A good last mile answer? Broadband competition might still be possible

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/5352348.htm


Broadband competition might still be possible
By Dan Gillmor
Mercury News Technology Columnist

When anyone asks how to find innovation in technology today, I answer,
``Look where you don't find monopoly control or crushing regulation.'' One
such place is in wireless communications, specifically in the open-to-all
part of the airwaves, and lately I'm seeing some things that give me hope
for the broadband future America so desperately needs to create.

Regulatory missteps and marketplace misbehavior are creating a dangerous
duopoly in the ``last mile'' of data access to our homes and small
businesses. Unless wireless can compete, the regional telephone and cable
monopolies will control communications well into the 21st century.

I'm beginning to think that wireless can compete, because of enormous recent
innovation in what's called the ``unlicensed spectrum.'' That's the part of
the airwaves not controlled by government or specific industries and
companies.

The rise of the 802.11 ``Wi-Fi'' wireless standard, from a tiny blip to a
more and more essential part of everyday communications, shows how progress
thrives in a truly open marketplace. But Wi-Fi isn't the only interesting
story.

Tom Freeburg and his colleagues at Canopy Wireless Broadband Products, a
unit of electronics giant Motorola, are telling one of the most intriguing
stories of all. They've come up with a system that could bypass, at least
for the near term, the wire-line duopoly in urban and suburban areas. The
technology may also turn out to be nearly ideal for deployment in rural
areas.

The radio-based Canopy system uses unlicensed spectrum, so no one has to ask
for regulatory approval. The price is low enough -- a company or Internet
service provider can serve hundreds of customers for about $20,000 in
start-up equipment costs -- and it looks easy to deploy. Best of all, it
offers excellent data-transfer rates, in the range of 6 to 7 megabits a
second, which is much faster than the cable and phone-based alternatives
today, though ISPs offering Canopy-based services commonly ratchet down
individual customers' capacity to some extent.

A Canopy ``access point'' -- the base station serving end users -- has six
radios, each of which covers 60 degrees of a circle, so the six can radiate
and receive signals in all directions. It's sensitive to barriers such as
groves of trees and most modern buildings, especially as the range -- which
can be as far as 10 miles from the access point -- increases. An Internet
service provider can set up as many access points as needed to serve an area
if the population density and customer demand are too high for one access
point to serve everyone.

Motorola is creating an international distribution network for Canopy, and
says there are ``tens of thousands'' of these radios in use around the
United States so far, and several hundred customers that have set up at
least one access point.

One of Motorola's customers is start-up Neopolitan Networks in Palo Alto.
The company sells extremely high-speed data connections and associated
services. It has business customers in south Florida and Silicon Valley,
including the Peninsula, San Jose and the East Bay, and uses Canopy for some
installations.

Frank R. Robles, Neopolitan's founder and chief executive, says the Canopy
system offers superior technical quality -- including customer radios that
are much lighter than competitive models -- and flexibility in
configuration. The bottom line, he says, is the ability to offer a serious
alternative to the dominant data carriers.

Neopolitan plans to offer the service to residential customers, first in
multi-dwelling buildings such as high-rise apartments and condominiums, and
later single-family homes. Robles says the price will be about $50 a month,
but for that money the customer will get a faster, more reliable connection
-- in both directions -- than cable or DSL service now offers.

Making the connection fast in both directions, uploading and downloading, is
essential for things like Net-based video conferencing, among other things.
Even more important, from his perspective (and I emphatically agree), is
helping the Internet achieve its original promise.

Robles says, ``I'm trying to open it up so people can be producers, not just
consumers,'' of broadband information.

Serious bandwidth like this could bring another benefit. Voice traffic takes
up very little space on a fat data pipe. ``Voice over Internet Protocol''
(VoIP), bypassing local phone companies, is starting to make serious inroads
as more people get fast connections.

Robles says the Canopy system's architecture makes VoIP a snap to add to a
customer's account. That has a nice ring.

For his part, Freeburg avoids talk of bypassing the local phone monopolies
for voice traffic. He does say, however, that his goal ``is to get rid of
all the wires in the local loop.'' Same difference. May he succeed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Gillmor's column appears each Sunday and Wednesday. Visit Dan's online
column, eJournal (www.dangillmor.com). E-mail dgillmor () sjmercury com; phone
(408) 920-5016; fax (408) 920-5917. 

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