Yesterday Blandin hosted the second installment of the Broadband pre-conference webinars. (The third and final installment on Broadband Policy is planned for November 19th.)
The session today was: Wireless Technologies – Learn about the emerging services that will provide the increased mobility that business needs and citizens want. Hear about new wireless technologies that can extend broadband coverage into more rural areas. Presenter: Pete Borchert, Senior Market Analyst, Alltel Wireless. (To listen to the whole session, please check out the conference call archive.)
Pete did a great job. I want to thank him for sharing his presentation with us:
Here are the questions that came up:
Question – Does the Alltel network serve any schools?
Yes, through SE Service Coop. It’s going well with them – the latency is low and the QoS is high. They were able to do video and interactive TV. (With 508 Gig)
Mobile wireless is increasing in importance with communities – what is the outlook for mobile network reaching to rural areas?
With licensed bandwidth it should be easier to do because we can power those at will. Line of sight will no longer be important. By 2012 – we should cover 90 percent of the state – but the economy will impact that rate.
Mobile and fixed will come together because mobile will go further. A big question is – what will the demand be?
When you say 90% coverage, are you referring to the entire state? I am located in the Cook County, and we have significant line of sight problems.
Unfortunately – you may be in the 10 percent areas. Alltel needs to go where the money is – but the USF may help get things in place sooner.
What are costs to end users?
There are all you can eat packages for $50-60/month for mobile Internet service at 3050Mbit/sec.
As we move to 700Mhz – what will happen to reliability?
Fixed wireless is at 99.9 percent uptime. Often wireless can be redundant connection – in places such as a call center where 100 percent wireless is essential.
What are partnering opportunities? If you were a community – how would you stimulate investment?
Clearwave started by going to communities with market research but always had success when they got the community involved. We partnered with cities – and they offered use of vertical real estate to help drive down investment costs. DTED grants were a big help as well. USF has been valuable. Some of those partnerships are harder to come by today.
End users now pay lots of different bills: Internet, cell… Could wireless solve this problem?
Wireless could become a triple play provider. The efficiencies will allow providers to play in triple play arena.
What’s the range of these technologies?
Current range is 5-7 miles line of sight. The 700 Mhz will go 20 miles in rural areas and pine trees shouldn’t hurt much.
Russ Simatec talks about Maximum Communications. They are a wireless Internet service provider. They focus on rural areas. Pete is right in that we still don’t really know what the customers want. The technology is rapidly changing. Uses of spectrum are important criteria. We focus on WiMAX. Mobility is a big issue.
What about WiFi as an investment?
It comes down to spectrum efficiencies. WiMAX and EVDO are built to handle community networks better. There may be a convergence of both technologies – WiFi and WiMAX.
What is the relationship between fiber and wireless and the interconnectedness?
Fiber can bring lots of bandwidth but not mobility. Also the fiber can be cost prohibitive for many rural areas. But fiber can make a great backhaul. Wireless is more affordable.