Showing posts with label Matt Damon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matt Damon. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The Bourne Legacy: Gripping As Expected



I desperately did not want the Bourne franchise to end with the third movie, but made peace that it did. But it did not die when I thought it did, just like Bourne keeps living on in the movies. Word is Matt Damon wants to come back as Bourne. I can't wait.



"Mr. Bond, you have a nasty habit of surviving!"



I prefer Bourne to Bond. Bourne is the best the CIA has to offer, and they turn on each other. That anti-establishment theme adds depth to the relentless action.

And then there's Manila traffic. Can't beat the Third World when it comes to traffic chaos. That and slum living. A chase in the slum is breathtaking because you don't know what's around the corner.

I watched it at Kaufman. I walked over. And I walked back. It was past midnight. I jogged. It was thrilling. For one I got lost. It is harder to navigate the streets when there are no people, few cars.

I like them both, but if pushed I'd say Matt Damon does it better. He can look more cerebral, more vulnerable, more conflicted, and more determined as necessary.


Time: Will The Bourne Legacy Usher in the Story-Less Movie?
the corrupt U.S. Government agency behind the programs to create super-soldiers — is left to menace another day ..... the movie’s lack of story is apparently not a problem for most people. Not only did the movie debut at the top of the box office this past weekend, but the movie’s critical notices (which have been amusingly split) include praise for its momentum, its “turn-your-brain-off” qualities, and the sheer breathlessness of the experience of the film. As Tim Robey of the Daily Telegraph puts it, “Caveats come later: while it’s pulsing on screen, you won’t want to be anywhere else.” The critics at the screening I went to seem to agree that summer movies aren’t about story, but about spectacle. As long as you have enough memorable scenes of special effects or action in there — for example, Jeremy Renner wrestling a wolf, which he then goes on to punch in the face — then people will want to see it...... in almost every clash between culture and commerce, it generally pays to be cynical, sadly.... It’s not that The Bourne Legacy is a good movie in and of itself, perhaps, but that it reminds people of enough other good movies that they still manage to find the viewing experience worthwhile. (Plus, you know, wolf-punching.)
This right here is another movie to wait for. I predicted it will be made right after the event: The Bin Laden Operation.





  Matt Damon On ‘Bourne Legacy’ And the Future of the Bourne Franchise
the gritty world of assassins, spies and government cover-ups ..... With franchise scribe Tony Gilroy at the helm, most feel confident that the film will, at the very least, stay true to the tone that Bourne Identity director Doug Liman, Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass and Jason Bourne himself, Matt Damon, established in the first three films. ..... we touched upon the Bourne franchise, his hopes for Bourne Legacy, and what his involvement may be in the future of the franchise ...... There’s been talk about you joining Jeremy Renner in Bourne 5. Producer Frank Marshall said that was his dream ..... He’s awesome, and you know, he’s one of my favorite actors and I believe him in that world. You know, when Paul and I talked about maybe doing one, years ago, where we pass it off to somebody so the franchise can continue with someone else, Renner was the first guy that we talked about.
Bourne 5 could see a triangular struggle. The two have teamed up, but only remotely. There is just too much relentless pressure for them to get together physically, but they coordinate acts. And because both of them have similar operating styles that confuses the agency. The agency does not know which one of them they are dealing with at any one point in time. Although the agency knows both of them are out there. But as Pam Landy says, "If you don't see them, they are gone." So it's the agency at their tails, and them fighting some non state actor elsewhere which is even more evil. Some leftover element of the Al Qaida perhaps whose individual operatives are no match to these two super soldiers. These walking talking robots, super humans, computers, machines, humans, cyborgs, Matt, is that you?

Physicists talk of parallel universes. The Legacy is a parallel universe.

Tony Gilroy Talks ‘Bourne Legacy’; Renner & Damon May Team Up for ‘Bourne 5′
ever since writer/director Tony Gilroy conceived the project, the door’s been left open for Matt Damon to return as Jason Bourne in a fifth installment (we’ll just call it Bourne 5 for now). ..... Bourne Legacy overlaps directly with events in the Bourne trilogy. Moreover, it appears that plot points from Bourne Ultimatum reappear in Legacy, in order to set the storyline of the latter in motion..... My dream is that in the next one we see Matt and Jeremy team up .... the non-fractured mindset of Renner’s character
I have a name for Bourne 5: The Bourne Resurrection. Where do the two get their resources? They know the agency so well they dip in at will into the agency's resources. But they are like this startup that just can not join forces with the big, old corporation. The agency is the big, old corporation. So here's the plot. The two team up remotely, accidentally. They get into a fight with a terrorist organization. And the agency keeps getting in the way. They manage to infiltrate the terror organization to prevent a major catastrophe. Wait, I am taking away from the tension between the agency and the super soldier. The agency itself is the best enemy the super soldier can hope for.

Philadelphia Weekly: "The Bourne Legacy" is a Far Cry from its Predecessors
The chief architect of the Bourne franchise, Gilroy was pissed when his script for Supremacy, the series’ second, was pummeled into pure whiplash action by director Paul Greengrass, thus softening what he had planned as a tale of redemption. In retaliation, he only turned in a hasty, pissy rough draft on Ultimatum, described by Damon as a “career-ender.” In a 2009 New Yorker piece, he claimed to have never watched it
NY Daily News: 'The Bourne Legacy' - interesting reboot, but not exciting enough
Jason Bourne was part of a top-secret government project. Turns out he was not the only one and after an intelligence failure, as the US government is shutting down the project which is killing every soldier in the project, one of them, Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) escapes..... He teams up with the doctor (Rachel Weisz), who used to administer performance-enhancing medications even as the US government tries to hunt him down...... The original "Bourne" series was exciting because Bourne was an assassin trying to find himself. He was a man of conscience who had killed a guy he knew he shouldn't have. Amnesia and conscience had made a potent mix there...... Though this part does try to build these two elements up, the attempt lacks lustre. Aaron is only trying to find himself and not remember himself. And secondly, the bit about him having developed a conscience is so poorly developed that this one small flaw takes the sting out of the film...... Thus you don't feel as much pull as you did in the "Bourne" series because the emotional base is not built well enough..... Aaron is thus as much of a quick thinker and doer as Bourne was and is a good fighter and evader of authorities. There are some good chase sequences as well. The actors live up to the expectations..... What's missing are some more hand-to-hand fights and a shaky camera, two staple elements of the original series. The camera here is too steady, and the close-ups during the fights too close for comfort..... Yet, the theme of a powerful and power hungry nation creating monsters of mass destruction to control the world to their own advantage, and then unable to cope when just one backfires, is strong enough
The Telegraph: The Bourne Legacy: review
If a medal could be awarded every summer to the movie that most handily exceeds pre-release expectations, my vote for this season would go straight to The Bourne Legacy. Predictions — even early reactions — weren’t too sanguine. How could a Bourne movie possibly function without Jason Bourne in the middle of it? Isn’t Matt Damon vitally necessary to making these flicks tick? Also, how would the franchise fare with its screenwriter, Tony Gilroy, in the director’s chair, rather than the more obviously virtuosic Paul Greengrass, who handled the last two? ...... It’s not so much a sequel as, if you like, a para-quel, overlapping the story of Jeremy Renner’s new rogue agent with the familiar saga of Bourne’s amnesia-stricken reappearance and quest for answers. Bourne never shows up in person here, but he’s a structuring absence around which Gilroy dances with flair. ..... enhancing the field abilities of its agents, both physically and intellectually, by the use of experimental drugs ..... the same high-tech instruments of pursuit that Bourne had to outwit. ..... Renner brings a variation on his impudent Hurt Locker stoicism to bear on this: it’s nothing to do with him that the character lacks Bourne’s tragic air of a little boy lost, and is correspondingly less compelling. ..... rapid, detailed and unpredictable storytelling which never needs to push us far forward in time: call it top-flight running on the spot. ..... there’s nothing here on a par with that astonishing Moscow stuff in The Bourne Supremacy
I have a better plot. The CIA knows the two of them are out there. And it is still chasing them. The two of them don't know about each other. So when the two intersect with the agency, the agency keeps confusing one with the other. That sometimes plays to their advantages, sometimes to their disadvantages. Finally they come to know of each other's existence, but they still never get to meet. And the movie ends. The tension is still there. Between the agency and the super soldier gone free agent. And there is a girl. Instead of amnesia the tension comes from not knowing the other exists.

 
Enhanced by Zemanta

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Best Thing I Read Today


I really, really like this guy. Matt Damon. The three Bourne movies are my favorite action movies.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Open Coffee MeetUp: New Location




Nic Butterworth's Open Coffee MeetUp

I was there when Nic launched the Open Coffee MeetUp. The dude is a minor tech celebrity locally. And the turnout was good. More than 20 people showed. I kept coming a few times. It is not like investors did not show, and plenty of entrepreneurs. But the investors were institutional ones who would be good for round 2, round 3, round 4, kind of. They did not click with my seed money needs. And then I dropped out, kind of. Then I got slightly distracted with things Obama.

Now I am back. I went two weeks back. Noone showed up. So I left at 9:15. I met someone - Hilary Rowland - who I knew had RSVPd and who I met again at the NY Tech MeetUp - that 800 pound gorilla of MeetUps - and she said she did go. I did not see Nic, I did not see her, what was going on?

"We were in the corner in the left," she said.

Hmm.

Ends up I was in the wrong location. Nic started at the Astor Place Starbucks. Now it is a different location, better for me since now I don't have to change trains.

I set my alarm for seven. How about tomatoes for breakfast? Makes you feel cutting edge, healthy eating and all that.

I show up at nine. Only one other person was there before me, someone I had emailed before on the MeetUp system, but did not have a face for.

Facebook Group: New York Open Coffee MeetUp
Prospect Park Pick-Up Soccer
NY Tech Meetup

Nic set it up for a Thursday morning on purpose. Jobholders and entrepreneurs are two different species. He wanted to weed out the former.

Slowly people gathered. Nic did not show, but someone from his vertical video search company did. It was a good size crowd,more than a dozen. You get the intimate talk at the Open Coffee MeetUp that you don't get at the NY Tech MeetUp. That second usually has 500 people in the audience and presentations. Afterwards you interact for a few minutes with the celebrity presenters, like last time I did with the DoubleClick guy who sold it to Google for $1.6 billion. Now, that is some big fish.

Scott had also sold Fotolog for $90 million only a week before. So I needed to congratulate him.

I introduced myself saying I used to come here looking for investors, but I am here now primarily because I consider it a great learning experience to interact with entrepreneurs at various stages of growth.

Someone took the initiative to break the group into two. One for current affairs. I chose to stick with the second.

Lefty said his name was Lefty.

"Is that really your name?"

"When people say Lefty, I respond."

The actual name on his card was even more exotic. Leftonred Atanycorner. Dean is a consultant who helps early stage companies. He told me I had emailed him. Have I?

He said he was not interested but he came to sit near me twice. That is a lead to follow through.

Arnaud recently moved here from France. I could hardly pronounce his name.

This was my third or fourth time meeting Mark. The first two times I met him at Drinking Liberally, Rudy's, near Times Square. He was with The Huffington Post. Then I also saw him last week at the NY Tech MeetUp and waved him hello from a distance. Another person I was surprised to see there was Carlos, one of the top Obama volunteers in the city. His CEO ended up the guy who had sold his company to Google. I am impressed, Carlos.

Mark personally knows Arianna Huffington, of course. Yahoo, Salon ("Slate," he corrected me fast) and The Huffington Post had just hosted the first ever online only presidential debate, mashup, to be specific. We talked about that a little. By the way, Arianna Huffington is a Facebook friend of mine, as is Howard Dean, and Matt Damon, and Hilary Rowland, and Andrew Rasiej, and Greta Van Sustern at Fox News who has written a few times on my Facebook wall.

Yahoo: The First Online Only Debate

After everyone had left, Mark and I kept talking. Ends up he also lives in Brooklyn, "the most residential of the four boroughs," I said. I have been meaning to go to the Drinking Liberally in Brooklyn.

We talked. He gave me some very good advice on my startup. Then we talked soap. Then we walked to Union Square where I took the train to Astoria where I was meeting a former Nepali ambassador to Qatar for lunch. He is flying back to Nepal on Monday. We talked for hours.

The past two years I have met most of the top Nepali politicians here in the city including two former Prime Ministers one of whom said to me, "Thanks for saving me."

Lance I had seen once before. He was back. He was sitting next to me, but he ended up in the Current Affairs group.

Vlad, now that is a Slavic name.

JP has a real interesting startup. It is a social networking site. But it looks like a desktop application. There is the free part, and there is the premium version, so no ads. "Distraction." He is half Chinese, half Hispanic. He speaks Spanish.

Troy is in the mobile space. That is exciting. So much going on in that space.

I got engaged in a mini conversation with him. I could propose Christmas be celebrated in January but that is not going to happen, it is ingrained in the culture; do you think America's lagging behind in the mobile domain is partly cultural, I asked. He said it was more to do with the regulatory framework. The tiger had not been unleashed.

Not my space, though. I empathize with the Homo Sapien that needs the screen and the keyboard to be a certain size.

Frederic.



An Asian young woman who did not have her card with her, but who had a startup "that I can't tell you much about."

Hmm. I should use that line. If I tell you more, I will have to kill you.

Facebook Group: NY Open Coffee MeetUp.

"The IC is going to be like a frying pan, like a rice cooker. It is not the technology of it. It is the business part that is going to be amazing."

The Open Coffee MeetUp is a great Thursday morning thing to do. And the monthly NY Tech MeetUp is where you start the month.

Soccer on Sundays. And you got it all made.

"I live in Little Bangladesh. Prospect Park is the best part of where I live."

Scott 2.0, MeetUp.com 2.0

In The News

Analysts Mull Apple's Interest in Wireless Auction PC World
South Korea nears antitrust decision against Intel InfoWorld
Cisco Appoints Naresh Wadhwa to Lead India and SAARC Operations NDTV.com
Cisco® has appointed Mr. Naresh Wadhwa as President and Country Manager of its India and SAARC region (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation). He will report directly to Mr. Owen Chan, Cisco’s President, Asia Pacific Operations. .... Prior to Cisco, Naresh worked with 3Com Asia Ltd and Wipro Infotech in India. ...... Mr. Wadhwa has a degree in Engineering in Electronics from Mumbai University. ..... the worldwide leader in networking
Teenage Disney star apologizes for posing nude Xinhua "High School Musical" is Walt Disney Company's most successful show over the last two years generating profits to the tune of 1 billion U.S. dollars. ..... the photograph was allegedly taken by Zac Efron, Hudgens's 19-year-old boyfriend, and her co-star on the show. Together, the couple are by far the biggest "tween" stars in America
AMD: Is closing the quad-core deficit enough?
ZDNet the launch of AMD’s single-die quad-core milestone processor. ...... Intel’s soon to launch 45nm chip takes the die size down to an even more manageable 107mm squared.
Quick Take: Dell Comes Out of the Storage Closet Motley Fool Storage networks are a reasonably cheap way to keep pace with the digital Everest of data that businesses must track. ..... By choosing to go "mostly" direct, Dell is eschewing services partners who could make the MD3000i a hit. And, worse, it's blowing a ripe opportunity to become a consultative partner to fast-growing small businesses
Dell reports strong storage sales Bizjournals.com
Dell launches storage systems for small businesses Reuters a new computer data-storage system on Monday targeted at small businesses, one of the storage market's fastest-growing segments. .... the devices, which start at about $7,000 and run to $13,000 ..... the growing backup needs of small businesses grappling with ever-increasing amounts of data. ....... iSCSI, an Internet-enabled alternative to other methods for connecting computers to data storage. ..... Small businesses, defined by Dell as employing 20 or fewer people ...... the fastest storage revenue growth of major data-storage vendors in the second quarter, increasing nearly 24 percent to an estimated $405 million ...... HP is the world's biggest PC manufacturer. ..... Dell earns about 85 percent of its revenue from businesses, with consumers accounting for the rest. ..... "What you are starting to see emerge is a bit of a different focus where we are pointing the company into different areas," CEO Dell said. "We're making a number of long-term investments," which include the new storage system.
Painless Drug Injections ABC News
HP Inkjet technology to be used medicinally Monsters and Critics.com
Dell's 'Veso' appliance runs on four-core Opterons and thin VMware Register
VMware's Diane Greene Sees Virtualization Embedded In Servers InformationWeek will soon ship servers with a hypervisor pre-installed, allowing customers to activate virtual machines shortly after turning on the server ........ The simplest way is to add a flash memory device to the motherboard of the server. The device holds a stripped down, 32-megabyte version of ESX Server called ESX Server 3i ..... "Virtualization really does simplify IT" ..... Microsoft's upcoming Windows Server 2008 is due next February, with the Viridian hypervisor to be added within six months. ...... The shift by the hardware makers to embed virtualization illustrates how far virtualization of the data center has come in a year's time. At VMware's annual user group meeting last year in Los Angeles, spokesmen on stage debated when virtualization would cease to be a specialized niche and enter the mainstream. That debate appears to be over with virtualization's adoption by the hardware manufacturers. ....... You can dynamically scale your infrastructure with embedded hypervisors and "drag and drop virtual machines off of network attached storage.... the notion that an embedded hypervisor or any other hypervisor will one day replace the operating system ...... A hypervisor, on the other hand, sits between a virtual machine's operating system and the processors, routing communications between the operating system, the CPUs, and other system resources. ...... can activate disaster recovery if necessary, firing up stored images of failed systems ....... a neutral virtual machine file format called Open Virtualization Format.
New stocks for 'Today's List of Top Growers'
CNNMoney.com The new additions have little debt and offer well-above-average growth. ..... The case for replacing Dell is simply that the computer-maker's results have deteriorated, and it's not clear how it can restore rapid growth. Dell's greatest strength has been cost-efficient production of made-to-order PCs. The company has had initial success broadening that business by selling through Wal-Mart and other stores. But managing large inventories will make it harder to maintain profit margins. ...... Corning, the leading maker of optical fiber.
Review: Hewlett-Packard's Blackbird 002 gaming PC
San Jose Mercury News
Cisco Continues to Deliver on Data Center 3.0 Vision by ...
CNNMoney.com Cisco® (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced the integration of Cisco VFrame Data Center with VMware Virtual Infrastructure, a key solution for the Cisco vision of next generation data centers, called Data Center 3.0. ...... increased IT agility and flexibility, faster coordinated provisioning of storage and network resources, and improved business continuance. ...... The Cisco vision for Data Center 3.0 entails the real-time, dynamic orchestration of infrastructure services from shared pools of virtualized server, storage and network resources, while optimizing application service levels, efficiency and collaboration. Cisco and its partners are helping organizations to design and build virtualized, self-defending and efficient data center infrastructure for delivering superior application performance and user experience.
Online-Only Forum With Democrats New York Times The sponsors have been looking for ways to keep the forums fresh, which has mostly meant experimenting with the format ....... This is not being broadcast on television but will be available tomorrow on a computer near you. .... He finds lengthy dialogue more revealing and would ideally like to see Lincoln-Douglas-style debates across the country. “Great moments in conversation come as part of a flow,” he said. .... success will be measured not in live ratings after an hour or two on a single evening, she said, but in traffic to all three sites over a period of time, in links, and in seeing how long users stay with the material. Users will have a week in which to vote on whom they think won.
SAP, Oracle agree to reschedule court hearing to Sept 25
Forbes
Sun Expands Alliance With Microsoft
The Associated Press is the latest twist in a truce the companies, once bitter rivals, hammered out in 2004, when Sun pocketed $1.95 billion in a settlement payout from Microsoft over antitrust and patent allegations, and both companies vowed to make their products work better together. ........ Microsoft, the world's largest software company, stands to gain from the agreement because of Sun's reach in the server world. Sun is the world's No. 3 server seller with 13 percent of the worldwide market, behind IBM and Hewlett-Packard ....... the momentum surrounding so-called virtualization technology, which allows computers to run more than one operating system, saving hardware and electricity costs while boosting the performance of giant, energy-sapping machines. ........ Sun and Microsoft vowed to make sure their respective operating systems worked well with one another's virtualization technologies, a commitment that could help both companies prosper from the trend toward data center consolidation and urgent efforts by technology managers to reduce energy costs. ........ Sun's attempts to shed its image as that of a quarrelsome startup that in the late 1990s was eager to pick public fights with big rivals. ....... Sun is becoming a more restrained and inclusive company willing to forge alliances ....... the growing open-source movement in hopes that it will sell more hardware and services as more companies and programmers start using Sun's free technologies.

Microsoft Makes an OEM Out of Sun InternetNews.com the warming in relations between the two firms over the past three and a half years.
Wal-Mart touts return to low prices
BusinessWeek after disappointing results from last year's push into trendier clothes and merchandise. ...... the world's largest retailer.
Sirius-XM Merger: Costly Static
American Families Now Save $2500 a Year, Thanks to Wal-MartCNNMoney.com up 7.3% from $2,329 in 2004. ...... the continued reduction in prices due to the presence of Wal-Mart and the growth in consumer expenditures over the 2004 to 2006 period translates directly into savings for consumers amounting to $287 billion in 2006. This corresponds to savings of $957 per person or $2,500 per household. ...... http://www.SaveMoneyLiveBetter.com featuring the new ads, customer testimonials about how they've saved money by shopping at Wal-Mart and behind-the-scenes footage http://www.livebetterindex.com or http://www.walmartfacts.com
Wal-Mart rolling out new company slogan Reuters.uk
Wal-Mart Dealt Another Blow in Expansion Plans in Bay Area NewsBlaze
Wal-Mart takes charge tied to German sale
Reuters.uk
2 new tropical depressions emerge in Gulf, Atlantic Sun-Sentinel.com
Oil tops $80 a barrel, an all-time high CNNMoney.com
Sun to pre-install Windows on its servers TG Daily
Sun Expands Alliance With Microsoft The Associated Press
FCC: US doesn't need free wireless broadband Computerworld The FCC once again is siding with big telcos at the expense of consumers. This time around, it killed a plan that would offer free wireless broadband to 95% of the U.S., making use of a piece of the wireless spectrum that's unused. Are you surprised? ...... M2Z networks has been asking the FCC for months to approve an innovative plan that would bring wireless broadband to just about every consumer in the U.S. M2Z wants to use 20MHz of unused spectrum in the 2GHz band to build two nationwide wireless networks -- a free one with 384kbps download speeds, and a for-pay one with 3Mbps speed that would cost between $20 and $30 a month. ........ The deal would work like this: M2Z would offer the free service in exchange for use of the spectrum, which right now lies idle. The company would pay the U.S. 5% of its revenues in return for use of the spectrum. ..... The plan is no pipe dream from a flaky startup. The company is founded and headed by John Muleta, who is the former chief of the FCC's wireless bureau. ..... Because big telcos told them to. The spectrum was used previouly by big telcos for microwave connections, but is no longer needed, so it lays idle. Even though big telcos aren't using the spectrum, they'd like to keep squatting on it, in case they come up with a use for it. So the FCC lets them keep it.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Endorses M2Z Networks' Plan for Free, Family ... Earthtimes.org Rainbow PUSH Coalition (RPC) founder and President Rev. Jesse Jackson, in a September 7 letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin, endorsed M2Z Networks' (M2Z) plan to provide free and family-friendly broadband Internet access across the country. Rev. Jackson urged the FCC to work quickly to make this a reality for all Americans...... "The RPC supports M2Z Networks, Inc.'s (M2Z) plan to level the playing field for broadband access in the United States and to help connect millions of underserved Americans," wrote Jackson in the letter, adding "Moreover, we believe that the FCC has a moral obligation to promote justice and equality by extending the critical opportunities of the information age to all Americans.".... "For more than 16 months since we first proposed our plan to the FCC, M2Z has been ready to provide a free and family-friendly broadband Internet service across the country," said M2Z Networks' co-founder and CEO John Muleta. Muleta added, "We have consistently urged swift action to put fallow spectrum to use so that all Americans, not just some Americans, can enjoy the right to full participation in the digital age and fulfillment of the American Dream. This is the FCC's statutory obligation to the American people." ...... Section I of the Communications Act requires the FCC to act to make communications services available to the public at reasonable charges "without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges." Is this vein, Rev. Jackson wrote "It is critical the FCC make it a priority to establish a free nationwide broadband network as the benefits of broadband cannot be reserved only for those members of our society with sufficient disposable income to afford a monthly high-speed connection." ..... Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif., M2Z Networks' goal is to transform the current state of the broadband marketplace by building a high-speed wireless network throughout the United States. In May 2006, the company submitted a license application to the FCC to construct and operate a nationwide broadband wireless network in the 2155-2175 MHz spectrum band. Approval of the initiative, to which the FCC recently has indicated it would extend consideration in a forthcoming rulemaking, would guarantee delivery of free, fast and family-friendly wireless broadband service to at least 95 percent of Americans in a 10 year timeframe. The service will be supported by locally targeted search results and will include a network-level filter to shield children using the service from indecent content. If licensed, M2Z would pay the U.S. Treasury 5 percent of annual gross revenues from its premium subscription services, which could total payments of up to $1 billion over 15 years. The introduction of M2Z's broadband service would generate $18 to $32 billion in direct consumer benefits over the next 15 years according to two uncontested economic studies. M2Z is backed by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers; Charles River Ventures; and Redpoint Ventures; three of the most successful venture capital firms in Silicon Valley with $5 billon of capital under management. For more information, please visit http://www.m2znetworks.com and http://www.freebroadbandnow.org
Is free nationwide wireless broadband dead? Computerworld "the proper way to allocate this spectrum in the manner that best serves the public interest is to conduct a general rulemaking." ...... He described four different options that the FCC should consider for dealing with the band, including opening it up for unlicensed use, designating it as an "open access model that would combine wholesale broadband access and a Carterfone mandate," using it to create a free nationwide broadband network that would be supported both through advertising revenue and revenue generated from premium service fees, and licensing it through an open auction. ....... he wants to see the band used to create a free wireless network that will be funded by advertising. The idea is to make the Internet more like analog radio and television, where people can tune in for free in exchange for being exposed to advertisements. ...... "A lot of the big carriers want to forestall competition, and the longer they make us wait to deliver our services, the better it is. ... Americans are dying for broadband, and it's not that it's not available; it's just incredibly expensive. We're offering a free service that's being retailed today for $40 to $90 a month." ....... the early days of citizens' band radio, which he described as "a free-for-all that ultimately led to a lot of interesting ideas." However, he noted that the prospects for getting the current FCC to make the 2,155-to-2,175-MHz band unlicensed are grim. ....... "The FCC has long history of wringing its hands in public, and often what they do is most politically expedient thing, which means going to go through the same traditional auction," Jude said. "That seems to be the path of least resistance, and it has a lot of attraction for politicians." ....... "You're either providing Internet access -- and the good, the bad and the ugly that entails -- or you end up becoming a government censor, which has incredibly scary connotations," he said. "Likewise, how advertising works on a free tier is vitally important. Ads should not be intrusive or end up degrading the user experience." ........ "Opening the band up for auction a la the 700-MHz block is probably the worst idea of the lot," Meinrath said. "Let's have an auction that actually generates benefits that people will directly experience."
WiMAX CASE STUDY: Ertach’s WiMAX Experience in Argentina WiMax.com 1998 .... Ertach was awarded licenses of 50 MHz of spectrum in the 3.4-3.7 GHz frequency band for data transmission and value-added services. Today, the company is one of the leading providers of broadband wireless solutions in Argentina and Latin America. ..... In 2003, Ertach launched the “First National Broadband Wireless Network,” an expansion plan that covered 40 new cities in only 12 months. .... “We saw in WiMAX a promising opportunity. We adopted the 802.16-2004 standard and the growth possibilities of the company multiplied” ..... In 2004, Ertach deployed “The First WiMAX Network in Latin America,” providing internet access, data transmission, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) with the standard 802.16d. “In the short term, WiMAX provided us with many benefits such as the possibility of providing our customers with bandwidth speeds of up to 10 Mbps and QoS that allowed us to strengthen our business and equally compete with the other telcos; in most cases we were able to improve upon their price offerings and quality” .....In late 2006, Ertach was acquired by Telmex for a total of US$22.5 million.... the new wireless strategy of Telmex to compete against Argentinean fixed incumbents (Telefonica and Telecom Argentina). .... Telmex, together with Motorola, is conducting trials of WiMAX in the greater Buenos Aires area as well as in the cities of Cordoba and Mendoza. The company expects initially to target the residential and SME segments. In addition, Telmex and Motorola have 30 active trials in other countries across Latin America..... WiMAX tariff plans start at ARS 245 (US$77.65) for downstream speeds of 256 kbps. ..... Cable and DSL continue to be the most used technologies by Argentina’s mass market, not only because of their lower cost than wireless but also because of their greater availability. ... the launch of “True Mobile Broadband” with technology 802.16e. The company expects to bring its customers a true mobile WiMAX experience by 2008.
Increased Interest in WiMAX Will Impact the Cellular M2M Market Cellular-News the cellular M2M market will be impacted by the growing momentum behind the deployment of WiMAX as a next-generation WWAN communications technology. WiMAX is even more spectrally efficient and cost-effective to operate in carrier networks when compared with W-CDMA and CDMA EV-DO, making WiMAX very suitable for low data rate, low ARPU M2M applications ...... "Sprint and Clearwire are the two most significant service providers deploying WiMAX in the United States. ..... Clearwire - a Craig McCaw startup that has received $600 million in venture backing from Intel and $300 million from Motorola




Reblog this post [with Zemanta]