Wireless Broadband
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Bangalore, often viewed as the hub of India’s Silicon Valley, is looking to join a growing list of cities with wireless broadband everywhere, according to news reports.
The Indian Institute of Information Technology in the southern Indian city has been studying the project for the last six months and has short-listed five companies for the project. The service is supposed to be within two years, though no one is offering any details on how it will get done. Karnataka state, of which Bangalore is the capital, would not be bearing any of the cost of the project, a state government official said.
“The companies will have their own revenue model. It (the venture) will be something which will be platform neutral,” Anup K Pujari, Karnataka’s principal secretary, information technology told Indiatimes.com. He said the idea is to provide broadband Internet access for a customer on the move, irrespective of the telecom service provider the customer uses, with the service provider charging for interconnection. “(The) Expectation is that consumer will pay less than what he is paying today (for wired internet broadband access),” Mr. Pujari said.
Written by Shailaja Neelakantan on August 7th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wireless Broadband and India Telecom.
Intel plans to start WiMax trials in the next few months in several cities across India including in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Pune, the Daily News & Analysis reports. “We are also having a dozen trial discussions for the implementation of WiMax networks in India,” Ramamurthy Sivakumar, Intel’s Managing Director for South Asia, told the newspaper.
According to a report by research firms Maravedis and Tonse Telecom India will have 13 million WiMAX subscribers by 2012. “More than 70 per cent of Indian households do not have access to fixed wired telephone services,” said Adlane Fellah, senior analyst, Maravedis in a press release late June. “Instead, customers have flocked to cellular phone carriers, which have built a tremendous infrastructure to provide service to more than 10 crore (100 million) customers.” (Press Release PDF)
French technology major Alcatel has already set up a research and development center in the southern Indian state of Chennai to develop Wi-Max technology
But a disagreement between India’s CDMA and GSM operators may lead to delays in the launch of Wi-Max in the country, The Hindu Business Line reported late last month. The CDMA camp has mooted allocation of spectrum in the 2.5 Ghz band for Wi-Max services but the GSM camp has opposed the move.
In their response to a consultation paper on 3G and Wi-Max services put out by India’s telecom regulator, CDMA operators including Reliance Communication said that the 2.5-2.69 Ghz band should be allocated for Wi-Max services so that more numbers of operators can offer services. (The Government is banking on Wi-Max for broadband penetration.)
The GSM operators however say that 2.5-2.69 Ghz band should not be used for Wi-Max but should be left for third generation technology such as WCDMA. Interestingly, the CDMA Development Group, the international body promoting CDMA technology, has subscribed to India’s GSM operators’ views, says the newspaper.
Intel and Alcatel, which are investing heavily in developing Wi-Max technology, support the CDMA operators’ views. Equipment vendors like Nokia and Ericsson, which have a very strong 3G-technology portfolio, support the GSM operators’ views.
Written by Shailaja Neelakantan on August 5th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on WiMAX and Wireless Broadband and India Telecom.
Sprint Nextel, which announced tepid earnings yesterday is looking to wireless broadband to add a little sizzle to its bottomline. In conference call with analysts, Sprint-Nextel CEO Gary Forsee said that the company is moving the deployment schedule up by a quarter - from first quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2006.
“The success of our lab testing for EV-DO Rev A drove our decision to advance the deployment timeline, and I am pleased to report that we will make this exciting new service available to 40 million persons by the end of 2006,” he said. Sprint says it will have have 200 million EVDO POPs by end of the year.
Sprint, perhaps is feeling the pressure from AT&T/Cingular’s 3G services launch, and Verizon which is planning to aggressively rollout its own EVDO-Rev A service. EVDO Rev A is much faster version of the current EVDO Rev 0 technology and is capable of providing 3.1 megabits/s down, and 1.8 megabits/s upstream service. This opens up many possibilities, including high quality VoIP calling and better video streaming.
This quarter, our engineers demonstrated the first EV-DO Rev A over-the-air transmission, featuring average download speeds of 450 to 800 kilobits per second, and average upload speeds of 300 to 400 kilobits per second. We are successfully demonstrating applications, such as all-IP video telephony, high-performance push-to-talk, multi-user video conferencing, real-time gaming and video streaming — new applications which are expected to unlock tremendous new growth opportunities for our company.
Wireless data can help Sprint help blunt some of the pain caused by cheaper voice minutes. In the most recent quarter, the company had wireless data ARPU of $7.25, which is about 12% of the total ARPU. Wireless data revenue was nearly $850 million, an increase of nearly 70% year over year. The company said that Aircard business is posting robust growth, with Aircard revenue increasing 77% year over year and it has nearly 1.2 million Sprint Power Vision subscribers, up 57% sequentially. These are good indicators that wireless broadband can be a savior for the company.
Written by Om Malik on August 4th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wireless Broadband and qualcomm and EVDO.
Green Wi-Fi, a non-profit organization that aims to bring Internet access to schools in developing countries via cheap, solar-powered Wi-Fi networks, plans to start its first full-scale pilot project in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh at the end of the summer, reports News.com. Green Wi-Fi will be doing the India project for a Canadian aid organization that has asked for Wi-Fi in three schools in the northern Indian state where electricity is unreliable. One of these schools has a cable connection.
The concept behind Green Wi-Fi’s technology is to have a battery-powered router — charged by a solar panel — in each node in its Wi-Fi network. The nodes are mounted on rooftops and the network’s Wi-Fi signals are transferred over a grid using a wireless network standard known as 802.11b/g.
The company has received seed money from Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child Initiative (OLPC) that, interestingly, was recently rejected by the Indian government for being “pedagogically suspect.” According to Kaumudi, an Indian newspaper, the country’s education secretary Sudeep Banerjee said that giving schoolchildren a laptop each could harm their creative thinking and analytical abilities.
Green Wi-Fi doesn’t seem to have heard this particular take on the OLPC initiative. “We’ve heard that the strongest criticism they (OLPC) get when they evangelize their laptop is ‘What do you do about the network?’ If you have a computer but no Internet, you can play games and do spreadsheets, but accessing the world’s information is really where the value is,” co-founder Marc Pomerlau told News.com. We wonder what Banerjee will say about schoolchildren being given Internet access.
Written by Shailaja Neelakantan on August 4th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on WiFi and Wireless Broadband and India Telecom.
Open Source software might not be as visible in the telecom world, but its impact is slowly but surely being felt. A series of projects are tackling complicated products such as high-end switches, while others are cooking up DNS, Firewall and VPN gear. In fact start-ups such as Vyatta and Digium have based their entire business model on open source software. Add another name to the movement investing in open platforms.
Meraki Networks, a Mountain View, Calif.-based startup is building a business off of hardware and software based on MIT’s Roofnet project. The Roofnet Project was previously funded by MIT’s Project Oxygen and NTT DoCoMo. Meraki also consults on mesh-networking related issues for the fabled $100 laptop prototype project. The first offering from the company will likely hit the shelves this fall, and is called the Meraki Mini, which is a $49 wireless 802.11b/g router that allows users to build a wireless mesh network or extend the range of a municipal network.
Sanjit Biswas, the company’s co-founder, and MIT student on-leave, hopes the low-cost hardware will cause a wave in the mesh networking industry, and the company is working on beta-testing this summer. The hardware uses an open platform and the company is encouraging users to tinker around and install their own software. Though, Biswas says the router isn’t completely open source and part of the software is closed.
Biswas says that Meraki’s goal is to enable a grassroots movement of small wireless ISPs by providing them everything they need to get started. “Hardware (the Meraki Mini) is part of the story, but we also have the mature mesh routing software and hosted billing/user management tools operators will need to run a production network. We let the operators set the pricing and also brand their service.” What if software from Meraki ends up in a FON router? That could open up some interesting possibilities.
Still, Meraki might be one of those startups that is in the right place at the right time. As more cities and companies show interest in muni wireless, wireless networks with open platforms are starting to gain traction. Earlier this month we covered Sascha Meinrath’s NSF grant for his open source wireless mesh project. Earlier this week the Mayor of Boston unveiled plans to bring low-cost metro WiFi access through a non-profit foundation.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 2nd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on WiFi and Wireless Broadband.
Ed Whitacre, AT&T’s Chairman and CEO, stopped by a conference for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners in downtown San Francisco this morning, and gave a speech with some harsh words about the Net Neutrality issue.
There are reports that a vote on a Net Neutrality in the Senate will come much sooner than expected. King Ed during his speech said, “Some companies want us to be a big dumb pipe that gets bigger and bigger. . . .No one gets a free ride. The American economy doesn’t work that way. . . We are not going to build this with no chance for a return. Those that want to use this will pay.”
The remarks re-emphasized his position on the controversial issue, at a conference for state regulators of public utilites. AT&T needs friends in the NARUC given it’s rolling out new services like IPTV that need help from local regulators. The company is also trialling new services like WiMAX in an attempt to offer alternative wireless broadband in addition to high speed cellular.
While AT&T’s WiMAX service is not publicly available, one tester already has a review: Ed Whitacre, and he gives it an enthusiatic thumbs up. He told GigaOM.com after the speech that he uses the service at his home in Texas and gets 5.5 Mbps downstream over unlicensed spectrum. “It’s not ready for primetime, but I really like it,” he said.
Okay, that really explains why Ma Bell is pushing hard on WiMAX and other forms of wireless broadband.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 1st, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on WiMAX and AT&T and Wireless Broadband.
The ‘Broadband in the Sky’ concept is finding its way to India. Early next year, passengers aboard planes of several Indian carriers will be able to access the Internet to surf, chat and watch television on a broadband connection, reports The Financial Express.
India’s private carriers including Kingfisher Airlines, a JetBlue clone; and other fast growing carriers such as Jet Airways and Air Sahara, plans to provide Internet connectivity at 35,000 feet. The state-owned carriers Air India and Indian Airlines are going to offer these services.
“We plan to offer Connexion, Boeing’s real-time, high-speed Internet and data communications service,” said Jitender Bhargava, Air India’s Executive Director. Kingfisher Airlines has announced plans to have live television on its flights by next March. Its fleet of Airbus A320s will be fitted with a satellite dish and live television will be available at every seat.
That’s good news for Connexion, which the WSJ has reported has done poorly, and could have cost Boeing as much as a $1 billion. But one problem is that U.S. carriers reportedly didn’t show as much interest as Boeing expected, and the new Indian customers might not be enough to keep Connexion within Boeing’s longterm plans.
In India it’s a different story. India is currently going through an aviation boom, much like the one we say in the late 1950s and 1960s in the US. According to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, domestic market in India will add five million passengers every year for the next five years, with the overall market ballooning to about 45 million passengers by 2010.
It is certainly a large enough market. It is ironic that these moves are coming at a time when the entire nation is starved for bandwidth. It is causing enough concern that even the slow moving Department of Telecommunications is thinking about cutting bandwidth prices by 30-to-40%.
The telecom regulator recently informed the department that bandwidth prices in India were high because the country didn’t allow equal access at cable landing stations for new companies.
DoT is mulling over plans to open landing stations of international long distance companies to rival providers’ submarine cables and regulate access charges for the cables, The Financial Express reports. This would boost new entrants’ business and could lead to a 30-40 percent cut in bandwidth costs.
Written by Shailaja Neelakantan on July 31st, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wireless Broadband and India Telecom.
Dianah Neff, the technology czar and champion of Wireless Philadelphia is going to leave her job, and return to the private sector, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. The Philadelphia daily quotes four unnamed city government sources. Neff’s deputy, Terry Phillis is being wooed to take over the job.
“I have to say that without a doubt this project would not have made it to this point without her,” says Craig Settles, who is writing a book about Wireless Philadelphia., titled, Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless. “She had the vision plus the ability to get scores of people to believe in this vision.”
Neff, 57, is a viewed as one of the foremost authorities on Municipal Wireless Networks, and is likely to find a long list of suitors for her talents. There is a dearth of MuniFi experts. “She is a rockstar in the municipal wireless world,” says Settles. Among those who could be interested in Neff would include consulting firms, large corporations such as Earthlink and Google, and even cable operators who have wireless plans.
Those in the know say that the project is way beyond its teething problems and is on its way to become a showcase for MuniFi movement. More information as it becomes available.
Written by Om Malik on July 30th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on WiFi and Wireless Broadband.
Google is about to open up its Mountain View WiFi network to more than 500 more trusted testers, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. The expanded test indicates that the service is inching closer to its public debut. Google hopes to make the service ready for general availablity later this summer.
When I posted about Google’s Mountain View WiFi yesterday, the biggest request from readers was to check out the network’s speed. So I went back to the network, and did several speed tests around Mountain View.
The fastest speed I got when sitting relatively close to one of the access points outdoors was 928 kbps download speed and 567 kbps for upload. Google has said the maximum speed for both download and upload is 1 Mbps, so that’s pretty consistent.
At other areas, farther away from nodes I got 850 kbps and as low as 420 kbps for download speeds and lower than 100 kbps for upload speeds. So for residents, the farther away your house is from a light pole with a Google access point, the signal will likely degrade considerably. Seems like by at least half of the maximum 1Mbps. But that’s also for outdoors signals only. Google has said indoor use will be hard to get without an extended-range WiFi modem.
At my house I have DSL with a WiFi network and that speed using the same tests was 2.43 Mbps download with 415 kbps upload. So as far as speed goes, Google’s Mountain View WiFi isn’t exactly a cable/DSL replacer for now. But its free and ubiquitous and that beats cable and DSL on any day.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 28th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Google and WiFi and Wireless Broadband.
Even though trains and planes have already become mobile hotspots, very little attention has been given to mobile access to say users in their cars. That might change soon, thanks to Broadband Antenna Tracking Solutions (BATS), a start-up founded by few professors from Purdue University.
The company is reportedly testing wireless antennas that can automatically track and link users. The idea behind these antennas is to basically connect boats and moving vehicles to wireless networks. In tests, the antenna system prototypes have been able to connect 12 miles over water and nearly 9 miles over land, reports say. The tests were conducted using the 900-MHz Motorola Canopy radios, over Lake Michigan.
Network World says the company launched in January with seed money from the university. The patent belongs to the university, but three Purdue professors own the global licensing rights. The company is supposedly looking for investors, so companies interested in wireless hardware–Motorola, Tropos, Earthlink?–or interested VCs, get your checkbooks out.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Start-Ups and Wireless Broadband.
The Municipal Wireless market just got more interesting. Sources close to MetroFi, a Sunnyvale, California-based start-up tell us that the company has teamed up with AT&T to design, build and operate free wireless networks in different cities. The deal is with AT&T Enterprise Services division of AT&T. Riverside, California will be first city to get a service bid from the new alliance.
This is huge deal for MetroFi, which is building wireless networks in about a dozen cities around the US. MetroFi has been viewed as a laggard in the space, even though it has snagged some big cities. The company earlier this month won a bid to build and operate a big network in Portland, Oregon. It has similar deals with San Jose, California as well. More than MetroFi, the deal could have major impact on the whole Muni Wireless space.
First of all it validates the MuniFi movement, which so far has been vehemently opposed by the incumbents. A volte face if there was any. Secondly, it also puts a serious crimp in the plans of others, namely Earthlink, which have been counting on the MuniFi business to future proof themselves.
Written by Om Malik on July 21st, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on WiFi and Earthlink and Wireless Broadband.
Earthlink and Tropos might be looking to make millions off of muni wireless, but members of the open source community are hard at work trying to make wireless networking free. And they just got some funds to help their cause. Sascha Meinrath, of the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network, CUWIN, just called me this morning to say his open source wireless mesh project received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Sascha says he plans to use the money to add staff, scour the globe for open source partners, and boost research and testing.
The organization had been applying to the NSF for 4 years now, and previously Sascha had been paying much of the research fees out of pocket–so the news is good for him on a lot of levels! A project like this could help make wireless broadband available for communities that can’t afford it and address the real digital divide. Not just recreate the economics of the traditional phone and cable operators with a slightly less monthly subscriber fee.
I thought maybe the NSF was starting to pay attention to an open source wireless project because of what wireless networking was shown to do in recovery efforts in Hurricane Katrina and the East Asian tsunami. Sascha said he wasn’t sure why the NSF approved them this time.
The open source code addresses the networking layer that improves the strength and reduces redundancies of the wireless signal. The code is in beta form and freely available on the organization’s web site. Making this technology freely available to anyone might make some companies with nice profits from wireless mesh, a tad unhappy. But the companies that are confident in their own technology probably won’t mind.
Sascha said he has also been talking to a few companies for partnerships. For example, he says possible partnerships could be wireless hand held device makers looking to test products over a test mesh network, that don’t want to pay a lot to use an already established network owned by a for-profit company.
Allan Leinwand, a partner at Panorama Capital, is an open source networking advocate and funded Vyatta the open source router company. He says a funding like this is really exciting for the open source network community, but that it’s also a big leap to turn a project into a widely used product.
The CUWIN project is really small, so whether the code will become popular is unclear. Sascha said his group started as “a bunch of geeks in my living room and grew to an international community.” Maybe these funds could help the technology follow suit.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 19th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Wireless Broadband.
Today is the deadline for updating applications for the upcoming wireless spectrum auction, but we thought we’d dig through some more spectrum documents. One bidding team caught our eye. Telecom investor Willian Berkman couldn’t let Paul Allen get all the wireless action without a fight.
According to FCC filings a consortium backed by William Berkman, and the broadband over power lines company Current Communications Group that he co-founded and is Chairman, and including Current investors Goldman Sachs and TXU Utility Services, is looking to bid in the upcoming wireless spectrum in August. As you might remember, Current is also backed by companies interested in wireless–Google and Earthlink.
While Google’s and Earthlink’s individual investments are not disclosed Current has raised over a hundred million in capital to build its BPL network. There was a lot of speculation over Google joining the spectrum auction–this seems as close as the company was willing to get.
While Current refused our requests for the details on their wireless plans, wireless is already being used in conjunction with broadband over powerlines by companies like Motorola and Communication Technologies Inc (ComTek). BPL runs over electrical outlets and is touted for its ease-of-access, though has few deployments to date.
Wireless could help extend those deployments. ComTek’s VP for Broadband, Walt Adams, said in a few cases the company is already powering WiFi hotspots with BPL, and that the company is planning to grow its wireless offering later this year. So if Berkman and Current buy some wireless spectrum, the company’s slow-moving BPL plans could get a real boost.
For now how the consortium plans to use any wireless spectrum in tandem with their BPL plans remains unclear. The application is officially incomplete but the company has until 6PM today to update the filing.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 18th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Wired and Google and Earthlink and Wireless Broadband and spectrum and broadband over powerline.
FCC’s spectrum auction process is far from perfect. Mario Gabelli, a pundit turned spectrum speculator is a perfect example of someone with deep pockets can rig the game in their favor.
The FCC’s system of auctioning off the country’s spectrum is far from perfect. Yesterday a U.S. district court approved a settlement that said New York money manager Mario “Super Mario” Gabelli and his army of affiliate companies have to pay $130 million for gaming the auction system several years back.
According to the New York Times, the lawsuit was filed against the Wall Street investor by “whistle-blower, Russell Taylor III, a lawyer who was involved in the wireless spectrum auction,” five years ago under the False claims Act.
Gabelli, seemingly gamed the system by setting up small companies, whose sole purpose was to grab spectrum, possibly to resell that at higher prices. By claiming “designated entity” status a company can buy spectrum at a lower cost and then later resell it for a massive profit.
(We have put together a list of his new bets, and you can read them after the fold.)
While the FCC has changed some of these rules, we’ll soon see how effective the new plans are. That’s because Gabelli and his crew have once again filed to bid on spectrum for the Advanced Wireless Spectrum auction, which will take place in August.
Shouldn’t there be rules that should prevent anyone who has been fined for abusing the system for trying again.
We checked the records, and found a whopping 12 companies backed by Gabelli. (See the list of companies backed by Gabelli gang after the fold.)
If any of these companies win big in the upcoming election, we can probably assume that the spectrum will get flipped shortly after. None of Gabelli’s applications were accepted yet and were all labelled “incomplete,” but the company can resubmit over the coming days. This time around Gabelli isn’t pleading the “DE” status as a leg-up, but will likely have some other money-making scheme to generate cash.
The list of names includes:
- Cal-Ore Telephone Company
- Central Utah Telephone Company
- Upper Peninsula Telephone Company
- CS Technologies
- Cuba City Telephone Exchange Company
- Dunkirk & Fredonia Telephone Company
- Lynch AWS Corporation
- Western New Mexico Telephone Company
- Haviland Telephone Company
- Inter-Community Telephone Company
- Bretton Woods Telephone Company
- JBN Telephone Company.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 14th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Wireless Broadband and spectrum.
With Clearwire and the launch of WiBro, WiMAX and its mobile derivatives have been in the news a lot lately. The latest is Paris-based Sequans, a fabless semiconductor company, which says it has started shipping its mobile WiMAX station chips to test with its customers, for use in mobile devices like cell phones, PC cards, and USB dongles, as well as fixed devices.
The company is part of a gaggle of start-ups that are pushing mobile WiMAX silicon, and now that Korea’s WiBro network is officially up and running there’s actual customers. Sales of WiMAX equipment is estimated to top $3 billion by 2010 says research firm Instat. Fujitsu, Runcom, TeleCIS, Wavesat, and Samsung are all competing for business, and Korea’s WiBro network will be a really interesting test case to see which WiMAX chip companies find favor with phone makers and operators.
A few months ago Sequans managed to score a major partnership with LG to supply WiMAX chips to LG’s consumer electronics. The deal could be seen as way for LG to team up with a savvy startup, to compete against WiBro king and archrival Samsung. The Samsung/LG rivalry is intense, and will just get more so over WiMAX. (Though Samsung seems to be solidly winning for now.)
How intense is the rivalry? How about LG PR people making me take off the CTIA badge for an interview, because the event was sponsored by Samsung!
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 11th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Unwired and WiMAX and Wireless Broadband and WiBro.
Niall stopped by Earthlink’s SF store last night and snapped these photos. He says the store opended up on Thursday and has been touting DSL, VoIP, Helio, Mindspring, and muni WiFi.
The company thinks that boots-on-the-ground in targeted cities can help convince customers. We’ll see. And if their obvious bid to bring in pissed-off phone and cable customers wasn’t clear enough, they commissioned this not-so-subtle chalk drawing outside. (well that’s my interpretation of it–what’s yours?)
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 8th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Unwired and WiFi and Earthlink and Wireless Broadband.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Sherpalo Ventures (a venture vehicle of Google-backer, Ram Shriram) have decided that India is the next big market for mobile commerce–using the cellphone as a connected wallet to buy and sell stuff.
With over 100 million Indian wireless subscribers—-more than double the number of the land phones in the country–they could be right. The two firms are investing over $5 million in Paymate, a mobile commerce company, a start-up backed by Coruscant Tec, a Mumbai-based company that powers mobile content, commerce and other data applications that land on Indian phones.
Paymate might not have launched an application yet, but its site says the company is looking at “tele-merchant services”, “mobile wallet” and “person to person” payments services. Mobile commerce has been a distant dream for wireless carriers in the U.S., but in both advanced wireless markets like Japan, and fast-growing SMS-heavy markets like India, “m-commerce” is a real phenomenon. A recent report from eMarketer says that 43% of Japanese Internet users already use some form of mobile payment.
In India mobile infrastructure is starting to offer a cheaper, easier way to manage funds, especially in areas with limited banking systems. One likely mobile commerce strategy would be to marry m-commerce with SMS, since Indian mobile market is dominated by SMS and voice services. SMS-focused startup Air2Web’s has a growing business in India and the company says big Indian banks send out around 2,000 SMS messages to important clients per day for account managment. Coruscant Tec currently is trying to jump start demand for data services in the country, offering content apps like MTV’s Loveline for cell phones, a social dating service, as well as video, ringtones, and games and works with carriers like Airtel.
While wireless data is something new to the Indian market, wireless startups pushing mobile data are starting to hit it big in India. Canadian mobile chat company AirG works with Coruscant for its mobile chat application in India. Mobile marketing Enpocket recently launched a mobile advertising campaign with Airtel, and mobile games are going gangbusters in India, an example is Electronic Art’s partnership with India Games.
Mobile commerce will likely boom in India long before the U.S. despite recent attempts–Paypal Mobile launched this year, and startups like Obopay are pushing peer to peer payments. KCPB and Sherpalo are betting it does. The first apps will likely be peer to peer and direct buying and selling over a wireless broadband network. Maybe next will come swiping a mobile at the gates of a cricket stadium. Now that would be a big hit!
Photo via Flickr by Pidge
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 7th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Cellular and Wireless Broadband.
Colombian broadband provider, Orbitel, has just launched its WiMAX network and has started taking orders for the service. The plans range from $39 to about $325. The network will offer speeds of upto 2 megabits per second. The network is now live in Cali, but will soon be made available in 14 other cities. Network uses Siemens’ WayMAX gear. Fixed wireless technologies - of all flavors - are finding home in emerging markets especially those with limited legacy infrastructure.
Also, Its a WiBro World and The Truth about WiMAX.
Written by Om Malik on July 7th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on WiMAX and Wireless Broadband and WiBro.
Like Earthlink’s WiFi phone plans, the city of Taipei, in Taiwan, is pushing dual WiFi, cellular phones as a way to offer lower-priced phone calls over its municipal wireless network. The initiative is being called “Taipei Easy Call,” and is backed by ten companies says the BBC. By August the group hopes to upgrade schools and government offices to the new telephony system, which is supposed to be significantly less expensive in the long run.
Well, that’s the plan. If no one joins the network, then of course there’ll be significantly more investment and absolutely no savings. The New York Times recently reported that the network was finding it tough to attract paying customers. JiWire says Taipei’s municipal network is the largest in the world and perhaps these cheap calling plans would attract more users.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 6th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and VoIP and WiFi and Wireless Broadband.
Earthlink’s first muni WiFi network made news when it was launched in Anaheim, California, last week, but Earthlink’s VoIP VP Steve Howe, revealed some interesting news to me in a conversation this week. He says Earthlink plans to start selling WiFi-only phones starting in the fourth quarter of this year. The phones will work over Earthlink’s WiFi networks, and will have a voice plan somewhere between $10 to $25. Users have to pay extra for a data plan. That’s in contrast to the dual cellular-WiFi phones that the company plans to sell with its MVNO Helio, estimated to launch in the beginning of 2007.
Steve says Earthlink has narrowed down the WiFi phone search to two manufacturers, though declined to name which ones. (If you know which ones, or feel like speculating, add your comments.) He says over the past few days the company has been testing Earthlink’s WiFi phones over the company’s Anaheim network and that they’re working well up to 40 miles per hour.
Other companies have been offering WiFi-only phones for some time. Skype and Netgear have a WiFi phone, as does Vonage with UTStarcom. But Earthlink’s voice over WiFi could give a significant boost to these services going mainstream. The service could also boost the demand for Earthlink’s WiFi services, primarily because of the voice-data bundle. Earthlink will have to keep the prices low enough to attract mainstream users. High prices of cellular data services have been the main hindrance to mainstream adoption of such services thus far.
Still, there remain significant hurdles to Earthlink’s WiFi phone plan. Right now the phones are expensive. Steve says Earthlink will have to subsidize the phones for a good while, to push the industry standard below its current hundreds of dollars range. But “this business will get really interesting when the phones get down to the $40 range,” he says. Will this become another drain on Earthlink’s cash reserves? The company is spending like crazy on its municipal wireless projects.
Then there’s the basic risk of the citywide wireless deployments, and the big question: Will networks be able to attract enough subscribers to make enough money! There’s been fair enough discussion over that in recent days, and I wrote about this with an interview with Gary Betty earlier this year. It could happen, but given that the networks are so new, it’s entirely unproven.
Earthlink is also assuming that the price of WiFi phones will come down significantly, which will only happen if they become popular enough to support an economy of scale and a resulting price drop. That’s a more risky proposition and some speculate that WiFi-only phones are only transitional devices on the way to dual-cellular phones. With the Helio dual mode plan, the company can hedge its bet somewhat on the WiFi vs cellular debate.
When I asked him if the company had come into any major fights with cellular providers over the upcoming WiFi phones and cheap voice over WiFi offering planned, he says, “They probably don’t stay awake at night over Earthlink. But maybe they should.†It’s a savvy PR move to act as the savior for disgruntled phone company defectors. The company opened an Earthlink store in Seattle last week, and is planning to open another store in downtown San Francisco at 1 Front Street next week to convince more pissed Bell customers to join them.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 6th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on VoIP (the New Phone) and Unwired and WiFi and Earthlink and Cellular and Wireless Broadband.
Looks like Clearwire’s IPO plans weren’t going too well. The company, which was started by telecom master Craig McCaw, withdrew its IPO plans on Wednesday and simultaneously said it had raised $900 million in a private equity round from Intel Capital and Motorola Ventures. Given Vonage’s poor public performance, the move was probably a smart one.
A good deal of that financing–$600 million–will come from Intel Capital, which calls the Clearwire financing the largest in its history. Part of the deal also includes a sale of Clearwire’s NextNet Wireless division to Motorola for an undisclosed sum, and from here on out Motorola will provide the network equipment for Clearwire.
Previously Clearwire had raised nearly $360 million from backers that include McCaw, Intel Corp., and Bell Canada, and now even without the company’s planned $400 million IPO, Clearwire will have over $1 billion to burn on its network. The company needs the funds, given WiMAX networks are very expensive to build, and the company lost $140 million last year. The new injection of capital by the big partners is a major bet on WiMAX and means the network will likely be rolled out faster and more widespread.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 5th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and WiMAX and Wireless Broadband and Clearwire.
The attention on city-wide wireless isn’t just stateside, and Paris has delivered a media-savvy mayor to rival SF’s. The mayor told reporters that Paris is looking to add 400 WiFi spots through out the city, which will be run by private companies that will bid on the contract next year. In addition the city will lower taxes on local fiber deployments.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 5th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and WiFi and Wireless Broadband.
It’s no secret that Qualcomm is the wireless company everyone loves to hate. For the mobile world, its the Microsoft of the industry, angering competitors in many markets it dominates through its aggressive–or many would say monopolistic–business practices. So it wasn’t so suprising that Texas Instruments and Broadcom joined the ranks of the anti-Qualcomm league, accusing the company of abusing its stranglehold on the South Korean wireless market. TI and Broadcom were two of the six companies that filed similar complaints against Qualcomm in Europe as well.
It is important to note, that the San Diego giant has a patent portfolio which is pretty far reaching and protects the chip maker from its rivals. Still, the company’s stock has taken a turn for the worse, because of all the negative news.
And that wasn’t the first time Qualcomm has angered competitors in Korea. At the CTIA show in Las Vegas this April, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs spoke to a room of reporters on its great relationships with local parters in international markets, while his PR team left a stack of papers at the door trying to explain why that week Qualcomm’s South Korean offices had been raided by the Korean Fair Trade Commission.
With royalty rates like 5.25% on local Korean CDMA handsets and 5.75% on exports by South Korean manufacturers, according to the AFP article, its not hard to see why companies are disgruntled. [Qualcomm doesn’t reveal its exact royalty rates.] Others are concerned that Qualcomm will try to assert those high royalty rates through other wireless technologies beyond CDMA in South Korea, through its Flarion’s tech–though WiBro is getting touted pretty aggressively.
In India, Qualcomm is finding problems too. Media reports says Reliance is focusing on its GSM network, and not its CDMA network, in part due to Qualcomm’s high royalties.
Qualcomm has said it will try to work with partners to lower the cost of handsets, not the royalties. Guess the idea is that if you can strong arm others to take the cut, then you don’t have to. The plan makes money in the short term, but in the long run, pissed off partners isn’t a good business model.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 4th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Cellular and Wireless Broadband and India Telecom and qualcomm and WiBro.
By Katie Fehrenbacher
South Korea might have launched its own mobile Wimax flavor, WiBro, to the public on Friday, but Seoul is just the local stop for Korea’s far reaching wireless broadband plans. With the help of Samsung, WiBro is getting trials and deployments in both emerging and more advanced markets across Europe, South America, India, the U.S., and Japan.
Expanding the technology globally is as much necessity as grand ambition. South Korea’s relatively small population already is one of the most wired in the world and Korea’s Ministry of Information and Communication is bracing itself for a possible significant overlap of the already-popular domestic mobile broadband services and WiBro. Of course Samsung is no stranger to sales outside of its home base, and wants to sell its WiBro handsets to anyone it can.
If Samsung can convince enough international providers to partner it could gain a significant foothold in key areas for the next generation of broadband services. WiBro could also prove to be a major step by Samsung and Koreans to dominate an important wireless standard, and steal some of the U.S. long held hedgemony for telecom and technology standards. With companies like Qualcomm bringing in major IP earnings, and routinely clashing with competitors in South Korea over its practices–Texas Instruments and Broadcom officially joined the ranks today–its no suprise that Samsung wants a home-grown flavor.
That’s why Samsung is moving into quickly-growing markets like Brazil and India, making deals with Brazilian providers like TVA and eyeing India. But Samsung is also aiming for international markets that are more risky. In February Telecom Italia launched a WiBro trial for the winter Olympics, calling the move “Europe’s first WiBro network,” with further plans to roll-out WiBro in the country in 2007. In late May it was Croatia’s Portus with its H1 service joining the Samsung plan, and Venezuela’s Omnivision agreeed on a plan for a commercial service last year. Big trials last year also included Sprint/Nextel in the U.S., KDDI in Japan, the U.K.’s BT.
In a weirder move Samsung and Michigan’s Arialink provider plans to turn the state’s Muskegon County into “the first commercial deployment of mobile WiMax in North America,” in 2007. I look forward to a day that Muskegon locals are the first ones in the U.S. to get fancy Korean WiBro phones — if it ever happens.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Wireless Broadband and WiBro.
North Carolina daily, The Pilot, is going to offer free WiFi from its offices, and will eventually offer pay services in the Moore County and surrounding markets where it sells the paper. There is going to be WiMAX involved. Good idea? Jeff Jarvis doesn’t think so - and channels the ghost of Newspaper ISPs, which failed miserably. Sticking to your knitting and focusing on core competencies is a good way to keep competitors at bay. Shouldn’t The Pilot be focusing more on enhancing its online presence than having a dalliance with WiFi?
Written by Om Malik on July 1st, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on WiFi and Wireless Broadband.
Seven groups that include heavy weights like Cisco Systems, and IBM have responded to the RFP put out by Wireless Silicon Valley Task Force. The RFP is to build a giant wireless network that covers most of SIlicon Valley - from East Palo Alto to Santa Cruz. (More details in our previous report.) The most notable part of this news announcement is that Earthlink is not going to participate in this big build out.
- Azulstar, Cisco Systems, IBM, SeaKay (San Francisco)
- Blue Horizon Group (San Francisco, California)
- Community Wireless (Palo Alto, California)
- Fire 2 Wire / Ubiquity Broadband Communities (Carmel, California)
- MetroFi (Mountain View, California)
- Next WLAN Corp. (Los Gatos, California)
- VeriLan (Portland, Oregon)
These proposal will be reviewed, and a short list created, and will be announced by early September.
Update: WiFiNetNews has a complete analysis of the announcement, and it strips away the hype. Worth a read.
Written by Om Malik on July 1st, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on WiFi and Wireless Broadband.
Earthlink, the beleaguered ISP which is betting the farm on municipal wireless turned on its Muni WiFi network in the city of Anaheim. Earthlink calls its WiFi initiatives - Feather. The network went live on June 29 at a “wire cutting ceremony”. Curt Pringle, the Mayor of Anaheim officially ‘unwired’ the City at a wire cutting ceremony, which was also attended by Motorola, Tropos Networks and of course Earthlink executives. (More reports here.)
The service on this network is going to cost $21.95 a month. A $3.95 for a one-hour pass to $15.95 for a three-day pass are also available. The network will also serve as a platform for City, business and wholesale partners to access EarthLink’s municipal network for their employees and end-users. In addition to the network, the company has also signed up wholesale partners - PeoplePC (EarthLink’s wholly-owned subsidiary) and DirecTV - who will get access to the Earthlink Muni WiFi Networks. In addition, EarthLink has reached a non-binding agreement with AOL and is discussing ways to offer its AOL.com content and Web assets on EarthLink’s municipal network.
PS: if you live in Anaheim, I would like you to send me a review of the service if you end up using it. An honest and on the ground appraisal of the service.
Written by Om Malik on July 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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Over past few weeks, many new location based services (LBS) that leverage the WiFi networks have come to the forefront, and many of them have exciting enough offerings to give mobile phone networks-based LBS a run for their money - not that it would take much!
With WiFi becoming common place, and the upcoming entrance of city-wide wireless, companies like (Loki from) Skyhook Wireless, Plazes, and Meetroduction and its Meetro service, are starting to make major deals and find a significant user base. Meetro, for instance is building an interesting social aspect based on its technology, and it could actually catch on, once it expands beyond the classic early adopter user base. A new function that imports Myspace info could help on that front.
Skyhook Wireless’ location technology uses a database of WiFi access points to deliver user location. The company has Loki, its browser plug-in that is starting to bring in users, but it could go farther in licensing its technology to big players. The company says its talking to IM-providers, search companies like Google, and even the video game companies Sony and Nintendo for their portable devices. Sony and Nintendo were rumored to have checked out embedding GPS for the PSP and DS, but the feature was just too darn expensive–on that end Skyhook would be much cheaper.
In comparison, the phone based LBS have been slow to get off the ground. Following moves by Sprint and Disney Mobile, Verizon’s child-tracker service launched a few weeks ago, over just one phone, accompanied by major restrictions. Talk about a disappointing debut. What is becoming obvious is that LBS is less about technology, and more about applications - interesting applications!
Take Google’s Dodgeball service. Ever since the search giant acquired the company, it hasn’t done anything with it. It is not the coolest thing on the planet, it still needs a lot of effort, but it is still popular with dodgeballers. From that stand point MVNOs like Helio could help push the cellular market for social location based services. But up until that happens, we are going to watch the location over WiFi space - it is more fun!
Also: Somebody’s Watching Me!
Written by Om Malik on June 30th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on WiFi and Cellular and Wireless Broadband.
BellSouth will launch its fixed wireless broadband service in five new cities in the third quarter of 2006. The service will be available in some select parts of Melbourne, Fla.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Greenville, Miss.; Charleston, S.C.; and Albany, Ga. The service will have a downstream speeds of up to 1.5Mbps. The system transmits signals between local radio towers and a small non-line-of-sight desktop subscriber modem and utilizes BellSouth licensed WCS 2.3GHz spectrum. Other cities where the service is available include Athens, Ga;Palatka, Fla.; New Orleans, La.; Gulfport, Miss.; and DeLand, Fla. In addition, BellSouth announced yesterday that it would begin lab trials of WiMAX next quarter using Alcatel’s Evolium® WiMAX solution.
Written by Om Malik on June 28th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wireless Broadband.
South Korean companies have a pretty interesting plan to turn their version of (mobile) WiMAX aka WiBro into a global standard: go after some of the fastest growing emerging markets, and get the necessary scale to compete with rivals, mostly from the US. A few months of making a WiBro play in Brazil, South Korean companies are now targeting India.
Samsung , encouraged by some of the recent spectrum allocations in the 2.3 GHz to 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz bands in India, is now attempting to sell its gear which would allows 2 megabits download speed, and upload of 1 megabit per second. The company sees huge potential in the rural areas and regions that are off the main grids. Samsung vice-president (global marketing group) Dr Hung Song says the company is in talks with some Indian operators for the possible roll-out of WiBro in the near future.
Written by Om Malik on June 26th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wireless Broadband and India Telecom.
Boeing, the big airplane maker is rethinking its in-flight WiFi access service, Connexion. According to The Wall Street Journal, the service is unprofitable and as a result has been on the block, but has no takers. The company is said to have spent close to a billion dollars on the service, that is like the proverbial Big Foot in the US skies. (European carriers like Lufthansa and Asian airlines such as Singapore Airlines have introduced the service on their flights.) Andy is right when he says, that the US airlines are taking an approach that is reminiscent of the record industry’s approach towards downloads.
I guess being fiscally constrained could explain the US airlines’ reticence. Of course, there is the rise of the competing technologies. Jet Blue got some wireless spectrum licenses for offering broadband in the air recently. Airbus launched OnAir, a mobile phone-based service in 2005 which will allow GSM and GPRS access in the air. AirCell is another company that is looking to provide low cost broadband in the air.
Photos via Flickr set, Blogging in the Stratosphere.
Written by Om Malik on June 25th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on WiFi and Wireless Broadband.
The two major satellite television providers, DISH and DirecTV recently teamed up with WildBlue, a satellite-broadband service provider. Al Boschulte, Chairman of Probe Financial Associates, and former CEO of NYNEX Mobile (now part of Verizon Wireless) thinks that the deal is pretty limited in its scope, and the two companies should team-up with T-Mobile and add a bigger footprint in their battle against the wired incumbents - the cable and phone companies.
“This deal probably potentially affects no more than about 20% of DTV’s customers in rural areas … The big move into broadband by the DBS carriers is yet to come…T-Mobile should really be looking to see if it can participate in perhaps a three-way deal, with the DBS carriers and perhaps a wireless broadband network provider. They have an opening.”
Written by Om Malik on June 13th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wireless Broadband.
M2Z Networks, a wireless broadband start-up backed by Sandhill Road venture capitalists - Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Charles River Ventures and Redpoint Ventures - proposes to build a twin-purpose nationwide wireless broadband network, that will provide the third option for broadband services. The cable and phone companies have a virtual duopoly in the US. M2Z claims it can raise $400 million to help build and operate the network.
Mind you, these are just details from the FCC filings, and the company hasn’t made any statement. The company in a filing with FCC says it it was to get the soon to be vacated 2155 MHz to 2175 MHz spectrum for free for 15 years, it would offer universal broadband access nationwide, and in exchange it would hand over 5% of its gross revenues from its premium broadband service. In addition, it will give free 512 kilobits per second wireless access to one and all, which will be supported by advertising. According to Silicon Beat, M2Z says it can build this network in 10 years. ( I am not even going to get into the seemingly lopsided nature of this proposal…not up until I have more details on how the math is supposed to work!)
M2Z is the brain-child of FCC’s wireless bureau’s former head honcho John Muleta and Milo Medin, who in previous life had helped create and build the @Home Networks. (You can read all about that in Broadbandits: Inside The $750 Billion Telecom Heist). Milo, last time I saw him, was parked inside Charles River’s offices and was tooling around with Myth TV. Who knew he was cooking up yet another big network.
The blue-sky proposals such as this one, always make me queasy. It is easy to plan such massive scale networks, except when reality comes knocking. @Home comes to mind. What was the name of that ill-fated nationwide WiFi network backed by IBM, AT&T (the original), and a score of others.. Cometa was it?
Though earnest in its desire, the M2Z plan, is quite likely to be stuck in the quagmire called the Beltway. The spectrum owners - the wireless phone companies and others like Clearwire - would ensure that this plan doesn’t even get off the ground. Others who are planning to buy spectrum in a forthcoming auction would raise holy hell, if this deal was approved. But more importantly, the duopoly with its enormous clout in DC, is going to work hard to ensure that this remains a Silicon Valley dream.
As I have said earlier, between the wireless broadband utopia and Silicon Valley, there is Washington D.C.
Written by Om Malik on May 18th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wireless Broadband.
GoogleNET will soon be expanding into different cities - that is if you believe Earthlink CEO Garry Betty.
Despite repeated denials by the search company, anecdotal evident suggests that Google has national ambitions for its WiFi network, aka GoogleNET. I had written about this for Business 2.0 last year, and have been tracking this story. What started off as a sponsorship of a hotspot in Union Square in San Francisco, was extended to Bryant Park in New York City, followed by citywide access in Mountain View, California, and then came mother of all wins: San Francisco.
Google and its ISP partner, Earthlink, are now looking to expand to other locales. Earthlink is betting the farm on its WiFi efforts, and has won bids to build such networks in Anaheim, California, Milpitas, and Philadelphia.
Dow Jones News Wires quotes Earthlink CEO Garry Betty as saying that while Google-Earthlink haven’t identified the next city they want to jointly target, they have plans to expand their hybrid model - paid service from Earthlink and ad-supported free access by Google - the discussions are on! Unlike San Francisco, it seems the two companies plan to tweak their model a little.
They would, however, offer all city residents and visitors free access to Google’s ad-supported local search service and to area Web sites, he said, using technology from Google that would restrict non-subscribers’ access. Google would share some of the ad revenue earned with EarthLink.
Google recently filed for patents a technology that allows it to push highly targeted ads to wireless users, and then split the monies with the company offering the service.
According to the patent, which was filed in 2004 and published by the U.S. Patent Office in mid-March, the advertising can be refreshed and changed even when the user is not moving from Web page to Web page.
“I can’t wait for Wi-Fi everywhere. ” writes Chris Sacca, who has been championing Google’s WiFi efforts, on the Google Blog. Neither can we!
Written by Om Malik on April 8th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Google and WiFi and Wireless Broadband.
CTIA just concluded, and as expected it was all about wireless broadband. And why not - too much money is tied into the wireless data networks and companies need to figure out how to monetize that.
We talk about Wireless broadband networks - EV-DO, HSDPA, and new applications - in this week’s PodSession. We look at the forthcoming EVDO Rev A and what it means for not only the users but also for the carriers.
The latest version of EV-DO, revision A, promises up download speeds up to 3.1 Mb/s, upload speeds as fast as 1.8 Mb/s, and latency as low as 50ms.
HSDPA is a competing standard for GSM networks. It is capable of download speeds up to 3.6 Mb/s and uploads of 384 Kb/s. HSDPA allows simultaneous voice and data and can downgrade to older UMTS when a newer network is not available. But HSDPA is woefully behind, not just in US but also in Europe.
Also, you Mac lovers, Novatel Wireless is about to introduce a new Express Card version of EVDO modem, probably by next month. This and other juicy stuff in this week’s podsession, which is 22 minutes long, a 10 MB download. 
Written by Om Malik on April 7th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Podcasts and Wireless Broadband.
Unwired cities movement continues - Earthlink says it is going to unwire the City of Milpitas. The Wi-Fi mesh network will cover about 6.5 square miles, and will basically be like most other muni networks. While businesses and consumers will pay some amount of money to access the network, the City employees will also be able to access the network. Not sure who is providing the gear, but given the past record of Earthlink deployments, it must be Tropos Networks. As part of the deal, other access providers can use the network as well.
More on Earthlink’s muni wifi business and the story so far.
Written by Om Malik on March 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Wireless Broadband.