Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Comcast Executive Says Company May Compete with Verizon's New 'WiFi' Service

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 21:40:50 -0400

Comcast Executive Says Company May Compete with Verizon's
New 'WiFi' Service
Source: The Boston Globe
Publication date: 2003-05-16
Arrival time: 2003-05-15

May 16--A top executive of Comcast Corp. said yesterday his company
would roll out its own service if rival Verizon Communications draws a
big market with its offer of high-speed wireless Internet access through
"WiFi" gear mounted on pay phones.

But speaking at a Massachusetts Telecommunications Council
conference in Boston, David Fellows, Comcast's chief technology officer,
said he remains nervous about pouring resources into WiFi services that
rely on unlicensed public airwaves, rather than wireless services in the
better controlled licensed spectrum. WiFi stands for wireless fidelity and
refers to systems that offer 11-megabit-per-second Net access in a
roughly 300-foot zone around a "hot spot" transmitter.

Verizon earlier this week said it has activated the first 150 of a planned
1,000 WiFi hot spots in New York, using gear mounted on pay phones,
that will offer free wireless Net access for its customers who buy Verizon
digital subscriber line access at home or its dial-up Net service. If it proves
popular and successful, Verizon would likely offer similar services in
Boston and other markets, according to James Otterbeck, the Verizon
senior vice president of emerging markets.

Fellows said, "If there's a market there, I can attach a [transmitting device]
anywhere there's coaxial cable" to activate WiFi coverage. "If the world
wants a blanketed WiFi service, if there's a demand for it, our network
infrastructure can respond" with similar service. "We'll watch -- or we'll try
it -- and we'll see what happens," he said. "If it turns out this is a killer
idea, then we can very quickly respond."

Fellows said that earlier in his career, as a technology investor with Pilot
House Ventures in Boston, he reviewed several business plans for
WiFi-like services. But he said, "I always thought really hard about
launching a commercial service in unlicensed spectrum" that can be prone
to interference, overcrowding, and security lapses.

"To do it the way Verizon has announced scares me," Fellows said,
adding that Comcast might look to other wireless Internet access services
using airwaves protected by Federal Communications Commission
licenses.

Verizon's Otterbeck said his company has taken "every step with existing
technology and security measures to ensure privacy." But he
acknowledged that the service works on unlicensed spectrum available to
the public.

"We tend to recommend to customers that they limit themselves to
non-confidential, non-proprietary" Net traffic while using a hot spot, and in
particular that they not do online shopping that involves transmitting a
credit card number, Otterback said.

On another service issue, Fellows said Comcast is looking to move to a
cheaper "voice over Internet protocol" technology to offer phone service in
competition with Verizon Communications and other phone companies.
But he said, "My guess is that it'll be a year and a half, the end of 2004,
before we have thousands of [VOIP] subscribers and 2006 before we have
millions."

Comcast, which bought AT&T Broadband last December, currently has
1.4 million telephone subscribers with 1.8 million phone lines in service,
using conventional phone switches AT&T attached to the cable network.

While delivering phone service over cable lines was a key rationale behind
AT&T's $100 billion purchase of cable companies, Comcast is "being very
selective" about expanding service using the expensive conventional
switches instead of cheaper VOIP systems.

"What we're looking for at Comcast are profitable subscribers as opposed
to blindly growing customer counts," Fellows said. When Comcast feels
Internet-protocol systems are reliable enough to provide quality service, it
would be able to market phone service more aggressively, he said.

http://cnniw.yellowbrix.com/pages/cnniw/Story.nsp?story_id=38819725&ID=cnniw&scategory=Telecommunications%3AWireless&

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