WiMax Operator's Manual

Telephony in the Millimeter Microwave Bands
CHAPTER 3 ■ STRATEGIC PLANNING OF SPECTRUM AND SERVICES 61
Compared to the lower microwave bands, the millimeter microwave region is fairly well suited
to doing voice telephony as well as data. The relatively large amounts of bandwidth available
means that the operator is not faced with difficult trade-offs involving data services, particularly
if IP softswitches are used in lieu of circuit switches. As is the case with data services, the
operator should be striving to offer what is not commonly available from the wireline incumbent.
IP centrex where PBX-like functionality is offered to small- and medium-sized businesses
at reasonable cost is a good example of a new type of service offering that can differentiate the
competitive service provider.
Grid Computing: The New Killer App?
Grid computing is a term for a cooperative arrangement whereby a large number of collaborators
make their computing resources intermittently available over a high-speed network for
parallel computing applications requiring extremely high computing power. Grid computing
is strongly backed by such industry giants as IBM and Sun Microsystems and has seen limited
use in the financial industry and in scientific research, both for-profit organizations and
academic organizations. Incumbent telecommunications carriers have expressed interest in
the concept as embodied in a kind of hosted service offering where the carrier would manage
user resources for a fee and ensure security, but to date no carrier has introduced a grid
computing service.
In certain locales where large numbers of research institutions reside, an enterprising
wireless service provider could sell a combination of high-speed point-to-point millimeter
microwave links and grid computing services to a small number of high-value users. In the
future, you could see grid computing making expert systems possible; a mass subscriber base
could use them for various kinds of practical research and for personal reasons. You could, for
example, do investment research online and take advantage of the same kind of powerful
computing resources used by large firms.
All this is highly speculative at present, and I offer it only as possibility and as a stimulus to
fresh thinking on the nature of service offerings in the years to come.
The ASP Model
An application service provider (ASP) is an entity offering hosted services for subscribers.
These may include Web hosting and mirroring, storage, data backup and disaster recovering,
security, content management, and so on. A few years ago great things were predicted for ASPs,
but many failed in the marketplace, and few broadband access providers adopted the model.
Perhaps a better model is to attempt to partner with companies such as IBM that offer comprehensive
suites of business applications and to act either as a value-added reseller (VAR) or
simply a venue for such services.
The Carrier’s Carrier Model
In the carrier’s carrier service model, the broadband wireless operator resells capacity to others
and does not directly sell services or sign up individual subscribers. In general, this has been a
low-margin business and one that has not been particularly successful at the metro level,