Russell Shaw is a specialist in mobile computing, telephony, networking and covers these fields regularly for numerous print and online publications. Russ writes the popular IP Telephony blog on ZDNet and contributes regularly to The Industry Standard blog as well. Author of seven books, Russ' latest book is Wireless Networking Made Easy.
John Yunker is president of Byte Level Research. He closely tracks emerging wireless technologies and their impact on consumers and carriers alike. Over the years he has written a number of major reports on technologies such as Wi-Fi, WiMAX and cellular technologies.
About this blog
Unwired studies emerging wireless technologies and how they complement and conflict with one another. Technologies covered include: Wi-Fi, WiMAX, Ultra-Wideband, Zigbee, EV-DO, UMTS, HSDPA and whatever else comes along.
Today, we read that more than 26.4 million people around the world sent text messages in support of the LIVE 8 campaign to cancel the debts of poor African countries.
OK, that's nice. Now let's just say that the G-8 industrialized nations, leaders of whom are meeting this week, decide on this gesture.
What happens?
Nothing.
The very nations that owe the most money are, for the most part, plagued by endemic corruption and disease. Economies freed up by debt relief to appear more attractive to job-creating investment will find factories owned by those who are already in, or who have access to power. Workers will be paid less than sustinence wages. The very top people will still live in mansions and have Swiss bank accounts. And AIDS will continue to ravage the cities and countryside.
Now, if those same text-messagers, well, text-messaged or emailed the heads of the giant drug companies who refuse to mark down the cost of AIDS drugs for poor nations, and text-messaged the heads of evil tobacco companies that flood impoverished countries with their cancer sticks, then we might get somewhere.
According to at least one online Japanese-English dictionary, that roughly means "stop thief!!"
To catch a thief and more, Japan-based security firm Sohgo Security Services is introducing a robot called the Guardrobo D1.
Here's how this 109-cm tall ( that's three feet, seven-inches for metrically challenged folks like me) will work. Set up in banks, shopping malls and offices, Guardrobo will be equipped with camera and sensors that will detect unauthorized activity, such as intrusions or holdups. Or even fires or water leaks.
Then, if Guardromo detects the bad stuff, it will send radio alerts to "human" guards as well as route live camera footage.
Guardromo will be available in about a year. Pricing has not yet been disclosed.
About 25 years ago, I watched a 1956-vintage episode of "Science Fiction Theater."
In the eppy, an overweight, late 50s, soon-to-retire police officer was chasing a suspect down an alley.
The suspect climbed a fence. As the patrolman attempted continued pursuit by climbing the fence, he fell to the ground with quite a serious coronary.
He survived, and was implanted with a device that would monitor his heart movements and let a nearby hospital know if anything funky was detected.
The technology worked. The next time his heart was stressed, the radio signal was dispatched to the hospital and help came in time.
Now, I'm reading about an Ottawa, Ontario-based company called Zarlink Semiconductor. They've just rolled out a chip that could let doctor's monitor a heart patient's pacemaker in real time, from miles away.
According to Reuters wire service, the chip is inserted inside a pacemaker, which wirelessly sends data (such as an abnormal heart flutter) to a bedside base station in the home. The base station then sends the information over the Internet or phone to a doctor's office.
Once the doctor, nurse or hospital attendant gets notification of the problem, they could then use the two-way wireless link to adjust the pacemaker.
We're not quite up to the capabilities depicted in that Science Fiction Theater episode, but we are getting there.
As Reuters' reporter Susan Taylor writes:
"Potentially, the tiny chip could let a pacemaker tell a similarly equipped mobile phone to contact emergency services during a heart attack. A phone with global positioning system technology could even help locate that patient."
Including out-of-shape policemen chasing robbery suspects.
Can't agree more with my Corante colleague Dana Blankenhorn. "Always-On" is arriving, and medical monitoring is the killer app.
I'm driving home today from a latte at that coffee superchain - the one that offers T-Mobile Hotspot access in most of its locations.
Then, a 1962-vintage instrumental came on the radio. The song was named after one of the transcendant telecommunications infrastucture leaps we have made as a species.
I am talking about the satellite Telstar, and the song that honored the device.
Upon Telstar the satellite's launch on July 10, 1962, the free Internet-base encyclopedia Wikipedia notes, "Telstar (became) the first active communications satellite, the first satellite designed to transmit telephone and high-speed data communications, as well as the first privately owned satellite."
Despite all of Telstar's deserved acclaim, I thought that well, it must have done its job for a few years, and then either was decommissioned or fell to earth as newer birds got launched.
No. There have been nearly 20 Telstars, including at least a dozen in current use for a variety of telecommunications and satellite television applications.
Now here's an irony. As livery, Telstars promise to outlast its original developer, AT&T- set to be merged into SBC Communications in months.
Oh, and the whirring "sound" of Telstar, as rendered in the recording of the same name by the Tornados?
I always thought it was a spiffy sound effect, but "Telstar" the record was released a year before the Moog Synthesizer was invented. Composer Joe Meek generated the sound by -get this- running a pen around the rim of an ashtray, and then playing the tape of it in reverse
These are gizmos that either failed to catch on for any combination of several reasons: because they didn't have enough marketing or distribution money behind them, because they got outraced by better solutions - or because they like didn't work.
Here's a summary listing culled from the Top 40 listed Gadgets with functionality (or lack thereof) relevant to what we talk about here. If any evoke special memories, be sure to post a comment:
7- Cobra Dynascan Cordless Phone;
8- Texas Instruments TI-81 Graphing Calculator;
10- Timex Sinclair ZX-81 (a primitive portable computer);
19- palmOne Treo 600 (yea, I was wondering about that one as well, but I guess the 600 made the list because it was soon superseded by the popular 650);
35- HP 200Lx PDA. 1996 vintage, and ugly.
If you're wondering what was #1, I'll only provide limited information. According to Mobile magazine, the cited device was developed in the late 1800s to "treat female hysteria."
Last night I was thinking about how our ability to work and communicate on the go has compressed the time it takes for us to perform various tasks. To put it another way, we can get more done in a shorter period of time.
I know I'm getting into "well,duh" territory here, but hear me out. When it comes to task-related time management, we will - if not are, already - get to a point of diminishing returns.
What do I mean? Well, in technology, one way of quantifying "diminishing returns" is by positing that particular point when specific functions and applications reach a confluence with immutable laws of physics and as a result can advance no more.
Think of portable devices. They are getting smaller, but our thumbs are not. And, eventually, chip size and capacity will hit the wall, too. And there's a case to be made that nothing can be made to travel faster than the speed of light.
When it comes to using mobile devices for time management efficiencies, there's an immutable law in our path.
On this planet, we only get 168 hours a week. It was 168 hours before humans walked the earth, 168 hours when we lived in caves, 168 hours when we first built fire, the wheel, the semiconductor. And, until we establish colonies on asteroids and outer planets, this paradigm is not going to change.
Eventually, the ability of our mobile devices to help us do more is going to hit the wall. Why? Simple. The Earth, our Earth, is stuck at 168 hours. To put it another way, our planet is not scalable.
Not long ago, a song from my early childhood entered my brain. The tune was, "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah," by the late comedian Allan Sherman.
In the song, a homesick lad in his first moments at sleepaway camp is writing a letter home to his parents, complaining, in essence, that he is both bored and freaked (believe me, that combination is very plausible, and I say that as an adult).
Then, driving around on Friday night, the old song "See You In September" came on the radio. The lyrics had to do with a guy temporarily saying goodbye to the lady he had a crush on, biting his lip as he sang out loud how worried he might be that he would "lose (her) to a summer love."
What does this have to do with the Unwired world? Let me explain.
The world of the kid at the sleepaway camp, as well as the city gal at the summer lakeside resort, doesn't exist anymore. Communication meant writing a letter just before going to bed, and then dropping it off the next morning for pickup. Then,two or three days later, the letter would be delivered to your parents, or your loved one, or your now-ex loved one - in the hot steamy city.
Now, with cell phone and e-mail ubiquity, kids at summer camp can call their city-bound friends hanging out at the mall, and rub it in. Or, that 16 year-old camp counselor can call her high-school sweetheart every night on her Verizon calling plan.
I'm all in favor of staying in touch, but something's lost here. The ability to retreat into another world, to be essentially unreachable in summer, is lost.
No more "see you in September." Now, it is "I'll call you on your cell tonight."
Utne magazine (don't call it by its abandoned name of "Utne Reader" has a great piece on "Subversive Gadgets."
Depending on your view of sociopolitical networking as guerilla theater, most of the six spotlighted gadgets have the potential to stir things up or cause disruption.
I'm talking about devices such as the:
Magicbike Wi-Fi Bike, which can act as a mobile hot spot and command post for rally participants who are toting around their own Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices;
Rocket Crowd Counter, which works by means of a model rocket that flies above an assembly of people, shoots a photo of the crowd with a built-in video camera, and then can send pictures back to ground-based laptop devices equipped with head-counting software.
Don't want to give away the store. Here's a link to a page on the Utne site where you can purchase the full article
As a sighted person, it is difficult for me to comprehend the sheer terror of what it means to lose one's eyesight in this technomobile world. I can intellectually comprehend it, but can only feel it through observing the struggles of others not so blessed.
I have examples to refer to. Now 89, my former school principal uncle Dave, a proud, well-read man - can see little more than shadows. My long-time buddy Jim, a man with a technological bent, a Master's Degree and several books to his name, can barely make out the shadows. And when I last heard from my now-former girlfriend Mary a little over a year ago, she was worried how long she could continue driving before a chronic visual deterioration made that unwise, if not impossible. Irony... she's an occupational therapist for severely orthopedically impaired schoolchildren.
All three of these people embrace technology, but have great difficulty using it. Because handset screens are smaller and achieve lower-res than enhanced-display PC monitors, visual obstacles can be even more acute with mobile devices.
The posts were a combination of frustration and proposed work-arounds. One poster summed up the issue for so many: "You can send a man to the moon, send a satellite to Mars, build a space center in outer space, but why can't they produce a cell phone or a PDA or even a GPS with audio technology for the visually impaired," asked poster Johncue.
There's something else. It costs $3,000, but just might work. It's a headworn video magnifier named JORDY. Made by a company known as Enhanced Vision, who named the product after Geordi LaForge, a sightless character in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
And if you read through this Associated Press article, you'll see that a visually impaired NASA engineer has an idea to scale down the JORDY so it could work with handsets.
It would be welcome but ironic if a handset usability solution for the JORDY - named after a fictional space exploration scientist - came from a visually impaired real-world space exploration scientist.
I find it amazing how quickly a person can adopt a technology and, after having adopted it, grow impatient with it when it isn’t used to maximum effect. Take email for instance. In the early days of email I felt the urge to reply to nearly every email I received to let the sender know that I had received it. Today, replies are by necessity only. We are assaulted with emails so we don’t want our fellow emailers to waste our time.
Which brings me to blogs. Now that I have more than 100 blogs that I scan daily, I find it necessary to prune a few blogs from time to time. I have no formula for how I decide which blogs to keep and which blogs to delete from my RSS reader, but there are some traits common to those blogs that I have parted ways with.
After all, because time is a finite resource, there are only so many blogs a person can follow on a daily basis. Which means that every blog I add tends to come at the expense of a blog that I delete. Which means that I expect the bloggers that remain to not waste my time. There may be a billion blogs out there, but from the reader’s perspective, it’s a zero-sum game.
I’m really only referring to those blogs that purport to be about something, like VoIP or travel or Web usability. I subscribe to these blogs to learn more about these topics or issues and I tend to get annoyed when the authors spend more time writing about their personal lives than the actual topics. Occasional off-topic postings are just fine (like this one, for instance) but too much off-topicness and I will consider pruning that particular feed. A year ago, I was much more tolerant than I am today. Either I’m getting more cranky or I’m becoming a more demanding blog reader.
So here is my advice to bloggers who want to avoid being pruned…
Have Something To Add
If all you do is point to other news stories you have to ask yourself – are you adding value or are you just aggregating? Aggregation is fine on occasion (I’ve certainly done my share), but eventually you’ll be made redundant by someone who both aggregates and adds value.
Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid
I love bloggers precisely because they don’t have editors. I like the unfiltered thoughts, ideas and predictions. When I want an edited piece of work I read the paper. However, sometimes I wish bloggers would do a little bit more self-editing. For example…
Don’t blog to tell the world:
1. you are not feeling well today
2. you are tired today
3. you are tired of all the blogging you’ve been doing lately
4. you are going out of town for a few days
5. you just got back from having been out of town for a few days
6. you will be offline for the next two hours
7. your server went down and that’s why we haven’t heard from you for the past two hours
You get the idea. A writing teacher of mine used the term furniture moving to refer to wasted prose. These types of posts strike me as furniture moving.
Anyway, I’ll step down from my soapbox, prune a few blogs and get back to work. I’ve got lots to do as I’m getting ready to go out of town for a few days!
David Isenberg gave us the the Rise of the Stupid Network. Ambient Devices is giving rise to the stupid device.
While wireless phones get smarter, other wireless devices are getting dumber.
The Ambient Orb represents what I believe will be a growing segement of wireless devices -- those that do a great deal less, but do it really well.
Ambient Devices is in many ways a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). It owns no network; instead, it leases network access from another carrier (MetroCall's paging network).
The orb literally needs no instruction manual because it ships programmed to do just one thing, such monitor the stock market or the weather. You just plug it in and it does the rest. Now, if you want to the orb to represent different data streams, such as the pollen count or a specific stock, you need to set up an online account with Ambient.
I would like to see Ambient extend this functionality to home wireless networks and consumer devices. For example, I would like to have some orb by the back door that glows if I've left any appliance or light on in the house - so I don't end up leaving that house and then coming back twenty minutes later. I would also like smoke detectors that change color based on how much battery life is left.
As reported in the WSJ last week, a group of California Verizon Wireless customers are suing their carrier for selling them a "disabled" Motorola V710 handset.
So let me get this right, the first "Bluetooth-enabled" handset that Verizon Wireless brought to market was disabled?
That's right.
The lawsuit rightfully contends that when a carrier advertises Bluetooth support that is must support the degree of Bluetooth that consumers come to expect. In other words, just leave the technology alone and let it work as it was intended.
Verizon wants customers to use Bluetooth only for wireless handset capabilities, not for syncing their handsets with their computers or, worse, downloading ring tones and other "premium" content from outside Verizon's walled garden. As one customer said, "It's like buying an SUV that can't go in the mud."
This is a timely lawsuit and should serve notice to all service providers who believe that consumers will passively consume what wireless features they are fed. Thanks to Wi-Fi and other wireless devices, consumers are growing both savvy and demanding about wireless technology. They know what Bluetooth is capable of and they're going to be pretty upset if anyone stands in the way of that functionality. The same goes for Wi-Fi, which is gradually making its way into carrier portfolios.
Cellular carriers want to think of themselves as cable operators, who charge a monthly fee for "basic" connectivity plus make a bunch more money from "premium content." But the walled garden only works when there are walls, and thanks to a new wave of fixed wireless upstarts and newly motivated incumbents, like SBC and BellSouth, no carrier (wired or wireless) will win by walling in their customers.
The carriers of the future will tear down the walls between wired and wireless, TV and computer, home and work. The carriers of the future will function as personal systems integrators, selling services and not pipes. Verizon Wireless and Vodafone kid themselves in thinking they can control the handset manufacturers and, as a result, the consumers; it is a stopgap measure at best. Every disabled device represents a disabled business model. The walls will fall down.
Dave Mock writes in support of municipal wireless. I'm also glad to see Intel throwing its weight in support of cities that want to take control of their airspace. I'm not saying all cities should get into the ISP business; I'm just saying that they should have the freedom to hire whatever service providers they want to deploy and manage their wireless networks. The incumbents had their chance to be innovative and aggressive and they blew it. And, frankly, they simply can't move quickly enough to support all the applications that cities want to support over these networks.
Litigation may impede innovation, but it won't stop it. Cities and states watch one another and they will quickly learn that those that are not restricted by Pennsylvania-like legislation are improving their tax base by attracting citizens lured by low-cost or free wireless, are improving city services by saving money on municipal employee communications, providing broadband to their police and emergency services people at a fraction of the cost of 3G networks, and improving security, asset tracking, and, well, the list goes on.
This is a revolution and, like most revolutions, it is encountering fierce resistance. But the incumbents are too late to ban muni-wireless in every state. Wi-Fi created a monster: a more savvy wireless consumer. Once people install Wi-Fi in their homes they realize that wireless isn't quite so complicated after they. These people go to work and they demand Wi-Fi there as well. It is only natural for cities to fall in love with home networking.
Savvy wireless consumers are a fact of life and those service providers who learn to speak up to consumers rather than talk down to consumers will be the providers who succeed in the years ahead.
Dave Mock is a wireless consultant and analyst with currentofferings.com and author of the forthcoming book The Qualcomm Equation. Dave took a moment to answer a few of my burning telecoms questions...
Q: What are your thoughts about a Nextel/Sprint merger? Is this good news for US telecoms industry? Good news for consumers? A: The Sprint/Nextel combo will have pros and cons but overall I think it’s a move in the right direction for both the industry and consumers. Nextel’s strained network will get relief and Sprint will get some very profitable channels. The different network platforms will slow the integration though – they’ll operate two networks for a while.
Q: What are your predictions about Qualcomm and China? China has been testing the two leading 3G technologies along with a homegrown technology. Any thoughts on how it will all play out? A: I think China will push TD-SCDMA into the market somehow, with the principle purpose of leveraging a bigger role in the industry. Whether it is successful or not probably doesn’t matter as much as what it buys them. I think arguments of Qualcomm’s assertion of IPR in the standard are moot, as I don’t see it as a significant driver of royalty for them. However it plays out, CDMA and WCDMA should still develop a significant presence.
Q: EV-DO vs. HSDPA: Which do you like better, and why? A: I like EV-DO because it’s here today. Ultimately, HSDPA promises more flexibility for operators, but it’s got some distance to go before widespread deployment.
Q: Qualcomm is becoming a network operator with its MediaFLO deployment. Why is Qualcomm doing this and do you think it will pay off? A: Well, Qualcomm has no interest in being a network operator. But they certainly would like to see the spin-off take fire to boost demand for wireless broadband (re: their EV-DO). It’s a typical practice for them I call “seeding the market”, and it’s very forward thinking as there is not yet significant demand for streamed media. Odds are it won’t pan out well (just as several other ideas have flopped), but they only have to be right once to hit it big again.
Q: Since MediaFLO will using an ODFM technology, is this a sign that OFDM is going to drive Qualcomm's next-generation chipsets? A: I think OFDM will play a bigger role in Qualcomm’s designs going forward (where it’s appropriate). When it comes to chipsets, Qualcomm has demonstrated competency in integrating whatever customers demand – be it GSM, WCDMA, OFDM or maybe even Wi-Fi. As long as OFDM offers performance advantages, they’ll play.
Q: Speaking of Wi-Fi, do you think that Wi-Fi-enabled handsets will hurt the success of EV-DO and other 3G technologies, or increase usage of these networks (or both)? A: I think Wi-Fi is shaping up to be a serious threat, and this is no surprise to anyone in Qualcomm. But I think it hurts Qualcomm less than the operators, who will lose control of the channel. Regional (and municipal) Wi-Fi deployments have the biggest chance of limiting the uptake of EV-DO, and pressuring service prices. Actually, Wi-Fi itself is not the true threat – it’s the aggregation of hotspots and roaming agreements for WLANs that potentially could cut out EV-DO. But so far these efforts have failed.
Q: Should Qualcomm be frightened by WiMAX? And do you think the vendor will ultimately support WiMAX? A: Qualcomm should be concerned about WiMAX and anything like it – and they are. The standard itself will likely be stalled to no end as it is too broad right now, but some significant decisions will be made in 2005 that could put it on the fast track or send it out to be shot. Intel’s weight shouldn’t be underestimated here, and I think they’ll be successful in getting many in the industry to adopt the standard if it comes through in marketable form.
For several years now, the US has taken a back seat to Asia and Europe in regard to next-generation wireless deployment. A mix of competing wireless standards and tepid SMS usage were largely viewed as a sign that the US could not keep pace with the rest of the world.
Not any more.
While Japan and Korea will retain their lead for some time, the US is poised to surpass Europe in network speeds, bandwidth consumption and, more important, network variety. Here's the landscape as it looks today:
Next-gen Network Plans Cingular: UMTS/HSDPA (6 cities live with UMTS) T-Mobile: Wi-Fi currently and UMTS/HSDPA appears likely Verizon Wireless: EV-DO (14 cities live) Sprint: EV-DO Nextel: EV-DO Rev A or Flash-OFDM
Europe will see isolated HSDPA deployments, but nothing on the scale that we're going to see here. That's because Verizon's EV-DO network is pushing the other carriers to keep pace or try to leap ahead. And because Europe is on one standard and one set of train tracks, things are going to move a bit more slowly. One big wild card is the extent to which Flash-OFDM and UMTS-TDD succeed in Europe.
Remember when the US was criticized by Europe for its chaotic mix of wireless technologies? Ironically, this chaos appears to be doing more good than harm as it creates a more dynamic technology horse race.
And then there is bandwidth consumption. So what if US text messaging isn't on par with Europe; Americans are now paying for TV feeds from Sprint and are hungry for more frames per second. Qualcomm is priming the multimedia content market with its own nationwide OFDM rollout. And then there is Wi-Fi, which is wildly popular in the US and is driving carriers to create "Wi-Fi-like" wireless experiences.
Finally, there is Nextel, which will deploy a technology that is in line with what's going on right now in Korea. Truly cutting edge. (I'll post my thoughts on which vendor will win out in a few days.)
Yes folks, things are looking up for wireless consumers in the US.
Take water, add wireless technology and what do you get? Some pretty nifty applications. Applications that conserve water and alert you to water leaks at home.
The Motorola home monitoring system includes a device that will send you an email if it detects a water leak. Anyone who worries about freezing pipes in the winter may find this device handy.
And Wellspring Wireless announced that is will be using ZigBee to develop wireless monitoring devices for multi-tenant buildings.
These devices allow landlords to monitor usage by unit. Landlords will love these devices because they can install them under the guise of "water conservation" while giving them the opportunity to bill tenants as water usage increases over a set limit. The ends do justify the means, particularly out here in Southern California.
The IEEE has a new working group up and running (802.22) and they've got a new acronym that is sure to confuse media and profit analysts for years to come: WRAN, which stands for wireless regional area network.
WRAN joins a growing list of acronyms defined by coverage area:
- WPAN (personal area network)
- WLAN (local area network)
- WMAN (metro area network)
- WRAN (regional area network)
(There is also 802.20 "wireless mobility" which is in desperate need of a good acronym.)
Labeling a technology by coverage area is an inperfect solution. WLAN can easily be powered up to cover several miles and WMAN is not likely to see many deployments over 5 to 10 miles (let alone 30), at least in the unlicensed band.
WRAN will attempt to bring order to new unlicensed UHF/VHF bands that will open up as part of the FCC-mandated digital television "upgrade." Specifically, the working group's charter is to "develop a standard for a cognitive radio-based PHY/MAC/air_interface for use by license-exempt devices on a non-interfering basis in spectrum that is allocated to the TV Broadcast Service."
The "non-interfering basis" will probably be the technical issue most contested by broadcasters in the years to come. But every little unlicensed crack in the FCC wall is a good thing and I wish this group luck.
The iPass announcement yesterday that it will offer its enterprise customers flat-rate pricing for its Wi-Fi network is just another sign that the pay-as-you-go Internet access business model is going away.
And why is that? This quote from their press release pretty much says it all:
"iPass spends a lot of time in dialogue with our customers, and this pricing plan addresses the desires of some of our customers who wanted a way to make the cost of Wi-Fi use predictable," said Jon Russo, vice president of marketing at iPass. "This 'all-you-can-eat' approach allows the IT department to reliably budget the cost of Wi-Fi hotspot access across an entire organization or for a subset within it. iPass expects this new optional pricing plan to further accelerate Wi-Fi usage."
Charging by the minute or charging by the megabyte (MB) inevitably cause user frustration. Phone calls always seem to last longer than we expect and who honestly wants to spend their days monitoring the kilobytes of every email they send? Flat-rate pricing is a big reason why I favor Connexion by Boeing over Tenzing.
Flat-rate pricing is great news for content providers and, I believe, the future of the telecoms industry. VoIP would not be the phonomenon that it is today if consumers were paying for their broadband connections by the MB.
But what I find most interesting is that we're seeing a collision of sorts between per-minute voice plans and flat-rate data plans. If consumers want predictable billing and VoIP is proving that voice works just fine over broadband connections, how can per-minute voice plans survive in the long run?
As any carrier will tell you (privately), they can't.
Perhaps the 3G networks that we're now seeing go nationwide will give carriers the breathing room they need to start testing unlimited voice plans. Or, perhaps unlimited voice usage will be relegated to those Wi-Fi networks that carriers can't figure out how to profit from.
And cellular carriers can insert fine print into their contracts to prevent network overuse. Even Cox caps broadband consumption per month; it's just that the cap is set so high that few people are affected (so far).
Although the iPass announcement only affects IT departments. In a way, we're all IT managers when it comes to our personal cellular and data plans. And it's hard for me to believe that we all won't one day get those flat-rate plans we desire.
ComputerWorld mentions that Taipei is planning a citywide Wi-Fi network next year. And this is no small project either. They plan to blanket the city with between 15,000 and 20,000 access points, at a total cost of $70 million. I only wonder if they took a hard look at mesh networking to get the costs down, because they appear awfully steep.
Nevertheless, it seems that not a week goes by without another city investing in or studying a metro-wide Wi-Fi network.
Off the top of my head, here are a few cities to keep an eye on:
New York City
Philadelphia
Atlanta
New Orleans
San Francisco
Los Angeles
And I could quickly generate a list of 50+ smaller and rural metro areas that are also pursuing Wi-Fi networks. So why the big rush to Wi-Fi? And why should carriers be concerned?
Here are a few reasons why:
The digital divide: Internet access is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity. Cities want to provide Internet access to all of their residents. It is a noble and necessary pursuit and must not be trivialized.
The Wi-Fi effect: A funny thing happens when people install their first wireless home networks. They become a good deal more savvy about wireless technology. Suddenly, they're in charge of a network and it's not such a big deal after all. It's a minor, but important, shift in thinking that I believe will increasingly challenge the carriers. Metro wireless networking is little more than home networking on a larger scale. Town managers look at all the things they could do with a wireless network that they control. They could provide their emergency personnel with broadband connections, they could install video cameras around town with wireless feeds, they could track assets around town with wireless transponders, they could share one backhaul connection between multiple city buildings, dramatically cutting costs.
Carrier arrogance and/or apathy: Carriers have been sticking it to cities for years, charging them unnecessarily high rates for emergency services, backhaul, etc., not to mention underserving parts of the cities that carriers view as low margin. It is only to be expected that cities want to take matters into their own hands to save money primarily and at the least keep the carriers honest. If carriers had been more aggressive, more innovate and more affordable over the years we would not be witnessing this municipal backlash. Cities don't want to get into the telecoms business, but if they can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (or millions), while providing better service to their staff and citizens, they're going to give it a hard look.
Buzz: Cities are well aware of the attention they'll recieve by offering metro Wi-Fi networks. Cities want attention these days, to attract new businesses and residents. I'm not sure a city like New York or Los Angeles needs much more buzz, but this type of thinking makes great sense in smaller cities, those who want to attract people and business from the larger metro areas. Richard Florida (author of The Rise of the Creative Class believes this much. Internet access provides a cultural and business lifeline to people in smaller cities and rural areas.
That said, I understand that there are more than 10 states that prohibit municipalities from providing telecoms services. I also understand that the major telcos and cablecos are in a lobbying frenzy to prevent this as well.
Ultimately, they will fail. They will fail because the Wi-Fi cat is out of the bag and there's no putting him back in again. We, as increasingly savvy wireless consumers, now know what we can do with wireless networks if we own them. Wireless is a local phenomenon. We control Wi-Fi in our homes and municipalities are going to control Wi-Fi (and WiMAX) within their city lines.
Want to know more about municipal wireless developments? I highly recommend checking out this Web site.
The convergence of communications technologies is often portrayed as a wonderful thing for consumers. In many respects it is; the bundling of services often results in cheaper individual services and fewer bills in the mail. For example, I now pay for cable TV, voice and Internet access with one bill. But from the service provider's point of view, convergence can be downright messy; we now have cable companies selling voice services, phone companies selling media content, and wireless carriers headed into the fixed wireless (DSL substitution) market.
This recent article in The Wall Street Journal hits on the many of the major issues. Here's an article excerpt:
Over the past four years, the nation's largest phone companies have lost local phone lines by the millions as consumers fled to cellphones and e-mail. Many customers are giving up their second, and even their primary, phone lines. The intrusion by cable companies only made things worse, forcing the Bells to expand into other areas that promise more growth, such as wireless, high-speed Internet and television.
Covergence may not be pretty, but it sure does make the telecommunications industry exciting once again. These carriers have no choice but be creative and aggressive or they will be left behind; this will result in better prices for consumers and more creative services. Convergence isn't always pretty because creativity isn't always pretty.
T-Mobile is pre-promoting the HP IPAQ h6315, arguably the mother of all bundled devices. It packs Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPRS into one handheld device. There are countless articles out already about this device (pictured below), but what I'm most intrigued about is not the bundling of features but the bundling of services.
T-Mobile will naturally offer a bundled service that combines voice, Internet (GPRS and Wi-Fi) and email. The device will cost $500 but T-Mobile hasn't announced a service price yet. Some say the price will be similar to the rate that Verizon Wireless charges for its EV-DO service: $80/month. This would certainly be the safe way for T-Mobile to proceed; after all, there are thousands of early adopters out there chomping at the bit to try this thing (I'm chomping but I'm also cheap, so I'll be a holdout).
A bolder pricing move would be $60/month or less. This would amount to a savings for subscribers who currently pay for cellular at roughly $50/month plus another $20/month for Wi-Fi. A $60/month or less fee would further drive down the perceived cost of Wi-Fi. At $60/month, Wi-Fi would appear to cost around $10/month, making it the best deal going, not only in the US, but globally.
Bundling is now the rage among carriers of all stripes -- from cable to cellular. As more devices ship bundled with Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi will become increasingly bundled with services, and at lower and lower monthly rates.
I recently spoke with Alan Cohen, VP of marketing and product development at Airespace. Airespace sells Wi-Fi network equipment to large companies, hospitals, schools and even a few airports.
While Wi-Fi took hold quickly in homes and small offices, large enterprises have been slow to embrace the technology. Objections have included security, costs, integration and, when all else fails, ROI. Perhaps the greatest obstacle has been the IT manager who just doesn't want another network to manage.
Yet Wi-Fi is addictive. And once a board member or CEO gets hooked on it, a full-scale deployment isn't far behind. I'll give Airespace a great deal of credit for riding out some lean times waiting for these big organizations to finally start spending money. Times now are good, and Cohen says the company is doubling revenues every quarter and will be cash-flow positive by the end of 2005. The company also recently landed about $20 million in additional VC cash.
Looking Beyond Internet Access
What's most exciting about Wi-Fi in large enterprises is all the applications that have little to do with Internet access. For example, a hotel may install Wi-Fi for its guests initially but then realize that it can also use the network for curbside check-in, employee communications, etc. And it is these less-obvious applications that will give Wi-Fi an edge over proprietary wireless technologies in the years ahead. After all, if it's only wireless Internet access you want, Verizon Wireless has something called EV-DO that works comparably well.
What Wi-Fi offers enterprises that the major wireless carriers cannot is flexibility and control, which in turn enables creativity. This leads me to an application that is enabled by Airespace's location tracking feature. Once an enterprise has a network in place, it can use the network to track Wi-Fi-enabled devices, such as a phone, badge or RFID tag.
Cohen said that one of their customers is a hospital that has attached Wi-Fi tags to wheelchairs so it can track them. This hospital loses 110 wheelchairs a year (I guess the same way grocery stores lose carts) at a cost of roughly $10,000 each. This means that if the network helps the hospital cut its losses down to say, 10 a year, this alone will mostly pay for the entire network deployment.
And this is just one of any number of network applications the hospital will use; others include VoIP, doctor and nurse tracking, patient monitoring and medical device tracking. Wi-Fi, as a low-cost, ubiquitous and open technology, allows innovation to flourish. Once you build the network, the applications multiply.
This is the first entry of a new blog devoted to the convergence of (and conflict among) wireless technologies and what it all means to us, the prospective consumers.
I will apply a wide angle lens to such technologies as Wi-Fi, WiMAX, GPRS, EV-DO and Ultra-Wideband. Will WiMAX live up to its hype, or will Flarion steal the spotlight? Will Ultra-Wideband push Wi-Fi out of the home? Will cars become moving access points? Will Wi-Fi become free for all? (I certainly think so.)
Lots of questions. Lots of predictions. And lots of optimism. I believe that we are in the early stages of a much greater wireless revolution than cellular turned out to be. This new revolution began with Wi-Fi and is only just getting started.
I encourage comments and feedback and will include them on subsequent posts. Please keep in touch at jyunker@bytelevel.com.
Russell Shaw is a specialist in mobile computing, telephony, networking and covers these fields regularly for numerous print and online publications. Russ writes the popular IP Telephony blog on ZDNet and contributes regularly to The Industry Standard blog as well. Author of seven books, Russ' latest book is Wireless Networking Made Easy.
John Yunker is president of 
