Muniwireless newsletter 8 Jan 2009: top stories of 2008; Clearwire launches in Portland
Happy New Year! I am sending out the newsletter again as promised. If you have not been to the Muniwireless website in months, you will see that it has been redesigned. The biggest change is the addition of a WiMAX section, whose editor is Paul Kapustka, founder of Sidecut Reports.
2009 is going to be a difficult one and nobody knows what is going to happen. The talking heads on CNBC speculate about the rise and fall of the capital markets and real estate, but they have no clue. No one does, least of all the analysts who predicted $400 per barrel of oil by the end of 2008. Pity the airlines who followed their advice and hedged against cheap oil. I don’t have a crystal ball either so I won’t make any predictions. What I did was much easier: I looked back on the 2008 Muniwireless articles and pulled out the ones that I thought were the top stories: Top Muniwireless stories of 2008. I do see several trends.
(1) Mobile WiMAX gets rolled out slowly.
WiMAX operators are continuing to roll out nomadic/mobile service around the world. Clearwire has followed its Baltimore launch with the rollout of WiMAX service in Portland. Amsterdam’s WorldMax has just increased the speeds on its WiMAX network to 5 Mbps downstream (although the upstream bandwidth is still a “dialup” 256 Kbps). WiMAX-enabled devices, portable routers and multi-frequency USB WiMAX adapters are also coming on the market. But there’s some bad news as well: Intel has just written off its $1 billion investment in Clearwire (although that is an accounting matter and may not affect how Clearwire actually performs in the coming years). Nokia has just canceled its N810 WiMAX Tablet, which never really saw the light of day in many countries (their excuse is laughable).
Intel writes off $1 billion Clearwire investment
At the Clearwire Portland launch event
Coming soon from Clearwire: portable Wi-Fi/WiMAX router
Nokia cancels N810 WiMAX Tablet
Clearwire ‘business pricing’ emerges
Amsterdam WiMAX provider increases download speed to 5 Mbps
Map of global WiMAX nomadic/mobile service
(2) Demand for more WiFi from iPhone and iPod Touch users.
I was at Macworld this week and heard the same old familiar complaint: AT&T’s 3G network sucked. What do you expect? There were hundreds of Mac fanboys and fangirls, many of whom were using their iPhones. I heard that AT&T had to add more capacity to the 3G network by bringing in “portable” 3G cells but it did not help. People had trouble even getting voice calls to work. If, however, like me you have a T-Mobile prepaid card on a Nokia phone, things worked just fine. Or if you used your iPod Touch to make calls via Truphone on the WiFi network, you would have been fine.
Make Skype calls from your iPhone and iPod Touch via Truphone
Begin 2009 with a 3G iPhone for 19 euros
More on the French decision to ban iPhone exclusivity
(3) Fiber network unbundling in Europe, more competition in the cellular and broadband markets.
ARCEP, the French telecom regulator, has a new boss. Over the years, ARCEP has been aggressive in going after France Telecom’s unsavory anticompetitive practices. Its main contribution: bringing competition to the mobile and broadband markets in France. They’ve done this by forcing the operators to share lines and fiber ducts into buildings. In the cellular space, they have lowered the rates at which the operators charge one another for terminating calls. The Netherlands is also going full steam ahead with fiber deployments after KPN, the incumbent, entered into a deal with fiber company, Reggefiber, for an open network.
New ARCEP boss faces challenges on wireless and fiber issues
Local governments have significant impact on broadband competition in France
Tensions break out between operators and French telecom regulator
Dutch FTTH joint venture opens network to competition, gets green light from regulator
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Public tender announcement: check out the RFI from the city of Somerville, Massachusetts for the citywide wireless broadband network. If you want news of RFIs and RFPs, delivered to you directly, join my RFP Email alerts mailing list. Just email me: esme@muniwireless.com.
Muniwireless Linked In Group: Join the MuniWireless / Muni WiMAX Linked In Group for networking and discussions. Over 320 members as of 8 January 2009.
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