Mountain View Cellphones

3/13/2009  by www.mountainviewcellphones.com

Clearwire announced their anticipated rollout of the WiMax network in the coming years.  I did some numbers to quantify the estimated population that will be covered by its roll out (beyond Portland and Baltimore).  Given the coverage maps from the website, the network areas extend beyond the city proper so I took the metropolitan area population estimates (data from Wikipedia).

Existing Markets: 10.1MM

Portland 2,000,000

Baltimore   2,600,000

Seattle  3,263,497

Honolulu  371,657

Charlotte 1,897,034

This year growth:  26.6MM

Atlanta  5,278,000

Chicago 9,500,000

Philadelphia 5,800,000

Las Vegas  1,986,146

Dallas/Ft. Worth 6,100,000

Next year growth:  35.8MM

New York  18,815,988

Boston  4,400,000

San Francisco  7,000,000

Washington DC  5,300,000

Houston 5,600,000

Now, I could be underestimating some areas, but we have about 72.6MM from Wikipedia numbers for the surrounding metropolitan areas of these cities by 2010 announced.  They have many other smaller cities already lit up from the previous Clearwire, so we can add about another 10.0MM to be generous and about another 5.0MM in yet to be announced locations, and we get about 87.6MM people covered.  This is still behind the 120MM announced by 2010, so I think there must be more cities to be announced at the end of 2009 when they have some data about their progress to see test the rate of expansion.

What’s also important to notice about their plans is that they are targeting the large regional areas for service.  For domestic business, people travel to and from these major regions so they will have cover at the destination.

Though the numbers currently don’t add up to their press release, I think the roll-out is still to early to predict.  The roll-out could be much faster if the adoption rate of the Wi-Max service was much faster than anticipated.  Given the great rates and mobility offered by this solution, it has the chance to be the sole Internet provider to many customers and to take away business from DSL service in hoards.  This is especially true for small businesses that are held captive to DSL service where cable doesn’t reach (we happen to be such an operation currently but we are not alone, we have a phone number we don’t use just for DSL service).

Provided we are in a recession/depression, a conservative roll-out plan is the wise business strategy and to match cash burn with cash flow as much as possible is reassuring.

Lastly, their balanced roll-out will be necessary to keep device manufacturers interested in providing WiMax devices.  Broadband data cards are a great first start and should be able to carry the business for 1 year, but beyond this, we should be expecting devices that leverage the new bandwidth in innovative ways…that SKYPE/Google Voice mobile phone?

2/2/2009  by www.mountainviewcellphones.com

Sprint’s fortunes have the opportunity to change dramatically this year.  Unfortunately, consumers are very conservative this year, so that alone may derail the come back.  However, there are four big things that are going for the company.

 1.  WiMax roll-out…this is critical to hitting Verizon and ATT where it hurts (local data service to homes) and growing volume dramatically for mobile data users.  This is a truly unique product Sprint and Clearwire have and they need to get the roll-out going as fast as possible.

2.  Palm PRE…just in time for the 1st generation Apple upgrade with ATT, so customers have a better choice versus the IPhone.  If the PRE lives up to the blogosphere hype, then this can start subscriber growth again for Sprint.  So, these first generation IPHONE users have for the most part, gotten a poor web experience and maybe looking for a better web experience.  They won’t find it with ATT 3G IPHONE as the data network speeds and capacity are still way below Sprint and Verizon.  I haven’t found a single IPHONE user who has loved the speed of the Internet on their devices (outside of WiFi).  The PRE has the opportunity to be the ONE phone you need for both business and personal uses.  I will even trade in my Blackberry 8830 for this upgrade.         

3.  A consistent message…come to Sprint for saving money and use your phone for all that it can do.  The hokey CEO messages are finally getting thru to people.  We are having more people from ATT and Verizon come into our stores and wanting to save money and seeing what Sprint has to offer.  This combined with the economic environment will continue to favor the rate structure advantage Sprint has. 

 4.  Independent consumer tests and gizmodo data speed tests have confirmed Sprint is improving and is the most dependable and fastest data network around.  This will take time to show up in the sale results, but people are beginning to take a look at Sprint again.

Sprint literally has a 2 year window now to really turn things around and get better execution going forward for sales and retention.  These few dramatically differentiated and unique products Sprint can offer this year will be able to leap frog the competition and give consumers more for less. 

11/5/2008 by www.mountainviewcellphones.com

The FCC has approved and the Justice Dept. had given a preliminary ok to the combination of Sprint Xohm and Clearwire to quickly accelerate WiMax deployment nationwide.  This will be a huge advantage for Sprint versus other carriers going forward and it will be the best wireless data network for the next 3 years.

This is pretty much the last major hurdle to full deployment across the country and the major spend of billions to get this all going at the scale a national network needs. 

Coming to a town near you is a wireless broadband card that runs on both the established Rev. A network and WiMax,  so you get the best speeds where available.

Pricing of WiMax services is a no brainer.  My price check on the Xohm website was $45/month for 2.0x the speed of Rev. A today.  100% faster than anything today at 25% less than current service…where do I sign up…  I read somewhere on the news that service equipment sold out in the first week.  No contracts…again…where do I get one…

I saw a test of this working at the annual Sprint conference in Nashville.  It was moving about 6Mbps download and 4Mbps upload.  The ratings on the Xohm website are a less, but still remarkable, 2.0-4.0 Mbps download and 0.5-1.5Mbps upload.  However, the blogs and reviews clearly get higher and lower speeds depending on coverage.  This is still enough for me to get rid of my business DSL service from crappy ATT when WiMax rolls our here in California.   

WiMax devices will be plenty…it will usher in a new generation of mobile devices that may or may not be phones.  This has been the saying for the last 5 years, but now, its real.  There is a production quality network deployed.  Simple products like embedded WiMax on laptops will be a no brainer in many businesses.  What is more interesting is innovative products like Nokia Nseries phones/tablets (N810 in particular).  I saw this device at the beginning of this year and it’s a very nice solution.  They even connected a Skype call in the demonstration to exhibit the low latency of the WiMax signal (of course this is a demonstration environment and not moving), but it work very well, just like a computer.  The Nokia runs Linux and supports Mozilla as the browser.  It is also a full MP3 player and has expandable memory to 10GB (2GB internal + 8GB expandable).  Lastly, it does have WiFi as well.  It’s a great device to fill the need of the “Internet is everything for me” crowd. 

The ultramobile computing market may become more main stream with this jump start with WiMax.  It has all the power of a PC except in the palm of your hand.   

Consumer reviews on the web appear very good for future adoption and I think we have another hit on our hands. 

Lastly, what I think will kick WiMax into high gear is its open structure.  Sprint doesn’t have to approve the device for its network.  Manufacturers can now build it and sell it as fast as they can innovate and produce.  I’m not certain LTE has the same business model structure in mind, and given $22BN in debt Verizon will take on in closing Alltell and the billions spent on airwave licenses, I doubt they will just open up given things have been working well in the past closed carrier model.  This will be the singular reason WiMax has a great chance of sustaining and proliferating much faster.  I predict there is already a Google WiMax device already in the works somewhere in that company.  Intel must also have a ton of things in the works to put chipsets in.     

No contracts…fair pricing…rapid hardware innovation…and a national network…mobile solution…Sounds like a recipe for taking market share from DSL, cable, and current customers of Verizon and ATT.  

Unfortunately for Qualcomm…if this really works…they are in big trouble.  They bought Flarion a few years ago when Sprint Nextel was testing their OFDM stuff, but Sprint decided to go WiMax instead.  Qualcomm’s only choice so far is the ride the LTE bandwagon…but oh…so crowded a wagon.  If WiMax is stable and VOIP works well enough…then the world of communication will change dramatically in Sprint’s favor and to the favor of manufacturers in this new ecosystem.