When it comes to wireless protocols, most people are absolutely clueless.
Beyond knowing that their phone applications download faster when it says “4G” in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, people generally aren’t familiar with the technology and what it means.
It’s too techy for people to care about.
Media and marketers often dismiss this information as bewildering “speeds and feeds.” In other words, it’s technical specs that the average person has no use for. All they need to know is that bigger numbers equal better.
But it’s not that simple, and we’re not the average person, anyway.
We need to have a firm grasp on technologies as they grow and change if we intend to be ahead of the curve in investing.
As of right now, the majority of the world is in the 4G era of GSM radio communication technologies. In the United States, this means most mobile devices are using a wireless communication standard known as LTE.
But LTE, short for “Long-Term Evolution [of the GSM standard],” was proposed a full decade ago.
Yes, it seems like the cutting edge to the consumer, but these things take a long time to reach the point where they’re a broadly adopted standard.
That’s why we have to start looking toward the 5G era right now. The move for dominance in the next era is already underway.
Google is in
Over the summer, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) made an important purchase that received almost no publicity.
It acquired a Seattle-based company called Alpental Technologies. The company didn’t have any products or technologies on the market, but it had an extremely important angle that made it valuable to Google: human capital.
Alpental Technologies was founded by Pete Gelbman and Mike Hart, former researchers from Clearwire.
Now, you may not recognize the name Clearwire, and that’s okay. It wasn’t a huge name among consumers, but it was massive among innovators in the early days of 4G adoption. The company worked on a microwave wireless technology called WiMAX that was eventually rolled into Sprint’s national cellular network.
The technology has some usability problems against other wireless standards, and it only found a home in select markets.
But my hometown of Baltimore happens to be one of them. In fact, it was the first U.S. city with a commercial WiMAX deployment. I went to the ribbon cutting for the first tower.
You could say I know a tiny bit about it.
So here’s something that people haven’t been talking about…
Google had a 6.5% stake in Clearwire back when the venture began in 2008, investing approximately $500 million into the net $3.5 billion launch. The goal at the time was to reach 140 million people with the next generation of wireless broadband.
Unfortunately, it didn’t happen, and Google backed out in 2012, selling its stake for about $47 million.
But Alpental is giving Google another shot at it.
60 GHz
That’s the wireless band Alpental and Google will be working inside. It’s the unlicensed band that’s been used for everything from wireless HD video to short-distance, high-throughput networking.
The WirelessHD Consortium uses this band for its technology, which is capable of data rates of 28 Gigabits per second (Gbps).
This is extremely fast, to put it mildly.
Your standard household wireless router that uses different flavors of the 802.11 (2.4 GHz) wireless standard are capable of up to 11 Megabits per second. 60 GHz wireless Ethernet bridges easily hit the Gigabit mark.
Google has been testing the idea of being an Internet Service Provider with its own fiber-optic Internet deployment in Kansas City. Google Fiber has proven to be successful enough that the company is considering expanding to 34 new markets, with the first new ones in Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah.
Last April, Google said it planned to “add Wi-Fi” to extend the range of its fiber-optic deployments, and Pete Gelbman’s Linkedin profile said he was working on a “self-organizing, ultra low power Gigabit wireless technology to extend fiber optics.”
Interestingly, this is the same usage case that made WiMAX so attractive to Google six years ago. Many companies saw the microwave communications technology of WiMAX as ideal for “wireless broadband,” a somewhat different idea than 4G mobile data.
Wireless broadband was used to connect homes to the Internet rather than to connect portable mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. This is because microwave wireless is a much better solution for fixed, high-throughput connections such as wireless backhauling, where interference and signal attenuation could be controlled.
A Tough Nut
With Alpental, Google looks to be trying once again to break open metropolitan-area networks (MAN) — the idea I explained above. It’s like a local area network (LAN) but on a bigger scale. Think of it as a massive Wi-Fi hotspot.
This is vastly cheaper than laying fiber-optic cable, and with faster wireless communications, it can provide an excellent end-user experience.
The idea has been tried in the past and has been received poorly. But guess what? That’s because it’s been talked about in the same way I’ve been talking about it.
The appealing parts about it are just too techy. The average homeowner does not care about wireless throughput. They just want good service.
Fortunately for Google, Americans hate their Internet service providers with a passion.
The incumbents — Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Cablevision — have reputations for the worst possible customer service and unfair pricing due to regional monopolies.
Google could come in as a white knight with great customer service and fair practices and sweep the legs out from under the incumbents.
It’s already done that in Kansas City.
According to an informal door-to-door survey conducted earlier this year, it’s forecast that Google has secured 75% of Kansas City homes in the neighborhoods where Google Fiber is available.
Google could revolutionize the competitive landscape for broadband if its 60 GHz wireless plan takes root.
It’s a few years off, but it’s an extremely promising development.
Until next time,
Jason Stutman
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