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Texas Wireless Symposium: The Future in the Eye of the Beholder

Here in my hometown, we have an annual event, now in its third year, sponsored by the Wireless Networking & Communications Group at the University of Texas, this year dubbed the Texas Wireless Symposium. And this year, that sponsorship is shifting over to the Austin Wireless Alliance, a local group of over 100 companies allied to share information on wireless, and promote industry development in Austin.

The evolution of this conference reflects the growing commercialization of wireless. In its first year, the conference was heaviliy loaded with academics and theoretical discussions on radio engineering, etc. Last year, while there were more highly technical discussions than I would have liked, the program had shifted to include discussion of business issues and different flavors of wireless. This year, you can see the commercial side creeping in. The opening of the program was heavily weighted on the cellular side, with a kickoff Keynote from Steve Largent, CEO of the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA). I was disappointed that he toed the line on the munipcal policy debate, trotting out the old canard of the public sector competing against the private sector. That just is not happening. And the panels were weighted with representives from Verizon, Cingular, etc. But as the conference went on, more was heard from alternative wireless technologies like Wi Fi Mesh, WiMAX, UltraWideband, and others.

One interesting point of discussion has been when panel members dismiss WiMAX and gently highlight the hype aspects, careful not to be too disparaging, but nevertheless state that they are unimpressed with the technology and its potential. I call this the conventional view - when cellular companies brag on 2 BILLION subscribers, growing to 3 BILLION worldwide, its easy to understand their prejudice to an interloper like WiMAX or Wi Fi Mesh, which could disrupt their party - they are currently where the money is, and they'd like to stay there. At least for now, I would add, cellular is huge. But I'm glad to see that I'm not alone in seeing the promise of Wi Fi Mesh and WiMAX - these panels have been challenged by members from the audience during the Q&A period by those who see WiMAX, in particular, in a different light. Clearly, it's an item that is in discussion and hotly debated. This discussion is in stark contrast to the WiMAX World conference going on in Boston this week - I bet the discussion on WiMAX is different from their perspective.

The current panel underway while I'm blogging is discussing the venture financing aspects of wireless, with the moderator from Austin's own Motion Computing kicking off discussions. Dr. Preston Marshall from DARPA is talking now, and he's interested in technologies that are "infrastructure-less". Gotta love DARPA for pushing out the envelope. 'We invented IP, and that was great, but we want to know what is next."

The themes are convergence on the application side, convergence on the handset side, the convergence of WiMAX and cellular WAN technologies around OFDM at the 4G level, in about 4 years, and the potential of these technologies working together in integrated systems - WiMAX and Wi Fi mesh as overlay technologies, for instance. I guess that's what conferences like this are good for, to get people to speculate in public about the unknown future. We can't see there, but we can speculate. Clearly, the incumbent industry expects the future wireless world to look somewhat like it does today. Those who read this blog probably have a little broader viewpoint. (pun intended)

I'll post tomorrow during the municipal broadband panel (no doubt, that will be the most interesting panel of the week!!).

Posted on October 27, 2005 at 01:39 PM

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