Clearwire LTE Plans Won't Be Long In Coming

Clearwire and Sprint Nextel have been dropping clear hints that Clearwire could adopt Long Term Evolution as an air interface, either alongside its existing WiMAX network or as an eventual replacement.

Since the U.S. wireless industry has been through technology transitions before, it isn't hard to suggest how it might happen, and when. Companies have had to make transitions from one air interface to another within a single generation of technology, as well as migrating customers from an older generation to a new generation.

Where one air interface is switched out in favor of another within a technology generation, the trick is to add all new customers to the new interface while allowing the legacy base of customers to dwindle through attrition. At some point, the old network then can be shut down without undue disruption.

Where an older generation network is replaced by a next-generation network, additional spectrum also is required. If Clearwire wants to shift air interfaces within the fourth generation, it would maintain current customers on WiMAX, while creating a new LTE network alongside WiMAX, signing up new customers on LTE, and allowing WiMAX customers to gradually shrink through attritiion.

That suggests Clearwire will not want to wait too long, as it will want to limit the number of WiMAX customers it has to support while the LTE network is populated with customers.

As an operational matter--and there are other issues to consider--moving sooner is better than moving later, especially given the larger number of customers now coming onboard on the WiMAX network because of the popularity of the Evo.

On the other hand, abrupt action is not required, or even preferable, as the practical details of interworking between LTE and WiMAX, in the core of the network, will have to be proven, in a full deployment mode.

Handset suppliers will also need some time to ready suitable handsets that interwork, as devices now can use either the 2G and 3G networks, or 3G and 4G networks. Alternatively, Clearwire could encourage single-network devices.

With most consumers on two-year contracts, and a natural handset replacement cycle that runs two to three years, customers can be moved to LTE as they replace their current WiMAX devices.

The point is that Clearwire has plenty of spectrum, and industry executives have lots of experience with technology transitions. It will take some planning, and some time, but it is a normal and expected part of the business that air interfaces and networks are changed, at least every 10 years, and sometimes sooner, for other business reasons.

LTE Tests Signal Clearwire Is Serious

Google CEO Talks Up Synergy Between Mobile, Local, Social Networking

It doesn't take much insight to predict that Google will, sometime relatively soon, be making new moves in the location based services area.

Google already has made major and successful investments in mapping, local search, mobility, geo-location and navigation, for example. It also has made investments in location-based services that haven't gotten traction.

CEO Eric Schmidt recently has been talking up the synergies between mobility, local search and social networking.

“Foursquare and Gowalla are pretty impressive," says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "They show you the power of mobile,social and local,” Schmidt said.

“Google will play in that market in a lot of ways,” Schmidt added.

http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/lbs-roundup-foursquare-improves-its-looks-google-hints-at-gowalla-acquisition-8289/

Video Mashup About Google Verizon Net Neutrality Talks

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Google CEO Schmidt: "People Aren't Ready for the Technology Revolution"

Some people like the ability to remain anonymous on the Internet, while others are not so sure. Most of the bad behavior that happens on the Internet is "anonymous" in terms of its source.

Given the increased use of the Internet for criminal or anti-social purposes, it isn't too surprising that governments would want some way to track "anonymous" users.

"The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity," says Eric Schmidt, Google CEO. "In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you."

"We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it," he says. At some level, it is hard to disagree.

Google CEO Schmidt: "People Aren't Ready for the Technology Revolution"

LightSquared Gets First Customer

LightSquared, the Harbinger Capital venture planning to build a nationwide wholesale Long Term Evolution network, has found its first customer. Airspan Networks, a provider of connectivity to utilities for their smart grid efforts, says it will resell some of LightSquared spectrum to utilities.

LightSquared’s Proposed 4G Network Gets a Smart Grid Customer

Best Buy to Launch its Own Tablet PC

Best Buy’s CTO Robert Stephens says the firm is going to sell its own branded tablet PC. There are no details about operating system or who the manufacturer is. Some will note that it looks like an HP Slate. That would suggest a nine-inch screen.

Best Buy’s CTO Tweets Out Pics Of A Rocketfish Tablet

Mobile Internet Very Popular in China

For many people in China, the mobile Web is the Web. Not only do many homes in China not have (or need) landlines for voice communications, but also they don’t require hardwired Internet access for their fix of the Web.

With mobile phones, everything they need is in the palm of their hand.

The majority of consumers (54 percent) use their devices for applications including email, gaming and music, while 36 percent used their phones for text, SMS and voice only. Another 10 percent said they used their phones for calls only.

Mobile consumers in China also have surpassed their American counterparts when it comes to using the devices to access the Internet.

About 38 percent of Chinese mobile subscribers access the Internet from their mobiles, compared to 27 percent of American mobile subscribers. That is not so surprising since many Chinese consumers only access the Internet from their mobiles.

Mobile Internet More Popular in China than in U.S. | Nielsen Wire

Android Making a Breakout Move?

Android devices collectively have done something significant in the smartphone market. Since March 2010, Research in Motion market share has dropped and Android share has exploded.

As RIM supports a family of devices, sold across carriers, as does Android, the comparison is instructive.

Whatever else the results may be, they indicate a fairly-dramatic shift in end user demand from QWERTY keyboards and email centric behavior to touch screens and web activity.

Android Pays For Itself in Additional Search Revenue

Android is helping Google drive more than enough incremental search revenue to pay for its development, and then some, Google CEO Eric Schmidt says.

“Trust me that revenue is large enough to pay for all of the Android activities and a whole bunch more," says Schmidt.

Google Android Revenue

Five Ways Android Will Defeat iPhone and BlackBerry - PCWorld Business Center

You don't have to agree that Android will gain the lion's share of enterprise market share, compared to devices produced by Apple or Research in Motion to agree that Android will, over time, get more popular in the enterprise.

Android 2.2 (Froyo), for example, syncs with Microsoft Exchange and has new security features, such as remote wipe for administrators, lock-screen timeouts, and minimum password settings, that will put enterprise critics of previous Android handsets at ease.

While not everyone will love the Android platform, it will soon become the country's mobile OS of choice, some argue. That might even extend to enterprises, some might argue.

Five Ways Android Will Defeat iPhone and BlackBerry

52% of Clearwire Customers Live Where Clearwire Has No Service

One way of describing the impact the HTC Evo has had is to look at Clearwire net additions in the second quarter of 2010.

As of June 30, 2010, 52 percent of the company's wholesale subscribers resided outside of Clearwire's currently launched markets, Clearwire says. That's the impact of revenues paid by Sprint Nextel HTC Evo users who live in areas where all they can get is 3G network access.

That's some trick!

Clearwire ended the second quarter with 1.7 million total subscribers consisting of 940,000 retail subscribers and 752,000 wholesale subscribers.

During the second quarter, Clearwire added 722,000 total net new subscribers including 127,000 retail additions and 595,000 wholesale additions.

Clearwire Corp - Investor Relations

FCC Hits Wall With Private Net Neutrality Talks

The direct talks between Google and Verizon would seem to take on a new importance now that the Federal Communications Commission has hit a wall in its efforts to get the major stakeholders to agree on the outlines of a net neutrality solution. The formal end of the private stakeholder meetings, which have been said to have been unable to move forward on any of the key issues, now have been formally ended.

That means any agreement Google and Verizon can reach, even though it is a voluntary set of agreements, assumes greater importance as a way of crafting a compromise agreement potentially able to garner wider support, and avoid a nasty, litigious process that will slow, not expedite, faster innovation and investment in broadband access facilities.

If the talks have failed to reach consensus. it likely is at least in part because some stakeholders will not budge on re-regulation of broadband access as a common carrier service.

Net neutrality supporters say the only option they want is the Commission classifying ISPs as common carriers based on Title II of the Communications Act." That is pretty much a deal breaker for ISPs, both telco and cable, so it is obvious why the talks got no serious traction.

Net neutrality fans cheer as FCC gives up on "backroom" talks

Will Microsoft Let Mobile Eat the Desktop?

One of the safest bets anybody in the technology business can make is that the leaders of the past wave of computing architecture will not be the leaders of the next wave.

And since there is relatively universal agreement that the next wave, whether you want to call it the "mobile computing" or "cloud computing" wave, is coming.

And though executives at each company will strongly contest the notion, that means slim odds Apple, Google, Microsoft or Cisco will be among the top-five biggest names in computing infrastructure as the next wave is established.

As shocking as that sounds, that is precisely what has happened in all of the earlier computing eras.

Some point to Microsoft as the company most endangered by mobility. In this view, the company has no answer for a market in which the operating system is free, and the dominant application isn’t Office, as that is where Microsoft makes most of its money.

The argument is that Apple and Google have managed to create a market where operating systems are subsidized by revenues from hardware, advertising or third-party applications, while social applications like Twitter, Facebook and blogs are the way users increasingly communicate ideas, rather than through Word documents or PowerPoint presentations.

Those are apt observations, but even those developments do not capture the full weight of the challenge. Any company that today is a top player in the computing ecosystem, history suggests, will fall in the next wave.

History will have to made if the pattern is not to repeat, and it isn't simply Microsoft that is at risk. Every leading company today has to worry.

Will Microsoft Let Mobile Eat the Desktop?

Google Denies Reports It Has a Deal for Packet Prioritization

Despite reports to the contrary, Google says it doesn't have a deal with Verizon on "network neutrality" that includes packet prioritization, much less paid-for prioritization, Multichannel News reports.


"We have not had any conversations with Verizon about paying for carriage of Google or YouTube traffic," said Google spokesperson Mistique Cano. "The New York Times piece is quite simply wrong."

"The NYT article regarding conversations between Google and Verizon is mistaken," said Verizon spokesman David Fish. "To suggest this is a business arrangement between our companies is entirely incorrect."

The original reporting from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg had suggested agreement on a framework that would have included both "best effort" and "prioritized" services.

All we can say at this point is that the extensive talks between Google and Verizon Wireless will bear fruit. Each company has too much to gain, and much to lose, if the two parties cannot compromise on packet prioritization in ways that allow both firms to move forward.

Each has investors to persuade, at the very least, and both face a more-uncertain framework as the Federal Communications Commission proceeds with its network neutrality proceeding, as that process seems largely deadlocked on the important issues.

Google's Failures are a Good Thing

Many management consultants would say that the typical company learns faster when it tries new things faster, accelerating the rate at which it can sort the good ideas from the bad.

Few firms actually practice what the consultants preach very well. Failure still gets punished, and the bigger the failure the bigger the punishment. Google is among the firms that fail fast and frequently, and that is a good thing. The faster it sorts through initiatives that don't work, the faster it will stumble upon the good ideas.

Though people tend to remember the successes and forget the failures, given a sufficient passage of time, both Apple and Google have failed at some initiatives, in Google's case many initiatives.

That's a good thing, not a bad thing. Google is set up so that failure is not dangerous to the company's core business. That isn't always the case at other firms.

Some will defend a slower pace of trial and error precisely for that reason: some firms cannot handle a major failure as they experiment. That is one reason why it is good to have a platform that allows frequent innovations to be tested, at low or reasonable cost.

In a business where good ideas have to be discovered, there is almost no way around experimentation and failure. Companies simply need to improve their prototyping and testing processes, with the caveat that some companies (software firms, especially) have inherent advantages in that regard, and always will. That's why much, perhaps most, meaningful innovation now comes in businesses that are driven by software.

Google doesn't so much fail as experiment faster, and more frequently, than most companies can.