Last Weeks Rant – Well That Was Disappointing

For those who didn’t notice I tried to use the mail merge tool and sent a note with the subject “Funny how the conversation has diminished with all the tools at our disposal” . It was suppose to lead into this email.
Other than three people with an unsubscribe request, I am not sure anyone opened it. Here is what I wanted you to read.

I was listening to NPR http://n.pr/KOwWSu this weekend and they were having a debate as to whether we were really communicating on the Internet or just falling in love with our voice (and those that agree with us). It occurred to me that I was not hearing like I used to from friends about my articles and posts.
So I am hoping you find something interesting in my posts and respond. I will post your replies on appropriate blog or keep them to myself if that is what you prefer.

Here are the places I posted last week.

First of all I gave a lecture at Pace University to a class the Internet as Universal Service. It’s an interesting contrast looking at POTS, IP, GSM and Wi-Fi. In the end I think Wi-Fi is going to be the only safe technology to trust as end to end. I say this since LTE is being deployed as proprietary as possible by the carriers. I understood that for the first few years since the drive was there to get something to catch up to data demand. However, it’s clear this is going to be the norm and not the early adoption issue. http://www.slideshare.net/alwaysoncarl/does-the-mobile-internet

Cooper’s Law may be thwarted by bad deployments and the opportunity for competition is pretty sad. Last week we saw Lightsquared give up the ghost, I swapped my phone from a lesser party back to one of the two big players. http://www.mobilitytechzone.com/topics/4g-wirelessevolution/articles/2012/05/16/290511-cancelled-my-4g-phone-evidently-it-wasnt-primary.htm I went to order from Clearwire and realized the process was going to drive me nuts so I gave up. Pretty Sad and it indicates why there is reluctance to leave the incumbents.

Candidly it’s easier and the fact that the cable operators sold spectrum co to Verizon Wireless points out how hard it is to break in. While our friends in WISPA, do a great job supporting cost conscious customers, the general consumer market is not very flexible. When companies like Lightsquared go under and Clearwire revamps it makes it harder for the next company to break out.

I have friends tell me that Apple and Google are the real carriers and looking at how resentful ATT is that the bulk of the bucks go to Cupertino you can see there is no need for Apple to hurry to buy a carrier.

However, the market cap on Clearwire is so low and the bandwidth is so great, now may be the time. Perhaps it will be Amazon.

I should also note that I was at Blackberry Jam in Orlando two weeks ago so I don’t mean my quoting of others to suggest I think that devices are going to be duopoly like the wireline. In reality I think Microsoft and RIM are both on the right track. You will hear more about this as soon as I get my interviews posted. Let me say this the closer we get to full compliance to HTML5 the more opportunity for end to end to win. This will come up when we do DevCon5 in NYC in July. Http://www.devconfive.com

Not to be pitchy, but that’s also why I added the Bring Your Own Device / Wi-Fi sessions to the 4GWE event (now called Mobility Tech Conference & Expo) http://www.mobilitytechzone.com/conference/ . The business of the mobile Internet is very nascent and while we can be glad the carriers have gotten past WAP. We still have a long way to go before the business is mature.

Hell we can’t even agree on what’s mature yet. Yahoo! As a stock finally found a new height, but we will see if it maintains. I was hoping for a new mobile commerce model from Scott Thompson http://www.imhocorp.com/?p=939 . I guess he may have to pull a Steve Jobs and rise like a phoenix from the Ashes. Speaking of Ashes, Facebook looks like a good buy in about another 98 days http://blog.tmcnet.com/4g-wirelessevolution/2012/05/facebook-you-still-can-judge-them-by-their-cover.html . Although based on the amount of stock already out there and NASDAQ faulty T+1 systems. I may have to add a few more days for the market to equalize.

Mark Cuban said this was the most important IPO ever and in some ways he was right http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-ipo-may-be-the-most-important-in-history-says-mark-cuban-2012-05 . The stock may have single-handedly killed the tech bubble on Wall Street. I don’t know if you watched but for almost every other tech stock in the market it was like a scene from “On the Beach’ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053137/ . Nothing was moving. Even Apple was dropping as the capital went out to meet up with Facebook.

The market however is efficient and is back to work. One thing that kept coming up on Wall Street and with Gigaom is that Facebook has yet to figure out wireless http://gigaom.com/mobile/will-facebook-adapt-to-mobile-or-will-mobile-adapt-to-facebook/ . So let’s end with a discussion of largest user of wireless – machines. I did a webinar with ATT and AXEDA last week that was very good but left me questions about the singularity being near. http://m2m.tmcnet.com/topics/m2mevolution/articles/290542-phases-m2m.htm

Anyway I hope you enjoyed my rant and linking you to most of the places you can find my thoughts. As always I like it best when the audience talks back. I hope to hear from you soon.

Kind Regards,

Carl

Preparing for Today’s SquawkBox Call

If you are unaware every Thursday I run Squakbox on Calliflower talking about regulatory issues.
Jim Kohlenberger and about half of our known relationships are unable to participate in the discussions today.

Part of the reason is because Washington is a buzz with new regime planning.

So I am posting in my blog the important facts.

Here is the news of the week.

The FCC

  • voted to approve the use of WhiteSpace
  • Approved the redistribution of wealth I mean assets between Sprint and Clearwire
  • Approved Alltel’s Tad and the Mr Wizard going to Veriizon Wireless
  • The Intercarrier Compensation discussion is in total disarray

California Voters approved taxing VoIP in Los Angeles County, Sacramento, and San Jose

Major changes in Senate have huge implications for us

  • Ted Stevens is probably history is some way one scenario is that he is replaced by Governor Palin, the other is a direct loss.  He is part of the reason the California laws can exist
  • Sununu author of the VoIP Regulatory Freedom Act (2004)
  • Commerce Committee loses Senator Smith and keeps McCain (but will not be the leader)

2)    Here are the speculations

  • FCC Chairmanship has another of candidates the democrats, Commissioners Copps, and Adelstein have been mentioned as well as Lawrence Strickling who is working for Obama already.  Also mentioned are Blair Levin, Don Gips, and Julius Genachowski.
  • Commerce committee chairmanship will probably be Senator Rockefeller but Byrd and Inouye are also speculated.
  • Strong belief that Obama is going to include a Broadband Policy in the economic stimulus strategy.

So that’s the news.  Lets See what else we know about on the call.

A Tale of Three (FCC) Decisions

As the FCC enabled whitespaces for the computing industry the wireless world continued to be advanced with the merger of Sprint WiMAX into Clearwire and the approval of the Alltel acquistion by Verizon.  While I will miss the wizard commercials, I think the more important observation is the question of how wireless evolves.

The Verizon story will be mostly around LTE, Clearwire around WiMAX. But who owns White Space?  Who do you associate with this alternative?  Google and Microsoft have been big advocates, but I am not sure they intend to be a service provider for this space. On the other hand, Cloud Computing is probably going to benefit tremendously from the access the White Space provides.  Should I insert Ebay/Skype and Amazon into this discussion?  Motorola and Phillips for their devices?

Imho the future of wireless is going to be very dynamic.  And as we have seen from the iPhone’s success its going to be more about what you can do than what technology is used.

Interview with Brian Glinsman of Texas Instruments

I had the good fortune to speak with Brian Glinsman, General Manager of TI’s Communications Infrastructure and Voice Group. I was looking for an update of the market from TI’s perspective. Brian services a number of markets including medical and telecom.

We talked about Video, Radio, LTE, WiMax and the opportunities available today. The world perspective on Japan and China’s leadership with wireless.

The advancement of WiMAX with Clearwire.

This issues of supporting the existing wireless network.

The problems of supporting femtocell strategies and the lack of standards.

And the concerns about the cost of power today.

The opportunities in the medical space.

We end with the Apple iPhone and the Nokia N95 and Sling Player

Anton Wahlman

I did a podcast with Anton Wahlman which you can hear here.

Anton’s reports at Think Equity were always insigthful and helped me think about what was going on in the industry overall.

I have a tendency to speak to a lot of people and discerning the whole picture is more than science, it’s art. I would say that Anton has this ability.

I wish him well on his new efforts, which I am sure will be revealed sometime this summer.