This will create some interesting gadget packaging opportunities, and perhaps help TMD recoup some of the investment they've poured into polysilicon.

Hat tip to Candice Elliott.
3:28:56 PM    

Spent part of yesterday at the Broadband Wireless World show at the SJ Convention Center, walking the floor and chatting up vendors. Some unsourced rumors and speculative analysis:

• Intel and Fujitsu are both cooking 802.16/a PHY/MAC silicon. I guess their feet are moving. Firm timeline not to be had, but perhaps sampling around the end of the year.
• Many if not most of the proprietary point/multipoint wireless broadband vendors, even some of the largest, are repositioning to build around this silicon.
• The world doesn't need as many OEMs building around a commodity standard as will result. There's a good chance that the prospect of a standard appearing will freeze carrier purchasing, 'Osborning' the BWA business just as it must undertake the capital expense of reengineering for 802.16. Shakeout time.
• Guess-timated CPE and amortized base station costs when 802.16 products appear: $400 - $500 per sub trending quickly down.
• 256 subcarrier OFDM is the clear winner among the PHY variants.

I also bumped into Robert Berger - newly returned from his Japan gig at GLOCOM - one of the Good Guys in the 802.11 and general wireless data scene. He's of the opinion that the 802.16 move could be pre-empted by variant forms of 802.11. To be sure, the current CSMA MAC of 802.11 has some serious issues when operated in a point/multipoint or mesh mode. But there are ways of getting around it, from Vivato and other beamsteering solutions, to variant MACs. There's already equiment available around the $300 per sub price-point. Robert makes the valid point that the 802.11 market is feeding off scale economies [ed. - and overinvestment] and could mutate into this category while 802.16 struggles to get started. Hard for me to completely disagree, since I made the same argument with respect to Bluetooth. There may in fact be an effort starting within the IEEE 802.11 groups to formalizing a meshing variant. Hacked over 802.11 is always going to lack some of the 802.16 properties that are considered Goodness by many carriers, but if their investment and deployment is slow then victory by mutant WiFi is a credible scenario.

Finally, for a wildcard possibility, one of the more interesting new exhibitors was Omnilux, with a free space optical using a meshed architecture. At $1500 per node, it's well under the high priced FSO vendors such as Lightpointe and Terabeam, though still above the wireless. But, each node contains four transceivers, provides 100mpbs, routes, has QoS capability, and an embedded 802.11 access point. Could be very attractive for businesses or hot spot backhaul. Interesting. (Omnilux, BTW, is one of the survivors of the mostly ill-fated ideaLab! portfolio.
3:10:52 PM    

They knew. They kept quiet. They covered up relevant information when war and peace and life and death were at stake. 'Trusted', my sweet a**. Time for some soul searching among the mass media. How many more barbarians are you covering for?

And in case you thought 'Baghdad Bob' the info minister was only a humorous buffoon, look at that NYT article again. Just as much a thug as the rest.

Via Matt Welch, who has some choice words of his own.
2:07:03 PM