The race to connectivity

First, let me say I think Wi-Fi is the best thing since sliced bread. Really, I do.
That being said, a number of announcements last week made me scratch my head as different companies try to attack the wireless broadband space. Come along for a quick game of connect the dots.
Dot No. 1: Cablevision said it plans to spend more than $300 million to offer Wi-Fi service in New York City. Fellow cable operator Comcast instead decided to pour money into the Clearwire/Sprint Nextel WiMAX venture. For its $1 billion investment, it gets access to the nation, not just NYC.
Dot No. 2: Philadelphia is going to lose its grand municipal Wi-Fi service and sadly, EarthLink, which built the system, said it couldn’t even reach a deal to give the city or a non-profit organization full control and ownership of the $17 million network for free.
How’s that for a resoundingly bad business model?
Dot No. 3. Speaking of bad business models, EarthLink, featured in Dot No. 2, was an early investor in struggling MVNO Helio. MVNOs in general have been having a tough time making a go of it. Helio is in talks to merge with MVNO Virgin Mobile USA. Whereas Virgin Mobile has 5 million customers, Helio has only managed to pick up around 200,000. Both run their services on Sprint Nextel’s wireless network. Meanwhile two other MVNOs – Qwest and Embarq, both telecom providers reselling wireless as part of a bundle – are planning to leave Sprint Nextel’s network. Qwest is moving to Verizon Wireless’ network and Embarq is hoping to sell its wireless customers. (In case you want to throw in a game of Six Degrees of Separation in the wireless industry, Embarq is Sprint’s former wireline division and Qwest sold its wireless network to Verizon Wireless in 2004.)
Dot No. 4: Intel Corp., which wants to see a WiMAX chip in every next-generation device, just invested another $1 billion in the Clearwire-Sprint venture. But mobile networks need to be built before Intel can hope to see mass-market deployment of its WiMAX chips in every laptop. Meantime, Ericsson and Dell teamed up to put HSPA technology into Dell laptops this summer – on a network that is already largely built out.