valleylist Monday 7.07.2008 v 27.0 
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   HIGH TECH PRODUCTS
  + mozilla makes guiness book of world records
     - - andreesen and clark score again!
  + chuck reed celebrates e-bay founder meg whitman

  + virgin mobile purchases helio
     - - a real cell phone manufacturer
  + sunnyvale's yahoo! plans to win
     - - chief yahoo yang calls the shots all day
  + no way to shut down businesses legally
     - - chief davis to resign in san jose
 
 
 

WI FI is the harbinger of massive and monumental change in silicon valley.
 

The wi fi technology and economic environment is supposed to be a completely new landscape. Unlike the "new technologies in silicon valley" version of "valleylist" planned for monday 2.21.2008 - - Wi Fi is a big win. Difficulty - - a large up front investment and lots of planning and scheduling.
 

In fact Wi Fi is bigger than cable and almost as big as network television. Yet it should not require a lot of money from the consumer. Unlike the usual high fees associated with local cable or regional telephone or nationwide cell phones or national DSL internet access wi fi is not expensive. The people who got there first are actual entrepreneurs that took the risk of developing a new technology and fighting it out with the cities and states and counties who regulate any new kind of franchise related business.
 

Try the FCC and Bell Companies for rules on interconnecting with long distance carriers for a real glimpse of the people who first mapped the franchise world. They also developed the new technologies needed to market and sell the first high tech products. In fact the silicon valley wi fi project is not quite franchise and not quite big business - - they have labeled it a "jv" . As opposed to getting onto the importance of totally new technology there is just one big problem - - they can't get it done. 
 

Those in high tech are very enthused  - - Wi Fi is in fact a completely and totally new technology.
 
 
 

MAYOR OF THE WEEK is doubtless Patricia Mahan Mayor of Santa Clara who came up with absolutely the most fun Fourth of July anywhere in silicon valley. A staunch supporter of Wi Fi yet a little behind the times in developing their own anchor store for their Santa Clara high tech business park. Why not the center for Wi Fi companies? Let's see Cupertino has Apple and Sunnyvale has Yahoo! and South San Francisco has Genentech - - now what about Santa Clara has Wi Fi Central? Geeks like us will have to adapt for the time being and be happy that city politicians have continued to support the Santa Clara Convention Center which features an amazing array of top 10 public speakers and weirdo conventions like Michael Eisner telling an undisclosed  silicon wafer manufacture all about why the marketing department still pushes consumer packaged goods as opposed to real life cold calling and special event in person with the chamber of commerce. All things should  come and go in a big company except clients. Unlike the real world of work those marketing people occasionally like to pull something over on the rest of the company. By the week of the supposed new sales program the highly visible product manager is suddenly promoted to a  new and interesting job at an overseas competitor.
 
 
 

FRANCHISE COMPANIES AND THEIR MARKET VALUE
 

Comcast
 - - 21 million video subscribers
 - -   8 million high-speed Internet subscribers and
 - -   1 million phone subscribers
 - - cable systems 41 million homes in 35 states
 - - revenues of more than $22 billion
 

AT&T Communications
 - - 70.1 million wireless phone customers
 - - 14 million broadband cable subscribers
 - - 27 million direct tv television subscribers
 - - wholesale telephony services for all bell companies serving over 100 million customers
 - - at&t competes on the national and international level
 - - former bell operating parent company now created new brand for at&t
 - - total 1998 revenues in $119 billion
 

PG&E
 - - Service area stretches from Eureka in the north to Bakersfield in the south, and from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Sierra Nevada in the east
 - - 123,054 circuit miles of electric distribution lines and 18,610 circuit miles of interconnected transmission lines
 - - 40,123 miles of natural gas distribution pipelines and 6,136 miles of transportation pipelines
 - - 5.1 million electric customer accounts
 - - 4.0 million natural gas customer accounts
 
 
 

WHAT'S THE PROGNOSIS FOR WI FI ?  Cities in silicon valley feel an obvious need to do their own thing which is why the Wi Fi project in silicon valley is kinda off on a weird impossible to comprehend direction. Instead of anywhere in San Jose it's "let's run to mcdot's" because they have converted over to Wi Fi and purchase at least $7.50 worth of fast food on your way to a long drawn out caffeine induced transactional experience. The city of San Jose plans to go totally Wi Fi around someday in the yet-to-be-announced future - - not a single reference to the city's Wi Fi plans on the city internet service. The Palo Alto Weekly 7.8.2008 spells out the bad news - - single service provider MetroFi went under "unplanned financial difficulties" - - "In April, Internet-service provider Earthlink pulled out of Milpitas, part of a strategy to abandon the municipal-wireless business altogether. In May, Metrofi announced plans to pull the plug on Wi-Fi  service to Cupertino, Sunnyvale, downtown San Jose, Santa Clara, Foster City and Concord. Those services went dark in June " .
 

However Cupertino where Apple hangs out converted over to Wi Fi a few years ago and sends people to AeONsafe hotspots for city wide computing. San Carlos - - the test market city - - was the first to cancel because of yet again not understanding the importance of supplier management in a "franchise" or "city-wide monopoly" provider set of circumstances. The successes are in the independent groups who decided to not wait for the infamous "jv" group of people to get it together and who put together theisuccessfulessful wi fi programs. The San Carlos failure set everybody back enormously because it was supposed to be the first of all the silicon valley cities to go wi fi and complete an important test market project - - only to find out the project failed totally when the technology supplier got cold feet and cancelled the enormously important "test market" project leaving everybody to fend for themselves. If you've had to reference the "official" wi fi  consortium internet service what you find is a confusing mess of consortium information that is supposed to get people involved in a wi fi joint venture "jv" yet the obvious "greedy bastard on their way to self enrichment" style of the project has left their real clients - - silicon valley cities and the people who live in them and need computer internet access - - to figure it out for themselves.
 

Obvious problems have to do with who's going to pay for the conversion and what is it going to cost the taxpayer and why is it not getting done on schedule or even working effectively in the first place ? The recommended county-wide approach is a needed point for obtaining additional funds and help co-ordinating the conversion as well as technical support. Yet nobody wants to wait around for the bureacracy to try to get it together as a result everybody has had to go and "grow their own" . Even down to the lowliest consumer trying to wi fi their small home in the suburbs of santa clara it's time to go and just buy your own wi fi equipment and convert your home to your very own wi fi standard. That's what the Santa Clara Convention Center decided to do and they went with SmartCity as the supplier. If you a feeling very ambitious it's a good idea to wi fi your pc or laptop anyway and pick up a cheap NetGear or D-Gear or LinkSys wi fi adapter for your  computer at any silicon valley high tech retailer or yahoo! shopping .
 
 
 

NING internet social groups about wi fi [GROW YOUR OWN] Free Wi-Fi Places Tech Without Wires Wireless World hotpspot map WiMAX360 slingshot users 
 
 
 

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Received on Mon Jul 14 15:52:06 2008