[IP] [Technical] Land Grab - What If Wal-Mart Got in the WiMax Business?
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 28, 2004 12:20:49 PM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Land Grab - What If Wal-Mart Got in the WiMax
Business?
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
November 25, 2004
Land Grab
What If Wal-Mart Got in the WiMax Business?
By Robert X. Cringely
<http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20041125.html>
The world has gone crazy for wireless data. In the dismal days since
the dot-com meltdown of 2001, almost the only happy business news has
been in the wireless sector, whether it is WiFi, Bluetooth, SMS
messaging, you name it. WiFi hotspots are everywhere, 3G mobile data is
slowly coming, and next year, we'll see the first 802.16 WiMax products
-- the first of these initiatives to cause real concern for the
telephone companies. WiMax, which promises fixed wireless 70
megabit-per-second data service over a distance up to 50 kilometers,
scares the phone companies because it will be for the most part a
licensed carrier-class service that is capable of completely replacing
the current local telephone network. If you are a bloated and conniving
phone company, WiMax is bad news.
So of course, they'll try to kill it.
Many people think current WiFi technology also threatens the telcos,
but it doesn't. For one thing, WiFi networks are just too darned small,
and if WiFi hotspot aggregation was going to be a successful business,
wouldn't we see one or more of the aggregators making money by now?
Yes, you could link together 100,000 or more hotspots and create the
equivalent of a wireless Baby Bell, but there simply isn't that kind of
money being put into commercial hotspots. Even the boldest aggregation
plan called for only 20,000 hotspots, and that outfit is already out of
business. It ain't gonna happen. And the reason it won't is also
because of WiFi's great strength -- the use of unlicensed radio
spectrum.
It is hard to build a business model around unlicensed radio
frequencies and here's why: Anyone can use them for any acceptable
purpose, no matter how stupid. If WiFi came to be a real threat to the
phone companies, they'd just start their own WiFi businesses to
undermine any possible hotspot success. This wouldn't be the
enlightened phone company cannibalizing its own network before someone
else does -- it would be the very unenlightened telephone company
trying to screw-up the WiFi space for everyone else.
All a Verizon, a BellSouth, or an SBC would have to do is throw their
own WiFi access points up on telephone poles all over town, but instead
of using them for Internet access, they'd use them to continuously
broadcast bad movies on every available channel. As long as a real
service was being offered, even if it is a service being used by only
phone company employees (training videos, 24/7) then the FCC could not
classify this use spectrum as causing "egregious interference." No
foul, but also no reliable WiFi service, either, just all "Plan 9 From
Outer Space" all the time. And that's why the phone company doesn't
worry about WiFi.
[snip]
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