Tom,
I have sat in on planning these networks with
Time Warner and Comcast. The way they are building these versions
they will work for their purposes. Trust me I have built a couple
of large scale muni networks JIn regards to the mounting issues,
so long as they have above ground outside plant life will be good
for them. These nodes mount on the suspended messenger wire, not
the poles. That means they can just attach them to their existing
lines. I'm not saying that it will be easy but it's much easier
than someone else trying to build given the fact that they
already occupy the space on said poles. They are also planning to
ink deals with local businesses to mount nodes when necessary.
Since they will be wiring every node to their network for
backhaul, there is no requirement for any wireless meshing, just
connectivity to the client device. They do not necessarily plan
to have a contiguous network market wide, just where there are
likely to be high concentrations of users. This also not meant to
be a network that will hand off connections from node to node at
highway speeds. They are assuming a relatively stationary user of
the system.
This whole design philosophy is quite different
from the muni Wi-Fi networks most of us think about. The real
reason they are building these is to keep customer churn down by
offering existing broadband and video customers a free mobility
component in areas they are likely to need it. I would expect
they will also later ink some roaming deals will cellular
carriers but that is not on their initial radar as of now. They
will be using nodes that have smart channel selection capability
which will pick the quietest channel. In some cases there are
also plans to include the 5 gig spectrum as consumer devices are
now showing up on the market capable of using both bands.
I would not be so quick to dismiss this iteration
of outdoor Wi-Fi. It's coming; they have combined an extra 3.5
billion dollars they just received from selling spectrum to
Verizon. They are hiring plenty of skill to build this properly
and/or fix issues that arise. It's change and it's coming. There
is enough at stake to have to make this work. Cellular needs a
successful deployment strategy for outdoor Wi-Fi to work as well
for their offload needs. The manufacturers have a lot of radios
they want to sell so they have to make it work now. Outdoor Wi-Fi
will not go away now, you can take that bet to the bank. You may
not like or want that to happen but it's going to just the same.
When people say it can't happen I just remind
myself of how many times I have said that over my wireless career
and how many times I was proven wrong. Heck just a few months ago
people were complaining that the spectral mask in TVWS was not
going to allow for any reasonable speed offerings, yet now all of
the sudden we have manufacturers coming up with designs that
work. Everything changes and they change faster when more money
is at stake.
Thank You,
Brian Webster
www.wirelessmapping.com <http://www.wirelessmapping.com>
www.Broadband-Mapping.com
*From:*Tom DeReggi [mailto:wirelessn...@rapiddsl.net]
*Sent:* Tuesday, January 31, 2012 11:46 AM
*To:* bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com; WISPA General List
*Subject:* Re: [WISPA] Ericsson is buying BelAir, betting on Wi-Fi
Yes, a typical tactic for the sole purpose to destroy the RF
environment, and scare high ARPU businesses and investors from
trusting third party unlicensed wireless providers solutions.
Its all about fear factor.
But Just like any other large scale MUNI network, it wont work,
and will be to costly to maintain, and the bad press will
incourage the Cable Cos to shut down the networks instead of
continueing to damage their brand's reputation as a quality high
speed resildential provider. They can plan to deploy 10,000
nodes, but planning has no value if there is no where to
put/mount them. Maybe they could mount them inside people's
homes :-) Surely, they aren't going to work mounted on their tiny
green 2ft pedestals on every corner. Surely, they aren't going
to pay landlords $200/month each to mount on 10,000 commercial
building roofs. What they more likely would do is go put in Wifi
access points into the communities that they do not want to dig
up the streets and bring cable to, that the City/states are
trying to force them to do with cable, leveraging the franchise
agreement renegotiations. A attitude like, get off my back, why
spend $5000 to dig, when I can spend $200 on an access point and
pretend we serve everyone, and make it a play on all the lobbying
WISPs did to say, "wireless is good enough" for WISPs, so it
must also be good enough for Cable Cos. I could easilly see
Comcast applying for USF, and using Wireless combined with Cable.
>Time Warner is planning I believe around 10,000 node in the LA
market this year and after they get that market proven, they plan
on rolling out nationwide in their markets
Except the market wont be proven successful. Funny how history
repeats itself.
Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband
----- Original Message -----
*From:*Brian Webster <mailto:bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com>
*To:*'WISPA General List' <mailto:wireless@wispa.org> ;
memb...@wispa.org <mailto:memb...@wispa.org>
*Sent:*Thursday, January 26, 2012 4:16 PM
*Subject:*Re: [WISPA] Ericsson is buying BelAir, betting on Wi-Fi
It's not just the cellular industry. Comcast is deploying
18,000 outdoor wi-fi nodes this year and giving that service
for free to their customers to keep them happy in a mobile
environment and reduce churn. Time Warner is planning I
believe around 10,000 node in the LA market this year and
after they get that market proven, they plan on rolling out
nationwide in their markets. The networks are specifically
being designed for tablets and wi-fi enabled phones in a
nomadic but not seamless mobile environment. Being that the
cable companies who sold spectrum to Verizon for 3.5 billion
dollars, they are using some of that money for these deployments.
For those in those metro markets, these carriers are planning
both 2.4 and 5 GHz dual mode radios.
Thank You,
Brian Webster
www.wirelessmapping.com <http://www.wirelessmapping.com>
www.Broadband-Mapping.com
*From:*wireless-boun...@wispa.org
<mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org>
[mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org]
<mailto:[mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org]> *On Behalf Of
*Jack Unger
*Sent:* Thursday, January 26, 2012 12:00 PM
*To:* "memb...@wispa.org <mailto:memb...@wispa.org>" w; WISPA
General List
*Subject:* [WISPA] Ericsson is buying BelAir, betting on Wi-Fi
In a sure sign that the cellular industry is getting serious
about Wi-Fi, telecom networking giant Ericsson is buying
BelAir Networks, adding its high-performance outdoor hotspot
technology to its portfolio, sources told GigaOM. The deal
could signal a big shift in the mindset of the big wireless
vendors, which have always favored their own specialized and
expensive cellular technologies to meet growing mobile data
demand rather than more generic but much cheaper Wi-Fi tech...
<http://gigaom.com/broadband/ericsson-pursuing-wi-fi-with-belair-networks-buy/>
--
Jack Unger - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc.
Author (2003) - "Deploying License-Free Wireless Wide-Area Networks"
Serving the WISP Community since 1993
www.ask-wi.com <http://www.ask-wi.com> 818-227-4220jun...@ask-wi.com
<mailto:jun...@ask-wi.com>
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