[LINK] [Fwd: The President on the National Wireless Initiative: "We're Going to Have to Up Our Game, Marquette"]

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of David Boxall
> Sent: Saturday, 12 February 2011 2:36 PM
> To: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] [Fwd: The President on the National 
> Wireless Initiative: "We're Going to Have to Up Our Game, Marquette"]
> 
> 
> On 11/02/2011 6:03 PM, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
> > Oops, here is the link 
> > 
> <http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/02/10/pre>
sident-national-wireless
> > -initiative-we-re-going-have-our-game-marquette>
> >
> Interesting that the Yanks can't do any better. Or are they 
> fixated on 
> mobile?
> 

Nope. Yet the Chinese offered a compelling business case for high
density WiFi

>From a Presentation given by China Academy of Telecommunication
Research, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in Paris,
France, on the 18th Dec, 2009

http://innovation-regulation.enst.fr/fileadmin/documents/thematiques/Inn
ovative_Business_Models/Development_trend_of_digital_city_in_China-chenj
q.ppt

>From Slide 27:

Quote/

Five Main Characteristics for  Chinese Wireless City 
ISP model has the most brilliant future, while government dominated
model has the least
Government drives for competitiveness
Wimax+ Wlan picked as main technology, TD rise to be partner.
Social providers act as leading role, telecos are realizing to join this
contest.
The first application is to provide free public information. ISP service
can be provided in charge.
No clear business model can be found to be successful.

/Quote


Their feelings on the topic can be summarised by: [from slide 30]

Quote/
Wireless city can be considered as emerging service.
/Quote

The Chinese Summary appears to be quite succinctly put.

A Government WiFi implementation will fail.
A commercial ISP "content" led implementation will probably succeed
because the ISP's will make it work.

Possibly President Obama wasn't aware of the past failed Zeppelin
(MCI/Zone) US wide WiFi build out in the nineties and of course the
Carriers need to take back control of the Data Caps that the FCC just
bounced.
Ergo, Carriers are lobbying on both sides of the Pond for Capped
wireless broadband services so that they can be the sole content
delivery channel.

An interesting political exercise - Unfortunately driven by unrealistic
commercial [needs] and not consumer desires. Therefore it will fail
because the uptake will fail.

In fact I'm betting that the consumers will continue to come up with
alternatives like http://deaddrops.com/dead-drops/ to escape from
"Caps", filters and other such consumer control artefacts.