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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam Citron who wrote (20139)	3/10/2007 2:10:44 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 46821

Hi Sam, The article you posted makes for interesting reading, but it attempts to evoke unfounded concerns, IMO. A more technically discerning author might have focused on other aspects of delivering such a far flung platform as a WiFi network for the city of Los Angeles, but I'll stick with what was written. As I've often mused in the past, and as a friend of mine more recently reminded me, this is the type of problem (actually succeeding in the build out of a city-scale network that abruptly ends at the city's borders) that one would actually like to have. The problem is to first get there in a manner that leaves one whole. The article contains a lot of the push-pull dynamics that many of us have witnessed taking place between neighboring municipalities - and regions, even - when one city's interests (carriers, businesses, or its inhabitants under the auspices of the local government, itself) install a metro fiber infrastructure as a means of attracting tax dollars from new real estate buyers away from competing venues, whether it's the next town, or even from other regions around the nation when it comes to enterprise level headquarters building campuses and processing centers. The notion that wireless will stop shot at the city limits for any appreciable amount of time seems about as unlikely as sprawl stopping on a dime, as well. Despite who owns the poles, wireless creep will prove to be as incessant as fiber creep has proved over the past, always moving forward, never looking back. The one caveat here is the shorter life spans associated with individual wireless platforms than those of embedded fiber plant, which may leave wireless more vulnerable to longer periods of interruption during upgrades or outages, or worse, abandonment, under the worst of conditions. Whereas, the life expectancy of fiber is still an unproven quesstimate. Where distressed neighborhoods bordering the city would appear handicapped, I submit that they will, with time, and through various means become targeted by purveyors of new business models, which in all likelihood would seek to target their demographics more narrowly, or they might become the recipients of government funding of one form or another, or some combination thereof. And I don't think that it's entirely out of the question that, by 2009, as the article stipulates, a host of free wireless services might appear that could even displace the appeal factor of the larger city-scale network next door. (See my next post on this point). As for the tribulations that might be associated with cohabitation in parks, restaurants and other public areas with the type of individual who peers into their screens all day creating Powerpoints and drooling over the latest Web 2.0 tools? And enduring the pressures associated with keeping up with one's emails and constantly having to respond to text messages while in the park? If wireless ever reaches the point where it becomes as pervasive as many think that it will, and I feel most certain that it will, I could envisage some establishments actually profiting from a certain cut of clientèle in the future who will pay for the privilege of sitting down to lunch, or spending leisurely time in a privately owned park or atrium, in which wireless services are entirely banned or jammed. FAC