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To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (11012)	4/18/2001 12:16:28 AM
From: Peter Ecclesine	Respond to of 12823

Hi Frank, No, I haven't heard about Broadband2Wireless (BB2W). I did hear the saga about Darwin Networks and the amateur radio operator in Dallas. Note that amateurs also share spectrum in 5GHz, tho not with 1500W PEP ;-) My single thought is 'if it is good enough for money, its good enough for a license.' ;-) The FCC's job is to protect license holders from interference, and they will. Metricom on the barby anyone ;-) petere

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (11012)	4/18/2001 1:59:07 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 12823

Cisco looks to proprietary metro solution for salvation By Simon Marshall, Total Telecom 17 April 2001 Cisco Systems may have just announced its worst financial figures yet, but it looked on Tuesday to be planning an escape route by the year-end through systems that integrate IP routing and intelligent optical transport, with the promise of reducing costs for service providers. The firm's so-called IP+Optical strategy, which involves enabling routers to signal the metropolitan optical network to provision bandwidth on wavelengths, is not a new concept, but Cisco is now more eager than ever to develop and launch products. "Because of the economic downturn, we now have to concentrate on markets which make us profit," Cisco's optical networking group marketing programs manager Johann Strauss told Total Telecom, referring to the metropolitan area. "Rather than just addressing everything in the market with a general broadband solution, we have to aim for profit. We can bring our customers back into profit by driving down their operating and maintenance costs," he said. Cisco confirmed Tuesday it will cut 17%, or 8,500 staff, and report Q3 profits that fall below forecasts for the second consecutive quarter, a position that makes Cisco's IP+Optical bet crucial to boosting its bottom line and keeping competitors at bay. According to Strauss, while those competitors insist on "overlaying" existing optical networks with IP equipment - making them relatively complex to manage and control - Cisco has taken a different approach. "There's an overlay model and there's an integration model," said Strauss, "and we favor the integration model." This integration approach, which Strauss clearly sees as a competitive differentiator, means upgrading router software and adopting Cisco's Optical Control Plane (OCP) to manage network elements in both the IP and optical transport layers. "We can reduce the number of network management tools compared to Nortel, [because] they're favoring an overlay model," opined Strauss. But there may be a downside. Asked if service providers that already own competitive products, such as Juniper core routers, could use them within Cisco's OCP framework alongside Cisco IP routers, Strauss said "this isn't possible today." Interoperability could become a flaw in Cisco's strategy to profit from its OCP initiative if service providers are forced to install Cisco-only kit, and the Silicon Valley-based vendor has been criticized for a proprietary approach in the past. "These will be proprietary systems for the next two years," admitted Strauss, but said this was necessarily the case because Cisco was leading the way with OCP. It's understood Cisco refers to the system as the "Unified Control Plane" now, rather than use the "Optical" monicker it was originally given, which may reflect its concerns. Strauss claims the first fruits of the IP+Optical strategy will appear in the products of Cisco Powered Network suppliers by the end of this calendar year, although a trial system has already tested successfully at the Optical Fiber Communications show in Anaheim, California. COMENT: I think CSCO is at the momenty pondering how much they will shrink to its natural size. Remember Paul Kennedy explaining us of global overstretch? Empires would expand itself until they were overstreteched, Then they would shrink to its natural size. CSCO is in the process of shrinking to its natural size. First stiops buying new companies. The thrown overboard the ones not immediately needed. Then cutting products that has no future. We know that LAN gear, routers and stuff -the stuff where CSCO came from, obviously will remamin in the smaller CSCO. The battle now is to see what is kept and what would be jettisoned in this shrinking. People within CSCO would try hard to keep their parts of the empire: broadband wireless, ADSL and Optic+Transport.

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (11012)	4/18/2001 10:49:00 PM
From: Peter Ecclesine	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 12823

Hi Frank, RCR News, 18 April rcrnews.com has a more complete story on BB2W. Here is the unique part: According to Paul Adams, co-founder and chief executive officer of BB2W, Airora is unique in that it can be provisioned in less than a day, a feat enabled by the core of BB2W’s technology—a back-office operations support system, designed and implemented in cooperation with PricewaterhouseCoopers. It incorporates a Web-based prequalification system that allows prospective customers and network service provider partners to determine Airora’s availability in a given area, sign customers up for service and view and manage accounts via the Web. “We’re really trying to perfect the process and perfect the network,” said Adams. “We spent a lot of time and money on building the prequalification tool.” Interested customers can call a toll-free number to find out if their home or office is within a BB2W service area. If the home or office is accessible, BB2W ships the customer a 3-by-4-inch wireless modem overnight, and upon completion of the software installation, which takes a few minutes, the user’s desktop or laptop computer is connected. Logistics and enrollment - gotta have both. Sharing 1.5Mbps in a one mile radius, unlimited use for $50 a month. Equipment is $99 for a one year committment. petere Shades of CellularVision Shades of CellularVision