Hello readers. Thank you for your patience with me over the past month or so. I've blogged none at all. My only excuse is I have been super busy. Lots has been going on of late though. Let me catch you up. I have started maintaining the daily news and weekly newsletter for www.broadband-wireless.com so I hope you find that helpful and enjoyable. I am almost finished with a white paper I was asked to do for the WiMAX Forum titled: "Best Practices", VoIP Delivery over WiMAX Networks. I have interviewed a number of carriers extensively for this piece and learned a lot about VoIP delivery over broadband wireless. One big thing is that the planning process is crucial. Also, the wireless RF aspect is only one part of delivering carrier class voice. Carriers are succeeding however. Hopefully this white paper will be ready soon. And thanks to all of you who participated. I want to talk about some of the news items I think that are especially important. Perhaps first among this is the ongoing debate on Net Neutrality. The warring camps seem to be more entrenched each day. I suspect this topic will NOT be settled soon at all. However, if I had to hazard a guess I would estimate that the major carriers will win the argument. Their arguments have merits. But more importantly, their lobby is just too seasoned and good. I personally question if a tiered Internet is in the public interest. The money will have to come from somewhere, everyone will pass the costs on and ultimately I expect we will all pay more for access. The AWS auction in the (mostly) 1.7 GHz range, when it finally gets off the ground will be BIG for the US. We desperately need the spectrum. However, as usual, bigger companies will mostly warehouse the bands and especially rural markets will see little improvements for years. One firm, M2ZNetworks has proposed the FCC allow it use of 2155 to 2175 MHz without upfront cost in exchange for its building a nationwide broadband network at 384K free to all. It will field a premium network and pay 5 percent of its revenues back to the government as well. John Muleta, the former FCC Wireless Bureau Chief is the CEO and its Chairman is Milo Medin, who founded @Home networks. It is a laudable idea and could actually deliver nationwide free wireless however, the build out requirements of 33 percent in three years and 66 percent in five years and 95 percent in ten years means this company too will have to start in metropolitan area first as well to succeed. Very interesting play. I think it has a decent chance. Clearwire is going public in a $400 million IPO. Most interestingly it disclosed that it had 88,000 customers in its filing per an article I read. That is big news for the industry. Nokia dropping its CDMA joint venture with Sanyo is interesting, particularly as I am hearing anecdotally from friends that it is tougher to get CDMA handsets down in price. Qualcomm quickly launched damage control. But I think this underscores why it has moved strongly into OFDM products of late. The future will happen no matter what. And I don't think Qualcomm plans to be left behind. WiMAX is moving along steadily and 802.16e precursor products are starting to appear. Intel should soon have chipsets for laptops on the market. There is lots more, too much for one blog. I will try much harder to blog a little more steadily on things I find interesting and worthy of comment. Thanks for eading my blog.   Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.net   www.thefinalmile.net   www.wimaxglobalnews.com