For techno-economic study geeks only

If you like to do cost studies, then adjusting for inflation is critical. This website has the inflation adjustment factors from 1774 to 2016 (obviously future ones are projected). So have at it and start modelling!

The Iridium saga continues

Iridium has been an interesting case study in the telecom industry. This article points out that there is still a business model its LEO satellite-based system. Without going into details, Iridium was designed to be a system that would enable people to be in touch anywhere. It was developed prior to the widespread deployment of terrestrial mobile systems (eg. GSM) and when voice was the only application of interest. By the time it was deployed and open for business, this had all changed and terrestrial mobile systems satisfied many of the needs for which Iridium was developed and offered diverse handsets, data services and indoor capabilities, which were not available from Iridium. Its fortunes plummeted and was purchased on the cheap in bankruptcy. Today, its 347,000 subscribers generated annual revenue of $1.2 billion (or an Annual Revenue per User of about $3460 per user), so there motivated users (mostly government) exist. I wonder if the new satellites will have data capability ...

Update (7 Oct 2009): BusinessWeek posted this article on Iridium which covers much of the same ground as the previously cited article, but with more analyst insight.

How open is open source Android?

I have found the Android project to be interesting to follow. There have clearly been some successes in using open source for product development (Linux, obviously but also Apache). The success of open source seems to be a bit uneven; for example, I am not aware of a huge development community around Solaris, which was open-sourced by Sun. So when Google launched Android as an open source development project, I was most interested, especially given Google's market clout and user following.

So this item really caught me by surprise. I especially found this paragraph interesting (and a bit counter-stereotypical):

Google, however, appears to be significantly less permissive on this front than Microsoft. The company's legal department objects to the Cyanogen mod on the basis of its inclusion of Google's proprietary software. They sent Kondik a cease and desist order compelling him to remove the mod from his Web site. The Android enthusiast community has responded fiercely, condemning Google for taking a heavy-handed approach. Even Google's own Android team appears to be frustrated with the legal department's zeal.

I fully expect that some bright and committed programmers will find a work-around. The whole reason for the mod, of course, is that Google's ROM doesn't work as well. Isn't that how open source is supposed to go? Has Google discovered the hazard of this approach? I wonder if they'll encounter similar problems when Chrome OS goes open source?

Microsoft study places value on white spaces

I found this article interesting.

The study, by consultant Richard Thanki of Perspective Associates, suggests that by augmenting current unlicensed wireless networks, such as Wi-Fi hot spots, the white spaces could generate between $3.9 billion and $7.3 billion in value annually over 15 years. That would be the result of increased use of consumer electronics and other factors, according to the study.

In his study, Thanki writes that white spaces spectrum offers a broader range than a typical Wi-Fi connection. A single Wi-Fi access point enhanced by the white spaces could "fully cover a large building and the neighboring grounds and areas," he writes.

In addition, use of the white spaces could lower the cost of providing Internet access in rural areas, Thanki writes.

While chips used to power white spaces devices would initially cost roughly $10 more than existing technologies in 2012, the difference should steadily decline at a rate of about 30% annually from that point on, according to the study.

I would love to get a copy of that study ...



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Economic value of unlicensed spectrum

Here a new item for my reading list. This isn't the first analysis of its kind (search for Bill Lehr's paper, for example) and it undoubtedly won't be the last. I haven't read the paper in detail yet, but a quick scan through it indicates that the paper suggests that more spectrum be allocated to unlicensed use (whether "dedicated" unlicensed or through white space devices). In our study of secondary use, we determined that adding additional unlicensed spectrum tends to favor applications and systems that have small geographic reach since the contention from other unlicensed users is lower. Most of these studies do not differentiate application types; I'll be interested to see if this one does.