rob:
Dr. Viterbi is now on the BOD at Flarion and actively participating in the optimization and commercialization of their Flash-OFDM technology
Enough already with this major Viterbi role you ascribe to his activities in the development and commercialization of Flarion's Flash-OFDM.
So, Viterbi is on the BOD - so what? So are guys from three VC firms with equity stakes in the company:
flarion.com
And I note that of the major equity owners:
flarion.com
the Viterbi Group, which "advises and invests in startup companies, predominantly in the wireless communications and network infrastructure fields", is not one, though Cisco, who you also mention repeatedly, is. Do you know what % of Flarion Cisco owns? I haven't dug far enough to find out, though I guess the info is there somewhere.
Moreover, Viterbi is not on Flarion's Technical Advisory Board:
flarion.com
so he doesn't have a major role there, though some guys with pretty impressive credentials are on this TAB and presumably do play a role.
The big questions for Flarion - and you, as its main promoter here - and they're multi-multi billion/trillion $$/Euro/yen/yuan/won questions, are these:
(1) Given the inertia we have witnessed over the last several years in competing standards development, competing technology adoptions, and large scale development and deployment of appropriate network gear and device hardware, how the heck is Flarion going to achieve their projected wireless data market share - 600 million users, 50% of voice users - by 2007/8?
flarion.com
(2) How the heck is Flarion going to persuade all of the carriers to junk their just-getting-off-the-ground 3G wireless data networks in which countless hundreds of billions/trillions of largely borrowed currency have already been invested?
OFDM is clearly something to keep an eye on if one is a QCOM investor, but the "if we build it they will come" notion of how the best wireless data technology will somehow take the market by storm is just plain silly. As Qualcomm's experience over the past ten years has shown, it will take a long time, deep pockets, brilliant technical developments, and tons of sheer hard work and perseverance before some "new" wireless data technology will displace the 3G wireless data approaches that carriers worldwide are already well entrenched in.
David T. |
