Ken,
This is a tad ironic. I began answering your previous post by addressing the voice over cable aspect, then I thought that I was projecting again, and reversed it by focusing on the broader bandwidth considerations. Just goes to prove what John stated about the difficulty of reading one another on the Internet during the first pass, without getting into iterative clarifications.
There are some other similarities between your reply and John's as well, with regard to the way that each of these models (wireless and cable) perceive their optimum use of resources.
The CableTV Barons seem to focus on the bandwidth hit as the only thing they have to worry about, along with some common and consistent routing taking place between themselves. They're in for a big surprise, if that's all they think global voice network administration is about. But this is probably the case, coming from the same organizations who went blindly, relatively speaking, into a service sector without an ample back-office infrastructure in place, never mind automated service creation.
I don't mean to sound overly harsh here, but those are simply the facts, and cultural traits like those don't go away overnight.
John,
On the wireless side, what you say is true about the difficulty of passing voice over IP at this time, but I feel confident that improvements in gateway and interoperability are in the offing. Also, if Cellular and PCS can now handle voice today at 13 kb/s using compression and switched technologies, then they should have an easier time of it in the future at 5 to 7 kb/s over IP. Or at least that is the conclusion that one would reach on the surface... but again, there is more to it than that which meets the eye, I'm sure.
The other reason why I think voice may be favored is due to its current pricing reference, being much higher for comparable resources that the imagined "freeness" of the 'net's. It would be a lot easier to attract existing PCS users who are accustomed to paying 10c per minute into a 7c VoIP service, than it would be to lure those who are accustomed to the 'all you can eat' model onto the same pricing scheme. In my view, it's going to come down to where the providers think they can attract the most revenue for their buck, and how they can best leverage the efficiencies of IP. And finally, I think that if they don't put data on their nets, then voice will not suffer from the ills of contention. Of course, I could be wrong about this.
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All,
There is an interesting article, and quite appropriate at this point, in this week's EE News, titled:
" 'Wireless Internet' takes multiple meanings at CTIA" by Loring Wirbel
It appears that the author agrees with you, John, or at least his filters are set to the same attributes as yours -g-
eet.com
I've also posted it below for convenience and posterity.
Enjoy, Frank Coluccio
========================begin article:
"Wireless Internet" takes multiple meanings at CTIA
By Loring Wirbel
EE Times
(02/11/99, 6:08 p.m. EDT)
NEW ORLEANS New companies, alliances and products struggled to come to grips with a still-undefined market for wireless Internet services at the Cellular Telephone Industry Association's Wireless '99 show this week. Announcements ran a broad gamut from new players pursuing broadband fixed wireless services to fresh efforts to deliver simple messaging schemes over traditional circuit-switched networks.
Competition flared just below the surface here in areas including microbrowsers for next-generation handheld devices and server-based software tools. But most agreed that the future of cellular systems lay not in voiceband services but in a general shift toward Internet Protocol data over any wireless system.
Much of the action swirled around true broadband millimeter-wave services like Local Multipoint Distribution Service (LMDS). Not only were there dedicated sessions on broadband LMDS, but millimeter-wave startup Wavtrace Inc. (Bellevue, Wash.) elected to launch its broadband-access system at the show, while wireless-ATM specialist Netro Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) launched an effort to switch gears to LMDS and other licensed access services.
Narrowband data services also enjoyed a renaissance of sorts, as developers formed alliances to exploit simple messaging methods, primarily the Short Message Service (SMS) initially developed for GSM cellular. SMS found a new home in the iDen Enhanced Specialized Mobile Radio band from Nextel Communications Inc. and Motorola Inc., as those two companies formed new links with Unwired Planet Inc. and other software developers. Separately, Motorola's computer group (Tempe, Ariz.) announced a dedicated SMS server, developed in conjunction with ADC NewNet, for handling nationwide SMS distribution in iDen networks.
The upshot was to put the 800-MHz digital cellular and 1.9-GHz PCS communities on notice that they must evolve a range of data services for today's frequency bands and the wider-band channels promised by third-generation (3G) cell phones. Merle Gilmore, president of the Motorola Communications Enterprise Sector, said that these transitions drove Motorola's deal, announced last Monday, to work with Cisco Systems Inc. on bringing advanced IP routing and switching to cellular networks.
"One of our first goals is adding wireless-data capabilities to existing networks, and this will start in the 2.5G generation," Gilmore said. "More important is to put in place a migration path to move [circuit] switched hierarchical networks to a distributed, peer-to-peer, IP-based net."
This change in the physical network is sparking software battles in client and server worlds. A microbrowser war is emerging between Unwired Planet and Microsoft Corp., as the latter company divides its interests between independent CE-based microbrowsers optimized for Windows and work with Qualcomm Inc. (San Diego) on a "personal portal" for unified server-based applications accessible through small PDAs and cellular phones.
That effort-undertaken by the pair's Wireless Knowledge joint venture-begins to intrude on server-based information tools such as the ByeDesk agent technology from Fujitsu Software Corp. and the DNS Peering tools launched at the show by Canadian startup Saraide.com Corp.
The lesson for carriers is to go broad, exemplified at Wireless '99 by a flurry of deals that link regional and national wireless carriers to specific handset and PDA developers and software houses working on wireless data.
Broadband grows up
The obvious first front is LMDS and similar high-frequency systems. Wavtrace, a company with founders from Motorola, Siemens, MCI and other key vendors, launched what it called the first broadband Internet access system based on time-division duplexed (TDD) channels. Chief executive Tom van Overbeek said that TDD technology was critical in allowing LMDS to support the type of symmetrical services currently served by symmetric and high-bit-rate DSL (digital subscriber line) schemes. Another LMDS startup, Ensemble Communications Inc., is rumored to be working on a TDD LMDS system as well, but is said to be several months from announcing systems.
Wavtrace announced initial trials of its system at Virginia Tech, and chief technology officer Bob Foster predicted a growing interest in the dynamic bandwidth-allocation features that omnidirectional TDD radio allows.
Netro, a company that got its start two years ago touting point-to-point wireless ATM, made an extended pitch at the show for using its point-to-multipoint AirStar product line in a variety of millimeter frequency bands, corresponding to many regions' LMDS plans. Cynthia Hillery, vice president of marketing, said that the 28-GHz version of the system for the United States will follow versions for 26, 10 and 39 GHz. The North American LMDS market is not as mature as in other nations, she said, where wireless broadband access is often the only Internet option available.
Traditional cellular providers are looking to chip and subsystem developers for help in crafting midrate wideband services to deploy prior to the availability of 3G 384-kbit/second channels. Qualcomm, which made a strong push for its High Data Rate system at last year's PCS show, is trying to show carriers how to install HDR alongside CDMA cellular and future 3G systems in unified basestations. HDR uses dedicated bands to provide 128-kbit to 1-Mbit channels alongside traditional cellular service.
Qualcomm anticipates that the only way data service can be made profitable is by amortizing the cost of the technology over a common cellular infrastructure, said Paul Jacobs, president of the consumer products division.
SMS, long popular in Europe for simplified low-data-rate messages in a GSM environment, made a big splash as Nextel forged deals with Motorola, Netscape Communications Inc. and Unwired Planet to provide simplified Internet access using Motorola iDen phones and the SMS message structure. Mary Evren, business-development manager for wireless data at Nextel, emphasized that her company will work with application developers in SMS, circuit-data and packet-data realms. She said developers often need some basic training on the types of e-mail and messages they want to support. Some assume they want a full packet-data service when SMS will actually work more reliably, she said.
The telecom team in Motorola's computer group is providing fault-tolerant systems, developed in conjunction with ADC NewNet, for SMS server duty. They will be deployed as part of the iDen infrastructure for networks like Nextel's that use the service.
This begs the question of what kind of platform wireless users will want for interfacing to the Internet. LMDS and other millimeter-wave services clearly are oriented to desktop platforms, where full browsers and multimedia can be supported. The microbrowser makers, on the other hand, see the phone with a small display as the access platform.
New, augmented phone/PDA systems from companies such as Innovative Global Solutions Inc. (La Jolla, Calif.) were on view at the show, offering enhanced Web access based on the Unwired Planet browser. But Ben Linder, Unwired Planet's vice president of marketing, said it was just as interesting to see a simple four-line browser show up on the tiny iDen phones. The fact that these mini phones can access scores of Web sites shows that Unwired Planet is gaining ground in getting its Web tools widely deployed, he said.
The next battleground may be server tools. Wireless Knowledge, the Qualcomm-Microsoft venture, launched the first service offering for mobile server-based Internet access, dubbed Revolv. The company showcased 11 developers working in the Revolv environment for Windows platforms, and pledged to have other service suites available in coming months. Wireless Knowledge sees its server technology as enabling "personal portals" for Web service, based on a mobile user's personal Web space.
Others in this realm include Fujitsu Software's ByeDesk and newcomer Saraide.com (Nepean, Ont.), which grew out of a skunkworks program at Nortel Networks. ByeDesk already incorporates Palm Pilots and phones for its "agent push" technology. It added two-way paging systems to its SMS-enabled networks this past week.
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