When is a wireless tower not a wireless tower?

When it's biodegradable balloon operating at altitudes of 60,000 feet (12 miles). Space Data, of Chandler AZ announced in November that they'd conducted two successful tests of its CDMA SkySite balloon and CDMA 1X-RTT base station that is miniaturized, solar and battery powered and sent aloft. The base station was able to receive calls from ordinary CDMA handsets (Sprint and VerizonWireless use CDMA technology in their wireless networks) as far as 60 miles away. Backhaul is provided by a 2.4 GHz link.

Quality was excellent quality and a low Bit Error Rate. Phones on the ground had pretty unobstructed access to the nearest balloon-tower.

Total coverage area that one station can support exceeds 20,000 square miles (a circular area of 80 mile radius). The Space Data approach to wireless towers are fast and inexpensive since the electronics package can be reused. In practice, the electronics are released from the balloon and parachuted to the earth before the balloon flies out of the coverage area. The balloons are made of biodegradable materials and either disintegrate or fall back to the earth.

The company currently applies this technology to military communications in unruly battlefield operations and operate several wireless data networks for asset telemetry applications such as pipeline or transmission network operations. This technology is particularly appropriate in providing wireless service in sparsely populated regions such as the southwestern states of the US. In this application it is much more economical than building terrestrial tower networks.

Also, in a post-disaster environment such as the aftermath of Katrina or 9/11 where terrestrial towers were destroyed, run out of generator diesel fuel (and therefore electricity) or otherwise overloaded, the SkySite can be a major boost to any mobile operators' disaster recovery strategy. In these cataclysmic events, thousands of users had mobile phones with battery power, but no towers were operational and the few that were working, were completely overloaded in no time, rendering them quite useless.

Congratulations...

go out to Craig Hall, a buddy of mine is an advisor to the Bronze winner of the WSJ Technology Innovator Awards, VNL and of course to VNL and all the innovators promoted in the Wall Street Journal Technology section today.

VNL is a Indian company that has taken a page from IKEA, the global Swedish furniture retailer. Making wireless base stations power-independent with a solar and 72-hour battery supply, simplifying and simplifying their installation so all the components can be easily carried and a job aid explains in pictures how to install the system eliminates the installation cost and expertise previously required to deploy a base station in small remote Indian villages. In the 9th annual awards, the Journal reports that installer-villagers simply point the microwave antennae and stop when the beeping is at its loudest.

Some argue that breakthroughs like VNL aren't really innovative, however I beg to differ on two counts:

1. The inexpensive and simple deployment of mobile communications services can revolutionize living in these remote villages. A decade ago, Mexico installed satellite solar-powered payphones in remote villages and greatly stimulated their local community and economic activities allowing farmers to call ahead to find the market price before walking there, patients can call their doctor for advice on new injuries and distant relatives can call each other, reinforcing familial ties. In the Indian case, mobile service is a micro-business in its own right as many micro-businesses rent mobile phones. So, it will as the company's website proclaims, 'bring mobile service to the next billion subscribers.'
2. Simplification of product categories often revolutionizes the category to enable new markets. IKEA simplified furniture assembly so users could assemble their couch or chair or table themselves. This enabled a global network of retail outlets serviced by an efficient supply chain. Apple greatly simplified the digital music experience bringing together the 1.25 inch-hard drive, PC-synchronization software, MP3 (actually default is AIFF I believe) and recording industry to create the iPod-iTunes innovator.

For users and observers of the smart phone market, this was an extraordinarily hot summer.

It started with the much anticipated release of the Palm Pre. This awesome platform was everything that the iPhone wasn’t and more. Led by Jon Rubinstein, the Apple iPod executive who bolted from Apple to run the ‘bet the company’ product group at Palm in 2007, it was on both the Sprint (exclusive ‘til January 2010), and the VerizonWireless network. It was built on a new, Linux-like OS called WebOS. It was multi-threaded so apps could run in the background to be catapulted to the users’ attention as the result of some network, timing or user-defined trigger such as an instant message, the change of a key person’s presence status or the 15-minute warning of an impending meeting. Although it relied on an app store, originally with only a few apps since the SDK was immature, it promised no censorship by Palm.

And then Apple responded with the Apple 3G S, a newer, faster and improved update of their iconic product. Apple’s new OS 3.0 enabled several new and useful features while simultaneously slashing the price of the older and smaller unit to $99 with AT&T contract.

Then RIM introduced the BlackBerry Tour, the first really global phone from CDMA wireless companies VerizonWireless and Sprint. Lots of good debate about why there was no exclusive on this phone, but it came down to no need since Sprint was committed to promoting the Palm Pre.

And, not to be left out of the debate, T-Mobile and HTC introduced the 3G Dash, the only new Windows Mobile 6.1 device of this incredible summer.

And, in a shocking move, we’ve learned about how Dell plans to enter the smart phone market in China through China Mobile which purports to be the largest operator (by subscribers) in the world with nearly 500 million subscribers. It’s not surprising that Dell would enter the smart phone market. And, I suppose it’s not that surprising that Dell would begin by working in China since after all, a single carrier channel can position the product to so many millions of subscribers (China Mobile alone is roughly 2 x the entire US market), the iPhone is not available and CDMA (used by China Mobile, VerizonWireless and Sprint) keeps Nokia out of the picture. What is surprising, is that Dell will be releasing the platform using Google’s ‘juvenile’ Android OS. I would have bet that Microsoft put a full court press on Dell to adopt the Windows Mobile, but despite their strong relationship on PCs and servers, Android won the first platform.

Sometimes a competitive loss wakes up the competitor to do better next time. No doubt Microsoft will have to pick up the slack on Windows Mobile, or else they will be left behind. Other long-standing partners such as Motorola and HTC are rolling out Android platforms leaving Microsoft Windows Mobile as the platform for old folks and old phones.

All this focus on smart phones is amazing and indicative of intense demand for really smart pocket computers that look like and act like phones from time to time. Research by Brockmann & Company, due out in early September highlights the views and experiences of some 350 business users and their mobile phone plans, consumption and use of key features and the impact of mobile communications on business performance.

Clearly the laptop and the cell phone are colliding to spawn a new era of really small, really smart networked devices that are really all we need to our jobs.

However the research shows that it is no longer enough to just issue mobile phones to employees. IT has to support them well. IT has to constantly qualify new devices (like the half dozen introduced this summer). IT has to develop applications that make my mobile employees more productive and more responsive than their competitor on the street. The upcoming report is called “Beyond Unified Communications: How Mobile UC Changes Business” and sets the stage for the link between mobile UC and higher business performance and how to get mobile UC to work for your business. I’ll keep you posted when it publishes. You can visit http://www.mobileuc.net/component/user/?task=register and pre-register to get on the notification list for the free report.

The initial output of our research initiative “The Product Manager’s Guide To Mobile UC, 2009” describes the Mobile panel’s views on some 39 mobile features, some 11 system-wide features and reviews plans for mobile phones within the next six months. The 50-page report contains 83 graphs and is available for download at http://www.mobileuc.net/reports/pms-guide-to-mobile-uc for a nominal fee.

From our research, it certainly looks like enterprise mobility promises to not only change the business by accelerating it even more taking advantage of minlets (see What’s a Minlet Got To Do With It?) and making the deskphone, the desktop PC and maybe the laptop PC obsolete for most.