Is competition likely in U.S. broadband?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Robert J. Berger [rberger () ibd com]
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 6:41 PM
To: Brett Glass
Cc: David Farber; Dave Burstein; Dewayne Hendricks
Subject: Re: [IP] Is competition likely in U.S. broadband?

I've been involved with muni-wireless both on the hardware side and
the service provider side from 1999 - 2007. I am a major proponent of
opening up the spectrum to innovative uses. But my experience has
proven to me that there is no way wireless is going to deliver 10's of
Mbps let alone Gbps to the consumer anytime soon due the issues of
propagation (the need for "basestation" densities far greater than
what is economically afordable and/or the need for outdoor mounting
and thus truck rolls for every deployment). I am no longer directly
involved in the wireless industry because I have concluded that the
technology is not ready for primetime and it won't be for several
cycles of Moore's Law.

Being able to build some one off  Millimeter Wave (MMW)  or LMDS
radios is far different than getting mass produced radios with a parts
cost of less than $50 (which is what is needed for viable mass market
CPE). Note that all the existing MMW or LMDS radios are selling in the
10's of thousands of dollar range and are point to point. So there is
quite a bit of a learning curve to get to a couple of hundred dollars
CPE with mesh or Point to Multi-point.

LMDS / MMW radios might be doable for a rural business network like
Brett's but its not doable any time soon for mass market suburban /
urban consumer environments. They are definitely viable (and being
used) now for point to point backhaul links where there is no viable
fiber, for applications like Cell tower backhaul or bringing bandwidth
to office buildings. These kind of links can justify the $20k - $40k /
link capital costs and fit in the 1 - 2 mile pure line of sight
categories.

The line of sight / obstruction issues make it unsuitable for suburban/
urban consumer deployments. Because of the need to have aligned
outdoor (and probably roof mounted) antennas, each installation will
require a truck roll to install the unit on each customer home. There
can be NO obstructions between the home unit and the base station or
relay unit. There are very little locations that would allow for clear
line of sight between a large number of homes and basestations even
assuming basestations are spaced in 1 mile radius cells. Rain limits
range and/or reliability in these frequencies.

Like I mentioned many times before, a super dense mesh of super
intelligent, frequency agile (across Gigahertz of spectrum) cognitive
radios that cost a few dollars or less to make could make it possible
to beat out fiber. But we'll probably have nanotech or arfid clouds
that connect us all via telepathy before that (See http://www.rudyrucker.com/postsingular/
  :-)

In the meantime wireless will still have to compete with fiber.

In any case, both Fiber and Wireless are blocked by oligopolies that
are in bed with the regulators.

If that regulator / oligopoly blockade was broken, fiber is going to
deliver more for less than wireless for suburban/urban environments
anytime in the next decade.

So we still need to figure out how to create the economic/political
entity that can bypass the Telco/CableCo Oligopoly. Wireless is not
going to give us a technological magic wand to do that.

Rob

On Jul 26, 2008, at 11:00 AM, Dewayne Hendricks wrote:

> On Jul 26, 2008, at 10:47 AM, Brett Glass wrote:
>
> > > Now I'm all for breaking  up spectrum and last mile monopolies, but
> > > wireless won't be the way to do it any time soon.
> >
> > I repeat: I could do it now. I see that you've copied Dewayne on this
> > thread; he knows enough of the physics to confirm that it is not only
> > feasible but easier than designing, say, a good 802.11a chipset. Get
> > me some capital and some spectrum and I can do it.
>
>       I go along with Brett's comments here.  Everything he says is quite
> feasible.  Amateur radio (aka hams) has been doing wondrous things
> in micro and milli meter wave for years now.  Its one of the areas
> where you can still build your own equipment, like Brett suggests.
> It would be fairly easy to ramp a design up to low cost production.
>       He's also correct about the spectrum issue.  If the spectrum was
> there, so would be the capital to put it to use, which would also
> drive the development of better technology.
>
> -- Dewayne

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-838-8896 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
http://www.ibd.com




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