Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Broadband competition might still be possible

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 00:44:25 -0500

-------- Original Message --------
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Broadband competition might still be possible

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/5358106.htm?
template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

Posted on Mon, Mar. 10, 2003  

Broadband competition might still be possible
By Dan Gillmor
Mercury News Technology Columnist

When anyone asks how to find innovation in technology today, I answer, ``Look 
where you don't find monopoly control or crushing regulation.'' One such place 
is in wireless communications, specifically in the open-to-all part of the 
airwaves, and lately I'm seeing some things that give me hope for the broadband 
future America so desperately needs to create.

Regulatory missteps and marketplace misbehavior are creating a dangerous 
duopoly in the ``last mile'' of data access to our homes and small businesses. 
Unless wireless can compete, the regional telephone and cable monopolies will 
control communications well into the 21st century.

I'm beginning to think that wireless can compete, because of enormous recent 
innovation in what's called the ``unlicensed spectrum.'' That's the part of the 
airwaves not controlled by government or specific industries and companies.

The rise of the 802.11 ``Wi-Fi'' wireless standard, from a tiny blip to a more 
and more essential part of everyday communications, shows how progress thrives 
in a truly open marketplace. But Wi-Fi isn't the only interesting story.

Tom Freeburg and his colleagues at Canopy Wireless Broadband Products, a unit 
of electronics giant Motorola, are telling one of the most intriguing stories 
of all. They've come up with a system that could bypass, at least for the near 
term, the wire-line duopoly in urban and suburban areas. The technology may 
also turn out to be nearly ideal for deployment in rural areas.

The radio-based Canopy system uses unlicensed spectrum, so no one has to ask 
for regulatory approval. The price is low enough -- a company or Internet 
service provider can serve hundreds of customers for about $20,000 in start-up 
equipment costs -- and it looks easy to deploy. Best of all, it offers 
excellent data-transfer rates, in the range of 6 to 7 megabits a second, which 
is much faster than the cable and phone-based alternatives today, though ISPs 
offering Canopy-based services commonly ratchet down individual customers' 
capacity to some extent.

A Canopy ``access point'' -- the base station serving end users -- has six 
radios, each of which covers 60 degrees of a circle, so the six can radiate and 
receive signals in all directions. It's sensitive to barriers such as groves of 
trees and most modern buildings, especially as the range -- which can be as far 
as 10 miles from the access point -- increases. An Internet service provider 
can set up as many access points as needed to serve an area if the population 
density and customer demand are too high for one access point to serve everyone.

Motorola is creating an international distribution network for Canopy, and says 
there are ``tens of thousands'' of these radios in use around the United States 
so far, and several hundred customers that have set up at least one access 
point.

One of Motorola's customers is start-up Neopolitan Networks in Palo Alto. The 
company sells extremely high-speed data connections and associated services. It 
has business customers in south Florida and Silicon Valley, including the 
Peninsula, San Jose and the East Bay, and uses Canopy for some installations.

Frank R. Robles, Neopolitan's founder and chief executive, says the Canopy 
system offers superior technical quality -- including customer radios that are 
much lighter than competitive models -- and flexibility in configuration. The 
bottom line, he says, is the ability to offer a serious alternative to the 
dominant data carriers.

Neopolitan plans to offer the service to residential customers, first in multi-
dwelling buildings such as high-rise apartments and condominiums, and later 
single-family homes. Robles says the price will be about $50 a month, but for 
that money the customer will get a faster, more reliable connection -- in both 
directions -- than cable or DSL service now offers.

Making the connection fast in both directions, uploading and downloading, is 
essential for things like Net-based video conferencing, among other things. 
Even more important, from his perspective (and I emphatically agree), is 
helping the Internet achieve its original promise.

Robles says, ``I'm trying to open it up so people can be producers, not just 
consumers,'' of broadband information.

Serious bandwidth like this could bring another benefit. Voice traffic takes up 
very little space on a fat data pipe. ``Voice over Internet Protocol'' (VoIP), 
bypassing local phone companies, is starting to make serious inroads as more 
people get fast connections.

Robles says the Canopy system's architecture makes VoIP a snap to add to a 
customer's account. That has a nice ring.

For his part, Freeburg avoids talk of bypassing the local phone monopolies for 
voice traffic. He does say, however, that his goal ``is to get rid of all the 
wires in the local loop.'' Same difference. May he succeed.

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