Tin-Foil Beanies + 'Think of the Children!' = Newspaper Gold
from the i-use-my-router-to-scramble-eggs dept
The UK has seen its fair share of people freaking out over the health effects of WiFi, and a major newspaper there fanned the flames this weekend with its lead story saying children are at risk from "electronic smog". It's a strange article, though, because instead of finding any evidence that WiFi is actually harmful to people, it simply reports on how some groups are pushing for investigations into WiFi, then implies that's some sort of evidence that the technology is unsafe. This is despite previous reports that the radiation from being exposed to a WiFi network for a year is the equivalent of 20 minutes on a cell phone. Most of the noise about how harmful WiFi is comes from people claiming to have "electrosensitivity", though they generally fail double-blind tests checking out their claims that they can sense when they've entered a room with WiFi coverage. These sorts of stories are little more than hype-filled fluff that lack much substance to back up their wild headlines and implications of doom and gloom. Another case in point: a spate of articles -- started by one from the same paper as this latest WiFi scare story -- about how honeybees are being wiped out by radiation from mobile phones. The only catch was that the study in question had nothing to do with cell phones. The scientists also point out that the paper never bothered to get in touch with them, presumably because an accurate description of their research and findings would have made such a sensational story pretty dull.EU Roaming Cap Could Raise Domestic Rates
Back when the EU first said it wanted to take steps to cap the international roaming rates European mobile operators could charge their customers, we called it "balloon squeezing" -- meaning that they'd push rates down in one area, just to send them higher in another. Last week, Derek Kerton pointed out that this was likely to happen as operators simply raised rates for non-European roamers, but now a trade body of mobile operators says its members are looking at a 2.5 billion euro shortfall from the new price cuts, and could make it up by raising domestic rates. That would be the perfect outcome: the EU's action lowers rates for international travelers, but raises the rates everybody pays at home. Then what? More regulations, of course, leading to the EU establishing price controls for every single type of call.Muni Wi-Fi Redux
Muni Wi-Fi, or Metro Wi-Fi has been riding the hype cycle for a while, and has recently fallen into somewhat of a backlash, for which I'd like to take some credit. Not credit for being a reactionary naysayer, but for at least trying to force some reality into notions of using a Local Area Network technology to cover a whole town. This post is triggered by a piece by Craig Mathias over at Computerworld. That article is singing the praises of Metro-scale Wi-Fi networks, powered by multiple radios. Mathias seems to think that a new multi-radio approach will cure the maladies that have plagued many networks thus far, but this isn't the case. And this cure isn't new: I met with Bel-Air Networks' VP Networking Phil Belanger in 2004, and believe me they were pushing multi-radio solutions all along vs. the Tropos single-radio approach. Problem is more radios/node drives up the cost of the network. Funny, this reminds me of the last time I publicly disagreed with Mr. Mathias. It was 2004, when the future of Bluetooth was unclear to some, and I said, "there is not a credible market-ready solution that truly threatens Bluetooth." and Mathias said, Bluetooth "is largely a vestigial technology now that 802.11 is broadly accepted." That's right. He said Bluetooth would be replaced by...Wi-Fi. Wrong about Wi-Fi then, wrong now.I've decided to whip off a laundry list of thoughts on Muni Wi-Fi, but to spare those not interested, you need to click 'Read More' to see them.
RIM's Excuse For BlackBerry Outage Finally Emerges
from the too-little-too-late? dept
Research In Motion has delivered an explanation of what caused the BlackBerry outage earlier this week -- sort of. It says an insufficiently tested software upgrade set off a series of errors at its network operations center, which processes all the emails for BlackBerry devices in North America, and then its "failover process", which is supposed to switch things to a backup system, didn't work properly. The company says that it has plenty of capacity and resources to deal with its volume of messages and growing user base, and that it will better test its upgrades in the future. However, that explanation -- and the long time it took to come out -- doesn't wash with some observers, who say there are enough holes in the story that it doesn't add up. In particular, RIM's contention that it was upgrading its software on a Tuesday night, rather than over a weekend, has raised some red flags. Then, if a scheduled upgrade was behind the problem, shouldn't that have been immediately obvious to the company and news spread quickly by its PR team? The real damage from this episode won't be the outage itself, but rather the fallout from how RIM deals with it. On that front, things already aren't looking so good.What Is The Real Threat To Wireless Video?
Over at FierceWireless, Sue Marek takes a look at the battle between the Unicast and Broadcast approaches to mobile video. Vendors on the broadcast side (Qualcomm, Modio, Hiwire) are arguing that Unicast distribution over 3G doesn't scale, and if mobile video is successful, unicast video streams will clog the 3G pipes. MediaFlo is on this side, and has got Verizon and Cingular on board. But Sprint disagrees, saying that their experience with mobile video indicates that their 3G network has the capacity to meet mobile video demand even with unicast. Whether that's a negative comment on the demand for video, or a positive statement on their network capacity is unclear. Certainly, with Sprint's scads of 2.5GHz spectrum, the playing field isn't level. Their WiMAX plans call for video to be moved to this new network.But here's where I really diverge from the Fierce piece: the unicast vs. broadcast debate is an important one, but it's not "new battleground" for mobile video. We talked about this Mobile vs. Unicast paradox in 2004, and still neither approach holds all the right cards. There is more important battleground which seems to get overlooked at the conferences and boardroom strategy meetings: OTA vs. Sideloaded. That is, the carrier model vs. the iTunes or PVR sideload model. It's like this: If I have content in my PC or PVR, which I've already paid for and chosen as desirable, why would I re-buy content over an expensive 700Kbps wireless network when I could use a free, 480Mbps network (a USB cable) to transfer it from my PC into my phone? Phones with flash memory are well-suited for this, and increasingly available. In fact, I seem to recall a rumor that Apple might even try something in this space...
The big threat to carrier video business models is that consumers will learn to move video to their phones without ever passing the telco toll booth. And Apple is about to educate the masses as to that possibility. Whether consumers buy an iPhone or not isn't the point - the point is consumers will gravitate towards the cheap, simple solutions that are known to them.
SCO Head Wants To Ban Public WiFi To Stop Porn
from the that'll-help dept
Last month, Utah's governor signed a resolution urging Congress to pass a law that would set up "family" and "adult" channels on the internet as a way to keep kids from seeing boobies. The resolution was based on the work of a group called CP80, which advocates mandating porn be put on its own port, and is headed by the chairman of everybody's favorite tech company, the SCO Group, Ralph Yarro. Now, Yarro's told a Utah legislative committee that open WiFi networks should be banned, and all WiFi networks should have filtering software to keep out porn, or be password-protected, so that if any porn makes its way onto a minor's computer, the network provider can be fined. That seems little odd, like fining the state's transportation department for building roads that people might drive on to go buy porn somewhere. But the suggestions didn't stop there: a BYU law professor says the state should circumvent the constitution not by forcing ISPs to block porn, but rather by giving tax incentives to those that do. One state senator says that the key is "a statewide education program so citizens can learn about the real problem with the uncontrolled porn in our society, mainly coming through the Internet." We'd imagine that advertising the availability of porn on the internet would run counter to these people's goals, but apparently not.Worst LBS App Ever?
Here's my entry in the Bad LBS category: Nissan is putting together a pedestrian safety system called "Intelligent Transportation System (ITS)" that will "warn drivers of nearby pedestrians using GPS receivers in the car and participating cellphones." The location of the car and the pedestrians are transmitted to the ITS system, which makes a variety of calculations about collision risk, then sends alerts to the car if a collision is predicted. Hmmm. So here's my one-minute brain dump of problems: false alarms very annoying; what about pedestrians not on the system; very complicated ecosystem required; huge privacy implications; overly complex centralized system required; constant location updates required on a micro-second refresh rate; causes constant wireless data traffic; what about cellphones of pedestrians while they are in a car; the 3 - 15 meter accuracy rate of GPS (especially in cities) becomes very significant; the plan is to address 'distracted cellphone users', what, by distracting drivers, too; cars need to be upgraded for this. Enough. My gosh! Just because you come up with an idea doesn't mean you should build it. Who signed off to fund this turkey?Contrasting Good WiMAX Analysis Vs. Bad
Today, I'm linking to two different discussions on WiMAX. The first shows the challenging, time consuming reality of breaking new ground with WiMAX, and the second shows how a research report can be sensationalist (and misguided) by pitting tomorrow's vaporware against today's real-world technology.First up, a great summary of Sprint's current status with their WiMAX efforts at 2.5 GHz by Kevin Fitchard at Telephony Magazine. Fitchard correctly identifies the Herculean effort required by Sprint to advance WiMAX to the stage at which it can realistically be deployed in a nationwide network. That task is challenging because the reality is that the "standard" that is WiMAX is actually much more fragmented than certain PR departments would have you believe. The frequencies, MIMO characteristics, channel size, adaptive antennas, fixed/mobility are actually not defined by the WiMAX standards, let alone the fact that the standard isn't yet nailed down and interoperability testing is still distant on the horizon. All these factors could limit the global economies of scale that WiMAX has been promising.
But Sprint's Barry West believes that by moving aggressively, and early, Sprint can play a pivotal role in nailing down "de facto" standards before the WiMAX forum finalizes a spec - thus leading the 802.16e standards process. It doesn't hurt that powerful vendors Motorola, Samsung, and Nokia are all deeply involved with Sprint. With all the challenges standards bodies have had of late, a de facto standard seems less political and more attainable, especially when no WiMAX operators of the scale of Sprint exist to dispute Sprint's approach. Sprint's WiMAX gambit isn't a slam dunk, but it IS clear evidence that telcos aren't always stodgy, risk-averse followers propping up old business models. Sprint's 2.5GHz strategy is tied in my mind for "gutsiest US telco project" with Verizon's FIOS project. If Sprint succeeds, they will have a sustainable advantage that their competitors cannot easily copy (for lack of spectrum).
Next up is a report from InStat titled, "End Users Prefer WiMAX" over other options like Wi-Fi, EV-DO, and HSDPA (PDF link here). I'm not sure how InStat came to use this title based on their research, but I find it unfair that reality-constrained technologies like EV-DO are forced to compete with a PR-induced concept of what WiMAX may be when it arrives. That's like asking people what they prefer: The UK or Utopia. Hmmm...I'll take Utopia please. Wouldn't it be more fair to compare WiMAX powerpoints with the powerpoint versions of what EV-DO was supposed to be a year before it launched? The InStat research also found that the two top attributes when selecting wireless broadband were Availability and Reliability. How does that fit with their title, given that globally, WiMAX is available from a handful of base stations in Seoul?
The report details that "respondents interest in cellular data dramatically decreased when pricing was included in the description." So InStat pitted today's cellular data pricing against Sprint's estimate of what they will charge for WiMAX in end-2008? Is that reasonable? It's myopic to assume that the cellular carriers won't have different pricing by then, lowering it to compete with WiMAX, each other, and other technologies.
I suppose that I'm partly over-reacting here. The kind of questions that InStat is asking are, indeed, useful research questions. But they need to be taken in context, and interpreted very carefully. Analysts of this research data need to understand that the study is a "What WOULD users prefer?" question and not a "What DO users prefer?" Analysts also need to understand that reality ravages wireless technologies, so vaporware always looks better than today's choices. Analysts also should understand that markets are dynamic, and cellular won't stand still while we wait for WiMAX. The InStat people should know all these realities well, and should frame their research as such, but "WiMAX To Kill Cellular" gets more headlines than "In a 2008-9 WiMAX scenario as envisioned by Sprint Vs. commercially offered Feb. 2007 cellular data plans, users prefer WiMAX."
Filed Under: wimax
