[kictanet] Fwd: WiMax bypasses the Bells

[Alex Gakuru]

Alex Gakuru <alex.gakuru at yahoo.com> wrote: Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 21:29:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Alex Gakuru <alex.gakuru at yahoo.com>
Subject: WiMax bypasses the Bells
To: ke-internetusers at bdix.net

 [Excellent technology eliminating many bandwidth middlemen resulting in reduced consumer costs. ("Bells" broadly refers cable monopoly telcos]

[INFOWORLD]

WiMax bypasses the Bells
Posted by Jill Terry on April 26, 2007 03:00 AM 


Are Towerstream's metro meshes harbingers of freedom from Internet tiering?

Internet tiering, the practice of assigning smaller subscribers reduced qualities of service, bugs the hell out of me. It's a move to reapportion bandwidth in oversold markets without lowering the price of service for those whose quality is reduced. Why, some wonder, can't we work around this? Entrepreneurs could buy enough telco bandwidth to qualify for top tier status, then chop up that bandwidth and resell it with the governors removed. The catch is that bandwidth resellers are stuck using the copper and fiber networks owned by the telcos against which they compete. They have to place their equipment in telcos' central offices in order  to distribute their services. When tiering kicks in, telcos can stick bandwidth resellers, and therefore their subscribers, into whatever tier they like based on criteria fabricated by telcos.

There is a way around this scam, or rather, above it. Towerstream is succeeding where a lot of would-be wireless Internet players have failed. It supplies scalable Internet connectivity to businesses in metropolitan areas through a web of WiMax transceivers. My interest is less in WiMax technology than in what Towerstream does with it. Its business model is almost impossibly simple and practically impervious to telco interference.

It works like this: Towerstream leases small plots of space on the rooftops of office buildings. You'd never know it, but that's hot real estate up there, and most of Towerstream's early development hinged on snagging enough rooftop space to blanket the cities it serves. When Towerstream wins a spot on a roof, many of the buildings have  telephony facilities and hosting providers on or near the top floors. Towerstream grabs a gigabit link from each of them, and through the magic of the WiMax mesh, adds to its total available bandwidth and eliminates the risk that subscribers face when they buy their bandwidth from a single carrier.

This isn�t a tale of a telecommunications Robin Hood. At $500/month, its lowest-tier T-1 service (1.5 Mbps upstream and downstream) hovers around or slightly above average pricing for markets it serves. However, Towerstream gives its customers three extras that can make its service priceless. First, that T-1 includes DSL-like 3 Mbps "best effort" service; you get up to twice as much bandwidth when the network's not crowded. Towerstream offers a service level agreement (SLA) that's incomparably sweet for smaller subscribers: 99.99 percent guaranteed availability, a maximum of 75 ms round trip to the backbone and a max of 1 percent packet loss. And lastly,  Towerstream's network assigns high QOS (quality of service) priority to VoIP traffic, so it's practical for a business to use its WiMax Internet service to offset its wired telephony costs.

Did I say three extras? I missed the one that's the point of the whole story. You might recall that Towerstream buys its bandwidth in multiples of a gigabit, which puts it in the top tier in even the craftiest telco's book. Towerstream chops up that bandwidth and resells it, but there's no copper, no fiber, and no telco-owned infrastructure in the picture. Unless Towerstream loosens the 75 ms round trip delay and 1 percent packet loss provisions, it's promising that even its bottom end, T-1 customers won't be tiered.

Neither wired nor wireless bandwidth can be free because the infrastructure costs too much to build and maintain, but Towerstream shows telcos for the carpetbaggers they are and presents a model for escaping their clutches. It's not perfect: Only residents of  metro areas including New York, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco are reached by Towerstream, and Towerstream has no plans to reach out to or beyond the 'burbs. But Towerstream counsels would-be WiMax players aiming for smaller markets. Telcos, the future of the Internet is way over your head.

<http://weblog.infoworld.com/yager/archives/2007/04/wimax_bypasses.html?source=NLC-CURVE&cgd=2007-04-26>

           

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