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Wireless Networking United States Hardware

FCC Commercializes More Bandwidth for 3G services 60

Posted by Hemos from the opening-up-the-airwaves dept.
prostoalex writes "Federal Communications Commission opened up 90 MHz of previously reserved bandwidth for next-generation wireless services. The FCC news release (MS Word, PDF, apparently no HTML) specifies the following ranges to be available for commercial exploitation: 1710-1755 MHz and 2110-2155 MHz. Currently the licenses are issued to the business capable of providing "substantial service by the end of the license term", later on the licenses will be sold to the highest bidder. There's also this announcement about millimeter wave broadband frequencies."
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FCC Commercializes More Bandwidth for 3G services More

FCC Commercializes More Bandwidth for 3G services

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  • We know what's the best. We should be buy a band, setup our own protocal, and... rule the world!

    We have open source software.

    Why not open source an entire unique communication project?

    Davak
  • Is this going to be a standard around the world, or am I going to be SOL (like with so many other things) when I travel abroad?

    (Rant from someone who carries a Verizon cell due to coverage in US and a T-mobile phone that sucks in U.S. but works fine in other countries.)

    • What's that you say? A world-wide cellphone standard?

      Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

      <pause>

      ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

      Sorry, no. The US will insist on using CDMA-2000 as the physical layer of its 3G networks. Europe and Japan are using W-CDMA. Whatever frequency band you use, you'll have to wait for s
      • Ummm...CDMA2000 is more of a world standard right now than WCDMA is. You can pick up a CDMA 2000 signal in all of the US, most of Asia, and just about all of South America! Right now, you can only find WCDMA signals in a few areas of Europe, and Japan.

        IMHO, by legislating what cell phone standards are being used, Europeans are possibly allowing buerocrats to decide what technology is better!
        • Ummm...CDMA2000 is more of a world standard right now than WCDMA is. You can pick up a CDMA 2000 signal in all of the US, most of Asia, and just about all of South America! Right now, you can only find WCDMA signals in a few areas of Europe, and Japan.

          IMHO, by legislating what cell phone standards are being used, Europeans are possibly allowing buerocrats to decide what technology is better!

          [Marketing Talk] But WCDMA is going to be big Big BIG!!! [/Marketing Talk]

          I work in the cellphone industry and I
      • I carry three phones... sigh...

        1. Verizon, personal, best coverage over the entire US.

        2. T-mobile. Shitty U.S. coverage, works overseas, decently priced unlimited wireless internet access (well, at least in areas I go) via bluetooth from my laptop. (No bluetooth phones for verizon, and their express network is $80/month...)

        3. Nextel. Work supplied phone. Expected to carry it 24/7.

        So, two phones on the belt, one in pocket, and when I carry my ipod around, I start to look like the Borg! :) I shudder

    • Re:Any worldwide coordination? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The US following an international standard??? Sounds too good to be true....

  • great (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is a good thing. There are too many wireless operators in the US so spectrum is stretched pretty thin. Now we may get to see UMTS here in the states.

  • watter absorption (Score:3, Interesting)

    by IAR80 ( 598046 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @07:10AM (#7259207) Homepage
    The watter absorbtion is so big at 92Ghz that you can only use it indoors.
    • I was looking around the web at this last night when I saw the news releases and I saw them talking about pencil beams as though it was very directional. That made me wonder what it's got over laser. At first I thought perhaps it was because it was more resistant to weather variations, is there more to it than that?
      They're talking about Ghz speeds over a mile. But technically you could achieve a similar bandwidth with laser as well, right?
    • The aviation industry's been looking into millimeter-wave systems for landing in fog. You can "see" a completely fogged-up runway with millimeter-wave radar.

  • The right start (Score:3, Insightful)

    by schmack ( 32384 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @07:11AM (#7259209)
    It's great to see they're actually looking for companies who are going to do something with the bandwidth.

    The farcical 3G auctions of the 'dot com boom' era was the nail in the coffin of many companies who spent billions of dollars on spectrum they had no idea what to do with.

    Let's just pray some enterprising companies somewhat aligned to PC users get their mitts on it. If the telcos snap it all up you can bet it'll priced out of the market for mobile PC applications (wireless VPNs, general high-speed wireless access etc).

    A CTO impressing his lunchmates with his swanky cell phone displaying video clips of his kids is one thing, but there's a killer app out there right now for a cheap, wireless, ubiquitous service for PC users.

    Bill, Steve, Paul... somebody?

    • market vs technology (Score:2, Insightful)

      by reverb ( 39039 )
      I won't claim to be omniscient regarding 3G, but having recently been laid off from a RF component company I've had some insight into 3G basestation deployment in North America and Europe.

      My opinion is that one can throw all the spectrum you want at 3G and it will continue to flounder as it has been for the past three years. Companies such as the one I worked for have been looking for the take-off of 3G for quite a while and have now resigned themselves to the fact that it may never really happen. One of

  • No HTML? (Score:1, Funny)

    by a.koepke ( 688359 )
    Well for those without MS Word or Adobe Reader here is HTML link provided by Google
    • Dunno where the flippin HTML code I put in there went but I posted it again WITH the link this time.

      I put the tags in there...
  • Mobile operators were doing, on the whole, well in the uk until they paid over the odds for the 3G licences and have landed themselves in huge amounts of debt.
  • Here is HTML version of PDF [216.239.37.104] provided by Google
  • This is great news, the development of 3G services in the US has been held up for long enough by beaurocracy. Countries such as Japan, South Korea and Rhodesia have established a technical lead in this area, which can only harm the already weak economy.

    What might be interesting, however, is when the new 4G technologies come along. These will be different from previous technologies that work by modulating a carrier frequency, but will instead be analagous to ethernet with each phone using the same frequ

    • Re:About time (Score:5, Informative)

      by CaptainAlbert ( 162776 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @08:11AM (#7259392) Homepage
      Woooooo - flamebait!

      So much misinformation in that I actually laughed... briefly...

      Ethernet = CSMA/CD, that is, Carrier Sense Media Access with Collision Detection. Only one station transmitting at a time. Works OK for packetised data. 3G uses CDMA - Code Division Media Access - all users share a common frequency band and their signals are spread across all the available spectrum, and scrambled with a code unique to that user so that they can be recovered. No collisions occur.

      Modulating a Carrier Frequency - all broadband communication systems do this. Duh.

      Video link on a 50Hz carrier = snake oil.

      Video on the cellphone isn't a goal, it's available now with 3G networks.

      High speed mobile comms requires microwave frequencies. "Low" frequencies are typically already allocated to AM and FM radio broadcasts, and higher ones to VHF/UHF TV. No beaurocracy needed.

      I'm going to stop now and return to my normal colour. :)
    • The fact that the poster mentions "Rhodesia" as a country shows how much of a troll he is :)

      Rhodesia is what Zimbabwe USED to be called before the revolution about 20 years ago.

      It's a safe bet the rest of the information in the post is equally fallacious ;)
  • Great...let's add another layer of unnecessary complexity to the mish-mash of frequencies and protocols that is US cellular coverage. Bonus points for the lovely distribution plan which will inevitably result in scatter-shot distribution to any company who can file a vaguely-plausible business plan, regardless of what they plan to run over it. Cellular providers can't even build their network out to fill their existing licenses as it is.

    Technology advances make this even more irrelevant, as high-bandwidt
  • well the only problem i have with this is that public safety (Fire, Police, EMS, and all those other agencies) have been running into a communication crunch over teh last many years. And there aint no new frequencies being opened up to them.
  • This is a hypothetical but what if all these waves going through our bodies and brains is slowly killing us and by the time we relise whats happening it will be too late. There was a post some time ago in responce to the mothers who sued a school over this that said there where reports of incresed headaches but higher productivity. What about unborn babies... what is the effect on them. I guesse we won't find out for another 20 years when they grow up and enter society.
    • I hate it when people say radio waves are going to kill us and our unborn children. We are hit with radiation from the sun and lots of other enviromental radiations, fumes and countless other things that dont affect us. We've been using radio signals and lots of other types of waves for quite a while, why would it start affecting us now?

      I live in a big city and I dont have any headaches from any waves, in my experience the majority of headaches are caused by worrying, and some physical reasons as well.
      • The sun is causing cancer and Cancer rates have been skyrocketing. I had a friend I went to college with a while back (now he works at the Mayo Clinic) and he once told me way back when when I was prophezing about wireless internet that it would be highly dangerous for humans. I never really followed up with him about it, but it always stuck in my mind.
        • "I never really followed up with him about it, but it always stuck in my mind."

          Didn't have a tinfoil hat back then?
          • Say what you want but he is one of the most intelligent men in the U.S. and was working on brain research when we had the discussion. I'm a confirmed idiot on the matter so I lack to skills to debate the issue.
  • So what?

    Last time they landed a story on Slashdot, there was only a link to a Word document. I think a link to a PDF file is an improvement...

  • unlicensed spectrum (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pinguirico ( 716574 )
    Releasing spectrum is good. Releasing unlicensed spectrum is better.

  • 3G in Europe (Score:2, Interesting)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 )
    In Denmark, they rolled out 3G commercially last week. But after a new investigation on radiation in Holland and complaints from people living close to antenna's, there is talk about banning it near kindergardens... House prices are comming down for houses close to an antenna.
  • The problem with auctioning off spectrum to the highest bidder, is that it is basically a variation of the old "window tax" that the UK instituted back in 1696 (not to be confused with MS one where you at least get something for your money). That tax was so unfair it probably resulted in the expression "daylight robbery" as a phrase for being grossly overcharged.

    Mobile phones used to be used by just the privileged wealthy few - who could afford their high costs. For everyone else there was land lines, and

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