Industry don’t pay a price that’s fair
All the common people breathing filthy air
Roof caved in on all the simple dreams
And to get ahead your heart starts pumping schemes
Whoo oooh
I’m on fire
- Neutron Dance, Pointer Sisters
Three top U.S. cable operators may be close to a deal with Sprint Nextel to offer wireless service, reports Wall Street Journal. The resale agreement calls for the companies to distribute Sprint service under the Sprint brand, while other sources say it would be sold under the respective companies’ labels. The deal could be announced November 1st.
Cable companies have swiped 4.4 million phone customers. Can cable-supplied metro broadband wireless be far behind? Sprint, as part of its merger deal with the FCC, agreed to offer 2.5GHz broadband wireless services on its spectrum within two years.
- No spectrum costs. WiMax in unlicensed spectrum is a joke. (City-wide ‘mesh’ using 802.11 is a joke for similar reasons.)
- No backhaul interference issues. Want to guess at the native data rates available in DOCSIS 2.0 [the current dominant cable Internet standard]? Around 30Mbps upstream, and just under 40 Mbps downstream. A nice match for 802.11g.
- Cable MSOs could offer city-wide “hot spot” service, cleaning the clock of any incumbent ISP. They could start where this makes the most sense, and build out from there.
- Cable companies already own rights to the poles and building entrances. MSOs don’t have to re-negotiate with the municipality, they don’t have to lay new cable.
WiFiNetNews notes, “cable companies already possess rights—they already have franchise agreements. They already pay cities and towns tax based on their revenue and for rights of way”.
Couple those comments with a recent opinion piece on Muniwireless by Andy Seybold who drew an analogy between the CB radio and Wi-Fi. Andy argued that Wi-Fi will become a victim of its own success and that the 2.4 GHz band in which it runs will, in time, become unusable as Wi-Fi proliferates. He is taken to task by Tropos CEO Ron Sege.
Charter’s CTO (below) says, growth into quadruple play (voice, video, data and wireless) is inevitable.
Charter Cable has forged a deal with RemotePipes to offer RemotePipes’ IP Roamer Wi-Fi service. The remote access is available to Charter’s residential and business high-speed customer base. The IP Roamer client software is designed to enable users to enter a username and password in order to access multiple globally aggregated IP networks.
BelAir Networks plan to enable cable operators to deploy wireless mesh. Belair’s BelAir50s and BelAir100s can be installed anywhere in existing cable networks. The single- and dual-radio mesh nodes are strand-mounted, plant-powered and offer a Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) 2.0 interface and can be deployed directly on cable plant, eliminating permits and recurring fees, says BelAir. The strand-mounted BelAir50s and BelAir100s are currently in customer trials and will be generally available in the first quarter of 2006.
The ArCell radio utilizes the DOCSIS and covers about a half of a mile using the unlicensed 5.8 GHz band.
The dispute between cities and cable/telcos is described by the NY Times:
Dianah L. Neff, the city’s chief information officer and architect of Wireless Philadelphia, said that there was no animosity but certainly a chilly distance between the city and its most famous corporate citizen. For instance, Comcast officials have repeatedly disputed her contention that the private sector (read EarthLink) will foot the entire $10 million to $15 million bill to introduce the service and that the project will cost taxpayers nothing.
Comcast is wrong, she maintains. “It’s not like the $30 million subsidy they got to build their corporate headquarters,” she said.
Then there are the phone companies.
The Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) specification enables users equipped with a dual-mode cellular/Wireless LAN (WLAN) handset to roam between cellular networks and public and private WiFi networks. Alcatel, AT&T, BT, Cingular, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel Networks, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, and T-Mobile USA buy into it. Cingular and Nortel attended Portland’s cloud meeting, as did Qwest. Qwest was among 10 companies rumored to be making a bid, but backed out Friday. HP is also out.
Will cable and phone companies try to outspend each other into some sort Mutual Assured Destruction? Can cities defend themselves from a carpet bombing of 2.4/5.8 GHz?
“Equal access” to all competitors might make sense. It works for the Internet and was a requirement in Portland’s metro wireless RFI. Phone and cable competitors might lower costs and provide interoperability, expanding their total subscriber base. Competition WILL come from Clearwire, Sprint, Aloha Partners, MediaFLO and DVB-H. Without cooperation, Andy Seybold’s vision of doom may come to pass.
Responses to Portland’s “equal access” concept are due tomorrow. It should be interesting.
Related DailyWireless stories include; Wireless Cable, Regional Roaming Roundup, Time/Warner Cable Zones, Sprint/Nextel to Merge, Sprint-tel: Done Deal?, Sprint + Nextel = Cable?, WiFi Cable Phones, Sprint + Lucent for EV-DO, 4G Clouds in the United States, WiFi Vrs WiMax, Will 802.20 Challenge WiMax?, Sprint Plans National EV-DO Service, Cingular 3G Details and Cellular At The Races.
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