Why Did Cox Fail at Wireless?

Why Didn't Cox Try Femtocells Inside of DVR's or UMA WiFi Cell Service?

Cable operators can fix indoor wireless service through their own backhaul via femtocells or WiFi through their own networks.  There are a handful of femtocell companies that Cox could have partnered with but the best might have been Kineto which offers UMA WiFi for cell phone calls.  Will Cox change their marketing strategy as a new MVNO partner with Sprint selling Sprint femtocells?  

Cox Communications, a major cable and internet service provider in the United States, entered the wireless market in 2009 with the launch of its own wireless service. However, Cox eventually decided to discontinue its wireless operations and shut down its wireless network. While the exact reasons for Cox's failure in the wireless market may involve a combination of factors, here are a few potential reasons:

Competitive Landscape: The wireless market in the United States is highly competitive, dominated by major nationwide carriers such as Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint (now part of T-Mobile). These carriers have extensive infrastructure, large customer bases, and significant resources to invest in network expansion and marketing. Entering such a competitive market can be challenging for a new player like Cox.

Limited Network Coverage: Building and maintaining a robust wireless network requires significant investment in infrastructure, including cell towers, backhaul connections, and network equipment. Cox's wireless network had limited coverage compared to the nationwide networks of established carriers. Limited coverage can be a disadvantage, especially for customers who prioritize extensive coverage and network reliability.

Lack of Subscriber Base Synergy: Cox primarily focused on providing cable and internet services and did not have an existing subscriber base of wireless customers to leverage. Established carriers often bundle wireless services with other offerings, such as cable TV or home internet, to provide additional value to their customers. Without a substantial customer base in wireless, Cox may have faced challenges in attracting and retaining wireless subscribers.

Evolving Technological Landscape: The wireless industry is constantly evolving, with advancements in network technology and the introduction of new services and features. Keeping up with these advancements requires substantial investment and technical expertise. Cox may have faced difficulties in competing and adapting to the rapidly changing landscape of the wireless industry.

It's important to note that the specific internal factors that led to Cox's decision to exit the wireless market may not be publicly disclosed. The decision to discontinue wireless operations is often based on a combination of financial, strategic, and market considerations specific to the company.

Ultimately, each company's success or failure in the wireless market depends on various factors, including market dynamics, competitive positioning, network coverage, subscriber base, and overall business strategy.

10 Funny Femtocell Product Brand Names

AT&T's New Sponsor Sudafed - "Congestion Relief for Our Network"

SudaCell - Congestion Relief for the Network

SinuCell - Relief for your Network Congestion

MicroHell - Because we know your outdoor cell coverage is actually getting worse

Wi-For-Free - Why would we want to use a free back-haul service like Wi-Fi?

Never Drop - Or we pay for the call

Extenna - Extension for your iPhone 4 antenna that won't reach the cell tower

Ubiquity - Your phone should work everywhere our coverage maps claim

Auto Re-Dial - Because we know you will have to do it at least once

Show Me the Money - Just pay us and stop complaining about your poor service quality

Cell You Crap - When your $150 + $20 Per Month AT&T MicroCell drops calls

What are femtocells?  - They are 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE or Wi-Fi wireless device that has been specifically designed for cell phones and used it is used to enhance cell phone reception indoors and lower cell phone costs at the same time.  Femtocells are typically used to relieve network congestion, dropped calls and areas that have no cell phone reception.  

VCs Betting Femtocells Will Coexist with Wifi

The femtocell industry has been waiting to take off for almost a decade due to slow adoption from the telecom industry and reluctance from cable operators innovate.  It appears as if we are about to "cross the chasm" of growth into the mainstream consumer as the "femtocell" or "microcell" topic becomes more widely understood.  There has long been a healthy debate in the telecom industry if femtocells and Wi-Fi will even coexist as Wi-Fi has become ubiquitous throughout the world and is a viable offloading option for mobile phones. However, as we have all seen by AT&T's iPhone fiasco that control over the voice network seems to be most important as data speeds and capacity get larger and larger.  It also remains to be seen if the cable operators will continue to stick to their stance that Wi-Fi is their solution and they don't intend to purchase femtocells at this time.

Two leading femtocell developers based in the UK have seem to be getting the most traction around the world with carriers and have recently announced new funding rounds.  It is great to see VC's continuing to  fund the operations of these companies who are have been slugging it out for many years.  See our list of femtocell companies funded back in 2008.

Ubiquisys, a UK-based developer of 3G femtocells, has just raised $9 million in new VC funding and a total of $57 million so far.  The new money is going to be used to meet the demand from many carriers testing across the world.  Yasuda Enterprise Development Co. led the round, and was joined by return backers Advent Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Atlas Venture. The latest round comes from a combination of 5 new investors: Continents Consulting Group (5CCG), Yasuda Enterprise Development Co., Advent Ventures , Accel Partners , and Atlas Venture. Ubiquisys, which also has Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and T-Mobile Venture Funds as strategic investors, has its femtocell technology commercially deployed at SoftBank Corp. in Japan and SFR in France through its systems integrator partner NEC Corp. Rumor has it that AT&T may be announced soon in the US as well.  Read full article on Light Reading.

PicoChip recently raised $20 million influx of funds. UK femtocell chip maker picoChip Designs Ltd. has announced that it has raised an additional $20 million in equity funding and sold 1 million femto chips. All of picoChip's existing investors participated in the latest funding round, namely Atlas Venture , Highland Capital Partners, Intel Capital, Pond Venture Partners, Rothschild, Samsung Venture Investment Corp. and Scottish Equity Partners. With the new money, picoChip wants to hire more engineers in its development centers in Bath, England and Beijing. The company plans to increase its 150-employee base by between 25 percent and 30 percent. PicoChip's has sold 1 million femtocell chips.

San Francisco Has the Worst AT&T Reception

San Francisco has been awarded with the worst AT&T reception in the US according to our users.  The map above shows where customers have complained about dropped calls, data congestion and poor voice quality consistently and its only getting worse.  Search the AT&T Deadcellzones.com Consumer Generated Coverage Map by typing in your zip code or city name.  Ironically, one of the worst locations for reception is the AT&T building where Twitter's headquarters is. This building has very dense population of iPhones in the City and with 1.7 million iPhone 4 units sold in the first three days its not going to get any better.

AT&T Executives partly blame the San Francisco City Council and zoning laws, claiming that they are limited by 4 foot antennas.  I am not sure if I believe this excuse because back-haul, signaling and switching seem to be the carriers biggest challenge in other areas of the US.  Can AT&T make densely populated iPhone areas work properly with larger antennas and more fiber back-haul similar to SXSW in Austin?   AT&T executives claim that if they could put 6 foot antennas onto buildings that could would be better for all customers.  I would like to see a beta test in Downtown San Francisco of using larger antennas to test and see if it improved coverage. If successful, the San Francisco City County could use our database of complaints to measure the amount of complaints in an area as documented proof.

Also, we also think every AT&T iPhone purchaser (especially San Francisco) will eventually get a free 3G femtocell similar to Softbank in Japan when more competition starts to challenge their Apple monopoly.  AT&T's MicroCell may not be the complete solution to fix the problem but they certainly should not be charging for data or the device considering all of the complaints we are hearing about on their network.   Consumer reports across the country seem to be a very mixed bag about the AT&T MicroCell the tech capital of the World, San Francisco seems to be suffering the most. Some say the MicroCell works, some say it doesn’t (even when the network is up) and some say it drops calls all of the time.  The common issue seems to be interference with the Macro network and control for the signal is increasingly becoming a challenge for customers who are installing the mini cell phone tower.  Will AT&T stick with Cisco Systems as the MicroCell manufacturer or will they look for alternative femtocells?  

Apparently, AT&T looks like they are being selective about who they are selling their new MicroCell to as well.  Apparently, TechCrunch is trying to purchase a MicroCell one but has been denied.  AT&T managed to sucker in two of the biggest names in San Francisco to purchase their new Microcell,  Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Salesforce's CEO Marc Benioff.  Both could be great advocates  had AT&T's network been prepared but apparently there were problems.  Benioff posted on his Facebook:  “Bought 2 AT&T MicroCells and apparaently installation won’t complete. Called AT&T. They said they are having a national MicroCell outage since Friday. It won’t work for 2 more days." Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook: “I got one and it seems to work pretty well." “Pretty well” isn’t exactly a rave review.

Related Stories:
Is Cell Reception Getting Worse?
Steve Jobs Cronies Hype: AT&T Getting Better
Why is AT&T's MicroCell Dropping Calls?
AT&T to Spend $1B on Free Femtocells
AT&T's Microcell U-Verse Set-Top Box
AT&T Home Cell Tower or MicroCell
AT&T Customers Will Soon Be Happy
AT&T Service Plans and Coverage Review

Forget 4G Cell Towers, Bring on Femtocells

Will Mini Cell Towers Replace Giant Cell Towers Sitting on Rooftops and Hills? 

North America, Asia and Europe carriers are still debating and dragging their feet asking whether they should deploy citywide or one consumer at a time, using femtocells.  The industry has been talking about femtocells for many years and I have been reading headlines about the launch since 2007.  Its shocking that AT&T is ONLY rolling out its' 3G fetmocell (Microcell) today and no carrier to my knowledge has a 4G femtocell yet.  Why doesn't Clearwire / Sprint have a 4G femtocell?  

There are many headlines dating back to 2008 promoting femtocell launches by Clearwire (Wimax)  GigaOm and Electronita Verizon's 4G femtocell that never happened.  Is it for real this time and should you be concerned if I owned cell phone tower real estate or an investors in American Tower, SBA Communications or Crown Castle.  

Softbank Japan Offers Free Femtocells

Should AT&T should follow the lead of SoftBank in Japan, who announced this month they would provide free femtocells and dedicated ADSL broadband lines to anyone with poor coverage?  AT&T claims to have 98% population coverage - 1% behind their competitors - so this allows them to resolve dead spots quickly where their customers have problems. Although also rolling out more outdoor cell towers, femtocells can be deployed much more quickly when hosted in their customer's premises.

AT&T announced it is rolling out 3G Microcells nationwide but many readers have been turned away indefinitely. Maybe the rollout isn't going to go as fast as promised. With AT&T continuing to draw heat about their network coverage which like many other networks have been straining under the demands of iPhone and heavy data usage, they'll want to ensure the solution works with few teething troubles before ramping up the volumes too quickly.

See related article from Ubiquisys founder Will Franks

AT&T Customers Will Soon Be Happy

AT&T Customers "Jumping for Joy" about Microcell

Too many customers are competing for data and voice access on the same cell phone towers and this traffic needs to offloaded onto smaller broadband networks.  The success of smart phones have put data usage on a growth path that is unprecedented and. AT&T has reported an increase in network data consumption of 5000% over the last 3 years, driven by a minority of customers who own the Apple iPhone. An iPhone user consumes five times more data in a month, compared to other smartphone users and cell phone tower infrastructure can't handle the demand and data needs to be offloaded onto devices like the AT&T Microcell.

Cell Phone Tower Burning from iPhone Data Congestion

AT&T's Microcell
The media and public have finally put pressure on the big carrier to provide what it claims in its ads.  The AT&T femtocell has been in testing for almost three years and now it appears they finally have reached the tipping point where they have been forced to roll them out into the network.  AT&T is offering them on a limited basis in these locations:  North Carolina, Georgia, North San Diego, CA and Las Vegas, NV. The device promises to serve as a solution for people with poor, indoor cell coverage offloading both data and voice traffic over their network.   AT&T has also announced a LTE (Long Term Evolution) roll out to start  sometime next year and the Microcell (femtocell) will likely offload traffic from the cell towers through broadband as well.

Will Femtocells Payoff?
We think if AT&T focuses on satisfying its customers needs and overcomes the technical barriers rolling out hundreds of thousands of femtocells on their network that it will reclaim a significant advantage over competing carriers like Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile.  One think to watch is how aggressive the cable companies like Comcast, Time Warner, Cox and Cablevision get marketing against their customers.  It isn't clear how friendly cable companies will be routing wireless voice traffic over their broadband networks.  I predict that "he who owns the line into the home is the winner of all services".  Voice, Data, TV, Wireless

Beyond 2010 and Beyond: Is AT&T the Network to Beat?

From Geekshuilving, March 9, 2010 - Since mid 2007, when Apple launched the iPhone under an exclusive contract with AT&T, complaints have abounded about the inability of the wireless carrier’s network to handle the load. Tech related blogs regularly include complaints from customers, who either have the iPhone on AT&T or would love an iPhone but aren’t willing to switch to them. Complaints regarding lack of service, dropped calls and slow connections are mainstream topics, whose only positive outcome has been in the form of funny sketches on late night comedy shows. Read the full article. Read the full article at Geekshuiliving.com

Femtocells + Google Location Based Advertising

Google femtocells could reach more than 50% of the U.S. population.

Femtocells are emerging as the primary technology that will link the indoor and outdoor cellular networks. These devices improve the quality of service of 3G, 2G and 2.5 networks indoors. Mobile users can enjoy voice and data services from home without having to stand near the window or outdoors. Femtocells are particularly attractive to mobile carriers in the US and even Google we think. Femtocells are emerging as the standard technology that lets wireless phone use in homes and offices become a viable alternative to landline telephones. The ability to leverage the Internet for back-haul makes femtocells an economic force in the marketplace; it brings the industry changes in the way voice is delivered.  US carriers have struggled for years claiming the cost of the femtocells being too high around $100 and keep playing the "waiting game" in order to drive costs lower and see "who jumps first". Some have considered renting out femtocells to users for a long contract period for $2-14 per month, rather than allowing them to buy it outright for $100+.

One perceived barrier to rollout is the need to reduce the cost per unit of the hardware or subsidize it.  We think its simply an excuse because they don't want to open up a "can of worms" admitting to their coverage deficiencies in the US.  Initially it may be that operators provide femtocells to customers as part of a service plan but Google may plans to give it away for free and monetize it through location based advertising.  The US carriers are truly still dumb pipes and are clueless about location based adverting.  This would significantly threaten their paid femtocell business model and it would force AT&T and Verizon into advertising acquisitions in order to catch up.

Ubiquisys, the Google-funded company is providing femtocells to O2 (UK carrier), along with many other trials around the world. It has technology that listens in to the existing GSM and 3G network signals to establish if the licensee is allowed to transmit here. This provides the advantage of allowing network operators to lock the femtocell to one physical location or more, for a small fee.  Google could use femtocell technology to quickly roll out wireless services in the U.S. By deploying a femtocell-like system, in a matter of a year they might be able to reach more than 50% of the U.S. population. Google can deploy femtocells at malls, on city streets (by mounting femtocells on street lamps), and along major highways. Then it might strike roaming agreements with other carriers to offer users wireless service outside the home while it builds out its wireless towers similar to Cox and Comcast. If Google set up the wireless telephone business, they could offer communications free, basing the revenue model on location based advertising. If calls go out to the Internet through the femtocell, they could be handled in the same way that Google Talk works not, and there would be no need for a wireless services provider.