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  

    I am getting closer and closer to buying one of these little phones. A piece in CNET describes the new Treo 700p model from Palm that supports the faster EV-DO networks. This new model supports Bluetooth natively. If they will just finally add Wi-Fi capability one of these little jewels will be MINE. I realize power is an issue and added power may be needed to supplement the on-board batteries. But I wouldn't mind buying a piggyback cell. Very close. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.net  www.thefinalmile.net  www.wimaxglobalnews.com

    A chip company called Multigig, Inc. released information that it had created a new method to reduce the power consumption of silicon chips by reducing the power usage by the clock, which is constantly cycling across the chip and can consume over 50% of the entire power usage of the chip. Their press release claims up to an 87% power savings using the technology. This could be truly huge for laptops especially. Also, it could free up chip makers to start increasing clock cycles again to improve chip speeds. Power usage being a real limiter in the clock cycle wars. Very interesting. The company claims 22 patents granted with 50 more pending. Not shabby for a startup. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.net  www.thefinalmile.net  www.wimaxglobalnews.com

    Alltel and Sprint announced their intentions to ink a 10-Year two-way roaming agreement between the two parties. The agreement would be nationwide and include both voice and data services. The announcement didn't say whether or not the companies would cross-market services that don't duplicate in some markets. Still, that might be a natural extention. Clearly Sprint at least is focused on blunting Verizon wherever it can. Alltell already has voice roaming agreements with both Verizon and Cingular, but apparently NOT data agreements. So that is interesting. What is the WiMax angle? Data of course. There is a lot of upheaval in telecom these days. Traditional telcos, cellular carriers, cablecos and broadband wireless firms are all searching for new markets, alliances, products and customer bases. Ultimately this is good for the consumer I believe. And while I doubt they think so, probably for the carriers too. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.net  www.thefinalmile.net  www.wimaxglobalnews.com

    There was a nice piece in the Houston Business Journal detailing Crown Castle's acquisition of Virginia based Mountain Union Telecom LLC. The $309 millon dollar deal set to close July 7, 2006, nets Crown Castle 468 completed tower sites and another 79 under construction. The annual revenue from the sites is $26 Million. And the towers are mostly located in the Western US, including LA, Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas and some Puerto Rican locations. With increasing public resistance to towers coupled with the incessant public demand for service, expect to see more and more consolidation in the tower industry as bigger providers look to grow through acquisition. It is often much easier to upgrade a tower to accept more tenants than to build one from scratch, although not necessarily cheaper. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.net  www.thefinalmile.net  www.wimaxglobalnews.com

    I read a nice piece in the Wall Street Journal (subcription required) by Mark Heinzl and Shawn Young about the uptake going on with fiber due to high Internet traffic growth. Basically, all of the hedge bets companies made during the boom years of the 1990's are starting to bear fruit (that is unless the company is bankrupt, sold or otherwise dissolute now). The real growth in Internet use is starting to fill a lot of dark fiber laid for just such capacity need reasons years ago. Not to worry though there is plenty of dark fiber left. The article cites one estimate saying only 14% of submarine dark fiber is likely to be lit up by the end of 2006. Good to know the carriers are driving traffic though. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.net  www.thefinalmile.net  www.wimaxglobalnews.com

    This piece really caught my eye. It is not WiMax per se…but. Global Crossing is not telling how much capacity Google is buying. But I got the feeling it might be heavily. GC said that it was one of several companies currently buying from it. It did mention a statistic that a lot of carriers were exceeding more than 50% capacity on their networks and need to back themselves up. Internationally as well. At the moment this is just a blurb. But Watch for news on this. I think Google is leasing, buying or something its own fiber network. They have the dough anyway. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.net   www.thefinalmile.net   www.wimaxglobalnews.com

    This is from the 2004 International Telecom Data report the FCC compiles. Traffic jumped from 48 Billion minutes in 2003 to 63.6 Billion minutes in 2004. Quite a healthy little zip up if you ask me. The bad news? Revenues decreased while payments to international carriers went up. US revenues were down 4%. Re-sale traffic revenues and minutes were on the same general curves—down and up. And we wonder why the telcos are wanting to charge for content provider access across their networks. They are in a real pickle. Real disruption is occurring in telecom and I for one don't think it will slow. In fact I believe it will sharply accelerate. Tim Sanders   tim@thefinalmile.net   www.thefinalmile.net  www.wimaxglobalnews.com

    I read a press write-up on BBWExchange about these new transparent window antennas. Designed for covert surveillance, the antennas, which Fractal has a patent on and has named Tranztenna, apparently covers a wide range of spectrum frequencies. The press release I read was thin on details but I thought this was just neat. And if ability to receive multiple spetrums simultaneously proves out, could be a real boon to BWA providers all over. Tim Sanders  tim@thefinalmile.net  www.thefinalmile.net  www.wimaxglobalnews.com

    I'm sorry to not have a link but I was struck by an article in the print edition of the Wall Street Journal (which I read as often as I can). This blog has absolutely zip to do with WiMax directly but everything about what a global economy we function in. Which in a sense is all about how telecom and data transport knit us together. It turns out that Intel is putting a chip assembly, packaging and shipping plan in Vietnam. Why? Well, this part of the fab process where wafers are broken up into individual chips, packaged and then shipped to distributors is much more labor intensive. And labor in Vietnam is CHEAP running about $60 per month on average. I want to emphasize this is not a critique of Intel, companies all over the world are doing such. In fact, Vietnam is thrilled to have them. The investment per this piece by James Hookway and Nguyen Pham Muoi likely will run to several hundred million dollars, plus jobs and most importantly credibility with other high tech investors and employers. Most of the growth in Broadband Wireless and WiMax is happening internationally. I am concerned that the US is seriously lagging behind in broadband wireless functionality, adoption and availability. We need more spectrum both licensed and unlicensed at lower and mid-range frequencies. The big license holders are yet to do a lot with it (in 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz). We seriously run the risk of falling behind. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.net   www.thefinalmile.net  www.wimaxglobalnews.com

    This article in the San Jose Mercury News described a misunderstanding between the city of Livermore, CA and AT&T around permits it applied for to do upgrades. It seems the upgrades included cabinetry to support AT&Ts Project Lightspeed upgrade project to support IPTV. The city had not understood that at all. And for that matter was not at all sure it wanted any such. AT&T plans to spend upwards of $4.5 Billion to upgrade its systems to support IPTV. Other towns have been more welcoming. Most are considering offering a second cable franchise. Likely I think that will be more likely the trend than not. Lots more opportunities for the cities. The cablecos are screaming about this of course declaring it must be regulated. I say to them, fair is fair, your VoIP services are heavily cannibalizing Telco voice service everywhere. (I just added a line myself). IPTV is different from simple downstream or even digital cable in that customers can choose programming on a more pro-active basis (although nothing like what is potentially possible as yet). So what does this mean for broadband wireless? I recall a recent discussion with Tim Downs of Shorecliff and the Broadband Wireless World show where we both agreed it was not quite ready for IPTV. But could it be for some more limited versions of download video content? Heck yes. Tim Sanders  tim@thefinalmile.net  www.thefinalmile.net  www.wimaxglobalnews.com

Hello everyone. Thank you for visiting my new site. I appreciate your interest and your reading my blogs. There are a number of new aspects to the site already up as well as others I hope to roll out in the coming months. The first and most important is a regular blog feature for those interested in WiMAX and things Broadband Wireless. The RSS feed for those of you who follow that is: Blog I changed the look and feel of the site using a content management system. I hope you like it better. I am also extremely proud of the podcast I am doing with my associate Tom Parish called WiMax Global News. The RSS feed is www.wimaxglobalnews.com/rss. so please give the show a try. We have an interview series that I especially enjoy with some terrific guests so far ranging from Kelley Dunne to Tim Downs with Shorecliff to Eliot Weinman with WiMax World to Martin Cooper with ArrayComm and others. Our coverage is international as well as US. I have also added support on the front page for clients who only need basic questions answered to call and simply pay by the minute. I added feeds (RSS where available) to the primary news services I work with on the front page. In my opinion these outlets cover the full gamut of broadband wireless. I will hopefully have some informational products available soon. Also, please look here in my blog for upcoming speaking engagements and a new Webinar series I am doing with Juptermedia on the ISP side. My first one was very fun and is about pricing. This is linked on my first page. It is totally free here is the link. I promise to share my frank opinions on things wireless, give readers a heads up on trends I am hearing about (even if I am not at liberty to discuss details), and in general be useful to all. Once again thanks for reading and have a great week. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.net www.TheFinalMile.net www.WiMaxGlobalNews.com