Motorola's 4G Bet

For TelecomBeat, I interviewed Motorola's director of 802.16 products, and the person at SprintNextel responsible for evaluating 4th generation gear. The resulting story is posted here. An excerpt:

While Motorola is a manufacturer of 3G equipment, at least one team at the company is betting that some operators will bypass 3G and invest in fourth generation networks based on WiMAX. Called MOTOwi4 (the 4 stands for fourth generation), the group is leveraging the company's existing Canopy wireless data products, VoIP access devices, and Motorola IMS to enter the market quickly with a complete 802.16e solution for delivering broadband data and voice into consumer's homes.

More on Motorola's plans, including a description of their CPE's and a comment from Sprint on TelecomBeat's website.

Welcome Back Ma Bell

During my podcast with VoIP Magazine's Bryan Richard at the VON conference a month ago I suggested that SBC would take the AT&T name once the merger was complete. It looks like I was right. Andy Abramson was right as well. Gee, we should put our heads together and make a few more prediction :-)

At the end of the trading day, SBC will be announcing their new logo and trading symbol:

At close, the new company will unveil a fresh, new logo. After completion of the merger, the transition to the new brand will be heavily promoted with the largest multimedia advertising and marketing campaign in either company's history, as well as through other promotional initiatives. At close, the company will also announce the stock market ticker symbol it intends to use.

During that same podcast I also predicted that SBC's (err.. AT&T's) next target would be BellSouth. They already co-own Cingular...

VoIP over WiMAX from Motorola

This morning I spoke with Juan Santiago, Senior Director of Motorola's 802.16 products. He detailed their WiMAX plans and I found it especially interesting to hear that Motorola would be taking their existing VT1000 home VoIP gateway product and integrating a WiMAX CPE to offer VoIP over WiMAX. The VT1000 supports 10 different VoIP service protocols, including Motorola's own IMS implementation, allowing operators to offer high quality voice services over mobile broadband. He also said there was a VT2500 on the way which would also be integrated with the WiMAX CPE. Both products are expected in January 2007.

Juan said this would be one of three CPE's that Motorola will be offering for consumer access over WiMAX -- there will be a broadband only, the VoIP/broadband product based on integrating the VT1000 and VT2500, and a combined VoIP WiFi product... and he hinted at WiFi VoIP handsets, "entirely eliminating the need to go to an analog telephone."

Of course none of these products will be available in the U.S. market. You'll have to go over the border to Canada or Mexico, or overseas. Motorola is focused on delivering WiMAX in the 3.5 GHz range, which is a portion of the spectrum reserved in the U.S. for the military.

WiMAX: Fixed vs. Mobile

TelecomBeat has posted my first article from the WiMAX World show -- outlining the debate about fixed vs. mobile WiMAX deployments -- WiMAX: Fixed vs. Mobile

The nascent WiMAX industry finds itself at a turning point in its evolution as the WiMAX World Conference and Exposition opens in Boston, Mass. this week.

While the early “fixed” version of the 802.16 standard has been ratified, and long delayed certification of products appears certain before year-end, the newer (and unfinished) 802.16e “mobile” version of the standard is now getting all of the attention from large manufacturers and potential customers. Unfortunately for vendors and customers, it will be late in 2007 before certified 802.16e equipment is available. As a result, pre-conference presentations at this year’s conference tried to bring attention back to applications for fixed WiMAX.

More on the Telecom Beat website.

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance is a fancy way of saying, "huh?" And that is just what I have been saying while sitting here in the Boston "World Trade Center" and listening to the WiMAXWorld press conference while simultaneously fielding emails from my friend Paul Kapustka at the USTA Telecom '05 show in Las Vegas. Its almost as if we are living in two different worlds...

As an example, Mo Shakouri (chair of the WiMAX Forum Marketing committee) says that BellSouth made an announcement that they are using WiMAX to deliver "instant circuits" in places like New Orleans and Florida where hurricanes have devastated the physical layer. But a quick search on the web finds that they have a test service running in New Orleans. According to another report they have only deployed three base stations.

Another news report from the USTA Telecom show states that "WiMAX is just hype without spectrum." In this article the author reports on BellSouth's CTO's comments on WiMAX:

BellSouth owns MMDS and WCS spectrum, and will focus its exploratory efforts there, said CTO Bill Smith. “But it’s hard to start building something on the expectation of spectrum. We have a lot of opportunities to invest capital that are more certain.”

It seems that at the USTA show, carriers are skeptical about WiMAX. Perhaps that is why they didn't come to Boston. But does that mean that the folks that came to Boston are pathological optimists? Or just represent different parts of the industry?

For now I'll take the second of these two options. But I'll keep working on answering this question while I am here...

SBC WiMAX Presentation

Arun Ghosh, Principal Member of the Technical Staff, Wireless Networks, SBC Labs;"what I will try to do is speak from the perspective of an operator that has both wireline and wireless experience. In the last 10 years, mobile users have gone from 10 million users worldwide to oer 2 billion today. Broadband during this same period has gone from basically zero to 150 million users worldwide. While this is enormous growth, why hasn't broadband grown as fast as wireless? And what does this say about the adoption of wireless broadband?

Complexity, spectrum, regulatory issues, applications... these are all issues for the adoption of broadband. Wireless broadband has these and more.

Business challenges -- the bar is constantly being raised by wireline technologies (ADSL, VDSL, DOCSIS); there is a lack of global spectrum (which means the market is fragmented and you lose economies of scale); devices are still under development; and there is competition from 3G.

Technical challenges -- there are high spectral efficiency requirements for broadband, there is spectrum scarcity, QoS over wireless networks, and mobility (which is a big differentiator).

How does WiMAX address these challenges?

Most importantly, it is a global standard which allows for economies of scale. The price of the CPE, for example, is a very critical factor. With other broadband wireless technologies the CPE can cost thousands of dollars. We are already seeing WiMAX CPE's at around $200.

The business opportunities of WiMAX will be different in different countries. In developing countries there is a high rate of adoption of wireless technologies since this is a significant time to market and financial advantage over physical infrastructure. In countries where we already have a very good wireline network it is much more difficult. However, there are opportunities for broadband wireless -- not by competing with wireline broadband but by complementing such services. Mobility will be the key differentiator.

Earthlink WiMAX Presentation

Bill Tolpegin, Director of Corporate Development, Earthlink gave a presentation on "an operator's perspective of WiMAX." He specifically focused on municipal broadband deployment. "We have been searching the world for alternative broadband, the third pipe to the home. And I think we've found it..."

Municipal Broadband -- "Earthlink's focus is on the public/private partnership model." recently won the contract to build the Philadelphia open access WiFi network.

"If you had told me a year ago that I would be standing in front of this audience, I would have said you were dead wrong. I was fully convinced a year ago that licensed spectrum was the way to go. I thought that the only way to deliver QoS was with licensed spectrum. But having spent the last year doing diligence on WiFi... this stuff is out there and it works. It enhances the fixed line model and provides a mobile experience."

WiMAX provides the backhaul to our local pops. Why are we interested in WiMAX? bandwidth, QoS, services, standards, and a rural model. But there are some big challenges: spectrum, timing, perception, and hardware.

Samsung WiMAX Presentation

Hungkwon Song, VP Global Marketing Group, Samsung presented the South Korean perspective on WiMax. Samsung's WiBro technology will be the first mobile broadband technology in the world, and it is being merged into the WiMAX "e" standard.


Korea broadband market:
78% has wireline and wireless data access and next year some uesers will have 100 MB service. There are 37.8 M mobile subscriptions -- 36 M mobile data users. Revenue from data is 25% of ARPU. There are already 12 M EV-DO subscribers. Last year CAGR for the mobile data market was 85%. The very first toy that children play with in Korea is a mobile handset.


Applications:
5.7 Billion SMS messages a month. Every subscriber is sending an average of 5 messages a day. Data services has become an essential service for every day life.

May 2005 we launched satellite digital media broadcasts (DMB). As of August 2005 we already had 145,000 subscribers. In December 2005, a terrestrial DMB will be launched and will be free.

Cyworld is a combination of mobile blogging and web blogging. The upload traffic is 10 times the download traffic. In August, 2005 15 million subscribers including 1 million mobile users.


Three Generations of consumers:
Analog (30+); Digital (20s-30s); Post Digital (13-24). This last category is the one that is driving high speed mobile data services. They are living simultaneously in the cyber world and the real world.


WiBro rollout next year:
The South Korean government has mandated that WiBro will have a minimum download of 512 Kbps and a minimum upload 128 Kbps. We have demonstrated a 4 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload. Just yesterday we announced a PDA with WiBro capability.

Voice and the WiMAX/3G Debate

Various representatives of the WiMAX community have been repeating the marketing mantra that WiMAX is not a threat to 3G. I had a chance to speak with Mo Shakouri, the chair of the WiMAX Forum marketing committee, and I thought I'd try to nail him down on this issue.

"Its two different mindsets," Shakouri said. "The 3G standard is optimized for delivering voice first, ubiquitous coverage second, and increased data access but within a walled garden." On the other hand, "mobile WiMAX is DSL on the move. It is not optimized for voice..." And then he added the marketing phrase again, "WiMAX complements 3G."

So I said, wait a minute... are you saying that the primary difference between WiMAX and 3G is circuit-switched voice? I can do that with GSM and CDMA... And all morning long I have been hearing from vendors that voice revenue will be cannabilized by VoIP over WiMAX... So is it the ubiquitous part that I am supposed to care about? Because I certainly do not think that the market is a fan of the "walled garden."

"We are hoping that 3G is successful," Mo started, "but we do think that the advantage in the long run for WiMAX is that it is a flat low cost network. This is IP. It is 4G. 5-10 years from now, sure WiMAX may be the preferred use for spectrum over current 3G. In the meantime, it is a complement."

So I believe the correct answer to the question "is WiMAX a threat to 3G" is "not yet..." But 3G operators had better prepare for a day when the walled garden is gone, WiMAX is as ubiquitous as 3G, and voice is just another application on the IP network. And that day may be closer than the current financial models suggest...

KT to join WiMAX Board

Just learned from Mo Shakouri, chair of the WiMAX Forum marketing forum, that there will be an announcement tomorrow that South Korea's KT will be joining the WiMAX Forum board of directors. According to Dr. Shakouri, "KT is investing a billion dollars in bringing WiMAX to consumers." This follows the decision by Samsung to combine their Wi-Bro efforts with mobile WiMAX.

South Korea will have the first consumer mobile broadband service in the world, in operation using Wi-Bro technology in mid-2006. The rest of the world will wait for mobile WiMAX, expected in mid-2007.

WiMAX Panel Discussion

(WiMAX World, Boston) Panel discussion on the business models for WiMAX. Moderated by Caroline Gabriel who gave the opening talk this morning. Speakers included David McGrath, Head of Business Innovation & Consulting, Global Marketing & Strategy, Networks, Motorola, Inc. and Jim Orr, Principal Network Architect, Wireless Market Development Group, Fujitsu.

Each of the panelists opened with a brief presentation.

David McGrath - MOTOwi4
Significant un-served and under-served market needs, create a market opportunity for cost-effective wireless broadband solution... We see WiMAX as being complimentary to 3G. Big difference between 3G and WiMAX -- WiMAX has a much small cell radius, but the data rate within that cell is much higher. A key factor for the longterm adoption of WiMAX is the "Spectral Efficiency" of this technology -- carry more data in the same amount of bandwidth. Applications: (1) DSL Alternative - cost effective only in Rural and under-served markets (2) cellular backhaul - very price competitive to other backhaul solutions (3) local competitive access (ability to bypass the local loop) -- business case is OK with data, but add VoIP makes the economics work (4) underlay of 2G or 3G cells -- the cost per megabit for WiMAX in this application is substantially lower than other alternatives. Past 2007, also the opportunity to provide mobile WiMAX as a complement to 3G use.

David gave a number of specific examples of how to build out a metro area wireless network, comparing the cost of using WiFi versus WiMAX. The one scenario where WiMAX seems to be significantly less expensive is when covering users inside a building -- this is because the uplink radios can operate at a much higher power level under the WiMAX specification, thus the distance for WiMAX links can be greater, and this allows a significantly smaller number of APs. However the economic calculation depends upon the declining price of the user's CPE. David suggested that the cost per user would drop below $100 by 2010.

Jim Orr - Fujitsu Network Communications
Fujitsu WiMAX Worldview = 4G is a state of mind. Access to your data, all of the time, when and where you want it... It is going to be content driven... it is going to be a market with a lot of participants -- cellular carriers, traditional telcos, cable companies, satellite providers, governments, content providers, business owners. 4G will be a unification of wireless standards that allow for interoperability. This will happen on the network and on the devices. The advantages of WiMAX as a part of this mix -- performance, QOS, "nimbleness" (ability to operate on multiple channels), vendor diversity, flexibility, and this all leads to a cost advantage. So WiMAX will be a big part of that 4G world in 2010+. What are the business advantages of WiMAX? Access to difficult to reach customers, short deployment cycle and thus fast time to revenue, lower risk to add customers in areas that physical plant doesn't reach, shared survivability, ethernet overflow. Summary: WiMAX is driven by a global market, WiMAX will be a "participant technology" in 4G, Fixed WiMAX has a viable business case in the US Market.

Panel Discussion:

Q: Why do you make such a big deal of the CPE subscriber unit when cellular operators have dealt with this problem very effectively for years?

Caroline: In the fixed markets, if the operator has to subsidize the CPE, it becomes a cost item that may not be competitive against other fixed alternatives such as DSL.

Jim: It comes up in our conversation with every operator because they want to get out from under the subsidization

David: As you reduce the cost of the CPE, you increase adoption. But there are other factors that can be more important to adoption.

Caroline: Also, some governments in Asia are talking about banning subsidies.

Q: Can the panel address the challenges of delivering Voice?

Jim: Voice can be implemented through the QoS element. Its not going to be circuit switched, it will be VoIP.

David: You can build a viable business model for WiMAX on data alone. But you cannot do so on voice.

Caroline: We think VoIP will become a commodity very quickly and that operators will need to look for other premium products other than voice.

Q: In the developed markets we have very high penetration of DSL, we have the capability of DSL2 of 10 Mbps+ so can we will provide the kind of bandwidth that the applications like triple play will demand (with WiMAX) compared to the next generation of DSL?

Jim: In the cellular market, people were willing to give up quality and services in order to have mobility. The same thing is going to happen with data. People are going to want their data services to follow them.

David: Spectrum is always going to be an issue. It is a precious resource no matter where we use it. There is going to be a number of different services and it may be that applications like Television will not be best suited for WiMAX. You have to look at where it is most useful.

Caroline: The value of spectrum will depend upon what operators can do with it, so yes in developed countries the wireless data opportunities to consumers will be about mobility.

Q: Please address the application of interactive TV in rural areas where WiMAX may be the only way to deliver...

David: The whole technology around broadcast television using WiMAX isn't proved out as a business model. I don't think this is the best use of the spectrum, and that you aren't likely to get a good ROI.

Caroline: Perhaps at a significantly lower part of the spectrum, like Qualcomm's Mediaflo at 700 Mhz, but WiMAX as not going to be.

Jim: There is one other way, which is a client based DVR. If this is about using WiMAX as a distribution vehicle ahead of media consumption, it could be effective.

Q: When will Motorola make WiMAX handsets available? How will you support so many different radios in a single device - size, cost, power consumption?

David: For 802.16e, we are tied to the profiles that the WiMAX Forum has outlined. So the timeline is the second half of 2006 for the profile and so you can expect handheld devices from all of the major manufacturers in the early 2007 timeframe. There is an enormous number of challenges - how do I manage all of this complexity with a limited amount of battery power being one of the largest. WiMAX can actually be put into a sleep mode more effectively than many of these other technologies, so this will actually be easier than with some of the other radio technologies.

Q: Wondering about the implications for vendors from a licensing and royalty perspective as 802.16e migrates to Wi-BRO.

Caroline: By bringing Wi-Bro into the IEEE, many of the royalty issues will actually become easier, at least by comparison to the 3G world. This will bring RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) royalties to this market, which might not have happened with Wi-Bro if it hadn't been converged with the 802.16e roadmap.

David: What the IEEE is doing with cross licensing is very advantageous to WiMAX to make sure that it is not sabotaged by any one vendor. We are not in too bad a position, in the longer term the whole industry moving to a RAND model is crucial to consumer adoption of the technology - bringing down the cost of CPEs for example.

WiMAX Business Models

(WiMAX World, Boston) This morning's speaker is Caroline Gabriel, Research Director and founder, Rethink Research. She is also the editor of WiMAX Trends, published by Transmedia, the conference producer. Caroline presented research overviews from surveys that Rethink has done with carriers and equipment manufacturers.

WiMAX MYTHS
Myths that Caroline wishes to debunk: (1) WiMAX delivers 70Mbps over 50 miles; (2) WiMAX is cheap; (3) WiMAX is better than 3G; (4) WiMAX IS 4G; (5) WiMAX is an Intel Technology.

Reality:

(1) 802.16-2004 (d) has been approved as a standard for fixed wireless application. 802.16e (the mobile version) is expected for approval by the end of Q3 2005. This is designed to deliver up to 20 Mbps.

(2) There will be downward price pressure, but this will be over the next several years. The introduction of Taiwanese ODMs into this market segment (which is already happening) may accelerate this trend.

(3) There are complex trade-offs between WiMAX and 3G and the comparison between the two cannot be oversimplified.

(4) Hmmm... Maybe this one myth will prove to be true. There are markets where operators are looking at the option of leapfrogging 3G by going directly to 802.16e

(5) Intel has probably done more than any other company to promote WiMAX, but many other companies are working to develop the technology and virtually all of the large manufacturers are now participating in developing and promoting the technology.


CHOOSING A STANDARD
Despite the approval of 802.16-2004, most manufacturers and carriers are now focused on 802.16e. There seems to be broad consensus that the addition of mobility is an enormous value when making the decision to invest in WiMAX. Since 802.16e can also be used for fixed wireless applications, Caroline claims that most carriers will ignore the earlier standard and go directly to the newer 802.16e standard.

Despite this, Caroline believes that 71% of the market opportunity for WiMAX is for Fixed wireless applications and that mobile WiMAX products (certainly certified ones) are a year away. Thus she believes that there is a business case for the existing 802.16 products in certain markets. She specifically called out rural areas and "underserved" markets. Despite this, most large vendors will ignore the fixed standard so this will be a niche market for small manufacturers.


EXAMPLES OF FIXED WIMAX BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES:

WISP
The WiMAX implementation at 5.8 Ghz is suitable for wireless Internet service providers (WISP) but only for fixed wireless applications. According to Rethink's research, 80% of rural ISPs in the US will implement WiMAX in this part of the spectrum by 2008. Other categories of ISPs have also expressed strong interest in WiMAX. Changes in regulations in the US regarding unlicensed spectrum over the next few years could have a significant impact on these plans.


ENTERPRISE
Number one priority for WiMAX is T1 replacement. AT&T reports that half of all customer access circuits are less than 3 miles and almost all are T1 or lower bandwidth. Thus for companies like AT&T, WiMAX offers an excellent alternative to dependence upon the fixed wire owners.


SMB and VoIP
Small business is projected as the fastest growing and largest segment for WiMAX fixed access applications because it is the most underserved market.

BACKHAUL
While not "sexy" the backhaul applications for WiMAX will be very important in the near term. WiMAX offers a significant economic advantage for building metro area broadband distribution.


SUMMARY
Early launches of WiMAX will include business customers and VoIP applications. In the US it will be largely fixed applications in the 5.8 GHz spectrum. In 2005 WISP, Backhaul and traditional BWA. In 2006 Enterprise, Hotzones, and Underserved markets.

The 3.5 GHz spectrum will be applied in emerging markets today.

Not until 2008 will we see consumer mobility as an application for WiMAX.

WiMAX World "Pre-Conference"

Why do people hold conferences in Boston? And if you have to have a conference in Boston, must you hold it out in the middle of nowhere? As with the VON Conference (which I complained about last month) the organizers of WiMAXWorld are holding their conference out in the new convention destination, across the river from downtown. Someday it will be a great place to hold a conference (notwithstanding that it is in Boston). But today it is still under construction. So, not enough hotel rooms, no infrastructure (how about a Starbucks? Or ANY place, other than Dunkin Donuts to get a coffee?). And the traffic is horrible with frustrated drivers weaving amingst traffic cones and almost hitting the pedestrians. But maybe that is just Boston

Ah Boston in late October. 3 hour delay getting in here because of this weeks Hurricane Wilma fed early "Noreaster" -- just late enough to miss the 1:00 AM close of every place around my hotel to get dinner... then a cold wet morning to cross town to get to the Seaport Hotel and "World Trade Center."

This morning I spoke with conference host, trendsmedia CEO Eliot Weinman. He apologized for the (a) lack of signage (b) lack of a press room (won't be open until tomorrow) and (c) cramped quarters. He said that when they booked this space a year ago, "we had no idea how big WiMAX would be by now." Hopefully a positive indication that this will be a fascinating look into the future... There certainly are a lot of people here for 8:30 AM on a "pre-conference" meetings day...

Vonage Tops Internet Ad Spend

According to the research firm TNS Media Intelligence, Vonage has been top spender on Internet advertising for three straight months -- May, June, and July (August figures are not available yet). During these three months Vonage spent $73 million in online advertising (this does not include traditional print and broadcast spending). In April, Vonage had a similar pace of spend ($21 million) but was in the number 2 position in total dollars spent for the month.

How long can Vonage spend $20 million a month in online advertising? Can they keep it up long enough to get acquired? Is it just me or does this look like the bubble to anyone else -- spend ad dollars as fast as possible to get new users... who won't generate enough revenue to pay for the ads that drew them in??

Perhaps a better use of this money would be to improve Vonage's famously aweful customer service. Both because retaining customers would seem to be a better investment than attracting new customers if those new customers are going to leave... And having happy customers will help bring in new ones.

Blocking Skype

Back in late September at the VON conference, I encountered a company that claimed it was the first to block Skype. Now IEEE Spectrum is reporting that another company has also mastered this skill. Mountain View, CA based Narus, Inc. reportedly is delivering VoIP (and Skype) blocking technology to a number of overseas broadband providers. In a press release titled "Narus Empowers Carriers to Asess VoIP Traffic and Realize Revenue" (a nice way to say, block) the company claims:

One carrier determined that over 15 percent of calls bypassed their traditional network, causing a significant impact on revenue. Using Narus, this carrier recovered its losses by mitigating the traffic and passing information to the billing system to bill subscribers for the network usage.

Personally I find a number of things troubling about this response to VoIP by traditional carriers. Not the least of which is the assumption that every VoIP call would have been a traditional PSTN call. But significantly more worrisome than the Narus technology is the suggestion that carriers (even ones here in the U.S.) will intentionally degrade the quality of VoIP calls. In the IEEE Spectrum article, A Narus VP is reported as having said:

"But there's nothing that keeps a carrier in the United States from introducing jitter, so the quality of the conversation isn't good," Thomas says. "So the user will either pay for the carrier's voice-over-Internet application, which brings revenue to the carrier, or pay the carrier for a premium service that allows Skype use to continue. You can deteriorate the service, introduce latency [audible delays in hearing the other end of the line], and also offer a premium to improve it."

I hope that this is as intolerable to the FCC as it is to me. Nothing that keeps a carrier from intentionally degrading the quality of a service that competes with its own? If this is correct, we need to change the law. And soon.

WimaxWorld Next Week

I will be travelling to beautiful Boston, MA next week for WiMAXWorld, "Transforming the Next Generation of Mobile Broadband." As long time readers of IP Inferno know, we have been covering the WiMAX story for almost 2 years. Previous posts have discussed the possible threat to 3G from WiMAX, the attempt by Qualcomm to slow down WiMAX, why AT&T is (was) investing in WiMAX, the attempt by Canadian company Wi-Lan to extract royalties from WiMAX manufacturers, and all the way back in June of 2004, an interview with Dr. Mohammad Shakouri, the chair of the marketing group of the WiMAX Forum. In that interview, Dr. Shakouri said,

"Managing the hype and executing over the next few years are our biggest problems."

He was right to express this concern. Even here at IP Inferno we declared a Summer of WiMAX... err... in 2004. And even Dr. Shakouri's best guess that the first WiMAX certified equipment would be out by June 2005 was wrong. Vendors are now saying November 2005...

All of the hype has lead to more than a few people writing WiMAX off altogether. The Muniwireless blog pointed me toward an article on WiMAX and disaster response over at silicon.com which reports that

Markku Hollström, head of WiMax business programme at Nokia, said the technology had already been oversold: "WiMax is hype at the moment and it's pretty bad hype."

The muniwireless post also provided a pointer to this first hand account by Sascha Meinrath, WiMax Hype and Disaster Response. AKA: The WiMax Story You Won't See Blasted Around in the News. But the complaints really aren't with the core technical idea behind WiMAX, just that the equipment isn't "...ready for prime time." So blame the press (including IP Inferno) for hyping this technology before it was ready, and give it another chance. Boston's WiMAXWorld should be a good platform for the industry to stand up and tell us what is going to work and when it will work.

Buying Vonage

Lightreading is reporting that a number of possible buyers have stepped up for Vonage and that the company has "already rejected an offer of $1.5 billion." Last week here on IP Inferno we compared Vonage to flameout Pointcast and wondered whether Jeff Citron might make the same mistake...

Lightreading speculates that Bellsouth is the most likely acquirer. Given how frequently they have been mentioned one wonders whether it is their bid for $1.5 billion that has already been rejected... Given the recent lawsuit by Sprintnextel against Vonage, another reasonable guess is that Sprint made the offer and was rejected... and is now trying to use the lawsuit to slow down Vonage's sale to another player.

With all of the speculation on Who's Going to Buy Vonage This Week it seems reasonable to expect a sale real soon now...

Latest VoIP Podcast (Mostly wireless)

Mostly wireless: Google Wi-Fi in SF, CTIA Wireless Show, muni Wi-Fi vs. the incumbents, and more.

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Hosts

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Format

41:00, 17.3MB, MP3

Program

00:00 Welcome Back

01:20 Back from the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment Show

02:00 VoIP Wire-tapping

02:45 We've moved to Gizmo Project

03:40 Google offer to SF for free Wi-Fi

06:28 Why won't the incumbents rollout Muni Wi-Fi? Ted knows

08:50 Will voice be as generic as email?

10:48 Ted gets all granola on us

11:45 Nokia unveils new server

14:30 Bryan has trouble dropping the Google Wi-Fi story

23:30 Who's Going to Buy Vonage This Week? Rupert Murdoc v. Cablevision

32:30 Weekly Packet8 reference

32:45 Cool gadget of the week: Flash Phone F2K

LISTEN

Sprint Nextel Sues Vonage

Patent infringement, claims SprintNextel, in a lawsuit just filed against Vonage, The Globe, and VoiceGlo. According to the news on VoIPWatch the lawsuit claims that the three companies

"...willfully infringed seven patents relating to voice over packet technology developed by Sprint Nextel."

Several other news outlets have stories, including MarketWatch and the Financial Times. The Kansas City Business Journal (Sprint territory) had the interesting comment that

"Sprint Nextel spokeswoman Jennifer Bosshardt said the carrier tried to negotiate licensing deals with the parties named but failed to reach any agreements."

We'll be following this story closely!

Antitrust? Gee, Baby Bells?

Richard's VoIP and ENUM blog has picked up a story from the Associated Press reporting that a federal appeals court has turned over a lower court ruling which had previously dismissed a lawsuit which alleges that "...several of the nation's largest telecommunications providers... conspired to exclude competitors from their home markets..."

Gee, this hardly even seems shocking to me. Especially given the rumors that SBC now wants to buy BellSouth... Can't the bell heads think of anything more interesting to do than put AT&T back together again?

All I can say is that I am ready to have Google be my (VoIP) telephony provider as soon as they bring WiFi over here to my side of the bay!

Bifurcated WiFi

Google has announced ambitious plans to blanket San Francisco with a free 300K WiFi service, according to Om Malik. While being particularly interesting to the press because it is Google, one of the interesting aspects of this deal that is being lost in the noise is the idea of creating a free service at 300K, and a higher level of service that can be accessed for a fee. Om writes:

When asked if this puts the company in direct conflict with incumbents like SBC and Comcast, Sacca replied, “I think a few months ago, we might have thought that, but we have talked to them and it seems the thinking is evolving amongst other last mile providers.”

Perhaps what Google has convinced SBC and Comcast of is that there will be zero margin in providing low speed (300K) access, but that each will have a chance to be able to offer high speed access... Om writes "As part of its proposal, the company says it will be offering wholesale access to other service providers..."

The idea of two levels of service is a good one for consumers, but incumbents should watch out for the open source phenomenon. Free open source products are often introduced into categories with limited feature sets or limited scalability and reliability. But over time many such products have added features, improved performance, and now threaten their commercial counterparts.