To the Editor,
I enjoy Tracy Ford’s editorial columns, as I do Jeffrey Silva’s.
Your July 11, 2005, comments about the 2.5 GHz band are right on including, “The potential to offer high-speed broadband Internet access is huge…” I’d add that one doesn’t really need new applications like video streaming, online gaming, et al., to make that band a huge broadband success. These applications are nice additions, but a basic core desire of users is to have broadband service-including mobile-whenever, wherever, however they want it, simply and at a reasonable price. Fast, easy, cheap. It’s like voice when cell phones were first introduced: once made easy, economical and ubiquitous, people just talked more, lots more, using cell phones to complement landline voice usage. More talk, more business being conducted, more personal calls being made, more talk, lot’s more talk.
No new applications were necessary at that time to make cell phones a huge hit. Twenty years later, we finally see interesting new things for cell phones (and PDAs, etc.), now being added to gain incremental growth. Make broadband fast, easy and cheap and I suggest it will soar, with or without new, neat applications! IPWireless Inc. is pioneering such a powerful economical wireless broadband technology and is about to be tested by Nextel in the Washington D.C. area. It will be interesting to see what role broadband and/or IPWireless plays over the next year or two in the U.S. 2.5 GHz band.
And, yes, I confess: I’m biased as a cofounder of IPWireless!
Keep up the good work.
Peter A. Howley Western Ventures
