WirelessTechLog
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If you can''t listen to the show live, don't forget about the archives. By listening on the archives, you can catch the recorded version of the show at your convenience!

November 2, 2005 Show

Fresnel Zone and Line of Sight - Jack Unger
Author, consultant, teacher, and founder of Ask-WI.com, Jack Unger, joined us in Santa Clara for a "How To" segment on understanding Fresnel Zone and Line Of Sight (LOS).

October 26th Show

ISPCON Show Wrap-Up - 3200+ Attend Successful Show in Santa Clara
Steve Stroh and I were in Santa Clara last week for ISPCON Fall 2005. We had the chance to catch Author, Consultant, and Teacher of All Things Wireless, Jack Unger, and Golden Group CEO, Jon Price, was a show wrap-up Thursday afternoon right after the Exhibition Hall closed while the buzz over the Chevy HHR give-away still filled the hall.

Steve provides his list of interesting new products displayed at the show including a new Trango Broadband Wireless Subscriber Unit called the FOX5800s-D2 with quantity pricing less than $299 but Motorola fired back with new bulkpack pricing. A new components firm, Ubuiqiti, featured a 900MHz radio on a chip in mini-PCMCIA card format claiming OFDM and radio speeds of 54Mbps - Steve was particularly struck with this firm.

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October 5th Show

Industry News - Philadelphia Makes Its Choice - Earthlink
Well, the news is out now and to my mind there are two big winners - Philadelphia and Tropos Networks. Philadelphia was garnered amazing publicity for the past year which they seem to have weathered well. Kudos to Diana Neff, she’s an adroit IT person and public persona. Earthlink assumes all the financial risk is building out this network (investment: $12-$15 Million) and they move to the next and essential stage of their ISP life. And Ron Sege and Tropos get to demonstrate to all that good ole 802.11 WiFi scales well and handles all the challenges of a HUGE municipal deployment. No WiMAX spoken here!

Now we watch the implementation and the bids in the next big cities with two players none of us would have identified 3-4 four months ago - Earthlink and Google. And interestingly, these same two are battling over San Francisco as we speak. Steve offers several clueful observations about Earthlink's efforts to own the infrastructure - perhaps taking charge of their access to customers in the regulatory age of new FCC Chairman handing closed monopoly networks back to the RBOCs ($5 on where he'll be employed following this gig). It would be fascinating to talk to AOL execs who bailed on all their infrastructure plays - I wonder what they learned?.

September 28th Show

Industry News Review - Tradeshow Season Starting Again - WISPCON, ISPCON, Broadband Wireless World, WiMAX World
It's Fall and August has come and gone so vacations are over and that means it's Tradeshow Season again. Someone ought to tell the farmers (organizers) that you can't harvest all the crops at the same time. WISPCON, Broadband Wireless World, ISPCON, UWB World, Muni-Wireless Conference, W2i Municipal Wireless Convention, and WiMAX World all occur in October. It'll be a busy month. Steve plans to attend WISPCON, ISPCON and WiMAX World; Marlon's using the great weather to get more installs finished, and I'm heading off to a few myself in Orlando, Santa Clara, and Boston.

Google WiFi rumors and VPN beta software are really stirring the pundits who have little else to chew on in the quiet before ISPCON and WiMAX World. Clearwire mixing brilliant strategic moves with Bell Canada with stupid, clueless blundering over VOIP blocking. Sheesh! A good discussion.

September 14th Show

Industry News Review - Hurricane Katrina - Broadband Wireless Industry Relief Response
Coverage of wireless industry efforts to provide relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina highlight the show, WISPA and Part-15.org are working together to provide a cohesive response to federal officials, Part-15.org Chairman, Michael Anderson, has been invited to attend an open hearing at the FCC tomorrow in Washington, DC to discuss disaster relief response; HAM Radio operators continue to be an immense help in providing, in many cases, the only communications in devastated areas; eBAY buys SKYPE; WiMAX plugfest interoperability testing apparently stalls but 802.16e standard may be ratified soon; these items and more.

September 7th Show

Industry News Review - Hurricane Katrina - Broadband Wireless Industry Relief Response
Part-15.org Chairman, Michael Anderson, joins us to discuss the efforts of Part-15 and others to develop a coherent relief response in coordination with federal authorities. Our own Steve Stroh has been working with Part-15 on much of the public releases and planning documents, he joins us too to discuss this ever-fluid and developing topic. Michael's been working with FCC contacts developed over the years to position the capabilities of the broadband wireless industry with FEMA, the Red Cross and other relief agencies.

In other news, there have been early efforts by some industry companies, Trango Broadband, Smartbridges, Nuvio, notably, to overnight equipment to Louisiana WISPs who are operating and supporting relief shelters and other important communications functions. Mac Dearman of Maximum Access in Rayville, LA reports:
"1. Butch Evans - (BPS Networks of Malden, Mo.) left here late yesterday evening after having brought almost 1000lbs of bagged rice down from his home in Malden, Mo. He, his wife (Tony) and Son Michael went with me to deliver to the rice to the shelters and had an opportunity to talk with some of the evacuees. They also brought boxes of "care pkgs" that included personal and hygiene items such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, combs....etc
2. Jim Patient - (JeffcoSoho of St. Louis, Mo.) rolled in here last night about 8:00pm with his van loaded to the max!! It looks like (what we call) he is hauling a load of wet backs as the rear bumper is almost dragging the ground. He has a pile of TenX stuff, PCs - complete, cabling, canned food.... I dont know what all is in there and I don't know that he knows what is in there :-) He came to assist in making the wireless links into the rest of the shelters as I am hobbling around on a cracked Tibia (shin bone) with black and blue down to my toes! All I can say is Bless JIMMY Boy!!
3. Trango overnighted two complete links with external antennas and jumpers
4. Deliberant wireless has donated 15 CPE to make the Internet connection to the shelters ( I asked for 9 and the sent 15)
5. Nuvio is sending 20 VOIP phones
6. I have received $1900.00 into my paypal account in donations from various list members.
7. Matt Larsen (VistaBeam) has donated a 5 phone PBX for the larger shelter with long distance already paid for.

There have also been numerous other offers for wireless gear -- like TenX called and wanted to know "what else" was needed as well as Trango willing to donate whatever I needed. Pac_Wireless in another that offered to assist in whatever we needed. The offer of gear has been G R E A T, but I have been careful to not allow more sent than was needed to accomplish this task - although it seems to be growing!!"

Mac established a Paypal account to accept donations to pay for FOOD for the growing number of evacuees who're continuing to pour into his community. He reports receiving over $1900., to date, in that money jar.

August 31st Show

Industry News Review - Catch-up for August Vacations
Wireless Tech Radio took a couple much needed weeks off in mid-August. Steve Stroh and Jim Sutton provide an extended news catch-up segment. News topics incude: Steve's take on Om Malik opining that Google will become an ad supported WiFi provider; Feeva; Vonage IPO rumored; World Record WiFi connection claims 137 miles; Clearwire raises $260MM; Philadelphia narrows finalists to Two and the big winner apparently will be Tropos; Lafayette Voters Say YES; Dan Bricklin details FIOS installation; Verizon Lowers EVDO Service rates; Intel Digital Cities Announced for 13 world Cities; WiBRO Advances in Korea; Verizon's Wireless Promo.

August 9th Show

Software Defined Radio/ Cognitive Radio - Charles Bostian, PHD
Professor Charles Bostian of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Virginia Tech joins us to bring us to date on the latest developments in Software Defined Radio. Marlon attended a conference on Software Defined Radio several weeks ago where he met Dr. Bostian and knew we needed to get him on the show.

July 6th Show

Latest Wireless Industry News - Steve Stroh, Marlon Schafer & Jim Sutton
www.bwianews.com

MikroTik Routers and RouterOS - Arnis Riekstins
Mikrotik routers are known known to WISPs and wireless hobbyist around the world. Co-founder Arnis Riekstins joins us from Latvia to discuss the company and products. Also of note, Mikrotik was active in the Tsunami Relief efforts in Banda Aceh, Indonesia donating a 5GHz system and hotspot routers through their Indonesian distributor.
MikroTikls [trade name MikroTik®] was founded in 1995 to develop and sell wireless ISP systems. MikroTikls now provides wireless ISP systems for Internet connectivity in many countries around the world - some locations are Iraq, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, Ghana and many others. MikroTikls is located in Riga, the capital city of Latvia. MikroTikls has more than 50 employees. www.mikrotik.com

Speak Softly And Carry A Big Stick - Jim Snider
Spectrum issues are most important to the wireless industry and one of the most entertaining and engaging 'Watchers of Spectrum Issues' is J.H.(Jim) Snider. He's developed a number of publications that poke holes in the myth of spectrum scarcity and broadcaster's efforts to protect their ownership of America's spectrum licensed to them for TV services. Why do broadcasters have the reputation for being one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington? What implications does this have for spectrum policy? What is going on with DTV legislation on the Hill and at the FCC?

Jim's just published his latest book entitled Speak Softly And Carry A Big Stick: How Local TV Broadcasters Exert Political Power. If you want an inside look into how things work and what to anticipate, this is the book to read.
Jim Snider is a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in numerous publications including The Washington Post, U.S.A. Today, and Atlantic Monthly. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University and an MBA from Harvard University.communications purposes.
www.spectrumpolicy.net

If You Missed The June 29th Show ... Check it out below!

Latest Wireless Industry News - Steve Stroh, Marlon Schafer & Jim Sutton
Travels out to San Diego to visit Trango Broadband and their manufacturing plant; extended discussion of the Supreme Court BrandX decision www.bwianews.com

MetroFi : Wireless Dial-up Replacement - Chuck Haas
You've probably heard the introductory teasers on television: "Wireless broadband for $19.95 for three months!" But what if that was the model for your entire business? MetroFi founder and CEO Chuck Haas joins us to discuss this new start-up business that begins commercial services in the SF Bay area in August. www.metrofi.com

Fill-in Segment: News Segment continued - Steve, Jim & Marlon
Steve gives Kudos to the NetNewsWire RSS reader application (Mac OS only) and explains how he uses NetNewsWire to watch and collect news through RSS feeds; Frank Lautenberg and John McLain sponsor a new bill (Community Broadband Act of 2005) to allow municipalities to deploy broadband networks; Dell and Texas Instruments are working to oppose anti-competitive laws being proposed in Texas; Marlon provides comments on Software Defined Radio forum and impact on television braodcasters; Earthlink is bidding to provide broadband services for NYC's broadband RFP; US Military apparently negotiating to use XM Satellite for its battlefield communications purposes.