Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) News

Sprint / Nextel's XOHM Mobile WiMAX Commences Revenue Service In Baltimore, Maryland

Sprint / Nextel has finally launched its "XOHM" Mobile WiMAX service into revenue operation in Baltimore, Maryland.

Note that this isn't the first Mobile WiMAX network to commence revenue operation in the US. That honor belongs to some innovative smaller carriers... and AT&T Mobility very quietly launching Mobile WiMAX service in some cities in Alaska.

But now... it starts getting interesting.

Hopefully we'll see some of the national press doing the hard work of going to Baltimore, developing a test routine, and then trying XOHM against the wireless telephony Broadband Internet Access  of Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility... and yes, Sprint / Nextel.

If such reportage happens, what I expect to see is that much of the hype about Mobile WiMAX will be validated, because Mobile WiMAX is fundamentally better at providing Broadband Internet Access. Because...

• Mobile WiMAX is a communications network designed for Broadband Internet Access system that accommodates voice as just another service; wireless telephony Broadband Internet Access is a communications network designed for voice that (grudgingly, haltingly) accommodates data.
• Mobile WiMAX was designed from inception to provide Broadband Internet Access - it's designed to accommodate (though, not exclusively) the TCP/IP protocol used within the Internet.
• The Radio Frequency (RF) technology used in Mobile WiMAX is several generations ahead of that used in CDMA / 1xEV-DO (Sprint / Nextel, Verizon) and GSM / EDGE / HSPA (AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile, most of rest of world). Generally, Mobile WiMAX connections will work better, in more places, more reliably, at faster speeds. It also helps that, again, Mobile WiMAX is designed for data; with that, the Mobile WiMAX RF subsystems can do a lot of "tricks" that  can't be done by the legacy wireless telephony networks.
• Sprint / Nextel was able to build out XOHM's network in that rare set of circumstances - building a new network, doing it right, planning it right, but doing so with full access to any RF communications site through the legacy wireless relationships.
• XOHM was built for Broadband Internet Access - their engineers know what it's going to be used for - lots of fast Internet Access, and they built it for that, especially those oh-so-critical backhaul links that are usually measly T-1's on the wireless telephony networks. XOHM's network took a longer than expected to build in part because Sprint / Nextel couldn't get the high-capacity backhaul links (usually wireless backhaul) in place in time... and kudos to them - they knew that they'd need them.
• Mobile WiMAX has much lower latency - it can set up and tear down a connection in milliseconds (accounts vary as to just how many mS).
• Mobile WiMAX can truly accommodate "always on" devices - seamlessly, continuously, because it can set up and tear down connections so blazingly fast, making the network very efficient, while giving users and devices the experience of being seamlessly connected.
• I doubt that XOHM is going to do transfer limits... at least as clumsily as the wireless telephony companies have done.
• Sprint / Nextel is really going to try some new business models - no subsidy on devices, highly flexible pricing plans, etc.

I'm impressed, to date, that Sprint / Nextel really does seem to understand that XOHM is a classic Isenberg Stupid Network, and they seem to be OK with that. So far they seem to be staying out of the way of their customers.

Wish I was there to try it out for myself.

Now to see if Clearwire is capable of launching a Mobile WiMAX network into revenue operation.

By Steve Stroh

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) ; Sprint Mobile Broadband service using a Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem - 1xEV-DO Rev. A on my MacBook Pro laptop... while sitting in Starbucks with "free" (with onerous terms and conditions, including allowing AT&T to spam you) Wi-Fi available.

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) ; Sprint Mobile Broadband service using a Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem - 1xEV-DO Rev. A on my MacBook Pro laptop... while sitting in Starbucks with "free" (with onerous terms and conditions, including allowing AT&T to spam you) Wi-Fi available.

Living With The iPhone, Part 3 - iPhone Fixed, The Amazing Apple Store

In Living With The iPhone 3G, Part 1, I discussed things that I think were done well in the iPhone 3G.

in Living With The iPhone 3G, Part 2, I discussed things that I think weren't done so well, were done incompletely, and some that were just plain wrong.

In this (unplanned) installment, I'll discuss what happened with my particular iPhone and discuss the Apple Store phenomena.

In Part 1 and Part 2, I excoriated Apple for my the fact that on my iPhone, the Safari browser was crashing a lot. By "a lot" I mean, literally, every few minutes. On one site, Mapquest, it would crash every time before I could finish inputting an address... which turned out to be a good thing. Because of the constant browser crashes, my iPhone had become unusable, at least for the purposes that I bought it for - a constantly-connected Internet computer that I could keep in my pocket.

On Sunday, my wife and I were chauffeurs to support our daughter's very busy social schedule. One one afternoon appointment, we had a couple of hours to kill in the Seattle area, and my wife, having gotten really tired of hearing me whine about how often my iPhone browser was crashing, decided to take me to the Seattle Apple Store (University Village). Once there, I explained my problem to one of the concierges and he put my in the standby queue to talk to the Genius that was specializing in iPods and iPhones that day. I waited perhaps 45 minutes, just milling around (more about that in a moment) and in between scheduled appointments I was able to talk to the Genius.

Because I could demonstrate the browser crashing problem so vividly on Mapquest - as I was explaining to him, it crashed, and said he had seen that particular problem a few times before, and what had probably was that an app or some odd piece of data had become corrupted. His suggested fix was to take my iPhone home and dock it to the "host" computer (in my case, a Mac). Here were the steps he suggested:

• Sync / Backup
• Restore original settings (a button that's prominent on the iTunes application)
• Let it restore the backup

I did as he suggested, and it worked!

My iPhone no longer crashes constantly when using the Safari browser. It works wonderfully, exactly as I had hoped when I bought it. It now works better than it did when I bought it (which was prior to the 2.1 software update).

It's working wonderfully - I'll explain how I use my iPhone in a future installment, but suffice it to say, I'm blissful that I can finally start catching up on my backlog of unread RSS feeds including a lot of blogs, news, etc. This is the kind of experience I am used to from Apple products.

The Apple Store Phenomena

If you have any doubts about the growing market power of Apple... drop in at an Apple Store some weekend. You'll find that its crowded... to the point of being mobbed. The Apple Store I went to was elbow-to-elbow as its being remodeled to make it much bigger, and still people were willing to put up with it. There were people browsing, there were people buying, there were people dropping stuff off to be repaired, there were people talking with the Genuises. In short, the Apple Store has been a great experience - buying things there, getting support, etc. All of the people there are great, and customers really appreciate being able to get help face to face with their issues. That incredibly positive experience makes them much, much more willing to part with their money when it comes to their next purchase. It might seem like the Apple Store is "what good customer service ought to be", until you consider just how different that experience is versus the experience of the average PC customer. Where do they get that kind of help?

By Steve Stroh

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) ; Sprint Mobile Broadband service using a Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem - 1xEV-DO Rev. A on my MacBook Pro laptop... while sitting in Starbucks with "free" (with onerous terms and conditions, including allowing AT&T to spam you) Wi-Fi available.

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) ; Sprint Mobile Broadband service using a Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem - 1xEV-DO Rev. A on my MacBook Pro laptop... while sitting in Starbucks with "free" (with onerous terms and conditions, including allowing AT&T to spam you) Wi-Fi available.

No Article Today; RIP WaMu

Apologies for the lack of an article today. Life was a bit too demanding this morning and I wasn't able to complete Living With The iPhone 3G, Part 3, so it that will appear on Monday.

Here in the Seattle area, we're all in a bit of a state of shock that WaMu, after being such a financial powerhouse in the past decade or so, is no more. Seattle enjoyed the minor prominence of being the headquarters city to such a powerful consumer brand and being part of the top tier of consumer financial services. But we've survived the departure of Boeing's headquarters, the Sonics, Safeco, and many others. We'll be OK.

By Steve Stroh

Living With The iPhone 3G, Part 2

I discussed things that I thought were done well in the iPhone 3G in Living With The iPhone 3G, Part 1.

In this installment, I'll discuss things with the iPhone 3G that weren't done very well, incomplete, and just plain wrong.

By far, Easily #1, #2, and #3 on my list of annoyances with the iPhone 3G is that the Safari browser crashes - a lot - even with the 2.1 update. It's incredibly annoying, and completely inexcusable. iPhone 3G Safari seems to simply get "overwhelmed" when browsing a moderately complex page or pages. Google seems to understand the evolving nature of web browsers much more thoroughly than Apple and Microsoft, and a stable browser in a handheld computer like the iPhone is a basic requirement. (Commenters - yes, I know that Google's new Chrome browser is build on Apple's WebKit foundation.) It's the only reason that I went with the iPhone over other "wireless telephones with a web browser" - with the iPhone and iPhone 3G, Apple has done the best job to date of implementing a web browser and full-time Broadband Internet Access into a usable form factor that you can unconsciously carry in a pocket. If I could swap out Safari on iPhone 3G for Firefox or Chrome, I would do so immediately.

One thing that really surprised me with the iPhone 3G was that the iPod (audio playback) functionality wasn't implemented nearly as well as the dedicated iPods. Something I often did with my iPod is when I'm playing back a podcast and I miss something, I "rewind" (wonder how long that term from the era of tape recorders will persist?). (From memory...) Push the center button and then "spin the dial" counter-clockwise to move the playback point. In the iPhone 3G, you can move "forward" and "backward" in the audio file with the on-screen buttons, but you don't get a visual indication of where you are in the audio file like you do with the dedicated iPods. I was really surprised that Apple didn't implement an equivalent of the iPod "wheel" in the iPhone - it would seem to have all the elements needed in having a screen and touch inputs... Even if Apple didn't think that was the most efficient way to implement the iPod functionality in the iPhone, they could have offered is an optional user interface. Heck, make it a downloadable app!

But Apple is all about control of the all of the elements of your device, such as not offering an "iPod wheel" option on the iPhone. When Apple gets it right, that appoach delights. But when they get it wrong, it grates. And lately, Apple's doing a lot of grating.

The iPhone grating starts with the purchase / activation process. Buying anything else at the Apple store is a delight. If you know what you want, you're in and out in minutes and you feel valued as an Apple customer. Buying the iPhone in the Apple store leaves you feeling abused. The Apple Store personnel try, but they're not in control of all the inane questions and hoops that have to be jumped through. After 5 minutes into the process, you really start to wonder how much you really want this thing. Even after months, the whole purchase / activation process still has me irritated. The only thing that is good about going through all that at the Apple Store is that having to go through it at an AT&T Mobility store would be worse - at least Apple personnel try to make buying an iPhone a good experience; in my experience, the AT&T Mobility personnel don't even try to do that (especially if you're an existing customer trying to switch to an iPhone).

In my opinion, Apple could have done much better with the iPhone by becoming a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) such as TracFone and Virgin Mobile. That would give them complete control over not only the purchase / activation, but also being able to handle the entire picture of customer support, integrate the back-end functions (like an app that does keep track of your minutes, MBs used, etc.). But that's a huge task, and with Apple recasting itself around the iTunes Store and now the App Store, it was probably too much to take on to become an MVNO. But Apple is one of the very few companies that could make a success of being an MVNO and one of the very few who could make MVNO customers happier to be a mobile telephony customer of Apple rather than being a direct customer of one of the mobile telephony carriers.

Since this blog is mostly about Broadband Wireless Internet Access, let's get that out of the way. I rate AT&T Mobility's "3G" network, at least as experienced with the iPhone 3G as "adequate at best... when it's doing even that well." It just isn't that great. Better than "EDGE" was when you aren't in coverage of AT&T Mobility 3G or you have the original iPhone- definitely. Yes, the 2.1 software update to the iPhone 3G helped, but it was a marginal improvement to the overall connectivity in Seattle's Eastside where I spend most of my time. I've tried turning off the 3G and living with "EDGE" connectivity, and while that's more consistent, for using the iPhone 3G "web-intensively" like I do, EDGE connectivity simply isn't fast enough. If I was just using email with the native iPhone mail app, EDGE would probably be OK.

IAT&T Mobility, the iPhone US-carrier-of-no-choice, simply isn't anything special - the only thing AT&T Mobility has going for it is that it was smart enough... or desperate enough... to lock in Apple to an exclusive deal for the iPhone in the US for a period of time. But AT&T Mobility certainly isn't doing much to solidify the relationship to its iPhone customers:

• Reports (and lawsuits) that the popularity of the iPhone has "overwhelmed" AT&T Mobility's 3G network is consistent with my knowledge of wireless telephony technology networks and my personal experience. Even with "five bars" of signal strength, overall connectivity can be wildly erratic.
• The 3G network fiasco is ongoing, with no signs that AT&T Mobility, having committed to "hosting" the rapidly-growing base of iPhone 3G customers, is reacting to the overall inadequacy of their 3G network for those iPhone 3G customers that want to use the network they're paying so dearly for every month.
• The sheer cluelessness of having thousands of iPhone users sitting in Starbucks using AT&T Mobility's 3G network on their iPhone 3Gs while AT&T Wi-Fi is present in the Starbucks, but inaccessible to iPhone customers (without paying a fee). Win-win would be for iPhone customers to be able to securely and unobtrusively connect to the AT&T Wi-Fi while in Starbucks - faster speeds for them, lower load on the 3G network during those crucial rush hour times when Starbucks is busiest.
• AT&T not being willing to furnish basic information about usage, like voice minutes used, text messages remaining in your package, etc. as an email or easily-accessed web page, despite that the iPhone is a device that's ideally set up for such things. It appears AT&T Mobility's willingness to "innovate" with Visual Voicemail was a one-off effort.
• AT&T Mobility and Apple "considering" offering a "share the 3G connectivity" option for iPhone users, despite that AT&T Mobility already offers this identical functionality to its customers that use other data-centric devices? AT&T' not reacting rapidly to an obvious market need like this is just emblematic of AT&T continuing to be out of touch with what ought to be its most important market segment. 

Here are just a few things that Apple has left on the table, making for a gaping opportunity by... most likely... Android-based phones:

• It's "stupid" (I'll forgo using some more colorful and profane epaulets) for Apple not to allow / encourage the iPhone to sync with its "home base" computer over a household or enterprise Wi-Fi network whenever it's in range. Why require that at all??? Why can't the iPhone simply  use a totally web-based "home base"? MobileMe has that potential, but it still seems like Apple is clinging to the idea that every iPhone has to be tethered to a particular computer.
• I want perfect synchronization with my email, addresses, calendar, bookmarks, RSS newsfeeds, music, podcasts, messaging, photos, etc. Google has earned most of that by being, by far, the best way for me to get my work done. Google's made it as easy as they can to use their services on the iPhone. Apple's done little to work with Google. A few examples:
  • While the iPhone mail app will connect to Gmail, it doesn't support one of the most compelling reasons to use Gmail - the Archive function. It's unique to Gmail and incredibly useful, but non-standard and the iPhone mail app doesn't support it... but should. Until it does, I won't / can't use the iPhone mail app.
  • No connectivity at all for iPhone calendar and Google Calendar... sigh. At least Google lets you see a decent iPhone optimized view of your Google Calendar.
  • Bookmarks are just a confused mess on the iPhone. There's way too much detail baggage for bookmarks between desktop Mac Safari and iPhone Safari. Google does an adequate job of supporting browser-based bookmarks, but I haven't yet tried it out on the iPhone to see if they optimized it for viewing on the iPhone.

Then there's the random annoyances of the iPhone:

• Despite offering the best (Bluetooth) wireless keyboard, by far... not allowing that keyboard to be used with the iPhone for doing "heavy" text entry. The iPhone, sitting on a desk in a small collapsible stand, operating in landscape mode, on "shore power" with their Bluetooth keyboard would be an "80%+" adequate substitute for a laptop when traveling.
• Ditto Apple's continued (and apparently deliberate) lack of support for stereo Bluetooth headphones. OK, got it that using Bluetooth that intensively will be a battery drain. So we'll learn to plug it in while we're using it like that.
• Barely adequate camera, and no provision for video recording. You have how powerful an operating system / processor / memory and it's not adequate to offer video recording, however minimal?
• The emergence of third-party apps that support a "Finder" (user access to the file system) illustrates that Apple could have made it possible to store documents on the iPhone. But it's inexplicable that Apple didn't implement such a function, and integrate it into the core of the iPhone - documents get backed up during sync, etc. Really... this one is a major goof by Apple, and the confusion it will cause by not having done this from the beginning will be a major reason why corporations will strongly prefer phones other than the iPhone - because those other phones can easily, natively, store documents / files / images locally. (Not to mention that those phones will be able to store those files on removable flash drives like SD cards, that Apple has stubbornly refused to include in the iPhone.

Apple could fix those issues that are under its control. It can't do much about AT&T - Apple doesn't even seem to be that influential at AT&T now that AT&T fully understands how much of the customer experience it has turned over to Apple. But Apple could fix a lot of things about the iPhone 3G, and it will be one of the defining tests of Apple as a company if it decides to make the iPhone into what its customers really want instead of insisting that it knows best.

Future installments of Living With The iPhone 3G:

• Apple / AT&T / ecosystem observations (some scathing);
• How I use my iPhone - Gmail, Greader, etc.
• BWIA implications of the iPhone

By Steve Stroh

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) ; Sprint Mobile Broadband service using a Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem - 1xEV-DO Rev. A on my MacBook Pro laptop... while sitting in Starbucks with "free" (with onerous terms and conditions, including allowing AT&T to spam you) Wi-Fi available.

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) ; Sprint Mobile Broadband service using a Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem - 1xEV-DO Rev. A on my MacBook Pro laptop... while sitting in Starbucks with "free" (with onerous terms and conditions, including allowing AT&T to spam you) Wi-Fi available.

Living With The iPhone 3G, Part 1

I've had my iPhone 3G for more than a month now.

Overall, I like it (with one glaring, inexcusable exception - the Safari browser crashes constantly). It has changed the way I "operate in life" to at least a small extent. I'm able to "stay connected" with news, blog posts, and email better than I've ever been able to do before. The iPhone 3G is much more a computer that you stick into your pocket and bring along with you, with the added benefit of being a phone, than it is a phone with computer / Internet features grafted on.

One of the first things I bought before leaving the Apple Store was a clear plastic "skin" for the face of the iPhone. That's been well worth it in protecting the faceplate from the inevitable dings - smudges, scratches, etc.. I also bought a "rubber bumper case" for the iPhone. That came off after the first few hours. The iPhone is comfortable enough and slim enough that it naturally gravitates to a pocket, and the case impeded smooth movement of the iPhone in and out of pockets. So far, I haven't dropped the iPhone (major impacts, anyway...). In my opinion, Apple ought to include that faceplate protector on the iPhone as it ships, and include a spare.

Overall things done right on the iPhone 3G itself:

• It's smooth and comfortable, easy to hold in your hand. I find the shape much more comfortable to hold in my hand than the average small flip phone.
• One of the best features of the iPhone is that there's a silence switch - an honest-to-goodness old-fashioned mechanical toggle switch that silences the iPhone completely. No misc. tweets, etc. are emitted when silent mode is on - it just vibrates briefly when it wants you to know about something - incoming call, etc. Other phones "silent" mode requires you to turn off all kinds of things in obscure menus and worse, use push buttons that can get bumped or seem to change state entirely on their own - silent when you don't want silent, audible when you want silent, etc. The iPhone truly gets the silent mode right.
• A really pleasant surprise is that the iPhone 3G is readable in direct sunlight - no compromises. I sure didn't expect that. I'm amazed that they were able to put that good a display into such a compact unit.
• The speaker(phone) mode is surprisingly loud and intelligible. One example is that I listen to podcasts while I'm doing something like cleaning up the kitchen after dinner and I don't want the iPhone in danger of taking a bath as I lean over to scrub a pot.
• As a phone, it works... about as well as any other "wireless telephony" device I've used since my first Dyna-Tac phone. It's not any worse, that I've observed. Again, that's the iPhone 3G itself - the AT&T Mobility network comes in for some criticism.
• The handoff between "wireless telephony" and Wi-Fi networks is seamless. I've got mine set not to "grab onto" just any Wi-Fi network it finds - it only accesses my home Wi-Fi network and a very few others and otherwise stays connected to the AT&T Mobility network.
• Battery life is "pretty good". Battery life could always be better, but overall I can get a full day out of my iPhone, and the battery recharges are fast (at least with the included AC-to-USB charging adapter).
• It's really nice that the "charging cable" is "standard" iPod-to-USB; you can buy multiple chargers, from multiple sources, have multiple cables (and spares...) and you can always plug it into a handy USB outlet on a computer if you gotta get some juice. It's been maddening to me that you end up with all kinds of odd chargers, car adapters, etc. when you change phones.
• The transfer / synchronization of contacts between iPhone and desktop computer (at least my Mac) is seamless... a little too seamless. My iPhone has inherited the 5000 or so contacts that resided in my Mac's Address Book (it took me a year to realize that the email address of everyone I sent a message to or received a message from was automatically being added to my Mac Address Book. (A bit of a fiasco given that I was subscribed to a lot of mailing lists; it's going to take quite a while to "decontaminate" my Address Book).
• The 2.1 software upgrade definitely fixed a number of issues, including maddening long pauses when trying to scroll through contacts. My iPhone itself doesn't crash any more (my definition is "rebooting" to the Apple logo), and the connectivity is better overall.
• When it works (it's a bit slow) and in apps that support it, the ability to rotate the iPhone into landscape mode from portrait mode makes the iPhone twice as usable. Things that are hard or uncomfortable to read in portrait mode are much more comfortable to read in landscape mode.
• I'm relieved that Apple changed the headphone jack to being flush to allow any corded headset with a mini stereo jack to be used.
• Apple included the capability - now being implemented by third-party apps, for the iPhone to be used as a capable voice recorder. Wow... that has some really interesting implications for recording impromptu meetings.
• The "soft keyboard" feature works decently. It's an acceptable compromise between the utter unusability (at least to this middle-aged mind and fingers) of entering text on a 12-key numeric pad, and losing "device real estate" to a miniature keyboard 'ala BlackBerry. It's great to send full-sentence mixed-case, all (correct) punctuation text messages.

Future installments of Living With The iPhone 3G:

• iPhone things done not so well;
• iPhone things done wrong;
• Apple / AT&T / ecosystem observations (some scathing);
• How I use my iPhone - Gmail, Greader, etc.
• BWIA implications of the iPhone

By Steve Stroh

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) ; Sprint Mobile Broadband service using a Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem - 1xEV-DO Rev. A on my MacBook Pro laptop... while sitting in Starbucks with "free" (with onerous terms and conditions, including allowing AT&T to spam you) Wi-Fi available.

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) ; Sprint Mobile Broadband service using a Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem - 1xEV-DO Rev. A on my MacBook Pro laptop... while sitting in Starbucks with "free" (with onerous terms and conditions, including allowing AT&T to spam you) Wi-Fi available.

Broadband Wireless Internet Access - One of the Nines You'll Need

(1 Update - see below)

Our household Internet Access has been very nice of late. We've had Verizon FIOS for several months now. I opted for the 15 Mbps Symmetric (which, is not as fast as you'd think - the web largely isn't geared for user access that fast, except downloading big video files). My daughter makes good use of this, renting and buying movies from iTunes. I have to admit, it makes watching online video painless - whenever I check out movie trailers, I usually opt for the HDTV versions - it's just amazing.

FIOS is really nice... when it's working. But we're now experiencing our second major outage within a week. The first last Thursday and Friday was apparently a local fiber cut. I stumbled upon the scene on the way home from work - it required four of the big trucks, one of which was the splicing truck, and at least a dozen repair guys. That took out both our phone service and Internet service.

This outage is apparently confined to the Internet side of things - the phone is working just fine. I called it into Verizon's repair number and wasn't even graced with a human voice this time - I couldn't get any further than the robot despite requesting a live person several times. So we wait... such is life dealing with a monopoly. It's telling that Verizon Communications is about to launch their video services over FIOS and they continue to have problems like this; they're not ready to offer reliable phone service via fiber... let alone video. But they'll learn that the hard way in the marketplace. I don't think I'll bite and continue using satellite and TiVo for what video I do watch. But for all their failings, at least Verizon Communications isn't Comcast - dealing with them is absolute, pure unadulterated hell.

But... despite the outages, our household isn't dead in the water for our communications, before, or now. For phone we could use our mobile phones, and we're on the Internet thanks to the Sprint Broadband Card, and my wife's Mac.

Here's how it worked for us.

1. When I determined that Internet was going to be out for at least the night, I went down to the basement and turned off the FIOS router. Among other things, it's the DHCP server for the household.
2. I hooked up the Sprint Broadband Card (it's USB) to my wife's Mac and activated it, so her Mac was back on the Internet (slow DSL speeds, but she's doing her triple Master's degree online in the evenings, so offline isn't acceptable to her).
3. I turned on the Mac's built-in Internet sharing. It turns on a DHCP server and shares the Internet access onto the household Ethernet, which also provides the Wi-Fi.
4. We had to restart the computers to get a new DHCP address from the Mac (me, I just renewed DHCP leases on my computers and they were good to go).

I have reliable Internet access because I have diversity of connectivity.

But that was hardly my idea - it was described first, very eloquently... presciently... by David Isenberg in Smart Letter #73 - Buy as Many Nines as You Need... in 2002! I've met Isenberg a number of times, and every single time, it's a humbling learning encounter. If you ever get a chance to spend some time with him, I recommend it highly.

Broadband Wireless Internet Access is an ideal way to "buy enough Nines" to insure that your business, or household, stays connected. The main reason is that it's truly independent of the outages that are likeliest to affect your wireline communications (absent a regional catastrophe like an earthquake or hurricane).

One of the best examples of a vendor who can cleanly implement BWIA as one of your "Nines" is Junxion. They make an elegant box that takes all the sting out of using a wireless telephony Broadband Internet Access card as an enterprise-grade backup Internet link. Unfortunately, they've been bought out by Sierra Wireless, and while it looks like Sierra Wireless will support the existing product and customer base, their future is uncertain for new deployments. But how the Junxion box worked was simplicity itself. Plug it inline with your existing Broadband Internet Access (once it transitioned to an Ethernet cable) and plug your network into the Junxion box. If the primary Internet Access went out, the Junxion box took over. Pricey if used for more than a day or so given the transfer limits now in place, but it gives you a grace period to get the main Internet Access fixed without the company sitting around fidgeting without email, web access, ecommerce, etc.

Another is Towerstream. I've heard (and retold...) some funny stories about Towerstream over the years about how fast they can respond to customer requests and how that kind of response makes their competition look like sputtering buffoons.

OK, just one Towerstream story, that I heard from a pretty happy Towerstream customer at a conference. Customer has an outage on his T-1 line and finally gets the repair center on (mobile) phone. Repair center says it's not their issue and points finges at the carrier responsible for the line that they're reselling. Customer gets the runaround for hours and eventually, in pure desperation, calls Towerstream. Salesperson at Towerstream senses a real sales coup if they can scramble an install, so the Towerstream installer is there bright and early the next morning and has the customer back on the Internet (with good enough QOS to do VOIP) within a couple of hours. The customer hears nothing from his wireline provider all the next day, a Friday. He finally gets a call back... on MONDAY... saying that they "think they've found the problem and they'll have it fixed soon." You can guess the rest of the story. Suffice it to say, Towerstream is very, very real. They're one of those rare companies that just does what they claim to do, and best of all, know very clearly what business they're really in - they're just a bitpipe to the Internet, and they focus on being the best, most cost-effective, most reliable bitpipe to the Internet that they can possibly be. Their customers love 'em for that... all the way up to Gigabit per second "loving 'em".

Clearwire could have been, and might eventually be, a good alternative "Nine". At least they're on that critial independent, alternative infrastructure - mostly point-to-point wireless backhaul. But, based on my experiences as an ordinary customer, I can't recommend them. For one thing, they've adopted the Comcast mentality of "service with a snarl" and I've heard some real horror stories about Clearwire customers needing to discontinue service and Clearwire being incredibly unpleasant about it. Another issue is that Clearwire... or their commission-ravenous agents, will simply lie to whatever lengths it takes to get you as a customer.

Update: FIOS Internet Access came back on for us about Noon the day after the above post was written, making this FIOS outage about 18 hours.

My wife wrangled with Verizon Repair Service / Tech Support and she had the FIOS Router's web page up on her computer, so so she could tell the Verizon reps with total certainty that our FIOS Internet Access was not back on while she was talking to them. In sorting out some lingering billing / package issues... which just proves Verizon is laughably inept at such things...  Verizon and my wife came to terms about certain features. When I did an Internet speed check this evening, our FIOS is 10 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up. I'm willing to pay additional for the 15/15 tier, but in the end it isn't worth it to try to negotiate that additional speed and cost into the package.  I think we have a year in our package, and by then the use of our landline will probably be down to about nil, so we'll probably convert that over to lifeline service) and by then we'll probably be able to have picocells from the wireless carriers. One thing that all this billing hassle has made abundantly clear - I'm not going to trust Verizon to get billing for a bundle of video services right, so most of their investment in deploying fiber to me is going to end up stranded.

By Steve Stroh

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) ; Sprint Mobile Broadband service using a Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem - 1xEV-DO Rev. A... shared to the household Ethernet / Wi-Fi via a humble Mac Mini.

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) ; Sprint Mobile Broadband service using a Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem - 1xEV-DO Rev. A... shared to the household Ethernet / Wi-Fi via a humble Mac Mini.