4G: For Generations to Come

The Q&A with John Stratton and Jim Basilie shows a mutual knowledge of companies that are clearly working together.

Basillie, the CoCEO of RIM, makes it clear that he thinks that Verizon is the leader in mulitmedia services.

Stratton, makes it clear they are AppWorld (RIM's App Store) friendly in their development.

In the midst of this discussion a Joint Venture between, China Mobile,  Softbank, Verizon and Vodafone aimed at Widgets.

The annoucment of the JV which they call JIL (Joint Innovation Lab) is aimed at providing a community of 1B paying subscribers.  

Masayoshi Son, video is about the mobile computing power that is going to increase 1,000 times.  So the handset is no longer a mobile phone, the key all the rich media of music, video, etc.  

He personally is seeing his pc use decline he has moved entirely to a mobile device.  "Let's change the future together."

By being be part of JIL, you have can have Asian and European distribution.

Tags: China Mobile, Jim Basilie, John Stratton, Masayoshi Son, RIM, Softbank, Verizon, Vodafone

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The U.S. Army has used technology as its weapon for decades.  Today technology plays a vital part in military success--from gathering top-secret information to manufacturing efficient arms.  
Many military technological applications need broadband service to operate, such as radio communication, video surveillance, and security.  The military must ensure that its communications infrastructure can operate in a large coverage area--such as a battlefield--and is efficiently communicative among its soldiers.  However, finding the right technology was a challenge.
The Army attempted to deal with this issue by developing the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS), a program for a family of software-programmable tactical radios that would provide soldiers with voice, data and video communications as well as interoperability across the battle space.  The JTRS would need to use a network of wide bandwidth that would also be compatible with the existing waveforms in use by the Department of Defense.  The army began testing the $6.8 billion JTRS program in June 2003, but the project was set back by several financial obstacles and failed to carry through.
Then in December 2006, Motorola began producing the MicroTCA.  The MicroTCA provides a scalable, low-cost network-centric paradigm for effective connectivity between soldiers.  In addition, the MicroTCA is ruggedized in order to cope with the harsh climate of the battlefield.  In October 2006, Motorola, Intel, and Hybricon developed a ruggedized MicroTCA-based WiMAX demonstration platform at MILCOM, an international conference for military communications.  Combined, the MicroTCA and WiMAX network offered open standards-based subsystems on many different mobile platforms integrated into a high-performance network, physically fit for a military environment.  
In April 2007, the US Army's Communications Electronics Research and Development Engineering Center (CERDEC) evaluated Mobile WiMAX off-the-shelf products for possible military use, and the WiMAX MicroTCA proved to be a very likely candidate.  CERDEC also evaluated Samsung's commercial WiMAX products, yet details of the trial were not disclosed.  In June 2008, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) chose Alcatel-Lucent to provide a turnkey WiMAX radio access network that included a WiMAX base station, WiMAX Access Controller, and WiMAX Operation and Maintenance Center that supported the latest WiMAX standard, 802.16e-2005.  The equipment had passed examination by the Joint Capabilities Technology Demonstration (JCTD), which focuses on testing the usefulness of a hybrid communications architecture that uses standards-based, COTS, satellite communications and wireless technology to extend global, wideband communications in a mobile environment.
WiMAX has played a part in military developments besides for strictly communications infrastructure.  In January 2006, NASA drafted a proposal for the WiMAX Networked UAV Telemetry System (WNUTS).  Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), otherwise known as drones, are military aircraft that pilots can control from a remote base station.  Thousands of miles away from the battlefield, pilots sit at a video screen, viewing and attacking the enemy via a UAV that hovers unseen above.  The WNUTS used a WiMAX network to support telemetry applications for UAVs, including visualizing real time UAV missions in 3D flight through animation, performing real time GPS data processing for direct remote sensing data geo-reference, and displaying selective inch-level high-resolution image contents.  The WiMAX network was chosen for its flexible coverage, low cost, easy maintenance, and scalability.

Tags: Alcatel-Lucent, CERDEC, Intel, JTRS, MILCOM, MicroTCA, Motorola, NASA, Samsung, UAV, WNUTS, WiMAX, military

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The Wall Street Journal has it right in pointing out that Ericsson has positioned itself well in the US Market.  The acquistion of the Nortel assets, its selection by Verizon as an LTE supplier and its deal with managing Sprint's network has evolved into a dominating force.  And it comes at a time when transitions are going to be lengthened. 

My personal perspective on the acquisitions and mergers is that they never go through a comprehensive integration without a year of positioning.  Leaders become lurkers, Lurkers become darlings and systems that looked synergistic die on the product management life cycle. 

However, this is a good time to be assimilating the products of Nortel since the purchasers are moving at a steady pace toward something in the long term.  Verizon had a 21% decline in profit and is betting on LTE like it bet on FIOS.  It may be that the best hope for Verizon is in the soon to be released Apple Netbook.
However, the bleeding

Assessments and Evaluations are going to be a big part of the rest of the year as the network operators look to manage capex costs to match the slow market.

Craig Moffet correctly pointed out that Verizon is good at playing the share gain and their acquistion of Alltel was the best part of wireless growth.

Tags: Alltel, Apple, Ericsson, FIOS, LTE, Sprint, US, Verizon, Verizon Wireless

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Our quick impression from a full day and a half spent inside the Clearwire bubble, at the company's "official" market-launching event in Las Vegas on July 21: The nascent national WiMAX-providing company seems well past its sometimes-confusing stumbles of 2008 and into full execution mode, showing it can put on a confident, coherent local event even as its overall marketing, pricing and demographic messages remain somewhat a work in progress.



The ability to stage a fairly seamless, fun and informative day on the small stage of Las Vegas still doesn't answer how Clearwire will fare when it takes on the bigger challenges of market launches in places like Chicago, Dallas and Philadelphia, which still lie ahead on the company's ambitious 2009 rollout schedule. But embedded within the Vegas-flavored parts of Tuesday's proceedings were some new, strong marketing messages, which, if coupled with continued execution on the networking side of things, should bring cheer to Clearwire investors, partners and customers as the WiMAX express rolls onward.

While we'll dive deeper into some of the proceedings and interviews we conducted during the event in later posts and reports, Clearwire followers should remember the line "more for less," which we heard quite often Tuesday and will likely hear again and again at subsequent launches. Until now, a big problem with Clearwire's WiMAX offering has been that the company itself didn't know how to best position it -- how exactly do you best pitch a service that delivers wireline-like broadband with the mobility of a cell phone? Before the Vegas event, you could and often would get different answers depending on which Clearwire executive you spoke to.

Tuesday, several different executives all seemed to be "on message" with the cost-saving idea, making it pretty obvious to anyone listening that Clearwire's promise was mainly about giving you more of what you need -- mainly Internet access -- for less.

It's not a phone, it's the Internet.

I went to Las Vegas to attend the market launch by Clearwire.

The launch is reaching out to a population of 1.7 Million in a 638 mile area.  The launch today continues the road show by Clearwire as they open up new areas around the country.  The obvious goal is to keep the bandwagon going.  The momentum is certainly heading that way, the stock (NASDAQ: CLWR) has doubled since last year and the company is expanding their rollout strategy.  However, the goal is not upgrading existing customers, but to get new customers.  It's an uphill battle that requires putting Gorilla Marketing to work. 

On Local TV:  Clearwire embraced the town of Las Vegas by having the mayor cut the cat 5 cord and donating 20 WiMAX netbooks to the Virtual High School. Taking a shot at Verizon, Clearwire's commercial features cupcakes with sprinkles, like the sprinkles of the Verizon add, except here the sprinkles shower down from the sky beyond the Skittle showers of commercials gone by. The event ended with 500 balloons containing gifts of service and other gifts being dropped on to the local audience.

Street Warfare: The truck is green, with glass panels surrounding two rooms.  A living room area and complete with laptop and HD Screen, the second room resembles an office which includes a chair, a desk and of course a laptop.  As the truck is driven around Las Vegas, Clearwire employees work in the living room and the office.  On the body of the truck is the statement declaring this is not a truck it's a mobile office.