Ten Principles for Broadband Wireless Internet Access, WiMAX, and Wi-Fi

With every new type of Broadband Wireless Internet Access (and now, WiMAX) system, it's funny to read the breathless speculation of what that system "can lead to...". It's happened with Wi-Fi HotSpots, it happened with Metricom Ricochet, it happened with wireless telephony broadband Internet, and it's happening right now with Sprint / Nextel's XOHM network just started in Baltimore.

So I thought this would be an instructive exercise.

Ten Principles for Broadband Wireless Internet Access, WiMAX, and Wi-Fi

1. BWIA / WiMAX / Wi-Fi is, at its core, the Internet - simply made wireless. Getting users connected with the Internet, whereever they are, economically, fast, reliably is the core value of BWIA / WiMAX / Wi-Fi.
2. BWIA / WiMAX / Wi-Fi is wireless telecomunications done right. Wireless telephony was many / most of the design decisions about telecommunications made back in the 19th and early 20th century - made wireless. BWIA / WiMAX / Wi-Fi is wireless based on TCP/IP and Internet.
3. BWIA / WiMAX makes things practical that weren't possible or economical with the wired Internet or wireless telephony. BWIA / WiMAX / Wi-Fi makes it feasible and economical for all devices with a microprocessor to be online in some fashion, even if their connectivity is limited to sending or receiving a few bits of data a day.
4. BWIA / WiMAX / Wi-Fi is based on a standards and evolution process that allows for its growth, adaptation, and evolution - not the stagnant processes of the telephony industry. We'll see BWIA / WiMAX / Wi-Fi evolve standardized peer-to-peer mesh networking, picocells / nanocells, and many other technology evolutions that will be additive and not wrenching change.
5. The smartest companies will realize that in the era of BWIA / WiMAX / Wi-Fi they're in the content business - via the Internet, to all the potential users that are on the Internet, or in the bit transport business building networks. It's an either/or choice - you can't do justice to either when you're trying to do both - you end up making compromises to favor one or the other, indecision, when if you commit to one or the other, you give it your all to the business you're in.
6. BWIA / WIMAX / WI-Fi is not a lesser form of Internet, or "merely mobile". In many cases, it's better Internet than what can be done using wireline. Having fiber in your building or home doesn't do you any good if the terms are too onerous - transfer caps, high prices, limits on what you're allowed to do. It also doesn't do any good to have fiber "near". In places like New York City, companies like Towerstream are quietly using BWIA to bridge fiber availability to nearby buildings - speeds of 1 Gbps are easily doable, and faster speeds are about to happen.
7. BWIA / WiMAX / Wi-Fi enables a lot more competition for Broadband Internet Access than wireline. It's inherent in the medium - electromagnetic spectrum, that multiple access providers can operate in the same geographic area, and even share facilities, and still compete vigorously.
8. BWIA / WiMAX / Wi-Fi is adaptable to different parts of spectrum; it's designed to be flexible and agnostic about the physical layer of the particular spectrum - part of the legacy of being based on Ethernet.
9. BWIA / WiMAX / Wi-Fi has license-exempt options which is a critical distinction between it and the "gotta run a wire, somehow" nature of the wired Internet and the "if you're gonna use spectrum, you got pay someone" nature of wireless telephony. It's not always easy to use license-exempt spectrum, but at least it's possible, and that breaks through a lot of barriers and makes possible things that were consider impossible before.
10. This last point seems obvious, but it's so important that it needs to be explicitly stated and emphasized - that with BWIA / WiMAX / Wi-Fi, voice is just another type of service that rides on top of the communication platform. Voice doesn't dominate, and thus doesn't dominate design decisions, limit options, etc. That makes voice over BWIA / WiMAX / Wi-Fi inherently better than the voice over wireless telephony.

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) ; 802.11A/B/G/N Wi-Fi on a MacBook Pro laptop.

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) ; 802.11A/B/G/N Wi-Fi on a MacBook Pro laptop.