Hello Everyone. I wanted to let you know that I am now podcasting again. My show www.wimaxglobalnews.com is live once again. I uploaded a new show last night. This week's topics include a summary of some of the top stories from 2006—at least in my opinion.
I discussed the Sprint decision to use WiMax for its 2.5 GHz spectrum, the AT&T/BellSouth merger, the AWS Spectrum auction, a few thoughts on the business case for Municipal Broadband, industry consolidation and more. I am very pleased to be back podcasting and hope to do so much more regularly this year. I see challenges in that as I am currently the busiest I have ever been which, while good, is a real challenge.
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.netwww.thefinalmile.netwww.wimaxglobalnews.com
Another good piece in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) about the just-announced partnership with Nokia and Google to deliver Google's voice product over Nokia's tablets device for WiFi hotspots. This device apparently has no cellular capability as yet. I am increasingly coming to believe that VoIP will be the killer application that will drive broadband to its next level. It seems like such a simple thing. But the proliferation of IP calling platforms is getting almost dizzying. AOL is getting in the game. I got an e-mail just this morning from Skype announcing free outbound calling in the US and Canada through the end of the year. I realize their cost factors must be pretty low, but wow. This will drive broadband adoption like nothing else I believe. Increasingly you need broadband just to function in our society. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.netwww.thefinalmile.netwww.wimaxglobalnews.com
I had a really good show at Broadband Wireless World in Vegas week before last. I almost did not go due to how much I had going on workwise (It is good to have work by the way). I haven't missed the show since I started going. Ultimately I am glad I made it. I came home with even more work. So that is double great. Plus Tim Downs gave me my first voice in the industry as a writer and consultant and I don't believe in forgetting your oldest friends. So what went on? Kelley Dunne showed up with his new company Digital Bridge Communications, but he kept a low key profile. I think that firm will do very well. The Digital Middletown talk by Ball State professors and Kelley was excellent too. Proxim stepped up as the top sponsor. I thought that the mesh guys were out in real force. Strix was there and its customer Mobilepro was speaking. Tropos, Motorola with their two Mesh systems, Hopling (through its distributor StarMesh), Skypilot and one or two I don't recall. Mesh is really hot right now. Municipal wireless is driving the Broadband Wireless Industry right now. The WiMax talk and fervor from last year has muted a bit, I suspect because gear is still not widely available. The need for standards isn't going away though and the industry is just sensibly focusing on where the growth is right now. When WiMax is ready for the US market the intensity will be back. This isn't to say that it was unrepresented. Fujitsu was at the show in force and has been announcing wins left and right. As are many precursor WiMax vendors. The precursor proprietary gear is very, very good folks. And it meets the business case now. Don't wait for anything to get customes. Now is the time Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.netwww.thefinalmile.netwww.thefinalmile.net
This report about Canopy's new Cable compatible wireless systems caught my eye. I thought it was quite interesting. I have not seen anyone else come out with gear optimized to help cablecos extend their networks. With the Telcos coming after their video business with IPTV and the cablecos in turn offering VoIP and Broadband this makes a lot of sense. I can see some real potential sales gains here. Apparently the modems make use of the data over cable service interface specification (DOCSIS) 2.0 standard to handle the translation to the cable system. Neat idea, whose time has come. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.netwww.thefinalmile.netwww.wimaxglobalnews.com
I saw a good article in the Wall Street Journal last week about a Bon Jovi concert that Sprint/Nextel were going to host in December. It turns out the first fifteen minutes delivered a blank screen. Then glory of glories the band appeared, only to disappear over and over again. The message read "We are experiencing technical problems. Please come back in a few minutes." Now I know you are tempted to laugh. But this is no laughing matter for the cell carriers who really need new revenue streams. After all, most everyone has a cell phone. So raw customer growth will be blunted in the years to come. Additional services are the best option. Current offerings for music have got much press but the price is egregious ranging from .99c for a song up to $2.50. Goodness knows what they think they can charge for video. So the strong need is there. The platform is not. Enter WiMax. Sprint has the best chance to take advantage of this with their wide 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings. But will they? I am not at all sure they will. They may go with a Qualcomm solution or a UMTS derived one. At the end of the day efficient content will be IP based. And technologies with roots in voice calling seem to me to be an expensive bandaid when a tourniquet may be needed. Just some food for thought on a Friday morning. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.netwww.thefinalmile.netwww.wimaxglobalnews.com
I thought this article on the Earthlink Investment of $50 Million in Covad was interesting news. Covad is seriously involved in broadband wireless. It spent nearly $25 million last year to acquire NextWeb (one of the premier business case Wireless ISPs out there) and I understand Earthlink is very interested in broadband wireless too. Though how seriously is much in question. Covad uses something called Line Powered Voice which operates from the CO. Basically customers use analog phones as always (with no installs needed at the customer location) and the VoIP gear at the CO handles the connection. It also means that power outages aren't a problem unless the CO itself is down. Earthlink will sell the service around the US with a DSL bundle (which does need a modem). As I am about 30,000 feet from my CO (all copper), I should probably not set my heart on a DSL connection any time soon. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.netwww.thefinalmile.netwww.wimaxglobalnews.com
In the process of researching an article on carrier success stories I interviewed a really interesting executive with Partech International (a venerable, global investment house) by the name of Tim Wilson. Due to word count limitations, I wasn't able to include his comments in the final edit. So I wanted to summarize some of his thoughts here. Tim has a sterling resume including stints at Lucent and Digital Island and even AT&T Bell Labs. Now his firm does not invest in WISPs. Rather they invest in the technologies that could support VoIP delivery. To begin with I am very interested in voice nowadays because I am working on a white paper on the subject for the Applications Working Group. It is geared around "best practices" for carriers. So I am taking articles on VoIP and talking to everyone I can. "I see voice becoming very cheap and companies making money off of additional services," said Tim Wilson, partner with Partech. "Voice is however still an application people will pay for." He talked about how the emergence of VoIP reflects pricing problems that carriers have. Early on, telecom network capacity really wasn't there to deliver IP voice or manage it. In fact it was really only with the 90's buildout of capacity that data networks got uncrowded enough to support buffers for example that could manage VoIP elements such as jitter. But ultimately what this meant was it became cheap enough to deliver VoIP that carriers could begin to shift some of this traffic. He really does see additional services as the moneymaker of the future which much mirrors my thoughts. A great conversation with someone really knowledgeable. Thanks Tim. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.netwww.thefinalmile.netwww.wimaxglobalnews.com
I read a press release from Aperto describing the just completed rollout of its gear with India's VSNL (Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited), the top telecom provider in India. From the release it cites the first wave (which is apparently already deployed or at least underway) is covering 65 cities with eventual goals to cover over 200 cities planned the first year. The units are in the 3.3 and 3.6 GHz range. The network has some major corporate customers on it already including Amadeus (the airline reservation system) and Hyundai. VSNL has global services and especially strong presence in Asia. So far as I know this is the largest scale broadband wireless deployment ever done based on the number of cities fixtured. So far as I know. I don't know the number of units sold etc., but this is something. Slice it however you will, this is a huge, huge win for Aperto. Kudos to Reza Ahy and his staff. Aperto also announced it was opening a development center in the country. There was lots of details on that one so see their website for more details. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.netwww.thefinalmile.netwww.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.netwww.thefinalmile.netwww.wimaxglobalnews.com
I saw an article on Yahoo discussing a research report from Parks Associates that indicates that general Internet access interest is waning. To be fair to broadband the piece addresses Internet use in general. However, while the two should probably not be inferentially linked the reasons given would seem to me to apply to broadband as well. The Parks study indicates that some respondents feel they have enough access at work. Others are simply uninterested in the Internet. While a few more (8 percent) said they did not understand the Internet. Only 4 percent cited cost. Most interesting to me is that 39 percent just said other. Now that is a pretty broad category. So what could that mean? It could be that as the story says everything goes in cycles that are tied to the economy, social custom and other factors. Certainly as you get closer to the majority being on broadband the "growth" would slow. This is sheer speculation on my part so take this with the grain of salt it deserves. But could it be that being online just doesn't seem compelling to people because they don't see a substantive value in the way it changes their lives? How many of those who say no in this survey download ring tunes or music on their cell phone? Some do I bet. I think others may not have broadband capability where they live and don't see dial as a real service anymore (though this is a reach). I would actually expect that the services that could be vended through our pipes might be the fulcrum that provides a tipping point. Also, perhaps education is still an imperative for those who don't have Internet connections Things like a cheaper VoIP service from a service provider may be the one thing that changes their mind. People buy because they need things (if they understand they do) or because it makes them feel good. Virtually all buying decisions are emotional decisions even huge corporate purchases (can you say executive job security is what you sell—that is an emotional tipping point). I guess the long rambly point I am trying to make is that we need packages, services and education for our product that compel customers to take action. Understanding what that is is crucial. Asking them the right way is important too. Maybe we don't understand the right question here? Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.netwww.thefinalmile.netwww.wimaxglobalnews.com
I hope you will forgive my obscure literary allusions. I am a fan of the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge—to wit The Rime of the Ancient Mariner which contains the immortal line "Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink." So not only is my allusion obscure it is not even accurate because VoIP is ALL the rage. I read this news report on UPI about Yak offering unlimited international VoIP. All of this runs a neat $20 with voice mail and extras. I have been using several VoIP services lately. I am trialing my Cablecos new VoIP service (Yes I know they annoy me) plus the Gizmo Project VoIP, which has built in recording in WAV format. It also has a free tie into Free Conference which I have yet to play with. And of course Skype which I use constantly. I just found a neat plug in to skype called Pamela that also allows recording in both WAV and MP3 with a lot of control over sample rate and bitrate (pro version). Very cool eh? I still think this is the killer application even for small independent Wireless ISPs. Going with a third party may make a lot of sense here. But one caution: Be careful to understand the quality of any third party company's peering cloud. I am hearing some stories of real trouble once it leaves your network if that isn't solid. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.netwww.thefinalmile.netwww.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.netwww.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: