Google Apps on WildBlue Home Page

WildBlue Communications will be making Google Apps available to its broadband access service directly from the WildBlue.net home page in the first quarter of 2008. The apps include Gmail webmail services, Google Calendar shared calendaring, Google Talk instant messaging and Google Page Creator web page creation tools.

The new WildBlue.net home page will also feature a mix of news, weather, sports, and entertainment, plus powerful new customizable features from more than 2,000 available Google Gadgets that can be easily added to each customer's individual WildBlue.net home page.

To be sure, any Web user can access any of the Google Apps on their own. But the WildBlue deal should help increase awareness of, and use of, the Web-based apps. Some observers say most Web users aren't aware of Google Apps, so the deal will help popularize the tools.

The deal is reminiscent of the way the old SBC used Yahoo as a way to drive the usability of its Internet access services. Sure, the deal is not exclusive. Users can get access to the functionality some other way. But the packaging should help, in the same way that apps benefit from placement on mobile provider "main decks."

Has Muni Wi-Fi Missed the Window?

Municipal Wi-Fi arguably had a market window within which it had to get traction or lose out to cable companies and especially telcos. With EarthLink now backing out of the remaining deals it originally negotiated, that window could slam shut. That isn't to say there might not be some niches it could fill, but they will be smaller niches.

The higher end part of the fully mobile market will be able to buy fourth generation mobile services, broadband based on 700 MHz spectrum, WiMAX and 3G broadband services. The tethered part of the market will simply find cable modem, Digital Subscriber Line and fiber to home services too attractive to ignore as well. The out of office portion of the market increasingly can use T-Mobile hotspots, hotel Wi-Fi and airport Wi-Fi.

Clearwire and satellite broadband are going to make more sense in most rural markets, though independent ISPs continue to offer basic tethered access using Wi-Fi technologies adapted for more focused line of sight deployment.

Wi-Fi had to get into place before WiMAX arrived, and it looks like it simply is too late to be a sizable mass market access opportunity. That isn't to say hotspots are not a business at all; simply that it is a niche.

That said, sizable niches do exist for providers of satellite broadband in some segments of the market. WildBlue, ViaSat, Gilat and HughesNet prove that the niche exists. And Spaceway might someday create additional niches in the smaller enterprise market as well. Wi-Fi, though perhaps not of the muni variety, might continue to provide such a niche.