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? As the title says, I wasn't able to scare up much in the way of significant BWIA News. There's news, of course - but scanning through it, nothing signficant enough to bring to your attention.
So, I thought I'd take a few paragraphs to wax philosophic about the interplay between Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and wireless telephony (cellular) - how I see it all playing out.
Over the decade I've been writing about Broadband Wireless Internet Access, I've developed two inherent biases. The first is that the Internet has become (past tense) the source of most of the content (including applications) that people want to access, consume, read, use etc. The second is that I've come to believe, absolutely, in the Stupid Network principle first espoused by David Isenberg. I believe that both of those biases not only apply to Broadband Wireless Internet Access, but are even more powerfully "in effect" for Broadband Wireless Internet Access than they are in effect for Broadband "Landline" Internet Access.Here's one very minor example of this principle at work. Yesterday I did in fact discontinue my DSL Internet Access for my home. The reason is that I was paying a pretty high price (professional / small business rate of around $55/month) for what I considered merely basic-to-adequate service. The DSL had the maddening habit of going out on me at least once a day, and that was particularly galling on days that I had a heavy writing schedule. The outage would be for a few minutes, but just long enough to disrupt my workflow, and occasionally lose work (which was more my fault, as I should have been "saving early, saving often"). I had an alternative Broadband Internet Access - Clearwire, which despite the challenges of 2.5 GHz RF trying to "shoot through" a greenbelt at the edge of my property, has worked great, even in very challenging (for 2.5 GHz RF) rain. Wireless gives me a choice. I've even got an additional choice - completely different technology, spectrum, carrier - Sprint's Mobile Broadband (1xEV-DO Rev. A service on 1.9 GHz) via a USB "modem". More choice - via wireless.
If either of those pull a "dumb stunt"... like Clearwire used to do in default blocking of VOIP ports, or Sprint instituting draconian and expensive-to-overflow transfer limits (like Verizon Wireless) I have choice.
So... back to the stated subject. How do I think it's going to play out with Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and wireless telephony? I think that the advantage will go, inevitably, to the whatever technology / system / carrier that offers the best bang-for-the-buck while observing my two inherent biases. Wireless telephony is OK, unless there's a better bang-for-the-buck option, like say Sprint/Clearwire Mobile WiMAX for the same price or less than I'm paying for Sprint's Mobile Broadband on their wireless telephony network. But if I lived in an area that's implemented clueful-operation / reasonable price / good technology wide-area Wi-Fi, that's what I'd choose.
So many people are handicapping WiMAX because of the perceived "head start" that wireless telephony deployments have, but they don't recognize that Mobile WiMAX is frighteningly (to the established carriers) easy to deploy. It's cheaper than wireless telephony infrastructure, it's fundamentally more decentralized (no mobile switching station needed), and all the tower infrastructure is already there and paid for from the PCS deployments a decade ago.
Similarly, few recognize how rapidly Wi-Fi is maturing into a viable wide-area technology. Intel's just "discovering" this capability of Wi-Fi, and building a standardized mesh networking protocol into Wi-Fi is going to fundamentally change the playing field. There are some companies that seem to have perfected beam-forming technology that would enable real Metropolitan Wi-Fi services, as well as 802.11n being adapted for wide-area use. Not to mention that there's now a total of 550 MHz available in the 5 GHz band for Wi-Fi (and, of course, other non-Wi-Fi protocols) use.
So who's going to win in the three-way competition between Wi-Fi, Mobile WiMAX, and wireless telephony? I don't know... but it will be whoever does the best job of providing cheapest, fastest, fewest-restrictions Internet Access and gets out of the way. Wireless telephony could win if they cut their prices aggressively and just make it so compelling to use them for everything that anything else just wouldn't be of interest. Mobile WiMAX will find a beachhead in the market because wireless telephony carriers generally won't be aggressive about price. Wi-Fi could win by being the cheapest, fastest, where-you-really-want-it option.
In the end, the users win, because they'll have unfettered, fast, reasonably cheap access to the myriad services, media... and other wonders... of the Internet.
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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