xG, What are you doing!??

James Enck posts about xG Technology doing an IPO to raise $30m.

I find this a little absurd. Why would a company that claims it is sitting on the most revolutionary new wireless technology, that it claims will allow any corner shop to set up a network capable of supporting broadband speeds at huge range and consuming low power, go to the market at this early stage in order to get a paltry $30m??

Well, perhaps there are reasons, let's speculate:
- None of the VCs were prepared to put up money for a only tiny piece of the company (James post says the valuation is $650-700m, so $30m is just over 5%)
- None of the VCs were prepared to put up money without doing a lot of due dilingence.
- They just didn't like any of the VCs.
- An IPO is in keeping with a populist approach, in line with their grassroots approach to rolling out a network.
- The VCs thought the price was too high (it's more than Pipex in the UK, which has > 1 million customers. disclosure: I have shares in Pipex)
- Joe Bobier wants a Porsche 911 for Christmas!

xG Technology are taking a big risk with this, but if it works, it will give them capital without losing much of the company. xG Technology could go on to build a network of small 'operators' providing VoIP and broadband access for a fraction of the cost of the big operators. Alternatively, it could be the next step in one of the biggest scams in history.

I'd love to believe the former, but I'm a kind of cynical romantic (I never did get the haircut! - 80's joke)

It's only 12 weeks until Christmas, so start saving your pennies; xG is probably worth a punt, even at these prices & with an uneasy feeling that it might all be hyperbole.
If the technology works, then the rest will follow. Susan Crawford had an interesting post about listening to a 19-year old developer talking about the future of networks. I believe the guy; ad-hoc networks will be born and die, forming galaxies, spawning other networks...and frustrating governments and attempts to regulate them. xMax (as described) provides a better platform to support that vision than anything else around today.

I'm cynically optimistic about the future (it avoids disappointment!)

Colonic irrigation in Thailand...

Last night there was a coup here in Thailand!
Not a complete surprise, but still hard to believe. Thaksin was out of the country and the military seized the opportunity to effect some changes while he was gone.
Lessons for Thaksin:
- Don't believe your own hype
- Don't f*** with the Military!

The full extent of the shit that went down over the past few years may now be known. Rumour has it that Thaksin travelled to the US with a LOT of bags! ;)

The problem with enemas is that after one lot of shit gets flushed away, another lot starts piling up!

How the Mighty have fallen...

I just read this article about the launch of a new HSDPA router from Sarian Systems.
The fact that people can now openly come out and say that "Super-3G" is just going to be a "backup for M2M communication" shows how far we have come from the heady days of 4 billion pound bids for a bit of 3G spectrum.

Duncan Ellison hits the nail on the head with this - "3G has so far failed to drive growth and we can't see how HSDPA is going to fix that,".

I think what he's saying is that it's not about the speed, it's about what you do with it.

In a related story, it seems that UK providers are not going to be able to reclaim VAT on their their huge 3G license fees either...

It's tough being a dinosaur; the climate's turning colder and everwhere you look, someone just ate your lunch!

Extremism

This is not a post about terrorists or fanatics, but more about people needing to believe an absolute truth, to classify things into particular spaces and then refuse to contemplate evidence that contradicts the current classification.

So, what exactly is 'the mobile internet'? Is it, as many people try to tell us, accessing information over a mobile phone? Or is it just accessing the internet while in a temporary location? Or, is it accessing the internet while physically moving between 2 points?
What information is exclusively on the mobile internet? What particular access methods are only available to mobile? What services only apply to the mobile internet? (hint: access speed and size of screen are NOT discriminators)

I found Alec Saunders article particularly interesting because his traffic on the Mosquito Ringtone suggests that there are a lot of people out there accessing Alec's blog who are lookng for ringtones (mobile content). Are these people accessing Alec's blog through their mobile phones?
I seriously doubt it, although no doubt some people would probably claim that this shows that huge numbers of people are browsing using their mobiles!
The internet is now just a distribution mechanism, and the 'last mile' for people (or devices) to connect to that is increasingly varied.
But it is not siloed. There is not one internet for mobiles and one for fixed, one for commerce and one for free. That was at least part of the reason that WAP failed.
Applications such as Skype have proved that it is hard to control what and who can get to where, once access has been established.

People will choose the best method of connecting to the internet depending on their location and circumstances. I don't mean the fastest connection, I mean the one with least friction. If my phone data connection is efficient, fast, cheap and 'just works', then there is minimal friction to using it ubiquitously. If my device pops up a window and offers me cheaper WiFi at a fraction of the price, then I will probably switch to a WiFi connection. In the same way that the people accessing Alec's ringtone story switched from their mobiles to their PC in order to find ringtones.

There's no (or very little) barrier to entry in offering a service on the internet; the services are what I want, not a specific flavour of the 'last mile'. i.e. I want a ringtone, not a mobile-phone only data service.

More & more, the platforms are soft, the network is agnostic, and the customer is not equal to the subscription (or even the device - but the device still has some mileage, unlike subscription)

The mobile internet is a false god, there is only one way, one light. There is only one internet.

There are many services, but they should be about people, not devices...

(Disclaimer: I do not advocate any violent acts against purveyors of mobile internet, they should be peacefully convinced of the Truth through declining revenues and share prices)