Carl Ford : 4G: For Generations to Come
Carl Ford

November 2009

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Mark Kelley Interview

November 27, 2009

Mark’s history mirrors the wireless industry closely and includes being the CTO of Leap and leading developments at Nextwave and Qualcomm. Today, he is doing some consulting and thinking about new opportunities in the market. With all this history the discussion takes us to in-depth analysis. He blogs about various aspects of the [...]

The Taffy Pull of Nortel: Ciena & Ericsson

November 25, 2009

If the sum of the parts is never greater than the whole,  the dividing of Nortel into various sections has interesting implications.

First of all, Ericsson is on a hot streak right now.  It's announcements with ATT , T-Mobile and Verizon.  Its outsourced services with Sprint, has made Ericsson the leader in the market.  And its reflected in the fact that it now has an extra 5000 employees in the US.  

Most importantly,  It bought a cash cow for a mere $70M as the battle for 4G and LTE heats up they will be in their customers hearts already with the GSM support.

So its a pretty strong move.

On the other side, Huawei continues to capture the cable operators hearts and it will be interesting to see where the operators link between their IMS plans and the existing structure. 

However, if integration services are the story for the future, then an opportunity probably exists for other companies to build that kind of a service.

One place where Integration will be tricky at best is CienaNortel had a long history of walking to the beat of its own drummer on interoffice facilities, as the migration to ethernet continued it had a legacy mindset that carried over and doe not match well to Ciena.

So the question of how the nearly $ 800 M acquistion of the Nortel Ethernet assets get managed will be interesting to see.   My own expectation is this may be a bitter pill to swallow and Nokia Siemens maybe grateful they did not win the bid.







Tags: ATT, Ciena, Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Siemens, Nortel, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless

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All The Free in China

November 16, 2009

President Obama, went to China and gave a speech on Internet Freedom. The President was asked if Chinese people should be allowed to use Twitter. It was an interesting that the Blackberry man admitted he does not tweet. In China, Skype is a partnership with TOM, a company that complies with government requirements. The interesting [...]

I am STUNed with the Jonathan Rosenberg / Skype announcement.

November 9, 2009

The appointment of Jonathan Rosenberg as Chief Strategy Officer adds a new wrinkle to a career that started in "The Labs" and now moves beyond Cisco.  He has followed voice to app side all his career, and now he is at the right place to look at the application of all he knows.

Candidly,  I was feeling like all the can SIP save Skype discussion was a waste of time.  My thoughts were that the courts were going to be the place where this got settled and not in the standards bodies.

However, I was mistaken.  While I believe much of the knowledge about NAT traversal came from the capabilities embedded in Paradial, the world was off chasing the use of SIP as a solution.

Upper management found a strategy at a deeper level.  Namely to make it so that Skype now had the benefit of Jonathan (Prior Art) Rosenberg.

If ever there was someone who had been looking at the issues of NAT traversal Jonathan has been the guy. From the development of MIDCOM, STUN, ICE, TURN and of course SIP,  Jonathan has been there.

Mind you, the addition of another Jonathan at Skype also indicates where the company is heading even after being acquired.  You can think of Jonathan as being at the beginning of SIP coming somewhat full circle.  From adapting the Web model to telecom to now guiding the SIP model into the Enterprise, Jonathan is going to be well positioned.

Tags: CSO, ICE, Jonathan Rosenberg, MIDCOM, SIP, STUN, Skype, TURN, ViPR

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Clearwire Goes Live with WiMAX in Dallas, Chicago, Charlotte

November 5, 2009

The long wait for WiMAX in the Windy City as well as the DFW Metroplex is over -- as we expected, Clearwire is now selling services in both cities, keeping with the company's strategy of "soft launching" markets online before staging an "official" market opening with all the attendant hoopla.

Since it's Nov. 1, time for a new map -- and the one on the Clear.com website now shows Chicago "in the green" of Clearwire services, while adding Dallas/Fort Worth to the list of cities with service in Texas.




In North Carolina, the cities of Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro are also now listed as "live," so it looks like Clearwire should be able to make good on its promise to step up subscriber numbers in Q4, simply by having lots more markets selling services.

The big ones, however, are Chicago and Dallas -- two huge metro areas where Clearwire will see how it fares against existing service providers. In Chicago, Clearwire also has its first true "commuter" city, since thousands there ride the rails every day, to and from work, play, school and in just general getting-aroundness.

Will WiMAX's ability to connect while mobile make a big impression? We are only now just going to find out. We'll have some more thinking on Clearwire market launches later this week.










Radvisions Unified Communications Summit, TelAviv

November 3, 2009

I am never quite sure how come the world is so segmented. The realities of the market are far more ecclectic to me then the industry terms such as FMC, IMS, UC. And in reality, I think that is exemplified by the UC event going on in TelAviv on November 17th that is worth your [...]

Did you buy your car to access the road?

November 2, 2009

Roger Von Oech, the creator of the Whack Pack, often looks to spur creativity by asking questions that are not direct but would have a parallel.  So I asked the question to understand the nature of the access point to the Internet, which is your phone, home network or some other connection.  You buy a car with the assumption that your ride on roads. 

Are we at the point where you buy a device assuming it has connectivity to the Internet?

What if the device starts at Google?

What if the device only gives you Apple approved sites?

What if Microsoft made it a closed system?

Note these are not the names associated with the access fees you pay, but having everything to do with the regulations being discussed. 

We are at interesting stage of discussion in Washington about the future of the Internet.  We could make a case that it is an irrelevant discussion since the Internet has never been designed to be regulated by a single country.  However for the 200 M plus of us that live in the US, these issues are real.

In the Wall Street Journal today, L. Gordon Crovitz did a nice job talking about the goings on in Washington.  Markey and McCain giving opposite views as well as the Freedoms / Principles expanded by Chairman Genachowski.

One thing that Washington may be missing is the insight by Craig Labowitz shared at the joing meetings of NANOG/ARIN.  It was very insightful about the technological innovations that are reshaping the Internet. 

In the presentation there is cause for concern, in the fact that 50% of the Internet's traffic is aggregating into 150 sites.  It used to be thousands.  So Media control may be happening to Internet as well.  However these 150 sites are not just carriers or media companies, so the rules and roles of regulators are not a match to this next generation.  We could of course redefine Media to include them.

The reality is the Internet is progressing in its own policing with technology.  So where is the bottleneck?  And is it a smoking gun, a slow adopter, or some market power that represents the problem?

My own take is that its slow adoption, so I applaud the administration for its BTOP program, because the last mile is the place where you attach your device.  And back to the car metaphor, you want to hit the open road as soon as possible.  Trying to regulate the open road by your driveway specification seems like a bad strategy.

Tags: Craig Labovitz, FCC, Genachowski, L. Gordon Crovitz, Markey, McCain, Roger Von Oech, Whack Pack

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Sometimes I want to SIP Hemlock

November 1, 2009

A friend writes about Ian’s article Nice article. Still not convinced that P2P is really necessary other than punching holes through access routers, but … Things we know? Like Rohan (and Cullen, IIRC) screaming in Niklaus’s face at the VON in London because he refused to drop everything and go with SIP? Carl did an excellent circus master [...]