Europe Unwired
Carney, Brian M.
"Europe Unwired" EUROPE: THE GREAT UNWIRED BY BRIAN M. CARNEY BRUSSELS-Can anything save Europe's staggering telecom industry? The answer may be right here in my apartment. Having paid a hundred billion dollars...
...Some hopeful souls envision a future in which personal Wi-Fi networks like mine are shared with whole neighborhoods...
...If the operators are willing, and regulators are accommodating, high-speed wireless Internet access using GSM spectrum might just save 3G...
...C yq ae Y.i ,=f 7. 1717-A S~ w 0 You won't believe it until you hear it, the FR200 AM/FM/Shortwave radio actually puts he power of radio in your own hands...
...Increasing the speed available on the network is vital, and not just because it will broaden the range of applications that can be used...
...But the big wireless operators with their 3G licenses are hemmed in because regulators won't let them use anything else...
...The four bands allow you the dioice of hundreds of stations AM/FM/SW 1 /SW2 in your home, on your vacation or anywhere outdoors...
...If this gets off the ground, it could change the landscape, but the model is, as the VCs say, unproven...
...To make the wireless Internet pay off, Europe's telecoms are going to need more...
...You can always be informed on what's happening around the globe...
...wireless companies are making to their networks could be used in Europe, if the regulators will allow it...
...Sure, NTT DoCoMo has had some success with its "imode" in Tokyo-you can pay for sodas from vending machines with your phone...
...AN dulls and faxes for imemolionl orders ore the xpexa iklies of reeadsee am 34 s for sldpmesd...
...One NewYork-based startup, Joltage, is trying to set itself up as a middleman, offer No Power No Problem Ae!~ A Revolutionary Radio Always be prepared for am emergency...
...Shareholders are anxioust lvlanagement is nervous...
...We mcept Yrsq Mmlerrmd, Amerkon Fxpras, Distant Orack or homey Order...
...That's cool technology But it's probably not 100 billion euros cool...
...But charting the future of a market years in advance is difficult, to say the least...
...But I can do this only because my wireless Wi-Fi network hub is plugged into an ADSL modem, which in turn is plugged into a phone jack, which is connected to the phone company, which is hooked up to the Internet...
...Irwin Jacobs, the founder and CEO of Qualcomm-which supplies chipsets and software for Monet and other wireless broadband pioneers, including San Francisco-based SOMA Networks-is confident that similar speeds are achievable in Europe...
...If they did, however, it would make Europe's current 3G standard-which calls for speeds just one-eighth as fast as Monet's next-generation network-look slow, no matter how dearly bought...
...On Monet's 3G networks-set up so far in Fargo, North Dakota and Sioux Falls, South Dakota-you can be on the Internet, anywhere within their service area, for a flat $50 a month...
...In that case, Europe's cablemodem and DSL providers had better watch their backs...
...The economics are daunting...
...18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • MAV/JU...
...enjoy listening to sports, world events, talk shows, weather and news with only a few cranks...
...The speed of the network is a crucial determinant of the cost to the network operator of providing bandwidth...
...But to do so, they'll need to offer real broadband, not the pole-along stuff designed to keep mobile-phone users happy...
...In other words, Wi-Fi doesn't get me on the Internet-it merely connects me and my computer to something that does...
...tornado...
...Right now, speeds are only about two times the average dial-up connection, but an upgrade to the network later this year should allow speeds nearly 40 times faster than dial-up...
...So, as useful as Wi-Fi is, it's still dependent on my $40-month phone company DSL connection...
...Does the technology for that exist...
...Simply flip out the side Hand Crank and give it a quick 90 turns, the FR200 AM/FM/SW radio leaps to life and continues playing for up to one hour (depending on volume...
...You'll be amazed at the power...
...Europe's telecom bureaucrats have settled on one, known as UMTS (don't ask) and decreed that it will operate in a specific slice of radio spectrum...
...To order by moil, sand a cord amber and expiroGon date er rkeck or money order for 47.45 pks lox, ll opphceble', la $11011016 DIRECT, 3520 norm Are., Unit L, Redwood City, CA 94063 'U orders, please add L25% sties in [biled with shgmeml...
...The fxn7Ar FR200 AM/FM/Shartwmre Reie is oily 5 .45 [plus 57.50 slung and bonding and lox, if oppkable') peye k in IKe molly credit Cord drsis meets of $24.28...
...And while Europe's regulators may have stumbled into a sweet spot with GSM, they seem simply to have stumbled with UMTS, by assuming too much about what the market-and the technology-would bear...
...It's called WAR and it stinks-slow, frustrating, hard to use...
...Lots of people have heard of it more than they want to, in the case of telecom investors...
...Thanks to Wi-Fi, my laptop computer can be online anywhere in my apartment, as free as I am on a cordless phone...
...Sneering at America's chaotic backwardness in wireless is a favorite pastime of European bien pensants, and they no doubt thought they could do it again with UMTS...
...For desktops, it supplants DSL, cable-modenr or dialup Internet, eliminating the need to wait for the cable or phone company to set you up...
...But few really understand it-in part because they think of 3G as Internet for mobile phones...
...Someone has to pay for that, and there are limits to how many people will simply give Internet access away...
...What I have at home is a "Wi-Fi" wireless network...
...Dependable features such a5, a light source to help you find your matches, candles or lanterns until the power comes back on...
...Enter the much-maligned third-generation wireless-the technology Europe's telecom companies destroyed their balance sheets buying licenses for last year...
...What's more, European telecom regulators can only have been encouraged by the runaway success of the GSM standard...
...One problem: It turns out that the 3G spectrum for which Europe's telecoms paid so many billions last year is less than perfect for big-time bandwidth, requiring a huge number of signal towers...
...At the time the standards were written, restricting high-speed data services to its own special slice of bandwidth may have seemed like a good idea...
...ice storm...
...This restriction created an artificial scarcity of 3G spectrum, which in turn drove the price of licenses into the stratosphere...
...for more information, visit www.grundigmdio.com...
...Having paid a hundred billion dollars for third-generation wireless licenses, BT, DT, France Telecom, Vodafone and the rest are slogging through mountains of debt, decelerating demand and the prospect of shelling out billions more to build the networks required to utilize all that stratospherically priced electronic spectrum...
...Once again, technology has outrun the regulatory environment...
...David Beckham video clips (he's the latest heart-throb British soccer star) and local restaurant listings on mobile phones aren't going to get them there...
...earthquake...
...But if my apartment doesn't hold the answer exactly, it contains an important clue to the way out...
...Otherwise known by its engineering name, 802.11b, it is great technology...
...Before it's all over, Europe's telecoms will need to reap the equivalent of thousands of dollars each from every man, woman and child in the continent just to make these investments pay...
...flood...
...and airport terminals around the world...
...AMSP04 24 heirs a 7 days a week...
...Prymem in OSS...
...Phones are designed to facilitate talking...
...In the meantime, the technology has advanced to the point that Internet access in the Europe's GSM bands need not be limited to snails-pace speeds...
...Second-generation GSM networks-what ordinary European cell phones now use-would actually work better, requiring fewer base stations and relying on an infrastructure that's already in place...
...2002...
...Other countries or regions may choose different paths and different spectrum bands...
...Qualcomm's Jacobs says that the same enhancements U.S...
...It could run on the same networks that Europe's 3G license holders must build out, in any case, and eliminates at a stroke the nasty regulatory fights currently under way over unbundling "local loops" controlled by the former state-owned monopolies...
...They will never make Web surfing pleasant, no matter how many Gs you've got...
...Not to mention the likely opposition from incumbent telecom operators to ad hoc reselling of bandwidth...
...In fact, we already have the Internet on mobile phones...
...While this is happening on a limited scale in a few big cities around the US, every Wi-Fi network must ultimately be plugged into the Internet backbone somewhere...
...any natural disaster or a power outage...
...The technology will be able to support a high number of users at a high throughput at a reasonable price;' Jacobs says...
...With no conventional batteries or Af power whatsoever, the FR200 Radio with its fine-tuning control of signal provides superior crystakleor AM/FM/SW reception...
...For laptops, it means you can be on the Net in the car, on the train, in the pizza parlor in town-anywhere you might previously have used a mobile phone...
...We= eel ' 1o a P0...
...There are numerous possible paths to meeting the standard...
...The truth is that 3G is not a technology at all-it's a standard that defines what speed users will get...
...TO ORDER, CALL US TOLL-FREE.- 1-800-793-6542 Ext...
...Some already have...
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...The FR200 comes with a builtin crank-charged Ni-Mh battery, shoulder-strap carrying case and listening guide...
...Wi-Fi is being used to network Starbucks coffee shops in the U.S...
...This sort of service is a natural for Europe, with its high population density and low Internet penetration...
...If they can offer decent connectivity over the air at an affordable price, they might just be able to pay for those licenses, after all...
...The higher the speed of the network, the lower the cost per megabyte and the greater the chance that operators will offer flat-rate wireless bandwidth pricing-universally seen an essential step toward mass adoption of wireless Internet access...
...A Joltage subscription gets you on the Internet wherever there's coverage-what the company calls "HotSpots...
...A company called Monet Mobile Networks based in Seattle shows one way forward...
...if payixlf by Ared/nloaty cedar please colada...
...The wireless operators have the marketing infrastructure to cut out that middleman and offer wireless broadband directly...
...AK, HI, PR 8 Inert olionel m ks ([at-no-de) pie fox 1450-3811724 fat ship p'el and bindkrg...
...That's not entirely WAP's fault...
...w kx MAY/JUNE 2002 - THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 17 in, to collect fees from users and then split them with Wi-Fi "mico-providers" like me...
...GRUnDIG tiery2 cr/ infdrrnec/I Brian M. Carney edits The Wall Street Journal's Europe Business column...
Vol. 35 • May 2002 • No. 3
