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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: axial who wrote (10950)	4/15/2001 7:30:04 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Thanks. Out of all the major areas of technology today I believe FWBB is the most misunderstood and unappreciated. I don't claim to be an expert in the technology, as I have never worked directly in the industry or wireless research lab. However, I do have a degree in electrical engineering and have been around long enough to see the evolution of several remarkable technologies grow into remarkable industries. My career has been spent in technical sales and marketing and I have often been involved with selling new products and concepts. For the dynamics of FBBW to play out, the cost has to be very attractive, not only to gain end customers but to get the somewhat misguided and stodgy fixed-wired-brains of the major carriers to put sufficient capital and marketing muscle behind it. I think that FWBB has a place in the market distinct from mobile wireless because it can take best advantage of available bandwidth. Cost reduction is a mater of time and market development - from all that I can determine there are no "show stoppers"; i.e. challenging technological hurdles to developing OFDM chip sets (some companies say it has already been done) and no reason to think that costs won't be reduced and features and capabilities increased for several years to come. On the other hand, when I look at DSL and cable I see a relatively mature field of technology that is faced with a point-to-point modality that inherently limits technical innovation to the degree present in FBBW. Technical innovations such as MIMO are extremely exciting because they shatter previous conceptions about the limitations this field will face. I also find the "packet-hop" type of approach very exciting; I can picture a "wireless network fabric of users" that will make up a wireless network fabric. In this case the rule the "sum of the whole is greater than the parts" applies. A combination of MIMO and "packet-hop" possibly will evolve over time. Think about it; expand the concept of MIMO from multiple paths between the users and the towers to multiple paths between all the users and then that "local wireless network fabric” (for lack of a better term) being connected through multiple users to link to the towers and/or to fiber, cable or DSL Internet backbone. Inevitably, such wireless networks will be viewed as more stable, more reliable, have greater available bandwidth and lower cost than any physical wire or fiber connection could ever hope to achieve.