Carl Ford : 4G Wireless Evolution
Carl Ford
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4GWE

Are you Looking for Working? Can you help with BTOP?

July 23, 2009

I volunteered to help the NTIA with its broadband Stimulus evaluation, but before I get a chance to look at them, three of 4GWE speakers are working with various states for build out strategies. 

One of them told me he was only going to bid on ten and that has since doubled because the states have approached him.

This is to the point where he needs more people to write the proposals make the calls do the work, so he asked if I wanted to get involved.

Since I had volunteered already, I did not want to.  Some of the states he is applying for I know of other proposals.  Hmmn, I wonder if unserved can go to overserved in a year.  

Standard thought is that when three competitors exist real competition exists.
I have never understood if they would count a comprehensive view of data, video, voice as a single competitor or not. 

After a long delay the stimulus may be having the desired effect. even if it is just on paper so far.  I expect the monies for CAPex are going to be 2010 2Q.

On paper most of these proposals make a lot of sense to me, One of our speakers is augmenting a state I work in with some localized NAPs to connect regional fiber rings that are too isolated and do not support the communities connnectivity.  A few states made deals in the buildout era for fiber by the highway that is not supporting the local communities.  An analogy would be a highway with no off ramps. (Is I66 a good example?)

Lets see how the process continues, but I have to say after waiting for Washington to get the act (bill?) together, this is coming along nicely.




















Clearing the Way to Las Vegas Clearwire Launch

July 20, 2009

The Smart Approach: WiMAX Goes to College

July 15, 2009

A university campus prides in its cohesiveness, in its connectivity.  Campuses have always organized programs to bring their students together socially.  Now universities want to unify their students technologically.
In the past, students were able to connect to the Internet in various locations on campus via Wi-Fi--usually in the library, the cafeteria, the dorms, and several other isolated spots.  In an age of online communications, the Internet connection has become vital to a university's makeup. 

The Dead Zone: The realities of Coverage

June 27, 2009

While roaming the Internet, looking for things to make my Blogging more interesting to you the reader, I came upon Jeff Cohn's Coverage maps

I am sure you have seen the Verizon Dead Zone commercials. 

Looking at Jeff's maps you come to understand that living in an NFL city skews your perspective on coverage and makes the stimulus goal of unserved areas easier to grasp.  Mind you the economics are hard.  After all the Alvarion / Open Range announcement talked about 6M people in 17 states.  Its hard to get critical mass in some areas.

When I worked for what is now Verizon in NY I was struck how much of New York State might as well be US West territory.   When my pal Mark Hewitt showed me the plans to connect the fiber rings in NY I immediately recognized the holes that were being filled by their plan.

As will be discussed at 4GWE, If we are going to make the Internet available on broadband to everyone its going to take more than any one carrier can give us.  

One last point about the maps.  If you look at them you can see that unserved is a much greater problem then underserved.  It will be possible for the competitive providers to claim they need stimulus, but my hope is that Chairman Genachowski will focus on the unserved.  They are a greater need and more important to the greater good imho.  I base this on the believe that economies of scale work in our favor where people are served, I would venture a guess that whoever is servicing the area might be open to enabling wholesale.















Natural Selection and Evolutionary Process

June 27, 2009

Investor's Daily has a nice article on how wireless operators in the US have hit the saturation point.  While I keep trying to talk about nothing but the broadband wireless network of the future, consumers are selecting an alternative direction.   

Prepaid services are on the rise with companies like Boost (Sprint brand), MetroPCS and LEAP.  These services are strictly voice and text, with very little intention to use the wireless Interent at the moment.  One exception is American Movil which is testing a $30 a month plan that includes browsing.

For the large players world wide the story is a mixed bag.  On the positive revenue side the smartphones are on the rise to by 12% worldwide.  On the negative side the overall worldwide market fell by 9%.  (statistics courtesy of IDC in the article). 

While almost half of the market lost revenue worldwide domestically ATT is up almost 10% and its all thanks to Apple.  Mind you I am not sure those dollars translate to the net given the contract with Apple but we have to tip our hats to them.  Solid growth and from what I can tell loyalty.  I have not see the numbers, but I am guessing that 3GS has a lot of first generation iPhone users coming back.

Its seems for a great many consumers we should have a sign that says "Its the text stupid".  Their connectivity is about SMS.  For me, this feels like a market ripe for arbitrage which brings me back to the real value of the Internet.  The ability to evolve applications that grow the community.

From a 4GWE perspective the obvious question is what should we expect for the data needs.  As people are texting like crazy should we expect the data side to segment into low end services as well?  That will on my mind with our community in September 1-3 in Los Angeles.









Why we are here? 4GWE Rewind

June 24, 2009

I took the liberty of heavily editing  Brough Turner or Dialogic discussion from the "Our Genealogy" session.  When we come to the west coast we broke up the tutorial so that Brough Turner and Fanny Mlinarsky had more latitude to talk about the current environment.

I placed the Video on YouTube


What's great about Brough's analysis is the understanding of the prime movers in the technology.

This clip gives the perspective of the fact that like the landline network, the wireless network is being swallowed by the data requirements of the future.
In LA we are continuing the discussion about what it take to evolve the 4G wireless broadband.

In listening to Brough, one thought occurred to me is that iPhone probably drove the US 3G adoption way past Europe at the present time.  (Don't your get hopes, I have not reset my opinion of Apple.) 

Enjoy the listen and if you want to stay up to date with us join us at 4GWE September 1-3 in LA.

In the meantime if you want access to the presentations send me an email and I will add you to system.















Do DECT Phones fit in the 4G Wireless Evolution?

June 4, 2009

Scott and I visited our friend Mike Storella at SNOM yesterday.  As usual we got into a lot of subjects.  HD Voice, Video, VoWiFi, the expansion of SNOM's product line and distribution channel.  All good things.

We also talked about the DECT marketplace.  DECT is finally having its impact on the US.  They are feature rich phones, but the best part is they are easily integrated into a strategy. 

So in the battle of Femtocells versus Dual Mode, I want to cast my vote for DECT. 

At my house my DECT phones support intercom, bluetooth to my cell, speakerphone and its not about carrying something that needs to be charged.

As a matter of fact, I frequently use the base station as the only charger and leave the DECT phones lying around in convenient spots. (hmmmn, can I ask that the DECT forum consider TV remotes as an integration). 

I suggested we start discussing DECT's role at 4GWE.  We already have the Femto, Dual mode folks represented.









Should Cable even be in the 4G Discussion

May 26, 2009

A good friend who works with cable operators posed that question to me as we talked about the stimulus.  Right now I have been quiet about alot of this because the speculation has been more or less valuable. 

The Stimulus for telecom has a cascade of decisions that have to occur and while I know of friends with an inside track, I don't think my talking about their activities is helpful.

But this question is a sound one.  The reason is because of the definition of broadband is being set.  100 MB happens to be the preferred capacity in most discussions, but cable operators like 50 MB as their preferred unit of measure.

As Cablevision rolls out its public WiFi the question of integration to home solutions can they gain access to stimulus strategies. Now combine that with the ability to use White Space and you have a 4G network opportunity.

Let's be inclusive.  It will work out in the long run.















Cisco Delivers WiMAX Wake-Up Call With Clearwire Deal

May 14, 2009

After Cisco bought WiMax radio supplier Navini in October 2007, industry watchers have waited and wondered why the biggest networking vendor wasn't doing more with WiMax in the U.S. market. Now after Wednesday's announcement of a multi-year deal between Cisco and Clearwire, the waiting is over -- and you have to think Cisco just delivered a big wake-up call about WiMax to Silicon Valley and Wall Street in one big move.

What really made the deal big news was the inclusion of Cisco's pledge to ship a mobile WiMax end-user device before year's end. The other part of the deal, which involves Clearwire using Cisco gear in its core IP network, isn't so surprising -- in any IP network of Clearwire's size, you might be more surprised not to find Cisco gear in the wiring closets.

But by pledging to develop end-user devices, Cisco is signaling to the rest of the industry (and investors, if they are listening) that WiMax is more than a curiousity.



My GPhone gets a Needed Update

May 13, 2009

As the world continues to view the smartphone market as a battle between RIM and Apple, my T-Mobile Google phone is about to get an OS update that will bring on some new features. The update will also provide improvements to the camera capture feature, GPS and G-Mail integration.

The software release includes an on screen qwerty keyboard, video recording and playback, and some widgets.  While the market for third party applications is still decidedly in Apple's favor, I am excited about the prospect of receiving remote updates to my G Phone.

It is my contention that, going forward, the carriers will need to distinguish themselves beyond the type of device that they support. Once they are able to do this, remote provisioning is going to grow in the mobile market.  Releases of software upgrades are common, but he question is will the carrier's participation be something more than simply distributing these upgrades?  I believe the carriers will need to show a willingness to attack these provisioning issues if they do not want to be "just a dumb pipe".

Going forward it is still a question on whether there will be a shared app store, or if it will be device specific. If it is shared, a significant amount of expertise will be required by the carrier to provision these applications. 

This Market is Ready to Explode
Apple has migrated 5.5 M subscribers from Verizon Wireless to its' iPhone, It's unclear if T-Mobile's net increase in subs of almost half a million is based specifically on the GPhone, but the fact remains that 23% of all cellular phones are now smartphones, up from about 17% in the first quarter of 2008.  As we see sales of smartphones, as a percentage of total cellular phone sales, growing, we have to keep in mind that only two thirds of the smartphones are on a 3G network thus far.








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