150 Mbps Wireless Broadband

Image via Wikipedia150 megabits per second download speed: that's pretty amazing.

iTWire: 149.4Mbps over wireless broadband: Telstra and Huawei are testing LTE mobile broadband using 1800MHz spectrum ..... this was more than three times the peak speeds achieved with current mobile technology. .... "As mobile customers move away from 2G services and onto 3G and LTE, 1800MHz spectrum will increasingly become available to be re-farmed by operators. The overwhelming success of these trials shows that 1800MHz can be an attractive option for deploying LTE where access to other spectrum bands is constrained" ..... Earlier this year, Huawei set a record LTE-Advanced download speed of 1.2Gbps at the CTIA Wireless 2010 event held in Las Vegas.

1 gigabits per second is even more impressive.

Net Neutrality Woes

Image via Wikipedia

New York Times: The Struggle for What We Already Have: When Google and Verizon, a month ago, put together a well-meaning proposal for enforceable net neutrality rules, the two companies were vilified by the net neutrality purists — because they wanted to exempt wireless..... Surely, this has to rank as the Mother of All Unintended Consequences: there is an outside chance that in its zeal to make net neutrality the law of the land, the F.C.C. could wind up as a regulator with very little to regulate..... Net neutrality is, in fact, incredibly complicated ...... Data networks, after all, have to be managed. The engineering is complex. The capacity is limited. Inevitably, some form of prioritization is bound to take place. Rules also have to be created that will give companies the incentive they need to spend the billions upon billions of dollars necessary to extend broadband’s reach and improve its speed, so we can catch up to, say, South Korea. ...... It has been desperately trying to find a way to re-establish jurisdiction over broadband services, while at the same time continuing to push for net neutrality. It has become a very complicated dance. ....... the Internet service providers have made it plain that they will sue to prevent the F.C.C. from asserting Title II jurisdiction over broadband. ...... The truth is, virtually every player involved wants the F.C.C. to have oversight over broadband services. ..... Consumers have come to expect an open Internet, and companies will violate net neutrality at their peril.

To most everybody it felt like Google did an about face. Google abandoning net neutrality? For the longest time Google had been one of the loudest voices for net neutrality. And then Google-Verizon happened.

The thing to do is not to face the reality of technical constraints of wireless broadband. The thing to do is to get rid of those constraints. There are technical solutions. There are market solutions. There are policy solutions.

Release more spectrum and fast. That is the policy solution. Introduce much more competition. That is the market solution. They did not achieve higher speeds and lower prices in South Korea by abandoning net neutrality.

Use of wireless broadband exploding is a good thing. Demand has been created. Now create supply.

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Paul English Writes Back

I wrote to his official Kayak email address, and he wrote back. He might have copied and posted the body of the email, but he needed to have typed my name. I don't know if you know but Kayak's focus on customer service is legendary. They keep this old school big red phone in the office. Every time a customer calls, they pick and talk. The Kayak engineers themselves reply to every email every customer ever sends them. I just got my first hand experience of that legendary customer service.

Kayak, Paul English, Africa, Free Wireless Internet

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Kayak, Paul English, Africa, Free Wireless Internet

OnStartups.com: Startup Insights From Paul English, Co-Founder of Kayak (Via Paul Orlando, @porlando) the most popular travel search site on the web (and one of the top 1,000 most popular sites on the web)..... In Dec 2007, with just 39 employees, Kayak raised $230 million (at a much higher than that valuation) to acquire their largest competitor, SideStep. Paul is on my list of “best entrepreneurs I’ve met”. ...... my next 10 year project. I'll be at Kayak, of course, pushing it, pushing it, but I'm starting a new project that has an audacious goal of creating free low-bandwidth Internet for the whole continent of Africa.
Fast Company: Kayak.com Cofounder Paul English Plans to Blanket Africa in Free Wireless Internet (Via Adam Carson, @adamkcarson) a "big, big project," one that will consume the next decade of his life ..... 8.7% Internet penetration right now ..... belief that providing basic Internet is as essential to society as clean water and clean power. ..... he nonprofit/for-profit hybrid this summer and begin creating partnerships between JoinAfrica and local African for-profit telcos. ...... he's already bought satellite dishes and other gear and helped hook up villages in a number of African countries over the past decade, from Burundi to Uganda and Malawi to Zambia. "Having email and Skype has been transformative for the handful of villages I've worked in," he says. ....... "The continent of Africa has been so fucked over from an economic standpoint -- as an engineer, how do I use my skills to do something that's transformative?" ...... assure the system is "incredibly measurable and incredibly managed." ..... the project might cost billions ..... "The way Kayak is involved is that it's helping make me very wealthy, and I plan to deploy that wealth" ...... massive scale and hybrid business model

This speaks to me. This hits me like when I first read about the Chrome OS. (Chrome Operating System) I have been talking about "an operating system that supports a browser and nothing else, and hardware that supports that operating system and nothing else, something barebones" for a few years now. And I have been talking about "wireless broadband supported by ads" for a few years now. Actually that was my startup that Adam had put 50K of his money into, and 35K of money of people he knew. That money went back to the investors in February 2009 for understandable reasons. I liked the "we still believe in you, we still believe in the vision" parting talk. Lost the investment, kept the friendship. (Ignite, Set It On Fire)

The vision still rings true, only feels more possible due to the Chrome OS. The demand is still there. Billions lack wireless broadband. Heck, most people in America lack wireless broadband. (Job Search) Mobile is great, but you really need that screen size and keyboard size. Global South people are not mini people who can make do with mobile phones alone. Universal broadband will create One World for the first time ever.

Internet access is the voting right for this Internet Century.

Bill Gates thinks the world population will stabilize around nine billion. All countries can be turned into democracies. Poverty can be eradicated. Hunger can be ended. Universal broadband is possible. Big things are possible.

I don't think of the internet as a privilege that people get to access once they get rich enough, so focus on food. Cars, yes, but not the internet. The internet is the catalyst that will make all those other big things possible.

Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures
Hunger, Vision, Money

"A country does not become fit for democracy, it becomes fit through democracy."
- Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize In Economics




Travel, Music

Travel is like music. I never met anybody who did not like music. We no longer live in an era when you needed to be Marco Polo to travel. I have been all over America. I plan on going all over the world. Eventually. I got time. I have sketches in my mind for all India, all Africa, all China travels. You comb the land.

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Not Hardware, Not Software, But Connectivity

There is plenty left to be desired on the hardware and software fronts, but the real bottleneck in getting all 6 billion potential surfers online is neither, but connectivity. What business models could emerge to bridge up the digital divide?

Two technology models that hold promise: (1) broadband over power lines: zip, fast too, and (2) wireless broadband.

Internet access is fast becoming a basic need. What do you need to survive? Food and water are obvious. After that free internet access might be pretty close. I am serious.

The word "free" is important there. You don't pay for television shows. You don't pay to search on Google. The ad-model works just fine. The same could apply to internet access.



Say a company (or two, or three) comes forth, and they beam internet access to all corners of the planet. The catch being, when you go online with them, they, not you decide what the homepage will look like. And for that first webpage, they bring you online for "free." Heck, they might even get you to use only their browser, in which case, they could keep a toolbar that will always be with you no matter where you go online.

A click is a click is a click. I am sure a company like Coke/Pepsi does not care who the human being is. They will want people everywhere to see their ads.

And such a democratizing force that universal internet access will be too. Nothing like that to empower the individual. How will autocracies - those that remain - sustain themselves in the aftermath? They plain can't. Social transformation will be quickened. Universal education will become a reality, and it will be seamless from one level to another. A student in Bhutan could be following lectures at MIT.