Whither WiMAX?

It might seem odd to question just how big the WiMAX infrastructure market might be, given strong support from the likes of Intel and others who see a data device optimized broadband network as a huge opportunity. And maybe WiMAX ultimately will create a large enough global base of infrastructure that handset and device manufacturers will have a large opportunity.

But potential end user volumes matter, and matter a lot, in today's world. The issue isn't whether WiMAX will work. CDMA works. But global volumes for GSM networks are so large that device innovation is higher on the GSM than the CDMA sides of the ledger. Volume also is a factor for software developers, who prefer larger markets to smaller markets.

Sprint got people excited with plans to build a $5-billion, nation-wide network in the U.S. but that strategy is now in question. Sure, there's the rest of the world, but if you have followed mobile technology trends for any time, you are more careful about the installed base, and the potential installed base.

In the third-quarter, Infonetics Research says, worldwide WiMax equipment sales climbed a mere six percent to $206-million. Meanwhile, worldwide unit shipments of fixed and mobile WiMAX equipment rose 16 percent in the third quarter of 2007.

Still, Infonetics is looking for Wi-Max to see annual growth of 87 percent between 2006 and 2010 as more carriers embrace the fourth-generation technology.

The number of worldwide WiMAX subscribers (fixed and mobile) is expected to skyrocket to close to 60 million in 2010, led by the Asian region, Infonetics says.

Still, there is the historic example of iDEN and CDMA to consider. Devices are more important than networks these days. And one has to contend with the issue of sheer mass, in that regard. There's no question that WiMAX will work. But that's not the crucial question. The issue is how large the market for WiMAX devices might be, compared to GSM and its derivatives.

What Next for Sprint Nextel?

Sprint Nextel has turned to a wireless industry veteran in naming current Embarq Corp. CEO and Chairman Dan Hesse new CEO and President. So what might we expect from him? Perhaps a focus on the many details of execution that seemed lacking in Sprint, of late. Hesse gets high marks for execution at Embarq.

Hesse also was considered a top candidate for the Qwest CEO post as well. And in some ways, Qwest and Sprint are in similar situations. Qwest does not have the financial ability to do some things one might expect from a former Baby Bell. Sprint likewise is in desperate need of serious attention to its core business, even as it contemplates a fourth-generation WiMAX rollout.

Neither company seems suited to a major acquisition that would fix the basic problems each faces. Qwest lacks scale to make some strategies work (it does not own a wireless network and arguably can't afford a major fiber-to-home video initiative).

Sprint remains the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier, but is feeling a rejuvenated T-Mobile nipping at its heels and has to do something really serious about its churn problems. Beyond that, Sprint is looking at some very basic decisions about future technology direction.

Volume in the global markets clearly is in GSM, and Verizon, the other major CDMA-based carrier, has made clear its decision to migrate to LTE, a GSM platform, for 4G. That leaves Sprint even more out on the fringe, as it now supports iDEN, which no other carrier uses, and CDMA which is losing traction in the U.S. market, if not yet internationally.

Before those issues can be tackled, Sprint has to stabilize itself. And Hesse is an adroit manager, most observers probably would say.

Before taking the helm at Sprint spinoff Embarq, he spent 23 years at AT&T, serving as President and CEO of AT&T Wireless Services from 1997-2000, then the nation’s largest wireless provider.

It is probably fair to say Hesse will have to right the ship before considering launching a new vessel.

Personal Navigation: Quiet but a Big Deal

Garmin and TomTom will both ship over 10 million personal navigation devices this year, recent forecasts suggest. Total production in 2007 for just those two manufacturers is something on the order of 22 million units.

To put that in perspective, that's about half of the 55 million iPod music players Apple probably will sell in calendar 2007.

Location-based services seem to catching on very rapidly in the consumer space, after a long gestation in the commercial markets. Is it any wonder Google is so hot on location-based services, or the advertising and marketing opportunities that seem destined to come along with location awareness?

iRobot Cleans Up

This item just for fun, as my daughter worked on the company initial public offering. iRobot, which sells the Roomba vaccuum cleaner robots, got a five-year, $286 million contract from the U.S. Army for up to 3,000 military robots, spare parts, training and repair services.

Up to this point robots have used sparingly and mostly to deal with explosive devices. Apparently there are other things they can do. Aside from cleaning floors and sneaking up on dangerous explosives, that is.

FCC Relaxes Cross Ownership Rules

By a vote of three to two, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has approved a plan to relax media cross-ownership rules. The rule change, which comes amid opposition from some politicians, allows companies to own both newspapers and broadcast stations within a top-20 market. The rules originally were put into place to safeguard the "diversity of voices" within media markets.

Of course, the context was different then. There were three national networks and maybe one or two major newspapers in a market, with a fragmented radio audience. Since then, cable programming has exploded, with three 24-hour-a-day news channels and two 24-hour-a-day business national news channels available in most markets, and multiple local news channels in many major metro markets as well.

The daily newspaper business, meanwhile, has continued its inexorable, decades-long decline. Indeed, one can argue reasonably that the daily metro newspaper might not exist in the future, at all.

And on top of that we have the rise of blogs, Web news portals, podcasts, Webcasts and other media and news outlets.

Though there was not unanimity on the issue, one can argue that local media markets bear little resemblance to markets of the past, and are in transition to an even-more-different structure in the future.

The last time I looked, the major broadcast networks had become "entertainment focused" in the extreme. I can't even tell you how the "voice" of any of the five local national broadcast networks differs from any of the others. To the extent that the concern about "voices" explicitly is about "political" voices, there seems even less justification than there used to be for cross-ownership restrictions.

National broadcast TV networks don't seem to have any substantial differences of voice. Newspapers are on the way to extinction. Radio is highly fragmented. And then there are the cable news outlets, national and local, plus Web-based news and opinion portals and blogs too numerous to count.

As elsewhere, legacy rules are straining to keep pace with rapid changes in media, communications and information infrastructure.

Wireless Spending Now Equals Wireline

U.S. consumer household spending on wireless now equals spending on wired voice services, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey shows. Homes with multiple teenagers and two working parents probably will argue that wireless spending now vastly outpaces wireline, as landlines are phones connecting "places," while mobile connect people. There being more "people" than "places" in such a household, it is easy to see that wireless is the dominant spending category.

Cellular phone expenditures increased rapidly from 2001 through 2006. Coupled with a decrease in spending on residential landline phone services (residential phone services) over the same period, spending on the two types of services were practically equal in 2006.

Expenditures for cellular phone services per consumer unit rose from $210 in 2001 to $524 in 2006, an increase of 149 percent. Expenditures for residential phone services per consumer unit fell from $686 in 2001 to $542 in 2006, a decline of 21 percent.

In 2001, the ratio of spending on residential phone services to spending on cellular phone services was greater than 3 to 1. In 2006, the shares of these two components were almost equal, with residential phone expenditures accounting for 49.9 percent of total telephone expenditures and cellular phone expenditures constituting 48.2 percent.

Are Users Dumber, Or Software Too Complex?

Tech Support: "What does the screen say now?"
User: "It says, 'Hit ENTER when ready'."
Tech Support: "Well?" Person: "How do I know when it's ready?"

Make no mistake: our civilization runs on software. So be exceedingly glad when developers hide complexity so well something seems intuitive and natural.