Communications

Youth smoking falls with rising mobile phone ownership

Now that's a wacky statistic, but it's the fifth "key fact" from the MobileYouth survey posted by Graham Brown at mobileyouth.org. 

This is a global study that includes other interesting facts like:

• 1.1 billion youths own a mobile phone
• 10% of youths' disposable income goes to mobile products and services
• Youth spending on mobile will reach $300B by 2010
• Youths spend 8 times more on mobile than on music
• Only 27% of youth said they "trusted" their mobile operator

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NGN ≠ the Internet, and never will

I see and hear a lot of confusion about next generation networks (NGN).  In most cases people are using the term roughly as the ITU-T defines it:

A Next Generation Network (NGN) is a packet-based network able to provide services including Telecommunication Services and able to make use of multiple broadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies and in which service-related functions are independent from underlying transport-related technologies.

but many people don't realize how little this has to do with the Internet.

The Internet is a "network of networks" that includes millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks interconnected using IP.  It is a hierarchy because there is a backbone of ~28,000 autonomous systems (ASs) which exchange IP packets using routes established by Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).  The remaining millions of networks connect to that backbone via hundreds of thousands of ISPs and other intermediaries who are ASs or connect to an AS.

All of the NGN proposals (Wikipedia has a good summary) involve sophisticated QoS.  But it is well established that there is no technical or commercial requirement for QoS on the Internet backbone (references discussed here and here).

The thousands of organizations that are ASs exist in hundreds of different jurisdictions.  While some ASs are heavily controlled by governments (there is basically one AS for all of China), AS interconnection is independent of any single government.  Interconnections occur based on tradeoffs between the cost of doing business locally and the cost of routes to other locations.

Indeed, to the extent Tier 1 ISPs have attempted to limit free peering, Tier 2 ISPs have established peering agreements that form a donut around the Tier 1s, thus cutting Tier 2s' transit costs to an absolute minimum.  So the effectively unregulated Internet backbone is working remarkably well based on commercial arrangements between thousands of parties, just as it has for 15+ years.

With no technical need for QoS on backbone routes (as discussed here) and no commercial reason that anyone has articulated, it's hard to see how the thousands of parties who make up the core of the Internet would agree to do anything with QoS, ever.

Established telephone companies will deploy NGNs for telephone service.  To the extent they have a monopoly on Internet access, they will be able to use their NGNs to block access to the Internet, but the existence of NGNs won't change the way the Internet core works or the way anyone else's network works.

So NGN's are an evolution path for existing telephony networks, not the Internet, and they will last as long as the existing telephone service model lasts and no longer.

US Mobile Internet access prospects looking up

This is a very good week for the mobile Internet in the US.  Our best prospect for open mobile Internet access is not legislation or regulation, but having four or more competing networks that are technically able to offer mobile broadband access.

We have three such networks today — Verizon, AT&T and Sprint — but three is not enough to break the walled garden mentality.  What's changed?

1.  T-Mobile USA has launched their first 3G service using the spectrum they won in the 2006 AWS auctions.  For now, it's only New York City, but Reuters reports that T-Mobile plans to launch in 20 to 25 new markets by the end of the year and T-Mobile's stated intention is a full national HSPA network. In 2009, this will be our fourth national 3G network fully capable of multi-Mbps down and multi-hundreds Kbps up.

2.  Clearwire has cut a deal to take over Sprints WiMAX network.  As the Wall Street reports (subscription required) today:

Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are close to announcing a $12 billion joint venture that plans to roll out ultra-fast wireless Internet access for cellphones and laptops in coming years, with the backing of an unlikely alliance of technology and cable companies. Sprint has agreed to merge its wireless broadband unit with Clearwire, a Kirkland, Wash., firm founded by cellphone pioneer Craig McCaw. The new company has raised a total of $3.2 billion in outside financing from several heavyweights -- $1.05 billion from cable provider Comcast, $1 billion from Intel, $550 million from Time Warner Cable and $500 million from Internet giant Google. Smaller cable provider Bright House contributed $100 million. The investments value the new company at more than $12 billion.

This also reduces Sprint's financial exposure and hopefully reduces the likelihood they will be taken over or their network consolidated, at least in the short term.  I've been negative on the prospects for WiMAX in the past, but if anyone can make this go, Craig McCaw is good bet.  So Clearwire represents our fifth national network capable of delivering mobile broadband Internet access.

Assuming all this holds together, we will see affordable flat rate open mobile Internet access in the US by 2010.

Talking about Voice SMS, Video SMS and MMS in a webinar tomorrow

Tomorrow (May 6th) at 9 am EDT (1300 GMT) I'm doing a webinar on:

Mobile Messaging- Its Not Just About Texting

Mobile Text messaging has created new opportunities for additional revenue resources for global mobile operators.  Industry analysts predicts mobile messaging to reach $65B in annual revenue by 2010.  As a result of this messaging explosion, operators continue to look for ways to differentiate themselves in messaging services and to increase the revenue realized from text messaging.  Adding voice and video messages to the standard text message service is just one of the services operators are using to enhance the texting experience within their subscriber base. This webinar will examine video and voice short messaging services(SMS), discuss the technical considerations of implementing these types of services and review various operator successes with media messaging services.

Multi-Media messaging (MMS) has been very successful in some markets, e.g. the UK, while in others, like the US, it's used only for sending photos.  In other markets, it's hardly used at all.  Part of the problem is handset interoperability, especially when it comes to exchanging video clips.  In some cases, there are handset-specific user interface issues and in some markets the problem is enabling MMS operation, e.g. roughly half of the MMS-capable handsets in the Philippines haven't been "activated" (as the operator needs an SMS from the customer indicating their handset type).  Finally, there are markets where MMS inter-connection between operators.doesn't work, either technically or commercially.

But where there's a failure, other solutions emerge.  That's what I'll be talking about tomorrow.

I've written in the past about Voice SMS and about Video SMS, two services that fill the gap by being very simple to use and by working with every handset and every operator.

If you're interested, sign up here and listen in tomorrow.

eComm 2008 Panel: What Will Drive Wireless Innovation?

Here's the complete video of the panel discussion I ran at eComm 2008 in March, all 86 minutes.

My panelists were:

• Martin Geddes (STL Partners),
• Stanley Chia (Vodafone),
• Sumit Agarwal (Google),
• Jonathan Christensen (Skype),
• Christopher Allen (iPhoneWebDev.com),
• Benoit Schillings (Trolltech/Nokia)

Time permitting, I'll see if I can index some interesting highlights and have a follow up post with direct links — that's just in case you're hesitant to invest 86 minutes in the whole session...

Why there is no Internet QoS

In 2006, I wrote a short blog post on why there is no Internet QoS and likely never will be.  That post is a continuing source click throughs and email inquiries so, when Jon Arnold asked me to write a guest article for IP Convergence TV, I thought I'd tackle the definitive story on Internet QoS.

Here is the new article: Why there is no Internet QoS.  It may or may not be definitive, but I have filled in the engineering and economic background, and I investigate where QoS has been deployed in networks in order to identify where there may be QoS related opportunities for ISPs.

My conclusions:

• There is no Internet QoS today, and it’s unlikely any complex QoS scheme will ever be added to the Internet as a whole.
  
• To the extent next generation networks with rich QoS are deployed, this will only happen within walled gardens, not as part of the public Internet.
  
• But there may be opportunities for ISPs to create a simple premium service that could generate incremental revenue.

China's 3G license delay is a smoke screen

Last week there was a flurry of stories about China's 3G plans after Jonathan Dharmapalan of Ernest & Young was quoted as saying he expected it to take 12 to 24 months from the start of China's commercial TD-SCDMA trials, i.e. from now, until 3G licenses were issued.  But there was little analysis or comment on what's really happening.

3G licenses are a formality.  They delay the deployment of 3GSM & CDMA 2000 which could otherwise happen rapidly — just plug new cards into existing radios and offer established handsets (already being manufactured, in China, for the world market).

China 3G is happening, without licenses.  China Mobile Group already has deployment-scale TD-SCDMA radio networks on assigned, but not "licensed" frequencies, in eight cities.  The bottleneck is TD-SCDMA handset silicon.  Commercial trials were finally enabled by the recent delivery of an initial batch of 60K handsets.  This also allows China to meet, at least technically, their pledge to have 3G service in time for the Olympics.

Dharmapalan is speculating that it will take 12-18 months of commercial trials to get the bugs out and the system to scale.  That's plausible.  If so, it will be 12-24 months before "licenses" are granted, i.e. before 3GSM and CDMA 2000 deployments are allowed to proceed in parallel with TD-SCDMA.

The problem is China's patent position.  The core patents for 3G and for 4G are already held by the likes of Ericsson, Nokia, and Qualcomm.  TD-SCDMA provided a way for China to obtain patents on a specific 3G implementation and the size of China's market makes that implementation interesting to Ericsson, etc.  Since China missed the boat on core patents for both 3G and 4G, expect TD-SCDMA and it's 4G successor to exist on a parallel path for the next 10-20 years.

The good new is commercial TD-SCDMA deployments have finally started.

I'm most interested in 3G applications.  China has a vibrant market in value-added services for 2G.  As more and better TD-SCDMA handsets get deployed, we should see some really interesting innovation coming out of China — innovation that will be applicable to any 3G technology, anywhere in the world.

Mobile video-on-demand Yes! Mobile broadcast TV not so hot

I have an article, Going Mobile (TV), that's recently been published by MobileIN, a wireless and mobile information site.  In it I basically argue that major investments in mobile TV broadcast capability are less likely to pay off than investments mobile video-on-demand.

The biggest trend in commercial television viewing is personal video recorders like TiVo.  People want to watch TV content when they want, not when broadcasters schedule it.  The only exception is major sports events (the Superbowl or World Cup matches).  Even the evening news is frequently rescheduled for later in the evening.

The second relevant trend is growth in YouTube and similar web-based video content.  Broadcast TV went from 2-3 channels in the 1950s to hundreds of channels on a typical cable system today.  But consumers are also interested in the long tail of millions of videos that can only be served over the Internet today and, potentially, over the mobile Internet in the future.

Finally, survey's of early adopters of mobile video show music videos, movie trailers, weather, sports action clips, comedy videos, cartoons and amateur video shorts – typically a few minutes long at most – are the most popular content. In addition, it appears 85 percent of mobile video viewers watched viral videos (content sent or pointed out by others) rather than content they found themselves.

All and all, mobile consumers are looking for video -on-demand, not pre-scheduled broadcast TV.

So what's the logic for massive investments in spectrum, followed by even more money in new wireless infrastructure, followed by the need to sell everyone new handsets that can receive the new broadcast mobile TV channels?

Models for Muni WiFi completely neglect technology evolution

Modern travel means interminable waits, but it's a good time for reading. I finally read Wireless Pittsburgh: Sustainability of Possible Models for a Wireless Metropolitan-Area Network by Jon M. Peha, published in February as a working paper of the New America Foundation.

The good news — it’s full of interesting cost estimates and projected subscriber take rates based on specific demographics in Pittsburgh, Minneapolis and Philadelphia.  The paper also examines a range of business models, in detail, from complete monopoly to structural separation (wholesale–retail) to let-the-market-take-care-of-it.

The bad news — all of the models turn out to be extremely sensitive to revenue assumptions, i.e. to the estimates of subscriber adoption and willingness to pay.

The flaws in this study

All of the models compute a net present value based on five years of stable operations, but there is no mention of technology evolution or adoption rates of competing broadband services, i.e. cable and telco (DSL or FiOS) services since this is a US study.  Technology is evolving at a great rate.  You can’t bet on stability.

During the past five years we saw WiFi go from 11 Mbps to widely deployed 54 Mbps systems and bleeding edge (pre-standard 802.11n gear) systems doing well over 100 Mbps.  The last five years also saw costs decline to the point where we see widespread deployment of WiFi by individual consumers, a significant percentage of which are running open WiFi hotspots. 

On a recent drive through three different neighborhoods in Portland Maine, I was interested in looking up real estate information on the web.  On each of a half dozen occasions, I was able to find a open WiFi hotspot within one city block of deciding I wanted to connect.  In January, I was in north New Hampshire and spent two nights at small motel (not part of any chain) in Littleton, NH.  They had no Internet on offer, but a quick check for WiFi signals revealed two within range of our room.  If you don’t like my anecdotal information, look at the WiFi hotspots that have been mapped by Navizon.  It’s very different than five years ago.

No matter how much it simplifies the analysis, you can’t bet on stability.

What might happen with WiFi in the next five years?  The latest WiFi specifications add multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) support, additional modulations and other goodies.  As low cost WiFi routers incorporate these advances we’ll see speeds go over 300 Mbps, but more importantly MIMO technology increases both range and directionality.  This means overlapping systems work better (despite their overlap) and the signals from isolated systems reach further.

If you’re worried today’s open systems will be locked down, then spend your time thinking about schemes like FON which offer more secure ways for consumers to share WiFi bandwidth.

If you’re worried consumer solutions won’t reach the inner city, perhaps someone needs to relook at where WiFi has already been deployed, and then forecast what might happen over the next five years, given the cost of a basic PC is approaching that of a television and the Cable and Telco duopolists both push triple play bundles. 

Don’t short change technology evolution. 

Dark fiber policy — my talk at eComm

At eComm 2008 in March, I gave a short presentation (15 minutes including questions) on dark fiber as a key element of broadband policy.  Brad Templeton has a good summary in the last four paragraphs of this post.

Recently Lee Dryburgh posted all the eComm presentations on Slideshare. Since my presentation was mostly pictures, you need the script that went with the slides. The only way I can see to support this on Slideshare is to add one comment per slide, which I have now done.  If you are interested, go to the version on Slideshare.net, click on the "Comments on Slide 1" tab and then click forward from there.

I discussed the clear line between rights-of-way, conduits, poles and dark fiber - all of which are long-lived elements - and the technologies that light up fiber or run traffic over it.  The latter get obsolete very quickly, so it makes sense to foster rampant competition at these layers, or give control to users. The idea is those that want the latest electronics ought to be able to get them.

Dark Fiber

Turns out there are multiple examples of communities and even whole countries (Sweden) that have fostered the availability of dark fiber.  Not surprisingly, these locations lead in broadband performance (and in price-performance!).

NY Times grossly misreads WEF report

Today's New York Times includes an article by John Markoff entitled "Study Gives High Marks to US Internet."  But either John Markoff is fuzzy about exactly what the Internet is or he didn't actually read the report.  His title is way off base.  He did interview a few people who are quoted in the latter part of the article, so there is some information in the article.  But he's done a major disservice for the many who read only the title or perhaps first paragraph.

The study in question is the Global Information Technology Report recently published by the World Economic Forum.  While the printed report costs money, the summary is on-line and an interactive version gives access to all their data.

This is a report on information technology not specifically on the Internet (just look at the title).  The researchers measured 68 different attributes of information technology, only a few of which directly pertain to the Internet, e.g.

Attribute	US Rank
Internet users (per 100 pop.)	7
Internet access in schools	12
Broadband Internet subscribers	17
Internet bandwidth	19

To his credit, the first section of the report is about "network readiness" and the US is ranked #4, however the study's definition of network readiness includes all sorts of features of the broad business environment, regulatory aspects and computing infrastructure.

Prior to this, I remember John Markoff only for the book Takedown, which I enjoyed.reading even though my sympathies were with Kevin Mitnick.  :-)  So this article is a major disappointment.

Here are the 68 attributes the World Economic Forum study examines:

Visualizing African Internet Connectivity

Here is a great illustration of the not-so-fast or reliable connectivity at African Universities as seen from Trieste, Italy.  Only 46 seconds.

Thanks to Marco Zennaro at the Science Dissemination Unit (via TIER at UC Berkeley).

WiMAX in the US, a limited window of opportunity?

Their first service launch has been delayed, but Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse repeated his vow to blanket the US with a WiMAX network in his talk at CTIA this week.

I sincerely hope he succeeds.  We need as many competing data networks as possible, if we're to see any measure of open mobile Internet access. However, I'm worried.

WiMAX has been quite successful in emerging markets, providing fixed wireless Internet access in countries as diverse as Pakistan, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Georgia, Ethiopia and Georgia (the country!).

The US is another story.  The only significant US deployment is Clearwire's with roughly 400K subscribers, but on a mostly “pre-WiMax” network.  Again, the application is fixed wireless Internet access. 

It’s one thing to use fixed WiMAX to provide Internet access in Pakistan.  It’s another thing to compete for fixed access in the US.  Yes, our telephone & cable duopoly is moving slowly, but they are going after all the more profitable neighborhoods with broadband offerings substantially faster than what fixed WiMAX provides.

What about mobile WiMAX?  Mobile WiMAX is in trials today, using technology and providing performance that the 3GSM community will only see 2–3 years from now.  Sprint clearly hopes to use WiMAX as a springboard past its competitors and past concerns about its declining user base.  Presumably, in the longer term, they hope to converge their dissimilar networks (Sprint EVDO and Nextel iDEN) on mobile WiMAX.  But can mobile WiMAX build a large enough market soon enough? 

Volume drives down cost and cost advantages win in the end — witness Verizon’s announcement that they are jumping ship on Qualcomm’s CDMA evolution in favor of the 3GSM community’s long term evolution (LTE).  Today, GSM networks (GSM/ EDGE/ W-CDMA/ HSPA) have 80% of the world mobile phone market with billions of subscribers and a billion or so handsets manufactured each year.  Right now the entire Sprint-Nextel customer base is ~54 million subscribers.  Perhaps emerging markets will also adopt mobile WiMAX, thus driving up volumes?  Unfortunately emerging markets are even more price sensitive with the high volume application being basic voice telephony plus SMS.  GSM is the lowest cost solution by a wide margin. 

I hope I'm wrong.  I hope mobile WiMAX's performance lead (over LTE) is enough to carry the day.  And, in particular, as I’ve written before, I would very much like to see Sprint succeed, with or without Clearwire, because their WiMAX network would represent yet another source of wireless Internet access.  With four of more networks capable of mobile broadband Internet access, competitive pressures alone should give us what the FCC is currently ignoring, i.e. mobile data plans that are both open and reasonably priced.

 

Gaping hole in models for using spectrum efficiently

In February, the FCC’s Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis published three studies (1, 2, 3) on spectrum licensing and spectrum utilization.  Thanks to Nick Ruark for pointing them out.

Since the papers discuss tradeoffs between licensed and various “unlicensed” approaches to spectrum utilization, I printed them out and threw them in my luggage, finally reading them today.  These are theoretical studies that assume you are familiar with Nash equilibrium (named after John Nash, the mathematician made famous by the movie A Beautiful Mind) and mechanism design (a part of game theory that is directly applicable to designing auctions).  Heavy stuff indeed!

Reading on I was struck by a gaping hole in their assumptions.  Of course an academic study can start from any assusmptions the authors prefer, but it helps if there is some relationship to reality.

What’s missing in these papers is any thought of future innovations.  The key feature of the currently available slivers of “license exempt” spectrum (in bands just above 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) is that they provide options for future innovation.  None of what we know of as WiFi or Bluetooth, either technology or business models, was in existence when the FCC originally opened up the 2.4 GHz band — a band that was previously devoted to (and is still used by) microwave ovens and industrial heating equipment.  Indeed, the principal reason why the FCC is studying spectrum allocation models today, is the innovation that resulted from opening up license exempt spectrum.

So the goal isn’t to figure out how to make current users of unlicensed spectrum use it more efficiently with today’s technology.  The goal is to motivate people to find new ways to get more utility out of the spectrum in question.  How do we foster innovation?  How do we increase the opportunities for innovators to find new and improved ways of using wireless spectrum?

Of course, I shouldn’t be too hard on the authors.  After all, the economics profession only began to model innovation in the past 20 years or so.  For the previous 200 years, innovation was lumped in with other “exogenous” factors, i.e. factors that didn’t fit the model.

Zippy interviews me on Mobile TV

Zippy (actually Richard Grigonis) got my views on Mobile TV for a series on TMCnet. 

I'm negative on broadcasting :-) but very positive on mobile video on demand and on the profusion of other video-related things that people are finding to do with their mobile handsets.

Off for three days in Loma Linda California

I'm leaving (very) early in the morning for Gordon Cook's meeting on the Architecture and Economics of IP Networks, a.k.a. the Cook-In.  It looks like a full schedule, some people I know and many others I know only via email.  This should be very good.

Broadband penetration vs. broadband capabilities

I'm listening to the first session in the VON pre-conference workshop on Competition Policy and getting increasingly depressed.  Everyone on the panel is entrenched in traditional policy infrastructure — no thinking out of the box here.  What's more, at least two of the five people on stage seem to think the US is doing well, among OECD countries, with our deployment of fixed line broadband access.

The problem is definitional.  They are comparing broadband penetration rates.  I am comparing the relative performance of readily available broadband services.

The FCC's defines "broadband" as at least 200 Kbps in at least one direction.  The OECD uses 256 Kbps, while the ITU definition is “transmission capacity that is faster than primary rate Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) at 1.5 or 2.0 Megabits per second (Mbits).”  Using the OECD's definition, the US comes in 15th for broadband penetration by country.

But that's not the point!

Speeds of available broadband services

In Stockholm, dark fiber reach to every city block and an enormous number of buildings.  This dark fiber is available for lease by anyone.  As a result, there are many ISPs offerring services in greater Stockholm (and elsewhere in Sweden).  Just about anyone in Stockholm can get 100 Mbps symmetric Internet connectivity for 98 Kroners pe rmonth — that's $16 per month.

Similar service (100 Mbps) in Tokyo costs ~$26 per month and in Seoul it was closer to $30 the last time I checked with friends there.

In the Boston suburbs I have Verizon FiOS Internet access.  Downstream capacity is 20 Mbps most of the time and upstream measures out at 2.7 Mbps.  This costs $50/month.  I'm extremely fortunately to be able to get service this fast.

So my friends in suburban Stockholm have 5 time the downstream capacity and 30 times the upstream capacity for 1/3rd the cost.

Why don't people talk about broadband performance?

Most cell sites have only one or two T1/E1 links, or less

One of the things that surprised me at eComm was the audience reaction to hearing that most cell sites have only one, or perhaps two, T1 or E1 links going to them.  eComm was a sophisticated audience but they weren't familiar with this kind of operational detail.

Of course, I've seen a lot of data on this particular subject as, until our recent sale of the AccessGate product line, NMS Communications was in the backhaul optimization business.

Net-net:  As spectral efficiency keeps improving with HSPA and so forth, backhaul is rapidly becoming the bottleneck. 

Cell sites are fixed locations.  The vast majority are in urban or suburban neighborhoods.  Their bandwidth requirements will continue to grow, indefinitely.  In any rational world, one would purchase dark fiber to most of these sites.  In the irrational real world that is the US today, dark fiber is available on long haul routes but is extremely hard to come by in populated areas where most cell sites are located.

The root problem is we have given Verizon and AT&T privileged access to the public right-of-way, without requiring them to sell dark fiber, or lease dark fiber, or offer any connectivity other than T1 service.

What would it cost to construct dark fiber to 95% of these sites, if it were done as part of a community-wide dark fiber build like that being planned in Singapore and already completed throughout greater Stockholm (and most of Sweden)?  Construction costs for point-to-point fiber are 20% or so above those of passive optical networks (PON), but the cost of the dark fiber alone (no electronics) is perhaps 80% of the total construction cost, so they're in the same ball park.  Verizon has directly and indirectly reported various costs for their FiOS construction (FiOS is a PON network), but all current estimates are below $1000 per home passed. Even at $5K per cellsite, the payback for a mobile operator would be measured in months.

A few Notes from eComm

Three days of rapid pace content, mostly 15 minute segments with no overruns!  Presentation were mostly high level, focused on industry insight and direction.  Almost all were good or very good and some were excellent.  Almost no pure product pitches.  And, most important, tons of interesting people.  In fact it appears there were ~220 people and perhaps as many as 250 who attended at least part of the event.

In short, one of the best events I've attended.

I was completely immersed, and besides the WiFi was misconfigured the first day, so I didn't attempt blogging.  Others have done a great job.  Technorati has a good list.  Andy Abramson has a rundown of early media coverage although Google News has more of course.

The credit for making it all happen goes to Lee Dryburgh.  Thank you!

Above photo thanks to James Duncan Davidson.

Other pictures here and here and here and here and then there are some videos here.

Two weeks in California — eComm, VON and other meetings

I'm leaving for northern California early tomorrow (Tuesday) to participate in eComm 2008 in Mountain View March 12-14 and then Spring VON.x in San Jose March 17-20.  I'll be back in the office Friday March 20th.

At eComm 2008, I'm speaking on Thursday and moderating on Friday:

• Thursday, 10:20am:  Own the Network — A Radical Approach to Internet Connectivity
• Friday, 2:00pm:   Panel: What Will Drive Wireless Innovation?

The Weekend

Most of my weekend is uncommitted, as yet...  suggestions?

Then at VON, I'm speaking on Tuesday and Wednesday and running a session in the "Unconference."

• Tuesday, time uncertain...:  Unconference session: Rethinking Broadband Internet Connectivity
• Tuesday, 2:50pm:  Panelist in Content Delivery over Alternative Wireless Architectures
• Wednesday, 4:00pm:  Speaking on Wireless Mobility Trends

If you are attending either of these events or live in or are otherwise in the area and interested in meeting, please send me an email using "rbt", i.e. my initials, at nmss.com.