Reasons Why Nextel's Wireless Broadband May Run Into Trouble

Steve Stroh comes up with five reasons why Nextel's wireless broadband offering may have trouble succeeding. While I agree with the overall hurdles, I'm not convinced it's a problematic as Steve makes it out to be. His first worry is the fact that this is branded as a trial - which he's afraid will keep people away. That may be true, but I'm not sure that really matters to Nextel at this point. It is a trial, and I'd bet they're more interested in finding out how those who do sign up use it, rather than how many people sign up. This is also easily (and obviously) corrected once they get out of trial stage. The second hurdle is the branding which includes "wireless," which Steve believes is implied by Nextel. I actually disagree on this. I don't think that everyone necessarily associates Nextel with wireless, and by including the wireless in the advertising it's seen as a benefit of the service over wired broadband. The third fear is that it's non-buzzword, non-standard compliant. Again, this strikes me as a fear that will really only impact those who are too focused on the wireless industry. We've been yelling for a while for companies to stop focusing on buzzwords and jargon, and this is a case where that might actually help them. His last two points, though, I agree with entirely. They should focus more on how this can be a replacement for wired broadband to the home, but it sounds like they're just feeling out the market, and hopefully they'll get there. His last point is that they should be advertising a VoIP solution running over this wireless connection, and, indeed, that sounds like a no-brainer. Still, this is also something that's easily changed, and I imagine that they want to make sure that the basic wireless connectivity really works before they start focusing in on value added services like that.

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