I wouldn't worry too much about FiberTower. They did gross revenue of
$883,000 the first half of this year, while at the same time losing over
$9M in the same time period. Further, in urban markets cellular carriers
are on average paying less than $150 per T1. In some outer parts of our
market they tend to pay on average around $500 per T1, but certainly no
where near $1,200.
I know Nextlink and FiberTower both want to sell backhaul to cell
companies, but who is buying? Verizon uses their own wireless backhaul
for their sites in Atlanta. Cingular uses BellSouth fiber. I bet Sprint
will want to use their own WiMAX equipment. I hear Alltel uses their own
wireles backhaul, so that doesn't really leave many choices for Nextlink
and FiberTower. Guess that is why Nextlink's latest strategy is to sell
wireless last mile to XO.
-Matt
Brian Webster wrote:
Matt,
The cellular folks have been quietly improving their data network
capability. Their biggest problem to date was the T1 backhauls from the
tower sites. These were already loaded with voice traffic. In many markets
there are aggressive programs underway to replace all the T1's with licensed
microwave backhaul with much more bandwidth. Cellular has the advantage of
cleaner spectrum and lower noise floors. It has been proven that they can
deliver over the air rates necessary, once they fix the backhaul bottleneck
they will be serious competitors. Remember they also get to leverage their
already existing tower network. Sprint/Nextel even has the advantage of all
that 2.5 GHz spectrum they just announced their WIMAX plans for.
One of the major players for giving them wireless backhaul is FiberTower
who just merged with First Avenue Networks. This gives them instant access
to a lot of spectrum all over the US. While this may not be good news to
most of the folks on this list, there is an upside. The telcos are going to
lose a lot of business from them dropping those expensive $1200 per month T1
circuits to each and every tower site.........that should effect some
numbers for those guys.
Thank You,
Brian Webster
www.wirelessmapping.com <http://www.wirelessmapping.com>
-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Larsen - Lists [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 12:44 PM
To: WISPA General List
Subject: Re: [WISPA] Ma Bell's About Face On Muni-WiFi
Check back in with us in a year and let us know how that cell data card
is working. If you thought the oversubscription on dialup lines was
bad, wait until more people get on the cellular data networks. Talk
about something that will not scale when the data hits it - wow.
Matt Larsen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brad Belton wrote:
I wasn't going to pipe in on this topic, but George hit it square on the
head: Cellular.
Laptops are now available with built-in cellular data cards. This trend
will only continue as the cellular data rates continue to increase. My
Sprint data card pretty consistently pulls 500Kbps and can peak at nearly
1.5Mbps. This is far better than many WiFi hotspots I have connected to
and
certainly better than any Muni-WiFi system I've seen.
Pure coverage alone will give the cellular networks a huge advantage over
any muni system. I can guarantee you the next laptop I buy will have a
cellular data card built-in. <grin>
Best,
Brad
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of George Rogato
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006 4:07 PM
To: WISPA General List
Subject: Re: [WISPA] Ma Bell's About Face On Muni-WiFi
Tom DeReggi wrote:
My arguement is that the biggest prospective client for use of a mobile
network is the governement. If you give service to them free or without
financial contribution from them, its just plain stupid in my mind.
But what about cellular?
Aren't they posed best to take advantage of mobile customers because
they are all theirs anyways?
Sprint just announced they will be doing mobile wimax. Verizon already
has a decent nation wide high speed mobile internet access product that
a lot of law enforcement are all ready using in the plice cars.
And just this morning we heard about 4g cellular delivering 100megs to
the police car at 37 miles per hour.
How does muni fit into the future that will be dominated by cellular?
George
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