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The future of wireless internet service

Forget trying to build a wireless Internet business with any idea of serving people in their homes or businesses. In general, wireless technologies don’t work as well as the hard-wired options. Wireless Internet service will succeed where wireless technology holds an advantage.

Wireless broadband technology has three advantages over landlines:

  1. It is ubiquitous.
  2. It can be rapidly deployed for a far lower initial capital outlay.
  3. It excels at delivering the same bit stream to many people at the same time.
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A brief postmortem on the wireless Internet utility

Nearly all of the city-scale, mainly WiFi-based wireless ISPs of the past three years are dead. Some, like Philadelphia, lumber on as zombie ventures. A few small town systems will continue to operate as long as the social and political consensus supports the subsidy required. And there are a couple of big city projects that haven’t burned through their initial operating capital yet.

But the rest are dead. The disease that killed them was cash flow hemorrhage, brought on by virulent churn.… More

Skating through nuclear winter

The mood was grim, taken at face value, at the Wireless Communication Alliance’s annual Venture Capital panel, held in conjunction with the Wireless Communication Association’s symposium, in San Jose on Wednesday, 5 November 2008. VCs were saying things like “nuclear winter” and “survival is the new growth”. It sounded like they were concentrating on keeping their existing portfolio companies alive, rather than investing in new ventures. The two exit routes they rely on — acquisitions and IPOs— are largely blocked right now, so they’re marking time.… More

Live from the Wireless Communications Association International symposium

Best quote: “Survival is the new growth”. Tim Chang, Norwest Venture Partners.

Also from the Wednesday, 5 November 2008 sessions at the San Jose Fairmont…

  • Clearwire CEO Benjamin Wolff upbeat about market for mobile Internet access, compares it to mobile phone opportunity 20 years ago.
  • Alvarion VP Mohammad Shakouri saying Wimax is about mobile service to non-phone devices at a cost per bit that’s affordable for users and profitable for network operators. Says there are 400 WiMAX networks operating now in 130 countries, with 480 devices manufactured.
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From CTIA: light at the end of the walled garden

11 September 2008 by Steve Blum
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Spoke with Sean O’Leary, biz dev VP at TapRoot Systems at the CTIA show in San Francisco. They’re launching an application called WalkingHotSpot. If your handset has WiFi capability (and if they support your handset) it will allow you to run your cellular radio and your WiFi radio at the same time, and pass data between the two.

It’s a logical, and potentially disruptive, extension of the mobile phone concept: your broadband connection is tied to your body, not your home or office or car.… More