I’ve been saying for years that 3G is not suitable or scalable for VoIP communications, but it’s great to see Gigaom being level headed about the lack of VoIP services over 3G and going beyond the usual conspiracy theories.  There were some things in Om’s article that needs to be clarified.  Skype’s VoIP payload is [...]

Faulhaber and Farber answer the FCC’s Notice of Inquiry into fostering innovation and investment. They argue that these are two sides of the same coin, and enter into an analysis of three areas of the industries previous performance

Consumerist reports that AT&T limited its online sale of new iPhones to New York due to insufficient cell tower capacity, but what do we expect when New York goes out of its way to block cell tower permits?

A study spanning four Scandinavian countries with a population of 16 million people found no increase in brain cancer rates resulting from the use in cell phones. The results were published at the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Wireless networks are vastly different from wired networks in terms of the underlying technology and economics that support these networks. Wireless networks have always been regulated differently, so why is that being changed now?

Broadband for America “Mobile Broadband & Implications for Broadband Competition and Adoption” William Lehr (MIT) You can find a PDF copy of the paper in its entirety here. Dr. William Lehr reviews mobile broadband infrastructure, business models, usage models, and coming technologies that will allow mobile Internet to be a competitive force.  Wireless broadband is [...]

Americans have the most choice in wireless providers and they pay the least per minute of cell phone use, yet some pundits and academics see something wrong with the American cellular industry. Is their anger justified, or are they too removed from reality?

Three economists Everett Ehrlich, Jeffrey A. Eisenach, and Wayne A. Leighton have written a paper on “The Impact of Regulation on Innovation and Choice in Wireless Communications”. The paper examines the state of wireless competition in the U.S. relative to the world and the effect of regulations sought out by Skype and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The “Environmental Working Group” ewg.org just put out their report on the dangerous of cell phone Radio Frequency (RF) fields. The problem is that their report either relies on very small studies that show a possible correlation with increased cancer rates but they completely omit the largest studies that found no dangers with cell phone RF fields. The EWG makes several claims in their executive summary but they seem to contradict the larger body of evidence

Yesterday’s FCC wireless technology workshop was filled with some very misguided testimony from Sascha Meinrath, Director of the Open Technology Initiative at the New America Foundation. Since no one challenged Mr. Meinrath at the hearings yesterday, I felt compelled to set the record straight. Ethernet and wireless network standards pioneer Richard Bennett who was also listening in on the video stream gave a similar assessment of Meinrath’s testimony saying:

“His comments at the mobile wireless session on European hobbyist networks were quite entertaining, although not particularly serious. Claiming that “hub-and-spoke” networks are less scalable and efficient than wireless meshes is not credible”