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It's irony, people! Or is that satire?: The FCC's decision yesterday to essentially re-gut the remaining DSL business by eventually disallowing line-sharing and allowing ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers) to restrict access to any new high-speed digital final miles they deploy should hearten those in the wireless ISP business. Never has the there been such a call to action for an industry.
While the FCC rules will be challenged in court and may once again drag out over years and years while Covad burns -- or thrives depending on how interim rules are enforced -- the likelihood is for higher prices for consumers for DSL services, while those services are likely to also remain highly restricted because the ILECs can be sure that they won't have serious competition.
Cable modem network operators have made it clear that they think 128 Kbps upstream speed is reasonable for consumers, who have subscribed in great numbers. So this leaves residential and business users with few affordable options. Many businesses can pay for full or fractional T1 service, or they can opt for business DSL (as I have done: 768 Kbps SDSL for $250 per month).
But tens of millions of people would assuredly want more if given a decent price and independence from the local monopolies, whose monopoly power has been reasserted in these rules. That "more" could easily come from wireless ISPs.
Wireless ISPs should heed answer this call: the wired market isn't going to serve the customer at a reasonable price and a reasonable speed. With new entries in the wISP CPE (customer premises equipment) all the time, like Proxim's new $300 street price MP-11 system with custome self-install, or Etherlinx's set of inexpensive CPE and CO (central office) style devices, a wISP can be highly competive for installation cost, while offering an extremely high discount off DSL for symmetrical high speeds of 1 to 5 Mbps.
I would guess that any investors holding off on putting money into wISP will see yesterday's announcements as the key to opening up their checkbooks and pushing deployment. If DSL and cable won't become cheaper--although there have been some price drops which can't be sustained given the earnings performance at all Baby Bells, cable operators, and related firms--there's only one way out. Through the air.
Here's Dana Blankenhorn taking a similar stand to mine, but urging Earthlink to take a leading role in the wISP world. I'd go a step further: if Earthlink rolled out wISP service they could couple this with their existing agreement with Boingo and let their wISP customers get a cheap Boingo membership thus tying wISP broadband with wISP hot spot.
For good insight on the regulatory front, read Kevin Werbach's take, which links you to other views. Kevin is a former FCC staffer.
You Could Make a Dead Man Broadcast: The Rolling Stones have an extensively networked operation on the road based on Wi-Fi and linked via satellite because land-based high-speed service is difficult at their venues (which seems odd, given how many traveling groups depend on it). This business-oriented article explains the Stones organization's use of Wi-Fi for communication among themselves, for updating the Web site with live details of concerts, and for providing a lifeline back to family and loved ones.
Decentralize homeland security: An interesting meld of homeland security and smart mobs is positing in this article, which points out several ways in which distributed networks and intelligence could be effectively used to keep people safe. Unfortunately, the US has an entirely centralized mentality, even while funding decentralized, mesh-based battlefield systems for soldiers!
Intel shows mesh networking: In one swoop, Intel has validated the notion of mesh LAN and MAN (metro area) networking by demonstrating a lab version of it and discussing the uses they expect (and are obviously planning for).
GSM operators should consider Wi-Fi: At the Cannes GSM Association meeting, operators were considering and encouraged to add Wi-Fi to their offerings to better compete with wireline services.
Asian hot spot rollout could quickly offer voice alternative: The Asian Wall Street Journal reports on how the rapid rollout of hot spots across Asia could play out into a cheap alternative to cell phone service with the bonus of data. The article notes over 10,000 hot spots having been deployed. (And note to Tokyo's Mr. Berger: Wi-Fi isn't public domain; the IEEE owns it, among other parties. It's just out there for use.) [via TechDirt]
Dude, where's my Wi-Fi?: The Wi-Fi Caravan of cars down Interstate 5 has begun with backing from technology firms eager to get some promotion. Sounds like fun, but friends don't let friends IM while driving.
More on Proxim's new MP-11 line: I promise a full report on this myself based on a briefing I received, but enjoy 802.11 Planet's excellent rundown as usual.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:00 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified | No Comments | No TrackBacks
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Wi-Fi phones are coming (requires paid Wall St. Journal registration): My college classmate Kevin Delaney writes from Cannes, Frances, for the Wall Street Journal about the coming wave of cell phones that will work over Wi-Fi networks all within about 12 months. Motorola Inc. expects to unveil a cellphone by the end of next year....Texas Instruments Inc., which supplies an estimated 50% of cellphone chips, says it is releasing at least two cellphone reference designs...within the next few months that would allow its manufacturer clients to make dual-mode devices. Chip makers Intel Corp. and Philips Semiconductors are pushing forward along similar paths....Meanwhile, Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. in December unveiled a hand-held computer with built-in Wi-Fi and cellular capabilities that also enables users to make voice calls....At the 3GSM World Congress here [in Cannes] this week, Hewlett-Packard Co. is showing one of its iPaq hand-held computers connected to a cellphone seamlessly switching back and forth from Wi-Fi and cellular networks...Nokia Corp. also sells a dual Wi-Fi and cellular card to be used in laptops....Nokia, Palm Inc., Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson, and Qualcomm Inc. all say they are looking into Wi-Fi phones and either don't have exact plans yet or won't reveal more until they announce specific products.
Ricochet's return in parts of Denver, San Diego: The Ricochet network's buyer has started to light up parts of Denver and San Diego, and claims speeds of up to 176 Kbps. Goli Ameri, quoted in the article, rightly questions whether hot zones can compete with ubiquitous cell coverage. I've been pushing the new meme: speed trumps ubuiquity. Cell companies count on ubiquity winning, while hot spot operators are hoping for speed. Glenn's wireless data axiom 1 is: Near ubiquity is as good as total ubiquity. Axiom 2: Speed kills. Axiom 3: Cheap unlicensed trumps in two directions: free spectrum, cheap equipment. [via Dewayne Hendricks]
Wi All Fi in a Yellow Subcompact: Cory Doctorow and others form the Wi-Fi caravan from Portland to San Francisco on Feb. 21 with the technical assistance of VIA Technologies. A multi-car, high-speed, mobile Wi-Fi network. Pull over and set a spell boys, and spin us some bandwidth.
FatPort, Netwireless partnership in Canada: Vancouver's FatPort and the nascent Netwireless network have partnered to roll out 175 hot spots in the next year using FatPort's FatPoint turnkey hot spot hardware/back-end system. FatPort and Netwireless now have access through international roaming agreement with what they say is 1,000 hot spots worldwide. Netwireless has just three hot spots listed at the moment, but their parent company runs 150 computer retailers and integrators across Canada, so you can imagine how that sort of business lends itself to opportunities for deployment.
A transmitter grows in Boston: Public housing meets broadband in an experiment to bridge the digital divide. The projects sounds well directed with reasonable expectations. The story told here is similar to that elsewhere: when you give kids access to information, they'll suck at that hose no matter how much you push through it. Kids want to learn. (And play.) [via TechDirt]
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 11:35 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified | No Comments | No TrackBacks
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Proxim's affordable wireless broadband announcement: Proxim announced a consolidated and revised line of wireless broadband products intended to serve residential and corporate customers with an extremely low CPE (customer premises equipment) price expected to be $300 or less. The new system relies on line-of-sight point-to-point service, but the residental CPE comes with an interior window-mounted antenna that the company expects would eliminate 85 percent or more of truck rolls allowing a true customer-installed setup. (I spoke to Proxim last week; more about these products later today.)
Purchases make Wi-Fi free for limited time: An interesting approach by a UK chain of sandwich shops -- a purchase gives you free Wi-Fi hot spot time.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 8:20 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified | No Comments | No TrackBacks
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Vivato's Coming Out Party: Yesterday at Demo, Vivato announced the details of their first Wi-Fi phased-array antenna/switch, an indoor office system that can serve up to 150 users at 11 Mbps at distances up to 300 meters for about $9,000.
Some of the early comments have wondered about this pricing model: how many access points at even enterprise pricing of $500 can you put in place instead of a single Vivato switch? They're missing the key point that explains Vivato's disruptive potential: the Vivato unit is a switch not an access point.
Let that sink in, and you'll realize what it means: each user has the potential through steered and focused beams to receive a full Wi-Fi speed connection without interfering with other users. The Vivato switch has two gigabit Ethernet ports and two 10/100 Mbps Ethernet ports. 150 by 11 Mbps minus overhead at full utilization could saturate a gigabit port.
In practical usage, it's likely that not every user within range would certainly receive full exclusive 11 Mbps Wi-Fi usage. The laws of physics coupled with physical reality don't allow that. But to provide equal coverage with access points, you would need at least several dozen, densely placed, with as many nonoverlapping channels as possible, and a robust Ethernet infrastructure underneath it for backhaul.
I interviewed Phil Belanger of Vivato last week; Belanger was formerly VP of marketing and other titles at Wayport, and his move to Vivato is one of the reasons that I gave the company such credibility in the early days. He and others at the company are veterans of the industry.
Belanger said that until the day the FCC gave approval for Vivato to treat each of its steered beams of service as individual point-to-point connections governed by the power rules for those connections, they weren't sure the FCC would actually agree with their interpretation of the law. Fortunately, Powell's staff seems to encourage this kind of envelope stretching that's backed by testing. Belanger said that the FCC likes the Vivato model in that it encourages an "efficient use of the unlicensed spectrum."
The Vivato switch doesn't broadcast, but scans over a 100-degree field of view, but when it connects with a client Wi-Fi adapter, it focuses service directly onto that device. The switch is still limited by weak transmit signal on Wi-Fi cards, but Vivato's approach does extend range as well as allow transparency through interior partitions, solid or cubicle style.
Among several advantages Belanger cites for the switch is that even with all other costs being equal, there's a reduced price for wire deployment, which anyone who has contracted for Ethernet and electrical wiring for an office knows can run hundreds of dollars a drop. Even prewired offices may need renovation as additional devices are added. The Vivato switch just needs an optimal placement in a corner to have that 100-degree view.
The product itself is pretty minimalist: a textile covering (which can be provided in different colors to match office decor) covers the antenna, which has all of its administrative innards hidden as well. The first version of the switch is meant for interiors, and will ship in May. An outdoor version in an environmental, ruggedized enclosure will come next.
Belanger pointed out that the indoor model is limited practically to a single floor of a building, more or less, but that an outdoor version mounted to point at a building could cover most or all of the facility. This lends itself to airport, shopping malls, big retail warehouses, and conference venues, he said.
Up to four switches can be aggregated together to take advantage of the substantial LAN and WLAN management tools and support built in. You have to read the spec sheet for all of it, but it supports 802.1x/EAP, AES (when available as part of 802.11i), TKIP (as part of Wi-Fi Protected Access and 802.11i), 802.1q (VLAN), and on and on.
The switch offers rogue access point detection, because it's constantly scanning and has a signature library of what new access points look like.
Belanger said they would be running a switch at the CTIA conference -- it won't be the show's official network, but Belanger said they should be offering as much of a coverage area.
Vivato will be selling its products through value-added resellers, including TerraWave, announced today. They have 30 VARs signed up already, and the VARs will handle configuration and installation.
My take: Although Vivato is running a couple months behind their original schedule, my analysis continues to be that for many kinds of installations, primarily large venue hot spot and enterprise-scale campus or building projects, Vivato radically changes the deployment and maintenance costs and complexity, while so dramatically increasing network throughput on a per-client basis that it practically cannot be compared to any other product currently on the market.
The closest competitor rely on massive deployment of inexpensive access points, but still cannot achieve the coverage range, simplicity, or throughput of a single Vivato switch no matter how massively they were to build out.
The next three months will be crucial as Vivato tests its devices extensively in the real field, and reports come in. If Vivato can achieve its relatively modest goals given its equipment's potential, Cisco, Proxim, and many other vendors will have to rapidly rethink their model -- and raise cash for an acquisition.
A more technical Boeing Connexion flight story: EE Times offers a more technical look at the Boeing Connexion in-flight wired/Wi-Fi service story high above Lake Tahoe. Interestingly, Boeing is predicting 20 to 30 percent of a given trans-ocean flight's passengers would opt for service. On a recent flight that was 100 users -- at $35 a pop. This is a significant revenue improvement, obviously, even with the costs of operating the network, like performing a compression routine to put 2 to 10 more passengers on the plane.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:49 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified | No Comments | No TrackBacks
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Vivato announces first switch, price, shipping date: Vivato's unique phased-array antenna system can server 150 users indoors through walls, doors, and cubicle partitions up to about 300 meters from its hanging location for about $9,000 starting in May. The Vivato system supports 802.1x, has integral AES waiting for activation, and can handle TKIP as part of Wi-Fi Protected Access. I'll have more detail tomorrow from an interview with Vivato conducted last week.
Joltage shuts down: Joltage had a model of providing software to locations that wanted to become part of a network they would serve. As of the end of February, they will be shutting down. Their CEO wrote: Unfortunately, it appears that it will take substantially longer than expected for the significant numbers of users we anticipated on such a network to materialize. And because of the difficult economy, we are no longer able to finance our operations as we had once hoped we would be able to.
Joltage, Sputnik, and SOHO Wireless all appeared around the same time with related business models: enable individuals and companies to roll out hot spot without having to buy into large capital infrastructure investments. To wit, install software and convert an old PC with a PCI card into a hot spot nexus that would start collecting fees.
Sputnik semi-exited the business: they continue to distribute their free community gateway software which allows bandwidth throttling, priority access to certain users, and firewalled public service. But they are now an enterprise software company that can manage large numbers of wireless access points through the Central Control software.
Although SOHO Wireless is still around, I haven't heard their name in some time. The list of locations in their network seems to be quite short, but I'm not sure if that's just a list of outlets that want to be listed or all SOHO Wireless locations. (Check out their site for this great and honest revenue expectations run-through for hot spots.)
The world has shifted, it seems, to preboxed, turnkey hot spot installation, as I hear from Surf and Sip, Boingo, Pronto, Fatport, and many others that the boxes just fly out -- and require very little handholding once they arrive. I'd be curious whether preinstalled turnkey hot spots have exceeded 1,000 locations: based on numbers I've seen, I would think so. That's more of a force to be reckoned with, even with the demise of hereUare (an early back-end billing/network aggregator) and Joltage. [Joltage note via Tim Pozar]
InfoWorld says too early for 802.11g: InfoWorld tested Linksys and D-Link draft-802.11g equipment and found terrible performance in mixed modes plus shortened distances. 802.11g-only mode offered reasonable throughput improvements though: nearly four times as fast as plain 802.11b or mixed-mode b or g. InfoWorld rarely reviews consumer equipment such as this, but they offered an early taste as to have draft equipment will work, and present their reasonable, conservative conclusion to an IT audience.
Starwood, Intel team up for hotel Wi-Fi coverage: Last week, the Starwood hotel chain, which comprises 150 Westin, W, and Sheraton hotels, and Intel announced they would start putting in Wi-Fi access in properties starting in March. No mention of whether Cometa is involved in this at all.
Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:22 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified | No Comments | No TrackBacks