Published by Stroh Publications, LLC
Independent, original, in-depth coverage of the trends and technologies shaping the Broadband Wireless Internet Access / WiMAX industry
Recipient of Part-15.Org’s 2002 Wireless Advocate Of The Year Award
Steve Stroh, Editor
____________________________________________________________________________________
FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access And WIMAX
Issue 0017 / 2007-01
In This Issue:
The Quiet Connectivity Revolution Gets Noisy
In the last issue of FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access (now named FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access And WiMAX), the topic was "We're In The Midst Of A Quiet Connectivity Revolution". That was mid-2005, and it's now late 2007, and the Quiet Connectivity Revolution has gotten considerably noisier. So I thought it was appropriate to pick up where I left off.
The Wi-Fi iPod
Much of the last issue of FOCUS was devoted to describing an evolution of Apple iPod that I thought was imminent - an iPod with integrated Wi-Fi, the key feature of which it could download content directly from the iTunes Store (then called the iTunes Music Store) using a Wi-Fi Internet connection. In my vision of the "Wi-Fi iPod", the most interesting content for a Wi-Fi iPod would be podcasts. In the current implementations of the iPhone and iPod Touch (since the Wi-Fi capability of the two units is equivalent, for the sake of brevity, I'll call the pair "iPhoneTouch), there are two key things in my vision that are missing from the iPhoneTouch: 1) the ability to download podcasts (the only download that's "allowed" directly from an iPhoneTouch is music... and ringtones), 2) the ability to automatically download podcasts on a schedule, when there's connectivity, or when there's new content. These capabilities are in the iTunes (desktop) software, but one has to dock their iPhone or iPod Touch via cable to download such content - you can't even connect between your desktop iTunes and the iPhoneTouch. It's not like Apple doesn't know how to handle moving protected content via Wi-Fi because they do it quite well with the AppleTV product which doesn't allow you direct access to the iTunes store, only the content already present on a iTunes computer on the same network.
(Click below to continue the story.)
One explanation of why Apple restricts iPhoneTouch access to the iTunes Store via Wi-Fi is to avoid "stressing" the available Internet bandwidth of commercial Wi-Fi HotSpots (such as Starbucks, with which Apple has made a special relationship to easily download songs that are playing in the store). But that explanation isn't valid for why Apple has the same restriction when using private (home, business - non-HotSpot) Wi-Fi networks. Podcast file sizes can be much larger than typical music downloads - audio-only podcasts can run to several hours, and increasingly "podcasts" are video content with accompanying larger file sizes.
My assessment is that Apple will either proactively recognize this unmet demand for automatic podcast download and tweak the iPhoneTouch to include podcast downloads (with perhaps some default limits on file sizes)... or it will be forced by customer demand to do so. If not... Apple is clearly missing one of the biggest opportunities in "new media". It will be very interesting to watch the Wi-Fi capabilities of the iPhoneTouch unfold, particularly in competition with Microsoft's Zune which also has Wi-Fi capability. But enough of the "Wi-Fi iPod" / iPhoneTouch.
Mobile WiMAX
The title change of this newsletter reflects one of the biggest changes since the last issue of FOCUS
- WiMAX. WiMAX was just getting started then in the form of fixed
WiMAX, which was largely a standardization of what was already being
done with proprietary fixed Broadband Wireless Internet Access. While a
standard helped in some ways, mostly to reassure Service Providers that
investments in large deployments wouldn't be stranded or held hostage
by a single vendor wielding proprietary technology, the advent of fixed
WiMAX didn't change things all that much. But Mobile WiMAX is shaping
up as a game-changer.
For those with an open mind, the evidence is clear that the two dominant wireless telephony standards - Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) are going to have to evolve considerably faster than planned to encompass Broadband Internet communications which are being increasingly demanded by wireless telephony customers. There is a roadmap in place not only to evolve to this next level, but to ultimately unify the two standards, but that roadmap extends to perhaps the next decade, and more relevantly, multiple generations of systems and considerable investment to reach wireless telephony "unification". But even then, the unified system will be based largely on telephony technology, not originally designed around the efficiencies inherent in Internet Protocol (IP) communications, the base technology of the Internet.
Mobile WiMAX is "originally designed around Internet Protocol communications", and wireless telephony companies are now quietly, nervously considering whether it makes more sense to "skip straight to Mobile WiMAX" than continuing the slower and expensive evolutionary path... only to perhaps wind up with their investments being obsoleted by quicker-to-evolve and less expensive Mobile WiMAX technology and systems.
It's not so much that Mobile WiMAX is a technology that competes against the current CDMA and GSM used by Service Providers... it's the potential for the economies and capabilities of Mobile WiMAX to empower formidable new Service Provider competitors. Imagine a WiMAX Service Provider that charges nothing, or a pittance for voice communications. While Broadband Internet Access is a major load on a wireless telephony base station and network, the situation is reversed in a WiMAX base station and network - voice / telephony is a minor... tiny load on a system designed specifically for Broadband Internet Access.
Sprint's dichotomy / ambivalence regarding WiMAX is the the bleeding edge of the disruptive aspects of Mobile WiMAX for wireless telephony service providers. Sprint will be one of the first, and perhaps very few that will be able to directly compare cost-effectiveness, performance, customer acceptance, and overall advantages and disadvantages of Mobile WiMAX versus wireless telephony. Sprint will deploy a Mobile WiMAX network, now branded Xohm, in parallel with their mature CDMA network which is already one of the best wireless telephony Broadband Internet Access networks due to their deployment of 1xEV-DO Rev. A technology. One of the most disruptive aspects of Xohm is Sprint's partnership with Clearwire for roaming, cooperative branding, swapping spectrum, etc. One reason that such a close partnership is possible is that the technology behind Mobile WiMAX is standardized to a much higher degree than with mobile telephony Operational and Support Systems (OSS) which traditionally have required a very high degree of customization and integration with carrier's existing wireline OSS. It's pretty simple, really... WiMAX was created to transport TCP/IP packets... compared to the requirement for compatibility with wireless telephony infrastructure, TCP/IP was designed around the requirement of interoperability despite significant system differences.
Overall, the Sprint Xohm / Clearwire partnership portends a much, much higher degree of cooperation, interoperability, "roaming", and ultimately customer satisfaction than was possible with wireless telephony systems and infrastructure because of the capabilities of WiMAX.
Other "Noisy" Broadband Wireless Internet Access Trends
But
Mobile WiMAX is merely one of a number of Broadband Wireless Internet
Access technologies that are becoming prominent ("noisy"), such as:
- The much hyped 700 MHz band reclaimed from vacated television broadcast channels 52-69
- The potential for license-exempt sharing of television broadcast channels 2-51 in areas where blocks of channels aren't used
- The resurgence of wireless telephony Broadband Internet Access
- The resurgence of satellite Broadband Internet Access
- Metropolitan Wi-Fi Networks
- User-built Broadband Wireless Internet Access networks become practical
- Home Wi-Fi has finally gotten really good
- A new class of Broadband Wireless Internet Access Service Providers such as Towerstream
- Enterprise Wi-Fi is finally "good enough" to be primary connectivity within enterprises
I'll tackle these developments in the aggregate because each reflects, to a greater or lesser extent, two key truths - 1) that connectivity to the Internet at Broadband speeds has become crucial; in enterprise-speak the phrase is "mission critical", and 2) Broadband Wireless Internet Access in various forms is (very) often the most cost-effective, easiest, and overall best way to provide Broadband Internet Access.
The "hype-o-meter" is now permanently pegged when it comes to the upcoming auctions of blocks of spectrum around 700 MHz. Many "Internet advocacy" groups and individuals have chosen to "make a stand" to try, belatedly, to make a case for imposing various "public interest conditions" on whoever ends up owning 700 MHz. The 700 MHz auctions were elevated to high drama when Google chose to become involved in the 700 MHz auction. The mere possibility that Google, with all its technical prowess, its tens of $Billions of available capital has the old-guard wireless telephony industry running extremely scared.
My assessment is that Google, or no Google, the ultimate use of the 700 MHz bands will not be anything resembling transformative. Much hype and technological ignorance has been spewed about the "building penetration" and range characteristics of 700 MHz, which ultimately won't substantively change the business model of deploying Broadband Wireless Internet Access networks. I predict that despite Google's (assumed) best intentions, the old-guard wireless telephony players will ultimately win the 700 Mhz auctions... and will then proceed to do approximately nothing more substantive with 700 MHz than perhaps deploying more "streaming video for wireless telephones" network capacity. Acquiring such spectrum merely as a blocking ploy is, to the wireless telephony industry, simply a routine cost of doing business.
What will be transformative is license-exempt sharing of television broadcast "whitespace" for communications use in rural areas. "Whitespace" seems destined to happen because television broadcasters are actually supportive of whitespace technology and systems that are centrally managed and thus can reasonably be assured not to disrupt legacy (and new digital) television broadcasting. Whitespace will be a boon to small Wireless Internet Service Providers operating in rural areas because no (expensive) purchase of licensed spectrum is required, range between base stations and user devices can be significantly longer (including foliage penetration) than with "microwave" license-exempt spectrum such as 2.4 GHz), and like Wi-Fi and WiMAX systems will realize interoperability economies of scale through standardization, Whitespace will have its own (necessarily unique) standard to rally behind - IEEE 802.22.
Wireless telephony Broadband Internet Access got off to a rocky start several years ago; speeds were unimpressive and the the service offerings of the wireless telephony carriers were underwhelming and thus the take rate was correspondingly low. But the service offerings have now standardized somewhat at "unlimited" Internet access (though there are significant restrictions on allowed usage buried in user's contracts), at reasonable speeds (considerably faster than dialup, but somewhat slower than DSL), at price points of around $60/month. Sprint leads this trend by being "easy going" in restricting allowed uses and not requiring voice service for the $60/month price point. Overall, wireless telephony Broadband Internet Access has finally evolved to be good enough to be an average person's only / primary Broadband Internet Access... and already is for tens of thousands of people living a nomadic lifestyle such as "RVers". A significant new development takes full advantage of the new higher speeds and ubiquity of wireless telephony Broadand Internet Access to offer easy and cheap Broadband Internet Access to enterprises. Seattle-based Junxion was on of the first companies to discern that this was a solution to the significant difficulties of maintaining connectivity to widely scattered "outposts", requiring dealing with many different connectivity service providers (think McDonalds, Midas, or Edward Jones in areas where it's difficult, expensive, and increasingly unreliable to use T-1 circuits). Junxion's product transforms the vagaries of wireless telphony Broadband Internet Access (such as needing add-on software to "connect and disconnect") into a mere Ethernet jack from which Broadband Internet Access emerges. This is compelling - some enterprises have completely eliminated their use of T-1 circuits and simply "Fedex out" a preconfigured Junxion box mated with a pre-authorized wireless telephony Broadband Internet Access device. If there's a failure in the field, a new unit can be on the way within hours, comparing very favorably to the time spent trying to troubleshoot a failed T-1 circuit and get it it repaired. If "high reliability is desired", multiple Junxion boxes can be configured to "fail over" to alternate wireless telephony networks. One small example of the "good enough" utility of wireless telephony Broadband Internet Access networks, the majority of this issue of FOCUS was composed within the (web-based) TypePad service with Broadband Wireless Internet Access via Sprint.
It took about a decade, but a new generation of satellite Broadband Internet Access services are becoming available starting in 2007. WildBlue is a new service provider and intends to launch a new class of satellite specifically designed for consumer Broadband Internet Access. WildBlue's primary innovation is the extensive use of "spot beams", the satellite equivalent of "cellular" aggressive reuse of spectrum. Other providers of satellite Broadband Internet Access, notably Hughes, will also be launching new satellites with spot beam capability. Satellite is also being used extensively to provide Broadband Internet Access (as a backhaul, not direct user access) to mobile platforms such as planes (no, the concept isn't dead despite Boeing's abandonment of the elegant but very expensive Connexion system) and especially cruise ships and other large vessels. Again, even with the challenges of being remote and mobile, Broadband Internet Access has become crucial for both individuals and enterprises; being in (or over) the middle of the ocean no longer means one cannot keep in touch via email, or even voice and video.
Metropolitan (mesh) Wi-Fi networks have taken been much in the news of late. The primary cause of the news and angst is EarthLink's pullback from a number of its high-profile proposed deployments in major cities. The most savvy observers saw this coming - EarthLink's business model was unrealistic and ultimately unprofitable, especially given the current technology of most vendors of Metropolitan Wi-Fi systems and aggressive promotion of "DSL for $20/month" by incumbent telephone companies. Despite these setbacks, Metropolitan Wi-Fi networks are not only viable, but profitable when appropriate business models and better technology is employed (such as "beamforming Wi-Fi" by vendors such as Wavion Networks) that improves range and improves cost-effectiveness. Two examples of "smarter business models" are cities using Metropolitan Wi-Fi systems to simultaneously deploy public access Wi-Fi Broadband Internet Access and private, secure Public Safety Broadband Intranet Access (the latter using the tightly-licensed 4.9 GHz public safety band). By far, the recent Metropolitan Wi-Fi setbacks do not portend the end of Metropolitan Wi-Fi - merely a needed adjustment for the vast initial hype, inadequate technology, and poorly-thought-out business models.
As much as Metropolitan Wi-Fi Networks were a reaction against the failings of the private enterprise model of both incumbent wireline carriers, wireless carriers, and even independent Internet Service Providers, even "Metro Wi-Fi" doesn't address all the needs for affordable Broadband Internet Access in all the places it is needed. While there have been the interesting stories about Broadband Internet (often, but not always wireless) Co-ops, such "ground up" organizations providing affordable Broadband Internet Access have been very rare. Building (Wireless) Broadband Internet Access infrastructure is hard - there are a lot of complexity and "moving parts" to keep track of... which is why it's been mostly left to organizations who can pay for the specialized expertise required. But just as computers evolved from "being housed in a temple [data center] and tended by the priesthood [technicians]", Broadband Wireless Internet Access has evolved to the ability for users to build their own networks. A breakthrough technology, Wireless Mesh Networks, has finally evolved to be easy enough for ordinary users to "plug and play" network nodes. The most prominent example of this is Meraki, whose indoor nodes cost around $50, and outdoor "relay" nodes only cost approximately $100. Usable, easy-to-install, inexpensive mesh networks are a profound paradigm shift in the telecommunications industry, and it will only accelerate as Mesh Networking is "baked in" to all Wi-Fi as a result of standardization efforts underway by the 802.11s committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). When 802.11s is included, while Meraki-type nodes will be useful for extending networks, most of a network will be formed by devices (such as laptops) providing relay services for nearby devices. Wireless Mesh Networking that really works presents many new challenges for service providers that they haven't yet begun to address.
"Lower down the food chain" than Metropolitan Wi-Fi or user-built Wireless Mesh Networks, home network technology has evolved considerably. Wi-Fi systems based on "Draft 802.11n" have been shipping for several years, incorporating several advances that fix all the important issues inherent with in-home Wi-Fi. The key issue was coverage of an entire household, often erratic with earlier Wi-Fi systems, is fixed with the incorporation of Multiple In Multiple Out (MIMO) technology incorporated into 802.11n. Much stronger "good enough" security mechanisms have been incorporated, and some vendors have actually made this advanced level of security easier to use than earlier, weaker security mechanisms. It's little-known, but 802.11n quietly incorporated 802.11a - the use of the 5 GHz band for Wi-Fi, so new 802.11n (still, inexplicably, formally in "Draft" mode even after years of discussion) offer much higher capacities and less chance of interference. The total of these improvements is that Wi-Fi is now, by far, the preferred method of Broadband connectivity throughout a household, being incorporated into household devices such as cordless phones and even "cellular phones" (T-Mobile now offers a dual-mode Voice Over Internet Protocol over Wi-Fi / cellular phone), television set top boxes (Apple's AppleTV), security systems, and cameras ("webcams") to monitor the household from work.
Initially, these improvements in Wi-Fi were targeted at the very high-volume residential market. But they are just as compelling for use in enterprises, where connectivity cabling (the continual updating of) has become a major expense and "time sink". 802.11n assures coverage, capacity, and reliability because of MIMO, use of many more available channels in 550 MHz of spectrum at 5 GHz, and lack of interference. The security improvements largely answer the security concerns of enterprises, especially when (encrypted) Virtual Private Network (VPN) systems are used as an additional layer of security. With these improvements, enterprises now... finally... have the option of using only wireless communications infrastructure. One major improvement for enterprises with the current generation of Wi-Fi is VOIP/Wi-Fi phones (including those that incorporate cellular, like those from T-Mobile) and desk phones that don't require Ethernet jacks to be provisioned at all - just pick them up, plug them into wall power, and move them as needed within the enterprise and "they just work". Ditto for enterprise user's computers, which increasingly are laptops so the work "goes home or goes traveling" with the user.
Lastly, a new class of Broadband Wireless Internet Access Service Provider operating in urban areas has emerged. These providers not only "attack" the incumbent wireline telephony carriers to offer "T-1 circuits", but using new generations of Broadband Wireless Internet Access systems can provide Internet Access at rates up to... and exceeding... 1 Gbps! The best example of these new service providers are Towerstream, but it's growing increasingly crowded with new entrants such as XO forming a subsidiary called Nextlink to leverage XO's unused 28 GHz spectrum to provide high-bandwidth connections in conjunction with XO's extensive fiber network. What's really intriguing about these new service providers is that they have a proven, cost-effective method to actually provide high-bandwidth Internet access to, for example, residents of condominium buildings in metropolitan areas; perhaps not quite as cheap as "national imperative" Broadband in countries such as Japan and Netherlands... but 100 Mbps Internet Access delivered to an Ethernet jack in your condo is, at least for US residents, a pretty good start.
____________________________________________________________________________________
FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access And WiMAX
Entire Contents Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh, Stroh Publications LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Do not redistribute without express written consent of Steve Stroh and Stroh Publications LLC.
ISSN: 1536-7215
FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access And WiMAX is founded upon the following tenets:
1. Internet technology is becoming the foundation for nearly all communications, commerce, and entertainment services;
2. For Internet access to be truly usable, always-on Broadband Internet Access is required;
3. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, Internet access will be ubiquitous;
4.
In the “last mile”, wireline-based technologies and systems will
generally prove to be insufficient or not cost-effective to provide
ubiquitous, always-on, Broadband Internet to most homes and businesses;
5. In the near term, Broadband Wireless Internet Access in all its
forms – Sub 11 GHz, Above 11 GHz, Free Space Optics, Ultra Wideband,
Licensed, License-exempt has emerged as the most likely technology to
provide cost-effective, ubiquitous, always-on Broadband Internet
Access.
FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access And WiMAX is published by:
Stroh Publications LLC
P.O. Box 84, Redmond, WA 98073-0084 USA
425-939-0076
[email protected]
www.focusonbwia.com
To subscribe to FOCUS, please see subscription information:
www.focusonbwia.com
All logos, trademarks, etc. referenced in FOCUS are the property of their respective
owners.
Comments