Mobile TV over WiMAX. Good, but again, sad, article in RCR Wireless that discusses yet another doomed-before-launch effort to build dedicated, streaming video technology at wireless customers. It's like at Wireless Telephony Service Providers, there's a sucker born every minute that they keep thinking / hoping / fantasizing that video is something they're going to be able to make a lot of money with. They're completely in denial that the trend is indisputably that video content is evolving to be just yet-another-thing-delivered-over-an-Internet connection. YouTube, the full-length videos that NBC is making available (including, brilliantly, old television series from their archives), all of which are funded by advertising. Video, voice, messaging, it's just another application that will be delivered over a commodity Internet connection to a general-purpose device. The service providers that get that they really are just a Internet bitpipe that happens to be wireless and mobile, will thrive. The ones that keep thinking that they're something special in an age of intense competition for commodity Broadband Wireless (Mobile) Internet Access, will not thrive, and eventually die. Take a lesson from history, folks - remember how dominant AOL was once upon a time? And how (in)significant they are now? The difference is that AOL's "captive" customers discovered how much richer the content was that's available on the Internet. It's not just YouTube... or NBC.com, or any one content provider. It's that with Broadband Wireless (Mobile) Internet Access... you have access to all of it. And with a significant local storage in your device, you can download it for later viewing and carry it around with you for extended watching. So... good luck with your video services folks - you'll either learn the easy way, from history and current trends, or the hard way by going the way of Western Union.
By Steve Stroh
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(Last updated 2008-02-25)
This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).
This article was written and posted via Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA); Clearwire service using a NextNet Wireless / Motorola Expedience Residential Service Unit (RSU).
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