Andy Abramsom did a great job listing out all of the ways he believes Google will monetize this device and I would like to add one more.

With the advent of universally accepted mobile payment the Google Phone will combine with Google Checkout to decimate the credit card industry while bringing more money to Google than one might want to think about.

It’s good to be search king.

Recently, the discussion turned to what is happening with AT&T’s network as their customers make the transition from using their cell phones as mobile voice platforms (with a little texting on the side) to real data clients.

According to John Donovan, CTO of AT&T, said the carrier’s wireless data traffic has increased 4,932 percent during the past dozen quarters. “I know what you’re thinking: iPhone. And you’re right, but only partially right,” Donovan said, explaining that Research In Motion’s BlackBerry devices and messaging-centric feature phones have also contributed to the increase in traffic.”

Apple Insider republishes data from a recent AdMob report that makes the claim, “In the worldwide market, AdMob notes that Apple advanced its lead in smartphone traffic share from 43% last month to an even 50%.”

Okay, so what’s next?

How about Fring making it possible to have Skype videophone on your Nokia S60 powered cell phone? If that catches on I wonder what the data usage statistics will look like a year from now.

But Mr. Donovan isn’t finished providing a wakeup call yet. Check out this gem, “If you look at 2008 for us it was unprecedented in terms of the work we did in the backbone,” Donovan said. “The capacity we carried in 2008 five years out will be a rounding error.” Donovan added that AT&T’s 2 gigabit backbone lasted 7 years, their 10 gigabit backbone lasted five, and the 40 gigabit will last 3 years. He then asked rhetorically, “How long will a 100 gigabit network last? At 400 gigabits I think our routers melt, I think finance likes liquid assets, but I don’t think that’s what they had in mind,” Donovan quipped.

Mr. Donovan also provided this bit of wisdom, “We have to rethink how we’re carrying traffic in our networks and I don’t think you can stop at just the cost per bit. We need to back out of that and fundamentally rethink how we interoperated, how networks are constructed, how routing is done and how we move content.”

Not all that long ago, there was a time when our telecommunications network was the envy of rest of the world. It was a time when you were almost assured that when you picked up the handset there would be dialtone and when you placed the call it would be connected, with perhaps only a busy signal preventing this from happening. On the very rare occasion when this wasn’t the case, any kind of large-scale outage was newsworthy.

In contrast, Verizon proudly advertises that they are aggressively seeking out network shortcomings using an army of people trained to repeatedly ask, “Can you hear me now?” This is actually a good thing as Ivan Seidenberg, the chief executive of Verizon Communications announced that they have no interest in continuing to offer landline service, instead opting to focus in on a cell phone service – even though telephone will be offered as an option provided across their Fios (Fiber Optic) network.

Why would this be a problem? After all, the number of people dropping their landlines in favor of cell phones is increasing every year. And if this is what the public wants, isn’t Verizon doing what any good business should do – listening to their customers?

John Donovan, CTO/AT&T, tells The New York Times, “Overnight we’re seeing a radical shift in how people are using their phones,” later adding “There’s just no parallel for the demand.”

There’s no reason to worry though, as AT&T is aggressively addressing this problem, as detailed in this press release dated, September 1, 2009 , “AT&T* today announced a substantial strengthening of its 3G mobile broadband wireless network where it has deployed spectrum in the 850 MHz band across large portions of metro New York City, Long Island and New Jersey.”

John Donovan, CTO/AT&T, also candidly admitted to Fortune magazine, “3G networks were not designed effectively for this kind of usage.” This leads me to wonder if AT&T has a meaningful dialog going with Mr Donovan as it appears there may be some internal disagreement.

In a report recently released by Cisco, [pdf] we find the following statements,

• “Globally, mobile data traffic will double every year through 2013, increasing 66x between 2008 and 2013. Mobile data traffic will grow at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 131 percent between 2008 and 2013, reaching over 2 exabytes per month by 2013.

• Almost 64 percent of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2013. Mobile video will grow at a CAGR of 150 percent between 2008 and 2013.

• Mobile broadband handsets with higher than 3G speeds and laptop aircards will drive over 80 percent of global mobile traffic by 2013. A single high-end phone (such as an iPhone or Blackberry) generates more data traffic than 30 basic-feature cell phones. A laptop aircard generates more data traffic than 450 basic-feature cell phones.”

Businessweek adds this information about AT&T to the discussion, “Many of its 60,000 cell towers need to be upgraded. That could cost billions of dollars, and AT&T has kept a lid on capital spending during the recession—though it has made spending shifts to accommodate skyrocketing iPhone traffic. Even if the funds were available now, the process could take years due to the hassle and time needed to win approval to erect new towers and to dig the ditches that hold fiber-optic lines capable of delivering data. And time is ticking.”

How bad could this problem realistically become? Perhaps understanding what occurred in Austin Texas earlier this year, as described by Fortune Magazine, can help drive the urgency home.

“At the South by Southwest music, film, and interactive fest in Texas earlier this year, the iPhone was all the rage — and not in a good way.

The device proved so popular with Internet-addicted attendees that AT&T’s wireless network in the city of Austin buckled under the strain, all but shutting down both voice and data service for many customers.”

The good news is that alternatives exist, “AT&T says its free Wi-Fi initiative isn’t a response to a recent avalanche of complaints from iPhone users that they cannot connect via 3G. Still, Jeff Bradley, the company’s senior vice president of devices, said that if more AT&T users shifted to Wi-Fi, the performance of the 3G network should improve.”

That’s right, please continue to pay for the 3G network service but if you could find it in your heart to use a WiFi access point whenever possible it will help improve AT&T’s 3G network performance. One might assume that AT&T would appreciate it if you would use someone’s else WiFi connection, perhaps while you’re grabbing a cup of coffee somewhere.

What you need to understand is that this problem isn’t AT&T’s fault, nope, no way as John Donovan, CTO/AT&T, explains, “AT&T’s wireless data traffic has increased by more than 18 times over the past two years, and he expects this trend to continue as the company offers more smartphones and 3G netbooks.”

I mean it’s not like anyone could have predicted this increased demand in traffic, surely not a telecommunications company with a few decades of experience, right?

Perhaps the most powerful tool we have to advert this crisis is fear. As no one wants to be in charge (or holding political office) the day the communications network goes down, that fear is our strongest ally.

If you’re like most of us, you’re all but drowning in too much information, well, no, not information really, a cry to get someone else’s crap into your focus. We all know the advertisers do this, hell, they’ve been doing this for longer than anyone here has been alive but there’s something new, something insidious happening here, something that could be quite literally dangerous, if we let it continue.

They crazy people are being given the pulpit.

There was a time when that guy (You know that guy, right? Everyone knows that guy.) who stood on the corner with a handmade cardboard sign claiming that the world was coming to an end on Tuesday (even though he never said which Tuesday which, come to think about it, still gives him a one in seven chance of being right) was largely ignored. At best he managed to collect a passing disbelieving stare or the ridicule of a few children – but that was it.

Not today, nope – now this guy is a political commentator, probably with his own radio show or at least regular guest appearances on one TV show or another. We’ve reached an age where instead of marginalizing the lunatic fringe, we are embracing them, inviting them into our homes (figuratively, to be sure) and holding their opinions up to the same standards we seem to apply to scientists.

Wait. Scientists? Well, those that believe in the evolutionism are just part of that religion. And the rest of us, well, don’t you worry, this is a country where the majority rules and we can simply vote that nasty evolution out of our sight.

Courtesy of Pew Research

We are interviewing people who will stare straight into the camera and tell you that they don’t want government involved with their Medicaid/Medicare. We see has been TV actors getting exposure on prime-time television shows and saying, “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No.” and this is allowed to stand without the ridicule that is justly deserves.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This isn’t a free speech issue and this is not something that the government should regulate. This is an issue where each and every one of us is required to be an active participant in the running of our country.

You have a right to say anything you want and make as big a jackass as you can out of yourself – and too many Americans have sacrificed too much to allow you to keep that right. At the same time, I too have a right, the right to deride and mercilessly mock you for publicly saying something so stupid that any decent human being wouldn’t let their face see the light of day for the rest of their lives after committing such a stupidity.

This isn’t a Democrat/Republican issue, it isn’t a conservative/liberal issue, it is the rational, intelligent versus the lunatic fringe contest – and many of us are concerned that they are winning.

I’ll leave it to you to figure out who is “us” and who is “them” hopefully before it’s too late.

Because, in the words of our previous Commander In Chief, “You’re either with us or against us .” even though, admittedly, sometimes it’s hard to tell the sides apart.

To more fully address this extremely complicated issue, this article will attempt to address many different aspects of this subject, outlining how this program should be administrated, in my opinion, of course.

Preliminary steps -

Legislate that all broadband backbone assets, as defined by fiber and high speed RF data transportation devices be reported where they can be collated, mapped and used to build a picture of what is available for use. To increase the usefulness of this map all vertical assets should be included, which would include towers that meet code with heights that exceed 100 feet, rooftops that would be useful in providing both RF backhaul sites as well as wireless distribution and mountaintops where it would be feasible to locate either RF backhaul or end user distribution. Any company found not complying with the reporting mandates will be fined and these fines will be added to the broadband infrastructure funding pool.

This information will be used to create a map of what areas have high speed backbone connections already in place and which locations do not. For the purposes of this discussion high speed backbone is defined as 10 Gbps or above.

Now, create a map overlay that shows where the existing backbone infrastructure could be easily extended using the vertical assets that are immediately available. It is understood that the cost to deploy RF transportation using already existing vertical assets will be significantly less expensive and substantially quicker than building fiber.

Next, create another map overlay that shows how these proposed RF backbone locations can also be equipped with wireless last mile connectivity as well as mobile connectivity where either technology is applicable.

Conduct a full auditing of the spectrum allocation table will be with the aim of identifying unused and underused bands. In addition, all commercial bands, currently in use, will be reexamined as to the continued need for this exclusive license as opposed to reabsorbing the spectrum and releasing it for use in broadband infrastructure. A specific example of this is the frequency used by taxis in this country which would now be able to utilize the 802.11p short range vehicle communications band instead. As a national strategy, let’s move towards a complete revamping of the way spectrum is allocated so that all of the tiny slices of spectrum are all recalled, critical licensed bands are moved out of the large swaths of spectrum we will assemble and those large swaths be divided into licensed and license exempt (if you’ll pardon the bastardization of the term) ultrawideband slices of spectrum which will power the next generation of Internet based communications for our country. As a bonus, this move will create a huge demand for all kinds of equipment to replace the now obsoleted radio devices that are no longer usable due to the change in spectrum allocation.

Any company that operates in backbone transportation services will be prohibited from supplying any services. This mandate will include both wired and wireless connection providers, including cell phone service. A company will be required to either provide data transportation or end user connectivity services but cannot provide both. This will also hold true for both owners and investors which will be allowed to participate in only one segment of the industry.

Phase one

Using the newly created maps, all broadband infrastructure funding to be handed out must be used to maximize the number of unserved people who will now receive broadband service. This is a crucial metric to apply to this first round of broadband funding so as to assure that the greatest efficiency will be achieved.

The aggressive use of eminent domain should be employed to seize (with fair market compensation) unused fiber strands owned by any private entity so as to immediately put these assets into use. In cases where fiber has been abandoned, or written off as fully depreciated assets, as in the case of railroad deployments or utility companies, these assets will now revert to the US government’s ownership where they will be tested and then put up for sale with the resulting funds to be used exclusively to develop more broadband infrastructure.

Phase two

The second phase of this construction will entail the building out of fiber to every location in the US, with a specific population density yet to be defined. The wireless network that is already in place will be maintained and continue to operate as a secondary network, primarily used for mobile connectivity but also as a failover.

Funding

With respect to paying for this new infrastructure construction, no new taxes or direct fees will be shouldered by individuals or corporations during the first construction phase. The money has already been allocated through the ARRA bill.

The funding for Phase two and any subsequent phases will be generated based on the taxes paid by the people who were newly hired due to this construction. As such, the IRS will be required to track every new (non-replacement) hire that is added to the Internet infrastructure industry, including the manufacturers of all components used in this construction, and report the money paid into the federal tax coffers. This money will now go exclusively towards the building of more infrastructure projects.

Congress will pass legislation that creates a $10 per vehicle assessment on every new automobile, beginning in 2010. These vehicles will be equipped with 802.11p wireless communications capability and this assessment will be collected to provide funding for the 802.11p network infrastructure. In addition, all federal funding for any RF or communications networks of any kind, E-911 included, will now be channeled into the Internet infrastructure funding pool as will all fees collected from licensing spectrum. Universal Service Funds will now be paid into the Internet funding pool and all funds will now be dispersed to ensure that every American will have suitable high speed access (as defined by 20 Mbps symmetrical) with a target rate will not exceed two hours of the current minimum wage for basic connectivity but where optional services can be provided at going market rates.

And to paraphrase Groucho Marx, these are my beliefs – and if you don’t like them, I have others.

The Information Superhighway. What promise that term engendered, at least, for those of us who treasure good, solid, information. It is important to note that nowhere in that term was there ever any suggestion that the information being delivered down that superhighway would be of any quality level or have anything to do with quality at all.

According to Russell Ackoff, there exists a ‘Knowledge Hierarchy’ or ‘Knowledge Pyramid’ which is more correctly referred to as an inverted pyramid where a progression is formed by taking the lowest component (Data) and through an aggregation process move through Information, then Knowledge, on to Understanding, and eventually Wisdom.

Another pyramid, one that attempts to describe Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, sees self-actualization as the pinnacle of development where by people will “embrace reality and facts rather than denying truth.”

Whether or not one subscribes to either of these theories, it should be readily apparent that information which is corrupt will pollute the decision making process to the detriment of all. If we are to assume that the DIKW hierarchy is correct, what happens when the data stream is full of bad data? Can we apply the GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) theory of computing to this question? And, if so, what happens when we include the concept of Cognitive Dissonance, otherwise known as Belief Persistence, to this process? To further complicate this question, what happens when the information being injected into the data stream is intentionally falsified so as to manipulate the conclusions arrived at? What effect would this have on society and society’s development?

When I buy a bottle of water I expect the container to contain as close to 100% pure water as can be reliably delivered, not some portion of water mixed with who knows what. And yet, when I seek out information on the superhighway, while there is no lack of quantity, the quality of this fundamental building block of wisdom is certainly in question. Certainly, critical thinking is a skill that must be applied to anything we come across but how does one teach this subject? An even better question might be to ask how one can teach critical thinking when there is no apparent baseline of good information to draw from?

Instead of prizing and rewarding excellent sources of this most precious commodity, we are now bent headlong into minimizing these sources as our media devolves into a catering service aimed at the lowest common denominator, filled with intentional misrepresentations chosen to confuse and confound anyone working to better themselves – more often than not, for political gain.

At what point do we understand that while a person is entitled to their opinion, the delusional psychopath prophesying that the return of the Hale Bopp comet mandates that we should all commit suicide has no standing with the researcher who can show credible evidence that we are harming our environment.

This is the Information Quality Quotient or IQQ.

The Boston Globe recently dodged a bullet, thanks to concessions from their employees, which loosely translates into employees making less money in return for their work. On the other side of the spectrum, Craig’s List has seen incredible growth in the last decade in their advertising revenue.

To illustrate this change, Pew Research Center recently released a report showing that online advertising is rising while print advertising is plummeting.

“Nearly half (49 percent) of Internet users say they have ever used online classified sites,” the Pew Center said in the report. In 2005, the percentage was 22 percent.

How bad it the carnage? Well, to borrow a “wisdom” from the US print media back in their heyday, it is said that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Is it just me or does the angle of trajectory in the graph above (from 2000 forward) look somewhat similar to  the following picture?

Attempting to ascertain exactly why this is happening could be an interesting study but from this author’s perspective not really relevant to our immediate future and even less so when we look at the longer term projections. However, let’s look at what we do know, or in the words of that pillar among pillagers, “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Well, I honestly can’t add anything to Donald Rumsfeld’s masterful explanation of reality but I can share with you a few interesting facts that seem pertinent.

In today’s world, people don’t seem to have the time to read. In fact, in just the last 25 years we have seen a dramatic decline in the amount of reading we are willing to do as a society. In the 1980s President Reagan demanded that every issue presented to him, regardless of complexity, be reduced to a single page, in our day and age Twitter limits these thoughts to 140 characters.

This seems to be the intellectual equivalent of what has been termed by the advertising industry as “rightsizing” which apparently began around the time when coffee ceased to be packaged in a one pound can, even though many of the companies cheerfully printed on their cans that their smaller cans made as much coffee as their larger cans used to. I suspect that this is what led Dunkin Donuts to advertise that they were selling Kahlua flavored syrup which could be added to your coffee, ostensibly to give it a coffee flavor.

In a recent grocery trip I noticed a box of cereal that contained 8.75 ounces, leading me to suspect that the manufacturer had left just a little more space in the box to accommodate the settling of its contents during transportation.

But I digress…

What can we extrapolate from the declining revenues in print media?

The obvious explanation is that the cost is perceived as being too high for the value received. If we look at my local newspaper and the amount of readers that might see my add, factoring in their advertisement cost and then look at the same advertisement on Craig’s List (at no cost) somehow the chances of me spending money on my local paper are slim to none. With the recent trend that governments are moving towards using their websites to publish public notices as well as job listings, two distinct ramifications are occurring. The first (and probably most obvious) impact is that what used to be considered the cash cow of print advertising revenue is disappearing. The second, and more insidious, shift is that those Americans who, for whatever reason, are not “plugged into the net” are becoming further disenfranchised, leaving them to the mercy of the televised media for all of their information.

This creates a new dynamic, one that needs to be closely examined, which asks where does this online information, as well as what remains in the print and television media, get created? The obvious answer is that someone somewhere writes this material which is then printed or spoken in the respective media outlets. One might then ask, what effect does “rightsizing” have on both of those informational resources? Well, that leads us back to the Boston Globe story where we are forced to wonder if the quality of their writing will remain now that they are paying less for their content. My guess is that the Globe may one day have on it’s masthead that this newspaper wraps as much fish as our old newspaper did – but again, I digress.

Another shift that can be clearly seen is that consumers don’t appear to be satisfied with the one way information flow that has traditionally been how radio, TV and the print media has always done business. Sure, some radio station formats allowed for people to call in and newspapers would publish a few letters to the editors but the idea of an ongoing dialog fell flat in both of those venues.

Today, sites like SlashDot and Fark post news stories but the real action is in the discussion. The implementation of this type of dialog by the print media, primarily known as their comments section, falls indescribably short of what online sites are doing – and it shows.

Another wrinkle in this ever-shrinking demand for quality content has to be the content creation companies. The need for content is soaring while the price the content commands is falling off. From what used to be dollars per words written has now become pennies per word and not very many pennies at that. Many of these sites don’t actually pay their content creators but instead opt for an advertising revenue split – leaving one to wonder what the quality of their content can actually be if the author is left starving while waiting for page views and advertisement click-throughs to generate small change per day. If this is the case, and it certainly appears to be, what kind of quality control can these businesses be applying to the content they publish given the consideration that they must regularly aggregate fresh content in order attract return readers.

Perhaps the most troubling question about this entire issue is that if we do truly understand that an educated electorate is required for a representative democracy to function, what are we doing to our intellectual underpinnings? If the quality of the information we are being fed is taking the same trajectory as the train in the picture above, at what point will our political system be incapable of functioning?

Even more to the point, does anyone actually know if we haven’t already passed that point?

Over the decade plus I have been involved in different aspects of providing broadband service, plus the many years prior spent experimenting with modems, one constant have never left me – we aren’t going fast enough. Oh sure, the fact that I could get online and retrieve settings for a 20 megabyte hard drive in less time than it took me to call tech support, remain on hold, chat with the engineer, then write down the information before I actually could get any “real” work done was an improvement, but still took too long.

The equivalent today might be waiting the 17 minutes required to download the latest ISO of whatever open source variant I wish to experiment with because just like every other impatient 53 year old child, I want it and I want it now.

Along the way, the argument was at one time framed as defining the “good enough” network, which to my way of thinking was the functional equivalent of building a house just big enough to live in with all of my possessions while providing no accommodation for what I would buy and bring home tomorrow.

Well, what will we bring home tomorrow? It seems that this would certainly be dependent on how much room we have to spare.

The history of mankind has been one where we continually add to this storeroom of innovation, at times pausing for various reasons along the way, but in the longer term the body of knowledge increases as we move forward.

Great, now I need a bigger house – again.

We make the assumption that communications began with hand gestures, perhaps punctuated by the odd sound which might have also included crude pictures drawn in dirt to get our thoughts across. From there we moved to cave art and a somewhat more involved set of sounds, cuneiform, papyrus, with the Gutenberg Press, radio and television coming sometime later. And this entire process was to facilitate getting an idea from one to another mind or in many cases one to many minds. In each graduation, from one technological stage to the next, the previous iteration always appeared to be crude as it was obsoleted.

Certainly there is nothing new under the sun with this latest communications platform, the Internet. Sure the underlying technology is all bright and shiny, even though the modem banks have all been sent to the scrap heaps, but the motivation remains the same, the ability to convey information from one to one or one to many.

But isn’t it curious that every one of these technologies have one inherent drawback, we communicate in a two dimensional manner while living in a three dimensional reality. And that is about to change.

Let me direct you to this link, which includes an interesting technological wrinkle known as the Open Source 3D Printer.

Image courtesy of Fab@Home

While this device is still in the experimental stage, the potential seems pretty clear. The day is not far off where we should be able to see a time when each home will have one of these devices and where hard goods will be delivered as a stream of bits that this printer will translate into a tangible object.

But the progression along this path isn’t likely to stop or even slow here, if anything this device will lead to even more interesting devices, one that stretch our imaginations even further.

So what happens when we take this crude 3D printer and push its limits by employing the capability of a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) device? What is a PDR device you ask? I’ll let this next link explain that to you.

A vivid imagination immediately jumps at the possibility to “print out” DNA which could then be conceivably engineered into food, possibly pets, or (be still my beating heart) even replacement parts for some of us aging folks. If this could be possible, what happens when we expand on the idea and suggest that a high speed printer might possibly be built that could print out an entire human being instantaneously. Combine that with the ability to transmit all the necessary data that makes up this human being and I’ll let you all draw your own conclusions from there.

But none of this is possible without a network that can lift this load.

We pride ourselves in developing higher and higher resolution graphics while leaving aside that a 3D representation exponentially increases that amount of information. In a relatively short period of time data has gone from being measured in bytes, to kilobytes, then megabytes, now the commonly accepted gigabytes, with terabyte becoming the new yardstick and petabyte being recognized on the horizon.

All while our networks proudly measure themselves in megabits per second.
Occasionally, the roadblocks need to be pointed out to us before they become obvious.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It is a different time we live in, one where we obsolete our tools long before they are obsolete. Cell phones are routinely replaced long before the two year contract that many sign with their providers has ended. This has little to do with functionality, even though battery life and new features may play a role in the decision, it has more to do with the cool factor.

And for those who are sporting a two year old Motorola Razr, the new iPhone3G looks pretty sexy, if sexy is what turns you on. I’ve heard that some people actually use many of the new functions available while they’re impressing their friends. For me, being the near Luddite that I am, I want to be able to make a phone call without being disconnected and occasionally send a text message, even though an IM would be infinitely more desirable.

But all of that is about to change, and change in a major way.

For those of us who believe communications is important, you know, the kind of people who actually care about spelling and try to make sure we are clear in what we write, we have long understood the shortcomings of the written words. Heck, most of us are envious of people like Joseph Heller or Kurt Vonnegut for their incredible ability to sculpt the written word, elevating writing to an actual art form. We have long known that communicating in writing largely removes the ability to convey emotions or even sarcasm – that aspect is stripped away, leaving the cold, written word to stand on its own.

Telephone was an improvement, at least the inflection in the voice would make its way from one end to the other, but the inability to look someone in the eye, to pick up the non-verbal clues, or to “read” body language still left one at a disadvantage.

But all of that is about to end…

We now are at the beginning of a new age, one where telepresence allows one to have a “face to face” conversation from halfway around the world, a world where no matter where you are, you’re there (if you want to be) and a world where the ability to hide your true emotions will behind a voice call may slowly disappear. The author makes no judgment as to whether this is a good or bad thing, it only is and that change will need to be accounted for, as well as gotten used to – because, like it or not, our world is about to be transformed.

It should be pointed out that this is not just a change in communications, it is a change in access. A shift to where a firefighter will have the information necessary to know what the floor plan in a building looks like and where dangerous chemicals might be stored. As technology progresses he might have real-time information as to who remains in the building, right down to what room they are in and even the health of the person trapped there – all provided at a loss of our privacy.

This will be a time when all the information anyone would need would be right there with them, wherever they go, accessible as necessary – obviously for a fee and only to those who can afford it.

And that may be where we will need to examine what we have built. With all the potential for good this may do, have we built something that is useful to society? Will this further exchange where we have given up even more of our privacy be worth it as the advertising we receive now knows where are, that it has been six hours since we last ate and that we are probably hungry, as an unfeeling device pushes a list of restaurants that serve our favorite foods all the while as it crosschecked our bank account to screen out the restaurants we cannot afford? From there will it report to our doctor that we cheated on our diet or even prevent the restaurant from serving us what we ordered in favor of something healthier? Or will this service become more mercenary as it targets the most vulnerable among us and feeds them directly to the sharks most likely to take advantage of them.

After all, this is a for profit service…

When I tried to check out who Network Acquisition Company LLC is, I ran across this article which details the founders as being, Derek Pew, Mark Rupp, and Richard Rasansky. While I don’t recognize either Mark Rupp or Richard Rasansky, Derek Pew was part of the original Wireless Philadelphia team and someone who actually has a background in telecommunications and networking. In fact, Mr. Pew might have been one of the only people associated with the project originally that actually had any experience in this field. It is my understanding that Mr. Pew left Wireless Philadelphia, if I had to guess, out of frustration and I am glad to see that he has reentered this project, this is a man that has the ability to save this project from ruin.

With all that said, I am going to offer some advice to the new owners of this project and hope that the advice is taken in the spirit it is offered.

1.) You’re in for a forklift upgrade, maybe not right away, but sooner than later.

2.) Using the tried and abandoned page view revenue model is not going to work

3.) You get one chance to establish a reputation, if you miss that you are all done.

Let me expand on those three suggestions a little further.

1.) If you believe you are going to fire up the rest of this network and use it for a year or two, I would like to direct you to the SlashDot comments as well as the comment posted by Beth on the WirelessPhiladelphia site.

Both of these users of this network are telling you that their experience was miserable and the old business wisdom that if one customer calls to tell you that you have a problem, there are a hundred more that didn’t call.

I am also going to go on record as saying that the $200 repeater which was mentioned in this article is not going to fix the problem.

2.) With respect to the advertising revenue being a component to your bottom line, the reality is that the commonly discussed method is not even worth the time to set it up. If you need proof of that I would be glad to point your to several network operators that have tried it and they will tell you that you would be better off spending your time walking the streets of Philadelphia and picking up pennies.

That said, this does not mean that there aren’t other ways of generating revenue from advertising. I am working with another network operator on failed citywide wireless project and we have developed a method of leveraging advertising that will generate some healthy revenue.

3.) Reputation – this is something I know you understand and I am sure you realize that you are starting behind the proverbial eight ball picking this network up at the point you are. I think it is well understood that you will be granted a honeymoon period by the city – but that honeymoon will be viewed by a cynical spouse. By banking that you are going to be able to “fix” the existing network or that the remaining portion of the network can be brought on-line with better results than the portion that is already operating, I’m going on record as stating that this will be time wasted.

Good luck Philadelphia, we’re pulling for you.