VentureBeat

FCC kicks off hearings on $7.2B broadband expansion

The Federal Communications Commission has kicked off highly-anticipated hearings about the $7.2 billion stimulus package for rural and underserved broadband services. Unsurprisingly, there has been much debate (and no small amount of teeth-gnashing) about how to best invest this chunk of taxpayer-funded largess.

“This is a huge deal… Broadband is the central infrastructure challenge of the early 21st century,” stated acting FCC chairman Michael Copps. “If done right, it will be the most formative proceeding in… Continue Reading

WiMax — Game on?

[Editor's Note: Back in April, venture capitalist Paul Grim painted a somewhat bleak picture of the future of mobile WiMax networks, pointing to Sprint and Clearwire's inability to strike a deal as one of its prime weaknesses. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission finally gave the agreement its blessing. But is this enough to rescue WiMax? Below, Grim revisits the topic in light of recent developments.]

While the world was busy celebrating the election of Barack… Continue Reading

CTIA Roundup –- Game Over for WiMax?

Editor’s Note: This opinion piece was contributed by Paul Grim of VC firm Sunbridge Partners.

Things are certainly happening quickly in the wireless industry — the iPhone has actually lived up to much of the absurd hype that preceded its release. It’s captured a big percentage of the mobile smartphone market and an even bigger percentage of mobile browsing activity -– because (duh) you can actually browse the web on it. It may become the one… Continue Reading

Tear down this Wall!

(Editor’s note: This is an opinion piece by Paul Grim, a General Partner at SunBridge Partners, the US affiliate of Japan-based SunBridge Corporation)

We recently celebrated President Reagan’s famous quotation from twenty years ago, a challenge to a closed regime that no one at the time ever imagined would open up and allow its subjects a real sense of freedom and choices.

So I would suggest that it’s time to set that challenge again, to another… Continue Reading

Is WiMax like the tragic Barbaro?

(Editor’s note: The wireless world is an important one, yet a jargon-filled one, so we asked investor Paul Grim to give us a lay of the land. We also asked him to spell out the acronyms, so that the rest of us can keep up. He wrote this several days ago, before the latest comments by a high-level Qualcomm exec, also critical of WiMax technology. Investors are plowing billions of dollars into WiMax.)

In addition to… Continue Reading

You call *that* a technology company?

[Disclosure: Paul Grim's firm, SunBridge Partners, invested in Eclipse Aviation, and this article is in part to explain why he thought this made sense, despite lots of people who thought he was nuts at the time. With dozens of companies offering copycat mobile or Web 2.0 technologies lately, his perspective about alternatives is welcome.]

Although there certainly has been no dearth of opining on the problem of copycat, flipmeat Web 2.0 companies and the VC’s that… Continue Reading