paul callahan…mostly common sense

Coming soon to your browser: Wi-Fi-based advertising.  Here is a screen shot of a browser from MetroFi’s free metro service — now delivering ad space and ad revenue.

From the company’s advertisers web page:

MetroFi covers more than 100,000 residents in the highly attractive Silicon Valley, California market. We have launched Sunnyvale, CA as the first Free – Advertiser supported Wi-Fi network in the Country.

MetroFi dropped its $19.99 per month access charge and cut over to free in early December 2005.  The company apparently discovered that it could actually make money selling advertising space.  Most people expect Google, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft to adopt the same model.

What’s next?  Location-based advertising.  I would expect that Cold Stone Creamery would pay more for an ad that would show up on browsers known to be somewhere on El Camino Real or on streets within a 1 mile radius.

MetroFi’s network is based on SkyPilot equipment and lists Ekahau as one of its technology partners.  Ekahau has long been known for its Wi-Fi based location technology, among other things.  Expect that partnership to expand.

What about the mapping guys I wrote about recently (Skyhook Wireless, Wi-Fi mapping guys actually making deals and Navizon’s do-it-yourself mapping)?  If they’re not already, they should be knocking on the doors at MetroFi and other Muni Wi-Fi networks.  Creating demand at the service providers should draw the equipment vendors (Motorola, Tropos, BelAir, SkyPilot, and Firetide) who are vying to supply the market.

Wi-Fi is the ultimate “good enough” network technology.  Want proof?  Watch this.  Two articles spawned by the words of Gartner Group Gartner: don’t rush on 802.11n  and Unstrung – No Rush to High-Speed WiFi  — and combined with advice dished out to Gartner clients — will almost guarantee products based on the recently ratified 802.11n standard won’t turn into significant money for at least a year.  Hell’s bells, these articles say you should wait a year or two.

Image: Death defying duck walking on thin ice

Never mind that you still need to plug your PC into 100 Mbps Ethernet for big file transfers, and never mind that the company upstairs brings your Wi-Fi network to a halt five or six times a day doing God knows what with their cordless phones or wireless security cameras.  It turns out that if Wi-Fi products are cheap enough and they sort of work, then they are “good enough” and widely adopted.

It’s no use fighting the tape, swimming against the tide, and various other metaphors — this just the way the Wi-Fi market behaves.  Just ask Airgo.  The company produced pre-N MIMO technology that solved the problem of higher throughput and better reach, but is only now getting significant traction.  Why?  Because 802.11 b/g/a was good enough.  In fact, 11 Mbps 802.11b is still in widespread use — I only know of one Wi-Fi phone on the market today that doesn’t use 802.11b (the Motorola CN620).

Where will we see 802.11n products first?  Consumer is the traditional first-adopter channel for Wi-Fi — simply because the compatibility issues are easier to deal with on a ones-y-twos-y basis, and the need for speed is likely to be greater.   In the enterprise market, the big swing votes are Intel and Dell.  Without widespread built-in 802.11n-based adapters for laptops, enterprise adoption will not be significant…and Gartner will be right.  Damn, I hate it when that happens.

Motorola has announced an indoor 3G system supporting both UMTS and HSDPA.  The AXPT High Speed Access Point looks to be about the size of a wide laptop screen (see the pic) and supports speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps.

Photo: Copyright © Motorola

On the surface:

• 3G and Wi-Fi go to war in public places.  The AXPT system will go head to head with Wi-Fi in spaces like airports — a vertical market rife with disputes over the control of spectrum.
• 3G may offer a path of least resistance.  If tenant-landlord disputes become the norm,  licensed spectrum may be less of a hassle.

But this is just the first skirmish in what I believe will be a prolonged war of attrition: ubiquitous, unruly, cheapo Wi-Fi versus expensive, reliable, locked-down 3G.  The indoor mobile equipment play has been tried before and gone virtually nowhere.  To break through past failures in this space, Motorola and others must:

1. Face the fact that Wi-Fi is in nearly every laptop shipping.  Though the sheer volume of mobile handhelds drawfs the numbers of laptops shipping, 3G has a long way to go, yet — and will not displace Wi-Fi in laptops any time soon.  Don’t laugh, but giving away laptop 3G adapters may be a start.
2. Price indoor 3G to compete with Wi-Fi.  Admittedly, indoor 3G is being sold to mobile operators who are significantly less price sensitive than enterprises, but the market reality remains — Wi-Fi gear is incredibly low-cost by comparison.  This is a classic case where “good enough” can easily kill the more elegant product.
3. Make indoor 3G very easy to install.  This is not trivial.  Today’s mobile base stations are basically manually configured by RF technicians, one by one.  Good luck pulling that off with a sea of AXPTs — the little suckers had better be self-organizing in the RF domain.

Directory Tags: | Wireless | WiFi | Wi-Fi | Motorola | Cable | UMTS | CDMA | WiMAX | Muni Wi-Fi | Mobile | Femtocell |

Two companies have emerged in the outdoor Wi-Fi mapping space, Mexens/Navizon and Skyhook Wireless.  I wrote about the Navizon product recently and felt it was important to dig into Skyhook as well.

Three substantial differences jump out between the two.  Unlike Mexens/Navizon which is providing a giveaway client, utilizing the freeware community to provide its mapping database, and has no current business deals, Skyhook is:

1. Selling a software ingredient.  Skyhook has provided a beta E911 plug-in for Skype’s client with some simple ingredient branding (see “Location brought to you by” in the figure), but they are mostly the mayonnaise on the meat in someone else’s sandwich.  In that case, if think you the mayonnaise tastes especially good, you might ask what brand it is — otherwise you’re mostly paying attention to the sandwich.  Deals with both TCS and uLocate seem to good examples of that business model.  Though they are hidden in someone else’s product, let’s hope Skyhook can establish a pricing structure that doesn’t drive them out of business.  Mayonnaise doesn’t usually cost that much and doesn’t usually get noticed.

   

2. Jump starting its own survey.  Let’s face it, at least half the value in these products is in the accuracy of the location database.  As a result, it looks like Skyhook has decided to own the process — ostensibly to control the quality of the data.  To get there, Skyhook hires people to drive around urban areas.  After the initial survey, Skyhook seems to imply that it also uses customer data — like Mexens/Navizon — to keep current.  From their listing if you’re looking for work:

Job Summary: Skyhook is looking for drivers that are familiar with the metro area to drive large sections of the city in order to passively gather wireless information. This is a full time position that is short/medium term. Drivers will be provided with a wi-fi scanning device and maps with specific target areas of the city. There are no stops, just driving and letting the device scan. Drivers should understand the following:

- This is difficult work and requires a systematic approach to achieve the objective
- Drivers must commit to 40 hours a week
- Drivers must have a license, a car in good working order, and insurance
- Some technological knowledge is helpful

3. Making some deals.  Skyhook has signed up uLocate where it appears that Skyhook is a component inside uLocate’s software inside Nextel phones.  Hmm…software inside software doesn’t provide much leverage.  Skyhook has also signed Telecommunications Service Corp (TCS) to help provide e911 services over VoIP devices (as yet unspecified), CyberAngel where it provides a theft recovery location function like Lo-Jack for laptops, and TeleAtlas where it presumably will integrate with another map database.  Most importantly, the company appears to be working with eBay/Skype, a relationship which obviously could lead to bigger things.

The biggest difference between the two companies — the number of deals in-place — Skyhook has snagged at least one big name, Mexens has none.   If Skyhook can figure out how to get paid a reasonable sum for its embedded software component and if the volumes are in the millions — a very big “if” — it can actually generate significant revenue.

If not, Skyhook could be relegated to the position Mexens/Navizon currently is in — hoping some big player will take them out for short money.  Remember, when you’re the most anxious to get an invitation to the dance, you rarely get asked.

Wi-Fi Planet ran a story in December on P2P Positioning Systems that caused me to take a closer look at Navizon, the product (formerly known as AlwaysOnGPS), and Mexens, the company formed to market the product.  Navizon is a weenie network with the potential of very big impact.

Most of you who know me for the curmudgeon that I am, may find this post somewhat alarming.  Don’t worry.  I haven’t lost my mind.  This company has the most interesting use of combined wireless technologies I have seen to date.  But it is not a product for the faint of heart.  In fact, it more like a project out of Popular Science magazine than a real product.  All that said, Navizon’s underpinnings are such that they could be morphed into a breakthrough system — if they end up in the right hands.

Navizon combines two elements:

1) mapping software that runs on a Pocket PC and;

2) a world-wide community database of maps provide by — guess who? — the users.

The system relies on an installed base of Navizon-equipped users who map the world as they walk around.  Every once in a while, Navizon’s happy wanderers synch up with its data base in the sky — and eventually Navizon has a map of the whole planet.

But wait a minute.  I thought GPS mapping systems already had every square foot of the planet mapped.  Why is this any better than GPS?  The company claims that by using a sea of gadgets equipped with GPS, GSM (GPRS), and Wi-Fi, its approach is more accurate and faster than GPS-alone.  To pull it off, the company suggests you borrow a friend’s GPS reader, attach it to your Pocket PC, run around for a while in your favorite places to do the initial mapping of Wi-Fi Access Points and cell towers, hand the GPS reader back to your friend, and carry on using only Wi-Fi or GPRS to find the nearest BestBuy or Starbucks.

What is cool

Tags and buddy tracker are both interesting features which are rapidly becoming table-stakes in the location market:

• Tags.  Navizon allows users to place tags of their favorite places on their maps — and like tags in the world of Web 2.0, they are shared with other Navizon users.  So I can mark Bartley’s Burger Cottage in Harvard Sq. as having the best burger I have ever eaten and all other Navizon users get to see that tag.  Users get to set their desired sensitivity to others’ tags to control the potential clutter.

• Buddy Tracker.  This is probably the coolest idea — and one that could interest heavy users of IM.  You and your friends can allow yourselves to be located by other members of your group.  Embedded in a low-cost, easy to use, hand held device marketed for teens, this application could be explosive.  Today, we are miles away from such a targeted device — especially one with the right GUI — but that could change.

What is not so cool

I know the software is free, but asking users to assemble their own combination of GSM/GPRS phone with or without Wi-Fi (which is is?), connect it for a little while to GPS, and drive around for the good of the community is asking a lot.

• Connecting GPS to your Pocket PC is not trivial.  For this, you must dig deep into the world of geekdom — especially if you are borrowing someone else’s GPS receiver.  Bluetooth dominates the world of GPS receivers.  This helps to some extent, but the implementation seems to be rife with conflicting com port problems.  In the event that you must use a non-Bluetooth receiver, you’re really skating on thin ice.  Good luck getting the right cable.

• Which Pocket PC, which phone?  Unfortunately, Navizon provides little in the way of help here.  The product makes no recommendations on what device works best (outside of casual user chat).  So, do I buy a GSM/GPRS phone using Pocket PC, or do I buy a Wi-Fi equipped Pocket PC.  Do I add Wi-Fi to a GSM/GPRS phone or do I look for a phone with both?  Or do I even need a phone?  Probably the answer to all of these questions is “yes,” a classic duck-under answer.  Instead, the company should provide a list of supported devices and step by step set up instructions for each.

Where is Navizon going?

Looking to get acquired.  Founders, Cyril Houri and Jim Parsons, are obviously trying to position Navizon to be acquired by AOL, Yahoo, Google, or Microsoft.  I give them an a even chance — 50% — of pulling it off if they:

1. Beef up current technoid support.  Tell me what to buy and support it.
2. Land some deals.   Unlike their competitor, Skyhook Wireless, Mexens/Navizon has no visible deals, either with service providers, or handset manufacturers.  Better get crackin’ boys.

Tough odds?  The next six months will tell.  No deals in that time frame will not bode well.

Even so, the company has been smart enough to keep it small and not raise a lot of money.  When you take that approach, you don’t need a big M&A price tag to end up being very very happy.

The company’s new VoWi-Fi module reduces power consumption for phones.  One of the biggest knocks on putting Wi-Fi radios in phones has been the fact that most chip sets are power sucking pigs.  For that matter, when was the last time you used your Wi-Fi equipped laptop without a power connection for any length of time?

SyChip, Inc. claims to have come up with a chip set and module that will deliver 8 hours talk time and 100 hours of standby time.  This could eliminate a substantial hurdle for single-purpose Wi-Fi phone manufacturers like UTStarcom, ZyZEL and others.  The pair are both building their products in China and currently driving prices down aggressively — some service providers are offering the UTStarcom phone for under $100.  UTStarcom appears to gaining market share in the OEM market for single-purpose Wi-Fi handsets.  In fact, Netgear’s recently announced Skype phone looks just like the UTStarcom F1000.  Hmmm.

When you talk to mobile phone and Wi-Fi phone manufacturers — converged or not — battery life is their number one sore point.  In public they may talk about their features, but in private they will tell you that nothing else matters as much as saving power on the handset.

In the article sited, SyChip talks about sleeping in between each packet.  I doubt anyone will beat that bit of magic for quite a while, but I hope I’m wrong.  The industry needs to get over this hurdle in a hurry.

One reader commented:

Re: SyChip’s power saving VoWi-Fi module…sleeping between the packets

by HNC Partners on Tue 17 Jan 2006 03:30 PM EST  |  Permanent Link

While this sounds like promising technology from Sychip, there are significant barriers to entry to the implementation of such technology for companies that don’t provide entire handset reference designs. Handset manufacturers are leaning more and more towards complete reference designs provided by full service semiconductor companies in order to achieve production economies of scale (buying more chips from a single manufacturer reduces their overall BOM cost), reduced development cost, and time to production/time to market advantages (it is far easier and lower cost to produce a product that has already been completely designed by a chip company than it is to design and built it from the ground up). The measurable value proposition of technology that falls outside of the standard reference designs has to be large enough to overcome the inherent advantages addressed above in order to make it into production products…

I couldn’t agree more.  Atheros, Broadcom, and Airgo wouldn’t have sold a single chip without an army of software engineers.  The reader’s comment that the handset business is becoming much the same is very telling.

The mobile handset chip set business has long been dominated by TI, but it is clear that Atheros has its eye on taking share away from someone in that space.  With those two players counter-punching, it is likely to be an all-or-nothing situation for SyChip — with exit through acquisition as the only option.

Directory Tags: | Wireless, | VoIP, |Mobile, | VoWLAN, | VoWiFi, | Wi-Fi | WiFi | DMOZ Wireless | Yahoo Wi-Fi

Surprise.  Recent articles cite Nokia as getting extraordinary — and unanticipated — uptake on its new 770 non-phone.  But wait a minute, Nokia’s 770 is just a straight-up Wi-Fi tablet, not a phone.  Have the gods gone crazy?

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB113641683365137964-lMyQjAxMDE2MzA2NTQwMTU2Wj.html

Moreover, it is not a converged Wi-Fi, GSM/CDMA phone.   Most reviews say that the 770 does a great job at providing a quality display in a small form — and has a reasonable price tag at $359.  As a result, Nokia can’t make the Wi-Fi gadget fast enough.

Such a positive reaction to the 770 is an indication that buyers want wireless hand held devices that do a few things well, not multi-function, all singing all dancing, nightmares that do nothing well.  Remember the boat-car — a dismal boat and a silly looking car.

Directory Tags: | Wireless, | Nokia, |Mobile, | Wi-Fi | WiFi | DMOZ Wireless | Yahoo Wi-Fi

The idea that your mobile phone will have multiple radios — fixed Wi-Fi and mobile GSM or CDMA — known as Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) has been climbing up the hype curve for two years or more.  Time for a reality check, don’t you think? Converged phones promise to:

• Avoid burning mobile minutes by using VoIP.  Users can piggy back on corporate VoIP minutes via Wi-Fi in the office or use cheaper VoIP services at home.
• Fill in coverage with Wi-Fi.  If your town stubbornly resists cell towers, or your office building doubles as a Faraday cage, you can make and receive calls over Wi-Fi VoIP.
• Go one-number, all-mobile with a phone that works everywhere.  Converged phone users can toss their wired work phone and cancel their wired phone service at home.

It’s pretty much all bunk.  The broad market wants cheap phones and cheap phone service and will put up with amazingly bad products and services to get them.  Look at Skype.  Today’s enterprise-style converged phone offerings have astronomical price tags and require genius engineers to configure the gateways.  Converged phone and service advocates need to:

1. Compete with the coming flood of cheapo Wi-Fi-only phones.  Netgear and others just announced cheap Wi-Fi-only VoIP phones built in China, supporting Skype protocol.   Motorola’s CN620 $600–$700 converged cell phone is a non-starter in the face of this onslaught.  http://netgear.com/pressroom/press_releasesdetail.php?id=305
2. Match the Skype and Gizmo Project pricing model.  Both services are free if you call Skype-to-Skype, or Gizmo Project-to-same.  Wi-Fi VoIP calls will need to be funded with advertising.  Wait until Google makes its move — I see them giving away phones in their metro-Wi-Fi projects in California.  Converged phones need to play this game, too.
3. Fix the authentication nightmare.   Cheapo Chinese Wi-Fi Skype and Gizmo phones all have the same dirty little secret — Wi-Fi authentication.  If you have Wi-Fi WPA2 encryption/authentication turned on at home, or you subscribe to an authenticated service like T-Mobile Hotspots, or you plan on using this new gadget on your corporate net, you will be out of luck with the current generation.  Converged phone weenies could make this work better than the low-cost Wi-Fi pure play phones.
4. Stop obsessing about live hand off.  FMC advocates need to stop worrying about live hand off of calls from GSM to Wi-Fi and back again.  How does, “I’ll call you right back when I get into the Wi-Fi coverage,” sound?  No problem if it’s free.

Directory Tags: | Wireless, | Convergence, |Mobile, | CDMA, | VoIP, | GSM, | WiFi | DMOZ Wireless | Yahoo Wi-Fi