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To: carranza2 who wrote (35274)	6/22/2003 3:34:05 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 74559

Hi again C2. In my previous post, I of course meant Irwin thinks voice in CDMA will not, or won't, be replaced, but data is not so secure in CDMA [even in 1xEV-DO]. I had a little brain spazz when typing. But back to the cost business. The point of the subscriber equipment being so cheap is that WiFi is ready now for sale at prices which subscribers can afford. WiFi in RoamAD can be sold for US10c a megabyte and make money, covering the building rental for the pop, access point hardware and all the rest of what's needed. 10c a megabyte is so cheap that people will use a LOT of it. They won't watch random streaming video at that price [some will, such as my NZ$430 an hour tax lawyer]. But they'll use all the normal stuff they want. I use half a gigabyte a month at that price and sometimes a gigabyte, on my faster ADSL line at home and don't worry about the cost. For US$20 I can be up and running on the RoamAD network [a WiFi PCMCIA card is about that now I think] compared with US$700 for a Telecom 1xRTT PCMCIA card [which is more than a whole iPAQ pocket PC]. Increasingly, WiFi will be built into devices and people won't have any incremental cost to log on. After logging on, a fixed monthly charge of US$5 would provide basic cash flow to RoamAD and capture those high value transactions which justify users logging on without giving away all the benefits to the subscriber for a mere 10c a megabyte. Then, 10c a megabyte would allow them to yak away or cerf to their heart's content, on lower value entertainment value usage. Unbelievably, Telecom is trying to charge SMS [short message service] style prices for Microsoft Messenger messages. They are insane! NZ$8 per megabyte is quite mad let alone the huge prices they are trying to get away with on Messenger charges by the message. Telecom will do the same with 1xEV-DO. Being able to provide services cheap [as RoamAD can do] doesn't mean they can't make money. That means they CAN make money. That's because the subscriber's HR [TM], hourly rate, is much less than they'd pay to use RoamAD all they like. That means subscribers would get a large consumer surplus by using RoamAD. That's what gets buyers of things going. A large consumer surplus. In common lingo, a bargain. RoamAD can charge so little that people will crowd on and use the service a LOT and cover their costs easily. Timing is the tricky part. Right now, there aren't enough people running around with WiFi in their gadgets to justify building large RoamAD networks. But as costs drop and the proportion of people holding WiFi devices rises, it'll be prime time for WiFi networks. There's a bit of chicken and egg, but 3% of the USA population already has WiFi so they can do as I am right now, lying wireless in bed with my notebook, instead of being on the mainframe upstairs in the cold. This year, the Centrino is out and more and more devices will have WiFi built in so that people can use their business, home or Starbucks hot spot WiFi. 330 kbps isn't all that fast, but it's better than most people get. Most people are on dial up modems. I've used it quite a bit and it is heaps fast for critical applications such as email, MS Messenger, Silicon Investor and normal web cerfing. Streaming video is okay on it too but of course faster would be better. 802.11g in OFDM will be faster and will also increase capacity, not that capacity will be a problem until there are hordes of people all cerfing in 802.11b in a few years. The nice thing about 802.11g is that it's backward compatible with 802.11b, so the old timers will be able to stay logged on and the old pop equipment will be able to be moved out to areas where the cost of equipment normally wouldn't justify a RoamAD network. So, RoamAD will be able to provide seamless coverage, high speed, mobile, low cost and low subscriber up-front cost service. That's not a bad combination and beats anything. With MS Messenger, people could click on "talk" and have a US10c a megabyte conversation over IP [internet protocol] which is a LOT cheaper than Telecom's voice over CDMA prices. My main worry is competition. I don't believe free services can justify themselves. There is a non-zero US3c a megabyte charge to get through the fibre out of New Zealand. But there is opportunity for hot-spot providers to compete. They have no engineering charges - just plug the hot spot into their ADSL and bingo, or Boingo, there's coverage of sorts - at least at the premises so people won't worry that they'll miss messages while they have a coffee and can flip a few screens on to catch up with email or something. RoamAD has to negotiate building access and rental, instal small antennae and a box of gizzards and tune it up so that coverage is good. That's the hard part. A hot spot operators cheap and nasty plug-in access point does a quick and dirty job which might be good enough and will certainly claim a lot of customers. We'll see. The jury's out but my money's in. Mqurice