BLACK ROCK CITY, Nev.--Burning Man is not just an alternative culture event; it's increasingly a commercial cellular opportunity, and that has purists fuming.
For one week, participants leave behind their work and more mundane matters, and immerse themselves in an alternate reality, recharging their creative energy and drawing inspiration from the surreal atmosphere.
The OpenBTS Project's 70-foot tower and three antennas, a Mexican-made knockoff of a Rohn 25 model.
(Credit: Dave Simon)The remote location, 140 miles from the nearest city (Reno) in the desert of northern Nevada, makes it easy to escape. Meanwhile, banning commerce (apart from ice and coffee from the organizers) is designed to wean people off capitalism in favor of a more idealistic gift and barter society.
Now, 23 years after the first man was burned, the real world seems to be intruding on the event in the form of the first commercial cellular coverage.
On August 20, Commnet Wireless installed a temporary cellular tower on private land right near the Burning Man site at a hot springs called Frog Pond, Mark Hansen, vice president of network operations at the wholesale wireless carrier, said on Thursday. The tower, sitting on a trailer and powered by solar and wind, transmits via satellite to the mobile-phone network, he said.
The company has a permanent cell tower above Empire, Nevada, about 15 miles from Burning Man, he said. But the company was curious to find out what kind of demand there was at the event and even more so, wanted to test out technology that could be used to serve remote communities, such as the Indian reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, he said.
There were technical challenges, and the service could offer only voice, not data, over the satellite connection, according to Hansen. People in the area made and received about 300,000 calls during the event, he said. Commnet had expected demand to be two to three times that, he added.
Commnet plans to remove the mobile tower next week and likely won't be back at Burning Man next year.
"Right now, I think we're going to lose money" as a result of the cost of deployment far exceeding the amount made from roaming charges, he said. "If we can't make money, we won't be back."
The company had approached the Burning Man organization about the project beforehand and was told that the event wasn't interested in it being there, Hansen said.
The electronics for the OpenBTS Project's cellular tower are housed in three enclosed cases to protect against damage from dust storms.
(Credit: Dave Simon)"The culture is one where they want people to be able to get away from their phones, and we can understand that," he said.
Meanwhile, Commnet worked with a Burning Man theme camp called Papa Legba, which ran a free limited voice and text service as part of an open-source cellular network called the OpenBTS Project, to make sure that the two services didn't interfere with each other.
While most rural communities would welcome the arrival of such service, many residents of Burning Man weren't pleased.
"Maybe I'm an old fart, but it will be very sad to see vast numbers removing themselves from the experience that is Burning Man," wrote "DoctorIknow" on the ePlaya discussion board. ("Playa" is what participants call the ancient lake bed known as the Black Rock Desert where the event is located.) "And to hear them everywhere I go, shouting into phones...I'd rather sleep next to a generator."
Another posting on the board was short and sweet: "Hang up and participate."
One Burning Man volunteer said she was "bummed out" after seeing someone check his iPhone while riding on an art car. Cell service is going to "change the culture" of the event, she complained.
Asked to comment on the matter at a news conference at the event last week, Burning Man founder Larry Harvey predicted that participants would police themselves to keep cell phone use in check.
"You can't f**k in the road, you can't sh*t in the road, and you can't use your cell phone in the road," he said with blatant disgust. "It's a private function. Do it in your tent!"
Not all of the estimated 42,000 attendees at this year's event were opposed to cell phone use.
While the service was spotty and unreliable, my camp was able to ask late-arriving friends via text message to bring more supplies and to receive a phone call from a friend to inform us that she wasn't going to be able to make it to the event, after all.
It was odd to hear the phone ring as we sat in our camp, but it was also strange having two fans blowing on us and refilling canteens from a cold-water cooler--luxuries that resulted from being on the electrical grid near Center Camp.
I didn't see anyone checking their phone messages as we waited several hours for a dust storm to subside so the Man could be burned on Saturday night. But I did see people staring down intently at their iPhones as they sipped their coffee in the Center Camp cafe during the day.
For some, the arrival of cellular service was inevitable.
"The theme (of Burning Man) is evolution, adaption," said John Gilmore, a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil libertarian and open-source advocate. "Get used to it."
OpenBTS Project supporter John Gilmore and co-founders Harvind Samra and David Burgess at the Papa Legba camp.
(Credit: Dave Simon)Gilmore was hanging out at the Papa Legba camp, where a 70-foot tower was beaming text messages and voice calls over a small GSM cellular network run by the OpenBTS Project.
The service, which was operational only about half of the time, allowed participants to send text messages and make 30-second phone calls to others at the event. Users also, theoretically, could receive them from people in the outside world via Skype and Google Talk through the iNum service, said David Burgess, an engineering consultant and a co-founder of the OpenBTS Project.
"We're constantly fighting heat and dust and infrastructure that is not quite there," he said.
This is the message the OpenBTS Project sent to cell phones at Burning Man inviting them to use the free service.
(Credit: Dave Simon)The group had tested limited voice service at Burning Man a year ago. "Our long-term goal was to provide a reference design for a type of cellular technology that is easy to deploy in remote areas and is inexpensive to operate," Burgess said.
Instead of having to get an extended contract with a telecommunications carrier for access to a mobile switching center, OpenBTS paid a small deposit for an account with Link2VoIP, which provides a gateway between the Black Rock City Internet backbone and the North American POTS (plain-old telephone system), according to Burgess.
Asked how much use the OpenBTS network was getting at Burning Man, OpenBTS co-founder Harvind Samra said that every 10 minutes or so a phone call was made and that there were 44 text messages pending in the queue at the time.
With Gilmore's help, OpenBTS was able to add the SMS capability to the service this year.
"I brought the Internet (via satellite) out here in 1999 and 2000, and initially, the reaction was terrible," Gilmore said. "They didn't want people geeking out in their tents."
Not only does the Burning Man organization use the Internet for many of its functions--such as ticketing, dissemination of emergency and critical information, and hosting a weather Webcam in nearby Gerlach--but having Internet service enables media outlets to e-mail their stories to printers for distribution in newspapers at the event and to publish stories directly to the Web, he said.
"There is a culture of haves and have-nots," said Gilmore, obviously relishing the debate. "Burning Man staffers with pagers and radios can talk with friends across the playa. The rest of us can't, and I wanted to do some equalizing there; to make it so we can all communicate on the playa."
Burning Man has survived the premature burning of the Man (2007), the anticlimactic existential crisis fostered by renegade activists calling themselves "Borg 2" (2005), and now angst generated by the sounds of cell phones ringing on the playa.
What could be next?
"I don't care either way about having cell phone service available. I'd keep my phone off and hidden, regardless," dj_john69 wrote on the ePlaya discussion board. "Now, if and when a Starbucks shows up to Empire or Gerlach, that's where I flip out."
Orange and T-Mobile are to merge their British operations to create the U.K.'s largest mobile carrier, their parent companies said Tuesday.
The as-yet-unnamed joint venture will have a combined customer base of about 28.4 million people, or 37 percent of the market, with the deal expected to complete in November. Orange chief executive Tom Alexander will be chief executive of the new company, with T-Mobile UK chief executive Richard Moat as chief operating officer.
The companies said the merger will cost between 400 million and 600 million pounds ($655 million and $983 million). It is expected to deliver savings of around half-a-billion pounds per year by 2014, by removing duplicate base stations and retail outlets, as well as other efficiencies in operational staff and customer support.
Timotheus Höttges, chief financial officer of T-Mobile UK's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, said in a statement: "We will become [the] market leader--our customers will benefit in many ways, for example from the best mobile broadband offer in Britain.
"In the second-biggest market in Europe, which is undoubtedly one of the toughest and most competitive, we are giving T-Mobile UK a clear and strong future."
The deal will include T-Mobile UK's 50 percent holding in its 3G network joint venture with Hutchison. It is not known how or if the deal will affect the status of Virgin Mobile, which runs on T-Mobile's network.
Deutsche Telekom lost 600 million euros ($860 million) in the first half of 2009, down from 1.3 billion euros profit in the same period last year, with its T-Mobile UK division writing off 1.8 billion euros and losing 100,000 customers. The period saw gains in the German company's other European mobile operations.
Orange said its U.K. first half sales were down 2.6 percent from last year, at 2.54 billion euros. Orange's parent company is France Telecom.
The deal will need shareholder approval from both companies and will also have to be cleared by British and European regulators. The U.K. mobile telecommunications market is widely regarded as highly competitive, and no regulatory problems are anticipated.
Rupert Goodwins of ZDNet UK reported from London.
New Zealand cell phone carrier Telecom on Wednesday unveiled its new lineup of phones, and while the iPhone wasn't among the offerings, the company did have news about a possible iPhone release.
Telecom's Alan Gourdie said the carrier is in "discussions--deep discussions--with Apple," according to the country's National Business Review. While Gourdie's comments don't guarantee Apple will sign on a second carrier in New Zealand, the negotiations echo what's been happening in the U.S.
Speculation that Apple will open up AT&T's exclusivity deal in the U.S. has been gaining momentum over the past few weeks, as reports of talks between Apple and Verizon spread. Of course, nobody expects Apple to make a CDMA-based iPhone--Verizon's current network configuration--but an iPhone based on the 4G network is a possibility.
Verizon's 4G network will use a technology called LTE, or Long Term Evolution, which is the same technology that AT&T is using for its next-generation network. If Apple did decide to go with a second network in the U.S., it could easily add Verizon without having to make another model phone.
Apple has not commented on a possible deal with Verizon, but during the company's most recent earnings conference call, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said AT&T was the "best wireless provider in the US" and that Apple does "not have plans to change it."
However, not planning to change having AT&T as a wireless partner certainly doesn't mean that Apple will not add another carrier like Verizon.
Qwest Communications International is reportedly seeking a buyer for its long-distance carrier business, as the company searches for ways to lower its outstanding debt load, according to a report Thursday in The Wall Street Journal.
Qwest, a , is reportedly hoping to raise $2 billion to $3 billion through the sale of its long-distance carrier business, according to the story which cited sources familiar with the matter.
That would pare down the footprint of the Denver-based telecommunications company, leaving it as a regional telecommunications player.
But such a sale could help offset its debt load, which at the end of the year stood at $13.7 billion.
Telecommunications giants AT&T, as well as Verizon, and smaller players such as TW Telecom may be interested in snapping up the business from Qwest.
A spokeswoman for Qwest declined to comment on whether the company's long-distance carrier business is up for sale. She also noted the company does not break out the financial performance of its long-distance carrier business.
Qwest is scheduled to release its first-quarter financial results on April 29.
Verizon Wireless is being criticized (again) by customers for its policy of requiring them to opt out or have their information shared with other Verizon-owned businesses.
The company began notifying customers in 2007 that they had 45 days to opt out. David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, received the "small legalistic pamphlet" from Verizon recently and wrote a blog posting on Friday detailing how difficult it was to opt out online, even with customer support help.
"The whole thing sucks," Weinberger concluded.
Verizon posted a note on its public policy blog on Monday that said nothing has changed since the policy was first implemented in 2007 and that no personal information is sold to third parties.
"We are keeping all the data in question in the family--unless you tell us not to," Verizon said in an October 15, 2007, statement that was re-posted on Monday.
I called Verizon and got more information. First off, customers can opt out at any time by calling 1-800-333-9956, said Verizon spokeswoman Debi Lewis.
Secondly, the information shared does not include name, address, and wireless phone number, but includes phone usage, billing information, and location information, she said.
Failing to opt out means a Verizon Wireless customer could receive marketing materials from Verizon Telecom, which is the landline business, or conceivably from Vodafone, a U.K. company that has wireless businesses around the world and which owns a 45 percent stake in Verizon, according to Lewis.
Hypothetically, Lewis said, Verizon Telecom could offer voice-to-text or landline voice-mail services to wireless customers, "services that interact and cross over."
Asked why Vodafone would want data on Verizon Wireless customers in the U.S., Lewis said: "What they do with it, it's hard for me to say."
This is the FAQ from the pamphlet notice to customers about opting out of data sharing with other Verizon businesses. (PDF)
(Credit: Verizon)
Worldwide subscriptions to telecom-delivered TV are expected to grow threefold by 2012, according to a report released Monday.
Despite the dire economic climate, the number of such subscriptions is expected to reach 71.6 million by that time, according to market researcher In-Stat's report.
Telecom-delivered TV--offered in the United States by AT&T and Verizon Communications--includes IPTV, which is television delivered via Internet Protocol. Elsewhere in the world, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telecom, and China Telecom are jumping aboard.
The telecommunications providers are trying to take on the giants of TV service--satellite and cable.
Key markets over the next few years include Brazil, Korea, and India due to recent regulatory changes that create more favorable conditions for the technology, In-Stat said.
"A number of new countries, including places as varied as Montenegro, Jordan, and Ghana, saw the launch of their first commercial IPTV offerings in 2008," Michelle Abraham, In-State analyst, said in a statement. "Only a few markets, like Japan and Argentina, remain hamstrung by restrictions that hinder incumbent operators."
The In-Stat report is another indicator of the growth expected in IPTV, with ABI Research anticipating similar increases in telecom TV subscribers.
In-Stat's report also notes the continuing trend toward convergence, such as the ability to control set-top boxes from PCs and mobile phones.
Updated at 2:22 p.m. PDT. See below.
South Korea's largest wireless provider is said to be in discussions with Sprint about a potential acquisition, according to a report on CNBC's Web site.
Citing "people familiar with the situation," CNBC says that SK Telecom is interested in acquiring the much larger Sprint Nextel, but that any deal is still "weeks away," and that Sprint's own board of directors is "divided" about whether to sell the company at all.
The report says that SK Telecom will not pursue Sprint if it is not open to acquisition, and that no specific negotiation price has been discussed.
SK Telecom is significantly smaller than Sprint Nextel--with 22 million subscribers, compared to 54 million--and would likely need to partner with private equity firms to get any potential deal done. But it's also unclear whether U.S. regulators would go for selling the company to a foreign operator.
It's not the first time the beleaguered wireless operator has been rumored to be for sale. In early May, there were reports it was in discussions with Deutsche Telekom about an acquisition.
Update: This looks to be a false alarm. Both Reuters and the Wall Street Journal are citing other sources that say the talks are about collaborating on technology, and not about an acquisition.
Telecom giant AT&T announced Friday that it has outgrown its San Antonio corporate headquarters and is moving to Dallas.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson
(Credit: AT&T)The company's rationale, according to a statement, is that Dallas will give it better access to customers and worldwide operations, and also to "the key technology partners, suppliers, innovation and human resources need as it continues to grow." Some of those technology companies with major operations in Dallas include: Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Nokia, Nortel, Research In Motion, and Samsung.
The move, which affects just 700 or so of the 6,000-some San Antonio-based employees, is expected to get under way in the coming weeks and be complete by the end of the year.
"San Antonio is a great city with much to offer and it's been good for AT&T as we've grown from primarily a five-state local phone company to the world's largest telecom company," said AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. "San Antonio will continue to be a major operations and employment center for us."
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