Hello BAWUG, My name is Patrick Leary. I am known as the Chief Evangelist for Alvarion, the major wireless broadband vendor. Like BAWUG contributors David Reed and Dewayne Hendricks, I was a panelist for one of the Spectrum Policy Task Force's unlicensed spectrum public workshops. Tim Pozar was kind enough to provide me with a link to this respected list.
My joining here is not for the sake of marketing, it is a personal desire to engage the public network community in important dialogue. In my view, the two groups of license-exempt advocates have run along parallel tracks for too long. I seek to intersect and convey what I believe are critical universal concepts (explained further below) that should unite us. My specific areas of expertise include the following: 1. In depth knowledge of the wireless broadband market, licensed and unlicensed, but with a special love and focus on license exempt. This includes an extensive comprehension of subtle concepts frankly lost on many within my own side of the wireless broadband community. 2. Part 15 with broad knowledge of the certification requirements as opposed to commonly believed myths, including a few which I see (perhaps incorrectly) permeate the public network community. 3. Very broad knowledge of the various business models of unlicensed wireless broadband as a commercial service. I have vast understanding of a great many deployments, many of which I am involved from a vendor perspective and many more as an industry promoter with personal relationships with the operators. 4. Real world experience with what is possible with unlicensed (and what has been done), the state of the market, as well as trends. This work is a vocation to me, fostered by an absolute belief that broadband is the critical element required to bring sustained economic growth. In particular, the ability of unlicensed wireless to enable communities to seize their own broadband destiny. The three critical points I hope to impart to this community are thus: 1. Do not lose sight that what is important is the public policy that enabled unlicensed to emerge in the first place. Wi-Fi is like the Model T. It is very important for all the same reasons the Model T was important. But, what enabled the Model T was the innovation enabled by new manufacturing processes. Consider spectrum policy as a similar enabler of innovation. Accordingly, too much focus on the 1st mass accepted byproduct of that policy risks missing the critical reality that it is the ability of policy to enable innovation. The only thing that must be protected and expanded is policy that promotes innovation. Do not seek to protect a static byproduct of that policy. If we remain effective stewards of that policy, I assure you that innovation far more compelling than the Model T will emerge. 2. I urge this community to understand that what is being constructed here is no less than the next generation telecom infrastructure. Like David Isenburg, I believe - no, I know - that IP will topple the circuit switched world. We are deep in that tumultuous evolutionary process now. Therefore, it is critical in my view that these networks be taken as seriously as Ma Bell took hers decades ago when policy and subsidy brought us arguably the best voice infrastructure in the world. Should we miss this point and allow the IP wireless infrastructure to be a loose patchwork of cobbled together networks, we risk ending up with a third world last mile infrastructure. 3. Lastly, I caution this community not to confuse the last mile with the last 100 feet. It is appropriate and unavoidable that Wi-Fi or the emergent dynamically combined standards (or perhaps UWB) become the last 100 feet. However, no hotspot is "hot" without the last mile access from which it is fed. In that world, deployments in unlicensed through North America do not use Wi-Fi. They use systems enabled by the innovation promoting ambiguity of Part 15. Innovation in the last mile using unlicensed long ago transcended Wi-Fi limitations, even those systems using the same 2.4GHz band. In fact, even those commercial providers of wireless Internet service (mostly the current province of small, non-metro providers) that use 802.11b largely customize away their compatibility with Wi-Fi. Software overlays such as the Karlnet polling software serve as a prime example of such. Currently, I estimate their are at least 2,500 commercial unlicensed wireless broadband service providers ranging in size in a single market from a handful of customers to over 4,000. I know of many systems where each covers thousands of square miles using unlicensed wireless systems. These systems share their legacy with 802.11b, but they are no more Wi-Fi than the Willys Jeep was a Model T. I look forward to a thoughtful dialogue and I hope I am welcomed here. Kind regards, Patrick J. Leary Chief Evangelist, Alvarion, Inc. Executive Committee Member, WCA/LEA [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph: 760.494.4717 (VONAGE VoIP service) Cell: 770.331.5849 Fax: 509.479.2374 (eFAX) -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
