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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (2685)	1/30/1999 1:37:00 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5390

NORTEL PULLS PLUG ON WLL PLANT In a shock move, Nortel has announced the closure of its Paignton, Devon manufacturing plant which is responsible for producing the Proximity I wireless local loop (WLL) products.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (2685)	1/30/1999 1:38:00 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5390

FAREWELL TELEPOINT The closure of Singapore Telecom's Callzone CT2 Telepoint signals the end of an era... Even the most ardent free marketeers must feel a twinge of regret for a technology which promised so much but which fell under the wheels of the GSM juggernaut. OK ROLL ON THE NEXT GENERATION OF CORDLESS TELEPHONES.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (2685)	1/30/1999 1:40:00 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5390

IONICA-THE STORY SO FAR Ionica first launched its wireless access service in East Anglia in May 1996, targeting the residential and small business market using fixed access technology developed by Nortel. The company's plan, according to founder Nigel Playford, was to win a 5% share of the UK telecommunications market by 2000-equivalent to having around one million customers. Initially Ionica seemed on track to achieve its goal with a strong marketing campaign stimulating initial demand. On the back of this good start the company went public in June 1997 and was welcomed with open arms by the Stock Market. Shares in Ionica went for 390 pence valuing the company at GBP600 million plus. By the spring of 1997 Ionica had expanded into the Midlands and was planning to move into Yorkshire, but software problems in its base stations, which severely reduced capacity, and unspecified deployment 'difficulties' were slowing rollout schedules. ' 'DIFFICULTIES'? UNSPECIFIED? IT LOOKS LIKE TOWER FOUNDATIONS TOO BIG.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (2685)	1/30/1999 1:42:00 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5390

PROBLEMS FOR THAI CORDLESS OPERATOR Editor: IAN CHANNING Issue Date: 13 January 1999 Thailand's Personal Cordless Telephone (PCT) network is struggling to survive and looks likely to cease operating in the near future. Despite having around 110,000 customers the network, which uses a modified version of Japan's PHS (Personal Handyphone System) technology, is running ever deeper into debt. Network operator Telecomasia Corp (TA) is unable to charge its customers because once it begins issuing bills it is supposed to start paying back its infrastructure supplier NEC. In an effort to resolve the situation, TA tried to close down the PCT network, claiming the technology was 'inappropriate' for Thailand but this move was rejected by national regulator Telephone Organisation of Thailand (TOT). To date, TA has invested between USD400 and USD600 million in the PCT network but has not achieved the level of coverage necessary to ensure a good quality of service. Under the agreement with NEC more than 50,000 PCT base stations were to be installed to provide total coverage of metropolitan Bangkok. Thus far NEC has installed 31,000 outdoor sites and over 12,000 in-building sites, insufficient say customers to provide the necessary coverage. TA also operates a fixed line network which is losing revenue because its customers are using their (free) PCT phones to make calls. TA is negotiating with its creditors to extend the rollover of its loan payments and recently announced that had reached agreement in these negotiations.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (2685)	1/30/1999 1:44:00 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5390

WLL ENGINEERS MURDERED IN CHECHNYA Editor: IAN CHANNING Issue Date: 16 December 1998 Four engineers, kidnapped early in October whilst working in Chechyna, have been murdered. The men, who were employed by Granger Telecom of Weybridge, Surrey, were Britons Darren Hickey (27), Peter Kennedy (46) and Rudolf Petschi (42), and New Zealander Stanley Shaw (58). No firm details concerning the brutal murders were available at the time of going to press but the men may have been killed following a bungled rescue attempt by Chechyan security forces. Press reports suggest that the kidnappers, who have never been identified, may have become aware of the proposed rescue attempt and killed the engineers in an 'act of defiance'. AT LEAST THE USERS IN THE PLACES I IMPELEMNTED WLLL DIDN'T GET THAT FAR.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (2685)	1/30/1999 2:42:00 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 5390

It is the propagation, Maurice! I haven't come back to that issue yet because it is complex for someone who doesn't have a background in microwave. (Moreover I'm not retired yet.) Let me write under the assumption that you don't know microwaves. If you know, please, correct me. Maurice, electromagnetic waves tend to travel straight the higher the frequency. GSM 900MHz spreads around. Light, the visible part of spectrum travels in straight path. What this has to do with the towers, foundations and soil becomes clear later. As the frequency goes higher, you get more bandwidth so you get more information transported over the radio medium. But you pay a price. As the freq. goes higher they start behaving like visible light, they suffer absorption, refraction, reflection. Radio signals are faster attenuated as they travel in the free space. In short a higher freq. gets useless with shorter distance to the transmitter. At lower frequency a radio signal goes further. WLL DECT, the one I implemented, operates at 1.8GHz. At this freq. you have to space your base stations with short distance between one another. So you have to construct more towers to cover a given area. Since WLL only make economic sense in a high density users' area, this areas usually do not have -in Asia- a lot of room to construct towers. So we decided to erect masts. Not the guyed type but self-standing masts. The foundation for these masts have to be very big because of the whole weight of the mast and the base station have to be dispersed over a wide area. We needed that wider area because the soil bearing capacity is very low 0.5 Kg per square inch. More civil works means more costs. More wider area means a limitation on the sites you can choose. Further, this was the tropics the tree coverage is high. So we have to construct these masts to clear the tree coverage adding to the problem above. WLL roots are its problems. WLL is a technology used in cordless PABX's. You give a WLL handy for the people roam around you office, your warehouse or construction site. Someone have the 'brillant' idea of using WLL as a replacement to the copper local loop, in Chechenya, Brazil and Thailand. But it dind't work. Because it requires too much engineering and too much infrastructure. I don't trust ny technology -and I don't mean telecoms only- that is too 'mass' intensive. Now if you say that one day GSM will hit the wall, and run out of carrying capacity and there is a new technology that solves the problem I agree with you. But do not call it WLL. WLL, MMDS and LMDS have no future and will never take off. But be careful. Engineers have this nasty -for investors- mania of always extracting more out of what they already have. Remember copper. Fiber to the home didn't take off because we can extract more bandwidth out of existing copper with clever components and algorithms. Now if they did this with copper imagine what they can do with a chunk of the spectrum! Moreover, these GSM infrastructure guys are charging high prices for the stuff they sell that there is room for fighting a price war against new entrants -Ionica, CT2 and PHS- that is not negligible. Now that are at it I go to the end: The soil of a region seating on a sedimentary basin is usually softer. It consists of sediments deposited by water running down the mountain slopes. You have volcanoes in Kiwi land. All that material runing down the slopes is deposited in the plains below near the sea. Ask some geological survey guys what is the soil's bearing capacity is these areas.