<< However, when pushing new state of the art technology the pins are not always going to fall exactly as planned. >>
You and I are most certainly in agreement with that statement.
If companies don't set aggressive dates for product deliveries - sampling dates in the case of ICs - don't push the technology envelope, they aren't going to survive in a competetive arena.
<< I don’t view missing some of these dates by a few months terribly disturbing (as some do). >>
Whatever individual you are talking about in that sentence is probably not complaining about missing dates for product delivery.
He's probably like me.
He's probably talking about a semiconductor manufacturer he holds a position in missing a sampling date by 2, 3, or 4 months and being told that the product was really not late ... that it was "on-time."
I have been vocally critical, of the management of a company that I am a shareholder of for missing a date - by 4 months in the case of the MSM5100 and by 4 months in the case of the MSM6300, less in other cases - and when they missed it, instead of simply moving on, celebrating yet another "on-time" sampling.
I assume you understand what I am critical of, and what I'm guessing whoever you are refering to, was probably also critical of?
It wasn't missing a date or dates.
There are any number of valid reasons a sampling date can slip. Been there, done that. Been there, done that, again.
It was telling us as a shareholders, telling analysts that track the company whose stock that we hold, that the product they missed the date with, was "on-time."
So that there is absolutely no misunderstanding, let me tell you precisely how I stated that when the MSM6300 sampled 4 months late and its late sampling was immortalized in a press release celebrating its "on-time" sampling, and 'Doug' Schrock stood in front of analysts with his slide celebrating the fact that for 5 consecutive years every single MSM had sampled on time, and to my embarrassment the giggles from the analysts in attendance were audible:
"Qualcomm is sometimes simply Incredible and as a shareholder I'm Incredulous.
While I am fully aware of why leading edge new products can ship late I abhor being told they shipped on-time when they ship late according to previously published statements by a corporation.
I accept the Safe Harbor "forward-looking statements" clausee for what it is intended to mean, but it does not provide sanctuary or an excuse for calling something that is late, "on-time", IMO.
We are, however, not talking here about products placed on roadmaps which are always susceptible to change and which we need to recognize. We are talking here about products that had anticipated sampling dates provided in Press Releases, Earnings Releases, and an Annual Report. ...
... We went through this last year with the 4 months late but none the less "on-time" MSM5100.
As it relates to the use of the word "on-time" by QUALCOMM I am once again reminded of the ad PriceWaterhouseCooper that ran through the Ryder Cup. It used a golf metaphor to address the issue of integrity in reporting and corporate governance. In the ad a golfer named 'Doug' was prone to making pocket drops from the tall weeds, adept at foot mashies, and had a poor memory when reporting his strokes to other members of his foursome. After seeing the ad, and having listened to Don give an otherwise fine performance at Banc of America Securities conference, it is difficult for me not to refer to Don Schrock as 'Doug' Schrock."
Arun Sarin of Vodafone, certainly understands that things don't always happen quite as quickly as we would sometimes like. He's been there before. More than once. In an article called "Red Planet" in the February 2004 issue of "Mobile Communications International," James Tulloch quoted him on the subject of [MSM6300 based] dual mode handsets.
"I would say transatlantic roaming is quite important. We just haven't figured out in a cost effective way how to transcend the boundaries of technology here." That will come, Sarin says, with the introduction of dual mode GSM-CDMA handsets in "six to nine months". Vodafone has considered and discarded, for the time being, an infrastructure-based solution. "Our technical people looked at a lot of different ideas, whether GSM1x or dual mode handsets, and...when we look at the cost and benefit analysis the answer that comes back is to go back to the dual chip idea." On the other hand, Sarin admits there has been considerable slippage: "We said it [would] be available two years ago, a year ago, six months ago and now I am saying it is six months out."
It would probably not be a good idea for any one from Qualcomm, Samsung, Motorola, Denny Strigl's staff or whomever, to tell Arun Sarin that those late handsets, were delivered in usable and salable fashion to Vodafone or Verizon - "on-time." Not a good idea at all.
Jim M., nice post. Question about your business comment--it is a viscous game of hardball.....I am envisioning a baseball immersed in thick, cold motor oil, creating a viscous state that would be much harder to hit than a spitball.....now that would be vicious :)
I am moved to comment on the dialogue that has recently taken place here, and I hope you do not interpret my comments as a personal attack. They are intended in the spirit of good and welfare.
<< I started posting about a year & ½ ago in response to Dave Mock’s faulty reasoned article disparaging Qualcomm /CDMA in which he also referred to the love/hate issues ... Being an investor in QCOM since 1996, I’ve experienced and got caught up in the battle so to speak. As far as I can remember, investing in the wireless industry has invoked a lot of passion on both sides of the “holy wars”. ... When I started posting, it seemed some of the “old time crazies” had departed / the disparagers were gaining ground and I stepped end to take up some of the “slack”. >>
The Holy Wars are over, or they should be, but poorly substantiated words like deceit and deceitful and disparage and sham, fan the embers, and if you use them carelessly, I think you need to be prepared for some occasional less than civil responses from even normally above average civil, articulate, diplomatic, and knowledgeable individuals - amd I sure put slacker711 in that category - that call your spade, the spade that it sometimes appears to be.
Time sure does fly. One of the many places you chose to post a copy of your 'open letter' (e-mail) to the "Unstrung" editors about a Qualcomm article published there by Dave Mock and Tom Taulli, back when you commenced your investment message board Qualcomm Advertising Campaign ("taking up some of the slack") in November 2002, was my long time home thread (Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates) on Silicon Investor.
I was the recipient of that post, and you asked me to critique the letter:
<< Eric L. Re-Open Letter to Mr. Mock and Mr. Taulli. I was meaning to ask, since I now have the opportunity thru SI, if you read their article in "Unstrung" and my response? I would appreciate your considered views regarding each. Thanks for your time- Jim >>
This was my candid and considered (and hopefully polite) response to you and specifically my response to your critique of a book by the articles authors that you never read, and in my estimation mischaracterized in your zeal to promote Qualcomm:
Let me assure you, as someone that read the book rather carefully from cover to cover rather than skimming it in a bookstore, that the book had no obvious "slant toward the GSM world". ...I gather that you don't buy books on wireless that fail to promote Qualcomm CDMA, and that fail to promote your own perceived advantages of the technological benefits of cdmaOne/cdma2000 over GSM/3GSM, and you also feel that you are sufficiently familiar with the majority of the factors that should be considered when (emotionally or) unemotionally investing in wireless. As a consequence I think you made the correct decision in not purchasing 'Tapping into Wireless'. ... a book that cautions about getting emotionally involved with the underlying technology of a wireless company. I think you are far beyond any possibility of heeding that advice. <g>
Since you have introduced the 'Dave Mock' subject here I think It might be appropriate to tell you how I was first introduced to "Tapping into Wireless," and how I came to place an early order for it at Amazon just after it was published.
I had already read two investing books by co-author Tom Taulli. I was also aware of the other author, Dave Mock, because I had occasionally exchanged posts with him on various wireless boards at The Motley Fool (TMF), and read some of his early wireless focused writings. Another journalist and fellow Fool who I often exchanged posts with on TMF, a German named Oliver Thylmann (aka BizKiffer) interviewed Dave for infoSync World and after reading Biz's review, I immediately ordered the book.
While the book is rather basic, I was impressed enough with it to do something I'd never done. I wrote a (very brief) review for Amazon under my TMF alias - 'InCards'.
As a former wireless professional and long time investor in wireless companies, I am frequently asked by fellow investors to recommend a good basic book on wireless. "Tapping into Wireless" fills the bill! The book is highly literate and well organized and covers wireless history, the wireless regulatory environment, the role of wireless service providers, the various warless technologies, and the evolution of wireless standards, and it does so without getting bogged down in technical detail. Better yet, it covers both wireless basics and investing in wireless companies. Not only does the book not favor a particular wireless technology, it cautions against getting emotionally involved with a particular technology. For those that are not intimately familiar with the industry, this is a great place to start.
One of the pagepoints I have set on "Tapping Into Wireless," is this one:
The problem for investors is that quite often the assessment of standards adoption wanders away from objective reasoning and leans more towards taking sides in a soccer match. Suddenly nationalistic pride takes over, and individuals begin to emotionally cheer for a company from their nation to succeed in a country that doesn't play by those rules. It's a game of focusing on the positives while trying to sweep the negative aspects under the rug. While technical standards certainly are a driving force in wireless, the focus on adopted technology is quite often misplaced. Rather than understanding how an adopted technology helps it compete for market share, too many investors emotionally put money behind the technology they feel is technically superior. Their rational is that if the technology is superior everybody will flock to it, while shunning the other, inferior technologies. Unfortunately, this is a very short-sighted approach to investing because it overlooks many other forces that drive the industry. There have been many cases of high-technology markets where supposedly inferior technologies absolutely pummeled the competition in the open market. .... - "Tapping Into Wireless: The Savvy Investor's Guide to Profiting from the Wireless Wave" (2002) page 49 -
Before I clip off the review that got me interested in "Tapping Into Wireless" I should add a few comments. A year ago or so, Dave and I started corresponding by e-mail triggered off a TMF exchange, and on occasion we exchange phone calls to discuss wireless matters and investing matters. We've never met - hopefully we will - but I have a very high opinion of this successful young engineer turned author, and I make no bones about it. I am hopeful he publishes another wireless book before too many moons elapse. Should he do that, after we both read it, we can discuss it.
Oliver Thylmann chats with Dave Mock, co-author of 'Tapping Into Wireless', a book that discusses the wireless marketplace intimately, about his view on the CDMA/GSM/TDMA battle.
The sub title of this book by Tom Taulli and Dave Mock reads: "The savvy investor's guide to profiting from the wireless wave", which might seemingly put it out of the reading list of those of our readers who are not investing their money in the stock market. While this is true about many aspects of the book, the knowledge that can be extracted from the book can help anyone who wants to understand the twisted interactions of the wireless market.
'Tapping Into Wireless' is aimed at investors, but should be considered a good read for anyone who would like to learn more about the wireless marketplace
The book is seemingly split in two parts. First, and this is probably the more interesting part for most of our readers, there's a lot of information on the wireless industry out there. This includes a look at the history of wireless dating back as far as the 1820s when Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry demonstrated how to induce current in a wire by a changing magnetic field. That might seem a bit too much of a history lesson for some, but by moving swiftly forward through the past developments until today's situation, the book provides a very round picture of the events that have brought us to where we are today - which will help a reader in understanding the current situation of the wireless marketplace.
The other chapters of the book are actually very similar in structure, providing a well-rounded view of the subject matter and helping the reader to further their understanding of the wireless industry step by step. This includes things like standards adoption in the chapter "The Driving Forces for Wireless", which talks about how exactly we came to have different standards. The book then goes on to cover subjects such as how to value and what to look at in relation to carriers, equipment and component suppliers, enterprise and emerging technologies, and then moves on to the more clearly investment-related subjects such as IPOs (Initial Public Offerings), when to sell, foreign investing, mutual funds and private equity. All this is conveyed in an interesting manner and is fun to read with many little stories that bring you closer to what the authors try to convey. Some of the investment focused items should probably be read several times, and parts of the book can be used as reference material since there's no way you will be able to digest all of the information available in the book in just one read.
If you are considering investing in this space or just want to know more about why things are the way they are and get a clearer picture of how they will become, then this is a highly suggested book. As you'll have noticed in the last sentence, there is an "if" in there, because this book is not for everyone. It is highly investment focused, and doesn't delve very deep into each subject but rather focuses on matters at hand from a business perspective.
The most interesting part for us here is the emerging of standards such as GSM, CDMA, CDMA2000 and W-CDMA. Why do we have so many different standards? Why can't it be simpler? Where did they come from? Where are they going? A lot of this is covered in the book, but we've been fortunate enough to get an in-depth interview with Dave Mock, one of the two authors of the book, where we tried to pick his brain on just these subjects.
Oliver Thylmann: Hi Dave. First of all, thank you for taking the time to do this interview and congratulations on the book, it was a fun read. What was your experience writing the book?
Dave Mock: It was actually very enlightening. While I already had a lot of the industry background that is conveyed in the book the study of the history of communications in particular really opened my eyes further to what's happening in wireless today. I saw many events in the past being repeated today, so it was very fortunate to gain that perspective.
Oliver Thylmann: Let's step right into it. From your earlier writings I know that you advocate that investors should know and understand the market or company they are investing in and not simply the balance sheet. Where did that idea originate and where did you amass your deep knowledge of the wireless industry?
Dave Mock: I've always been a techie and still work as an engineer designing embedded systems. When I started investing about 10 years ago I wondered if my ability to understand deeply technical issues would help me pick better stocks. I found that I really didn't need a deep understanding of various technologies but only the basics in order to gauge the competitiveness of a given company or product.
Being competitive in the wireless market also hinges on a number of factors that are difficult to quantify. For instance, how do you measure the political connections of a company and their ability to lobby for changes in their favour? You can't just throw numbers down and calculate potential. You have to see the big picture and look at the track records behind people.
Oliver Thylmann: What I am starting to believe is that investing is often lagging behind management theory in the sense that in the management world you are moving away from only looking at the numbers to things like the balanced scorecard to get a more complete view of what is going on. In investing you often tend to look at the financials only. So do you think that when investing in a company one should be able to understand what management does and why they do it? Just to put it a little bit differently.
Dave Mock: There will always be an element of the 'tail wagging the dog' with public companies in terms of Wall Street and the financial media pressing company management into certain decisions. Unfortunately, the operating capabilities of many companies are directly tied to their stock price, so companies will be pressed into short-term decisions to "meet the numbers" so that the stock doesn't get whacked. It's really dangerous when companies have debt covenants tied to the share price - when the stock starts down, it can get ugly real fast.
Management's actions designed to meet sales and profitability targets are usually more short-term decisions though - for instance, shifting the focus of marketing to pick up higher-revenue subscribers to boost ARPU (Average Revenue per User). The longer-term actions of executive staff are very important for investors to study though. This is the vision and R&D focus that comes through when you look at a company and its people over a longer period. For instance, after dabbling for years, Nokia finally got serious about CDMA a few years back. Having a track record in 2G CDMA will be very important as we move to W-CDMA in 3G. So I guess how you balance the management of a company depends upon the goal of the individual investor, whether they're looking to sink money in a company for 5 years or 5 weeks.
Oliver Thylmann: What many of our readers are often wondering about is where all the mess with different technologies came from and where it is going. We have the basic information on the technologies in our Lexicon but perhaps you can give us a bit of background information on the different factors that influence which technology a carrier will choose?
Dave Mock: Well, you have to remember that there's a story behind every technology. The environment under which they are developed and nurtured has a profound impact on how they eventually permeate our world and who chooses to adopt them. So the decisions to implement certain technologies, say GSM or CDMA, over others always come down to the people and organisations involved. That's why I thought it important to present the basics of the standards process in the book.
Many people often think technologies are adopted simply on merit. But there's absolutely no cookie-cutter diagram to choosing a good technology. Different wireless service providers have to consider their legacy networks when looking to move forward with a technology upgrade or change. In addition, their goals and target market are an essential part of this picture. It's not as simple as "well, CDMA is a better technology so let's go with that...".
Political motivations are also a strong influence in technology acceptance. A particular country's policy on regulation will dictate the possibilities for new technologies to break into that area. It's very easy for a government to advance a given technology through tariff structures or limits on the operations of some providers. We've seen many examples of countries like China offering biased subsidies for wireless equipment or service.
Oliver Thylmann: We recently had a press release here where the CDG (CDMA Development Group) was congratulating KDDI for their launch of the CDMA2000 1xRTT network. As you already touched upon, these kinds of groups are important in getting a standard to take hold. Can you elaborate a bit on which groups there are that are important? Also, was the adoption for GSM in Europe coming from the government alone or was that adoption mostly due to the better lobbying of the supporting organisation?
Dave Mock: The CDG, GSM Association, 3GPP (GPRS/EDGE/W-CDMA) and 3GPP2 (CDMA2000) are probably the major ones. I sort of view them as the glue that binds all the like-thinking companies and standards bodies together. Without them there would be considerable disarray as companies struggle to make wireless systems interoperable. The more marketing centred ones like CDG and GSM Association also spearhead lobbying efforts, such as the barrage on Anatel in Brazil a few years back, which can have significant influence on government policy. But it's also important to keep in mind that public releases from these organisations are strongly biased. You have to take performance claims and estimates with a grain of salt - but the hard statistics are usually very informative.
As far as GSM in Europe and standards regulation elsewhere, the government is never acting alone on these decisions. What the government drives is the overall imperative - for instance, we must settle on one standard or we are allowing multiple standards but they must comply with these guidelines for interoperability. Which individual technology best fits this edict is where the lobbying efforts of companies and organisations come into play. Many people poke at GSM as a "committee" technology that wasn't selected by technical merit but I disagree. The case in Europe just illustrates that the government was one big customer making a huge purchase decision - the various technical standards still had to be pitched for the value in their features and capabilities. GSM is an extremely capable technology that serves users well.
Oliver Thylmann: Barrage on Anatel? Could you elaborate on what role the CDG and GSM Association played here and what the end result turned out to be as something of an example of how this works?
Dave Mock: Anatel is the regulatory agency that oversees telecommunications in Brazil (they're the equivalent of the FCC in the U.S.). In the late 1990s, Anatel was looking at how to assign spectrum for various services. For mobile wireless, the most likely options were either the PCS bands (1900MHz) that were common with the U.S. and their neighbours or the 1800MHz band that was common in Europe and Asia for GSM systems.
Anatel invited input from companies about the pros and cons of either decision to help decide which was a better path. Once the consortiums like the CDG and GSM Association got wind of it they got governments involved to lobby Anatel, since the decision had a profound impact on future revenue for companies providing either GSM or CDMA equipment. Companies made investment commitments to Brazil in order to sway their opinion, and I'm sure there was lots of other backscratching going on that was never published. In the end Anatel voted to license the 1800MHz band for GSM. It was a sobering defeat to CDMA backers who saw it as GSM invading their stronghold.
Oliver Thylmann: You mentioned subsidies in countries like China. How is that different from what happened in Europe? Also, what about companies such as NTT DoCoMo moving into Europe (via KPN) and the United States (via AT&T Wireless)? They seem to be ready to lose substantial amounts of money getting into these markets. NEC's i-mode phone that E-Plus sells here in Germany sporting a color screen, polyphonic ring-tones and numerous other goodies costs only 250 EUR when bought with a subscription, which appears to be the result of heavy subsidizing.
Dave Mock: Handset subsidies are the centrepiece of U.S. services, used to get users signed up for long term contracts. Pre-paid subscribers heavily drive Europe where pay-as-you-go is more the norm. Cultures and spending habits of various regions heavily influence this. Americans have no problem taking on debt. Other countries are more averse to it.
But beyond this, many governments still exert heavy influence or outright control of telecom companies, and can basically dictate the growth of different services or technologies. European companies really just responded to culture, offering what many people saw value in, so there was really no extensive effort to guide wireless services into a specific model. In the U.S., open competition ignited a "more is better" mentality that naturally catered to the way Americans consume services. In either case though, consumers ultimately drive the form of services.
We'll have to see how well DoCoMo can turn domestic success into global prosperity. I'm sure they didn't intend to watch their investments dwindle but they also weren't looking to just make a buck on the stocks they sunk money into. They wanted a door into the markets, which they easily got for the money they poured out. It was much more of a long-term bet at the expense of the near-term balance sheet. They're probably willing to take heat from analysts for a little while as long as they can point to some global advances.
Oliver Thylmann: QUALCOMM obviously wants CDMA to succeed, but what about W-CDMA here? Does QUALCOMM have a good basis of intellectual property with respect to W-CDMA too, in the sense that the company will require massive royalties, or was W-CDMA something that was created to get out of the grip of one IP holder? Companies probably don’t want to give any one company a large share of the profit from their sales.
Dave Mock: Nobody wants to give away royalty - especially if it's not reciprocated somewhere. That's the main rub that most companies have with Qualcomm. Qualcomm is an excellent company with a lot of technical talent, but many European companies do not view them as much of a team player. It's interesting to see all these companies compete on one playing field and then go behind doors and try to work together on standards. Obviously the on-field rivalries linger.
With respect to W-CDMA, Qualcomm does have a lot of intellectual property here and they'll become W-CDMA's biggest supporter once it starts to bring them significant revenue. And while it was largely specified outside of their influence, it wasn't created just to avoid royalty, but that was one factor. There's a lot of resistance to give any one company too much control of any standard, and not just from a reluctance to pay them royalty. Essential IP gives companies a lot power and influence across borders, so many governmental bodies are concerned about foreign control in this area as well.
Oliver Thylmann: Looking closer at upgrade paths, CDMA networks will mostly move for a CDMA2000 based network while GSM operators introduce GPRS/EDGE and W-CDMA networks. What about the rest out there though? PDC or TDMA networks? Also, Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless are building GSM and W-CDMA networks which suggests that CDMA2000 is not necessarily that much of a better technology - even though many supporters say that the upgrade path is a lot easier.
Dave Mock: The "better upgrade" argument is one of the more heated debates today. Each technology has certain pros and cons, and it's ridiculous for anyone to say one is better than another without more context. Better for whom? What's the size and makeup of the network? What sort of spectrum do they have? What's the mix of service markets (urban, rural, etc.)? Who's their typical customer? What do the networks of their partners look like?
Networks based on PDC and TDMA will be around for a long time just as AMPS and others like NMT have been, but they'll slowly fade as operators build out GSM. There are some smaller operators that have less-common spectrum situations that may replace these time-based technologies with CDMA, but most will move to GSM.
As far as AT&T and Cingular, again its a waste to just say CDMA2000 is easier. While one carrier may place more importance on near term cost, others may place more importance on other factors such as siting new towers. What if moving from TDMA to CDMA forced you to move some towers in order to realize capacity gains? It's just not a simple decision, there's lots of considerations.
Another example is the capacity gains cited by CDMA supporters can vary dramatically depending upon the environment. Dense urban areas see much poorer results than rural areas. Of course they market the higher number but the rubber meets the road when testing ensues in a live environment. While in general CDMA can outperform on a number of measures, it's still not enough to overcome the drawbacks for some providers. AT&T and Cingular have cultivated supplier relationships for years and they're not just going to toss some of those out the window without very compelling reasons. I know a lot of people want to see black and white here, but it just isn't as simple as better/cheaper/faster all around.
Oliver Thylmann: 3G is starting to get a bit stale now, and we hear about companies testing 4G, All-IP and other futuristic technologies nowadays. Many of us know how bad Voice over IP services still are, mostly at least. Won’t an All-IP networks introduce serious problems here and isn’t there still a lot of research needed into that field to make an Voice over IP call with a mobile phone a valid suggestion?
Dave Mock: Providing VoIP has less to do with wireless and a lot more to do with the network. The critical areas are in the routing layer, not the air interface. So while the dream of All-IP may soon be reality, I don't know if it will be reliable enough for VoIP for some time. From an almost philosophical point of view, we're using a technology against the way it is naturally disposed. It's like bringing a million parcels to the post office and saying, "I know it will take you 329 different trucks, 67 different airplanes and 16 cargo containers to deliver these packages 8000 miles away, but could you make sure they all arrive next day within 2 minutes of each other stacked in the proper order?". Packet delivery is just not set up with priority and latency in mind (aspects critical for voice). I think we may still need some breakthroughs in routing technology for good VoIP... do you know of any?
Oliver Thylmann: Sadly, no. However, current information points to future base networks becoming independent of the radio access method being used, presumably due to an All-IP network. This would make it easier for companies to add another radio interface to their network. Do you see that happening in the future? Do we still have hope for one network?
Dave Mock: There's always hope, but I don't think it will ever be "one network". It really doesn't have to be though. Today, most of the major providers in the U.S. have several networks that are tweaked to play nice together and look like one network. At one time they were developed and operated by separate companies. So I think the advances in IP, software-defined radio and just Moore's Law will help get us to where we can meld some of these networks together in a similar fashion.
Keep in mind though that by this time it's likely we'll have at least a few disruptive technologies pushing attention away from this unity in favour of new features and better performance. Maybe the UWB communicators will render GSM and CDMA obsolete. I certainly think there's a good opportunity to get away from broadcast wireless technologies and move up to sophisticated point-to-point links. Again, it goes back to using a technology consistent with its nature.
Oliver Thylmann: You’re touching another few nice subjects here such as software-defined radio and UWB but these are still some time off. Another interesting thing at this time might be that some people still believe that Wi-Fi will be a major problem for 3G. What is your view there?
Dave Mock: I don't see Wi-Fi as being a serious threat to 3G. There certainly are areas where Wi-Fi makes a lot more sense so a cellular operator may lose lucrative business in some niches, but I don't think it will kill all their opportunities. Even though many think 3G is all about speed, people won't adopt it for broadband purposes for quite some time - the costs need to balance with the value of services. I get a sense that Wi-Fi right now is an instant gratification for broadband junkies, but over time it will evolve into more practical applications. Looking longer term though, it's entirely possible that the surge in Wi-Fi can be its own downfall - there's a limit to the spectrum and too many overlapping nodes will drop your broadband flood to a trickle real fast. This is why spectrum regulation started in the first place.
Oliver Thylmann: It seems as if there so many interesting topics that we barely got to touch on here that we'll have to have another chat at some later point in time, but for now; thanks a lot, and best of luck with the book.
Dave Mock: Any time. The great thing about wireless technology is that it is never dull and always changing.
If you want to learn more about Dave Mock, you can visit his website at:
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