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Wireless Networking The Almighty Buck Communications Hardware

Wireless Carriers looking for Elbow Room 107

Posted by CmdrTaco from the room-to-breath dept.
pillageplunder writes "Businessweek is reporting on the upcoming Wireless Spectrum Auctions. Over the next two years (Starting in Jan 2005) the FCC will auction off enough spectrum that will more than double the amount currently available. Estimates range anywhere from 50 to 70 billion dollars will be raised by these auctions. Short term, it should improve the quality of Cell-phone, long term, it should open up opportunities for so-called 3G services to take off."
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Wireless Carriers looking for Elbow Room More

Wireless Carriers looking for Elbow Room

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  • Hams? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tajmorton ( 806296 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:21PM (#11010231) Homepage
    And what about the hammers? Will they be elbowed out?

    • Re:Hams? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:35PM (#11010363)
      "And what about the hammers? Will they be elbowed out?"

      The ham radio groups where going to stage a protest, but they all got winded when trying to climb the stairs out of their parents basement. Then there was a Babalon Five marathon to watch.

      I kid.

    • Re:Hams? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by r2q2 ( 50527 )
      I don't believe any of the wireless spectrum is being sold by the FCC that will influence ham radio. Besides the ARRL does have some lobbying power to try to prevent this. They don't mention they are selling off part of the ham radio spectrum. Although most likely any new spectrum for hammers has a small chance of being available to hammers. Most likely they will be elbowed out by the telecom sector.

    • Hams don't really use that portion of the spectrum (Score:4, Informative)

      by VE3ECM ( 818278 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @05:01PM (#11010628)
      Hams are pretty much fine where they are.

      The portion of the spectrum that they hang out on (the HF bands, ~140 mhz, ~440 mhz) don't have the bandwidth for this stuff...

      The FCC is auction chunks of higher frequency spectrum...
      Hams have little pieces of it here and there (ie 902 mhz, 927 mhz, some 1.2Ghz and 1.6Ghz IIRC)... but the chunks are so small that there's not really much to gain by yanking it.

      Most of this spectrum is in the 800-900 mhz 1.8-2.0 Ghz bands...

      There's a big push behind the scenes to move the public safety bands out of 800 mhz and into the 700's... that frees up a lot of 800 for cell carriers, and eliminates that nasty Nextel interference that a lot of trunked radio systems in metro areas experience.

      • So, do all ham call signs start with VE3, or do you live around here somewhere?
        • Amateur radio prefixes are assigned geographically. VE3 is Canadian; Ontario specifically. My call sign while in the US is VE3ECM/W2... the W2 suffix is the area I am currently located. arrl.org has more info on callsigns.

  • Why should the FCC Sell? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stecoop ( 759508 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:22PM (#11010241) Journal
    This is a pet peeve of mine. Why should the FCC be able to sell spectrum for a region giving basically a monopoly to the bidder. I would much prefer that the FCC leases the spectrum to vendors and the income goes back to the people that rightfully own it (the land owners over the given region - you and me). It isn't the FCC's property to sell and it doesn't force vendors to address issues fast enough.

    • Re:Why should the FCC Sell? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pxtl ( 151020 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:29PM (#11010307) Homepage
      Besides that, I have the creeping sensation that this will just be used to further proprietise the US cellular communication system, pushing interoperability even further away. Company X uses expanded protocol Z that uses band ranges Y and so on, making it harder for customers to switch providers.
    • I agree. Nevertheless, it doesn't surprise me that this is taking place. The government has had a pretty dismal record for quite some time now regarding stewardship of public resources, and I think this falls under that category. It seems everywhere you look these days there's a "get mine and get out" mentality. It's prevalent in both business and government. I don't know if the people who do this kind of thing don't realize what kind of long term damage they're doing to the country and the economy or

    • Re:Why should the FCC Sell? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:34PM (#11010355) Homepage
      I've never liked the idea that landowners somehow owning the spectrum over their land. Does that mean that people who own massive tracts of dessert would get large amounts of money from the FCC for satelite TV (even though no one is utilizing that spectrum in those empty tracts of land)? I don't have a cogent argument against it, but the whole idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

      My problem with the spectrum auction model is it encourages companies to buy up spectrum only for the purpose of keeping it from others companies. If you own the spectrum you should be forced to put it to use within N years by X% of the public in that area, otherwise it reverts back to the FCC.
      • Does that mean that people who own massive tracts of dessert

        This prompts the question: Do people have rights to the airspace over their giant brownies?
      • That's exactly how it works. Every license has mandatory build out dates. For the PCS auctions, the first build out date was 5 years from the day the license was issued. By that point the licensee had to cover 60% of the population in the license block.

        • Sure, but coverage doesn't imply usage. You could put up a few towers in high population density areas and put pricing out of the stratospere to satisfy the FCC. It's then cheap to hold onto your spectrum .
      • My problem with the spectrum auction model is it encourages companies to buy up spectrum only for the purpose of keeping it from others companies. If you own the spectrum you should be forced to put it to use within N years by X% of the public in that area, otherwise it reverts back to the FCC.

        The FCC has exactly those kinds of network build-out requirements in nearly every spectrum license it issues.

    • It isn't the FCC's property to sell.

      Well, I agree and disagree. The FCC being part of the Federal government is ideally a representation of the people. Politics aside, that's democracy for you. When the FCC gets money, it's basically money for our government, and indirectly, us. As for whether they lease or sell, or how exactly the money is used, that's an issue which you can protest through voting and lobbying.

      • You are correct in the money respect. But the real issues are that vendors don't have incentives to keep the customers happy under the region other than a few mad customers. If the users/owners could come into a unified agreement in the region so that they could boot a bad wireless vendor than said vendors would have a much higher incentive of resolving dropped calls or no service.

    • Re:Why should the FCC Sell? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by the morgawr ( 670303 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:39PM (#11010401) Homepage Journal
      Actually the land owners don't own the spectrum and never had. That's why the FCC was set up.

      IANAL but my understanding is:

      When someone starts using land they have the rights to everything they need to use it in the manner they want. Tresspass and nusance laws prevent people from interfering with your use of the land. So you can't have someone walk through your yard because it is physically invasive to your property, but you can have someone broadcast radio through the airwaves or fly a plane way overhead because neither of those impeades your use of the property in anyway.

      In all likelyhood radio would have developed a similar set of common laws (this was all getting worked out in the courts). Where the first radio station in a region was allowed to use the band they were broadcasting on and could sue anyone emitting harmful interferance. However Congress became concerned that the legal costs would hold the industry back (there were concerns that radio companies could even make money), so they made the FCC.

      • Actually the land owners don't own the spectrum and never had. That's why the FCC was set up.

        Land owners (generally) own their land from the core of the Earth out to the edge of the atmosphere. The FAA was designed to essentially claim emminent domain in a type of confiscation of this resource. The same was done with the FCC and wireless. These resources are not generally used, and make much more sense to be managed as a public resource, but that doesn't mean that they aren't still "owned" by the land
      • Actually it depends on the what you are buying. Oftentimes the land is sold, but not the mineral rights, or water rights. If you really want to own the land all the way down, you have to be sure your contract specifies those things.
    • Or, even better, give the spectrum back to the people, who rightfully own it.

      Like put some spectrum that's solely devoted to a single family of 802.11-like standards set by the IEEE, with no microwaves, cordless phones, etc. to gunk it up.

      Or build allocations around spread-spectrum technologies. Remember, several spread-spectrum networks can exist on the same frequency bands, if done properly, and other networks appear only as noise. If networks are prevented from actively fighting with each other, it's
    • It isn't the FCC's property to sell and it doesn't force vendors to address issues fast enough.

      So very true. I also wonder if any of this will help us produce a wireless internet free of the ISP's stranglehold they have over access today. Of course it won't. I also believe that what is said about the spectrum being a finite resource is a lot of bull. The only thing finite about it is our knowledge. This is just an attempt to create scarcity where there is none. Why? For money and power of course. Our pres
    • The FCC does in fact sell licences *only for a certain period of time*, typically 10 years. Therefore, a provider who would continue to provide services would probably have to repay for the rights to continue using the spectrum later on. So in a way, this is a lease.

      The spectrum licences does not grant a monopoly to the highest bidder, far from it. In every spectrum band and every region, there are several licensees (at the very least 2, more commonly 5) and the FCC enforces restrictions on the total spect
    • I dont believe selling spectrum is in the best interest of consumers - its a big cash grab by the govt. Suppliers will be forced to pay ridiculous sums because they feel that they will be left out if they dont.

      The end result, just like last time, is huge debts piled upon telecoms companies. Who gets to pay for that - either us (consumers) or us (investors who lose their shirts when the companies tip over).

  • 3G... not interested mate! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:27PM (#11010287)
    Here in Europe where we manage to have a single standard and phones work with each other we had 3G auctions a few years back nearly crippling the mobile operators, and still hardly anything on them, no one wants video conversations, you can watch music videos on it, but take up is pretty slack... the government made a killing tho...

  • learn from other countries (Score:5, Interesting)

    by d_strand ( 674412 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:28PM (#11010290)
    auctioning spectrum is a bad idea. It's better to give it away for free to the companies that promises the best services to it's customers.

    Many countries in europe auctioned off 3G-spectrum a few years ago, and the money involved was insane... many of the "winners" weren't able to build any networks from lack of funds after the crazy fees they payed for the spectrum.

    Some countries instead held "beauty contests" where the companies that promised best area coverage where given spectrum for free (the promises must be kept with the threat of huge fines of course)
    • In the UK the ridiculous amounts paid have meant that the mobile telecoms companies are all having to make budget cuts, in some cases leading to job cuts.

    • Re:learn from other countries (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I do agree for 100%.
      We were so late in Belgium, that the market prices became more reasonable & that's the main reason why our phone company in Belgium didn't have those large financial problems (like all the other (larger) telecom operators in Europe).
    • Interestingly, the FCC already is already giving away spectrum, albeit rather reluctantly and with a lot of restrictions. Research on UWB (and I mean REAL UWB, not the commercially hyped UWB) is going on right now, to create a method for cell phones to use extremely narrow ( this guy's papers if you want to know more about it...

      Coming soon to you: Your new UWB-based cell phone!

  • They should be renting it out, not selling it. (Score:5, Informative)

    by kenf ( 75431 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:28PM (#11010291)
    The gomment should be renting spectrum, not selling it outright. That way we would have an income stream , not just one payment to squander.
    • out West? Well, those are rife with problems (environmental, esp watershed damage). I wonder what the ramifications of renting would be though. Probably, the gubmint isn't allowed to rent them through some sweetheart deal set up for the telcom companies. No, that never happens....
    • Maybe so, but with renting you have a lot of other problems. Two ways of renting:

      Lease is renewed every X years (like renting an apartment):
      The gov decides to up the rent by 100% this year and you can't pay.
      You do something and the gov decides to evict you or not renew your lease. (think politics)

      Every time you have to re-bid for the same spectrum:
      Congrads, you've built an entire infrasture around your frequencies, but you didn't get the same/any frequencies this time and you are up the creek.

      Proba
      • You build a big infrastructure around some frequencies and use it for some years, then when renewal time comes around, your infrastructure is obsolete enough that you can't make a competitive bid against someone using newer technology. Why the hell should you be allowed to keep consuming a public resource (spectrum) when there are more efficient uses that can be made for it?

        Obviously the renewal terms should be long enough to make the rentals able to generate a reasonable return on investment even if tha

        • RF infrastructure does not go out of date easily. lifetimes of transmitters and towers are upwards of 20 years and the equipment itself gets replaced periodically but does not get obsolete. The companies that use it will make the most efficient use of it for their purposes. If they have extra bandwidth, they will lease it. Look up satelite transponders and how many companies sublease extra bandwidth. What is a deffinition of efficient in this case anyways?

          The other problem with loosing the lease is th
          • changing out cellphones every few years?

            Oh, come on... cellphones rarely last longer than the 1-2 year contracts people sign anyway...

            And besides, they're practically free anyway. I mean, I just got a new cellphone... I picked the "upgraded" model that cost a whole $59.99...

            It has a 1-year warranty, and I have to keep it at least 21 months. If I get a new one sooner, then I have to pay the $250 buy-a-cellphone-without-new-service fee. But guess what... in 21 months I can get a new one. And I probabl
            • That's basically the idea. Base station equipment lasts longer than handsets, but I bet 90% of the base station stuff in service is less than 5 years old, and that will still be true in 5 years. So, expiring the leases after 5 years shouldn't affect the cost of sinking that equipment by more than 10%.

  • "3G" refers to... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eric Giguere ( 42863 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:29PM (#11010302) Homepage Journal

    Multiple choice:

    a) the cost of a new wireless device that supports this technology
    b) the average damage to your car when you hit a tree while trying to watch a video on your phone
    c) per-year productivity lost to phone-based instant messaging
    d) your new monthly cellphone bill

    Eric
    JavaScript != Java [ericgiguere.com]

  • Public Space rather than private (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:33PM (#11010341) Journal
    It would be far more useful to create more public airwaves rather than private and watch what happens. The 900,2.4G, and 5.2G have created a large number of innovations that have been resulted in a large number of products.
    • The FCC is indeed opening more unlicensed bands. It is getting to the point that operators can have pretty decent "elbow room" there. For a good idea of what's going to happen with WiMAX in such bands, check out this operator [towerstream.com] in Chicago, Boston, NYC, LA and some other places...

  • Not really accurate (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:34PM (#11010357)
    The article isn't very well written. It says that more spectrum will help carriers increase coverage. That isn't true. It would allow some carriers to provide native coverage (as well as sell service) in some new markets, but more licenced spectrum won't increase coverage at all. Spectrum increases capacity. That means less system busies and the ability to let customers use more of the system's capacity for things like data.

    It also suggests that Verizon and Cingular are in the same spectrum position which isn't accurate. In many markets (including mine) Cingular has nearly twice the spectrum of Verizon. This also leads me to think that Verizon will be a bidder in the auctions. Another thing that they don't mention is that the lesser carriers (T-Mobile and Sprint) often have equal or greater amounts of spectrum to Verizon in most markets.

    These auctions allow carriers to increase their capacity in their current markets and to move into markets where they aren't able to offer service because they aren't licenced for it - like how Verizon isn't licenced to operate in Oklahoma City. It won't increase coverage as the article suggests.
    • I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure that with spread-spectrum technology like CDMA (which has tight power control restrictions on the handset), more bandwidth actually can increase the coverage area.

      With more frequencies to broadcast on, cellphones on the fringe of the coverage area don't have to "yell" as loud for the tower to hear it, and phones that were previously "yelling" as loud as they could with no success, will then be heard.

  • Where'd all of this bandwidth come from? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gyorg_Lavode ( 520114 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:37PM (#11010381)
    Where exactly did all this bandwidth to just give away come from when the Military is having to override garage door openers to effectively use it's bandwidth [lancasteronline.com]?
    • From the article YOU linked too.

      "The garage-door opener frequency at issue -- 390 megahertz -- has belonged to the military since around 1950. Openers have legally operated at that frequency since at least the early 1980s, Karasek said.
      U.S. law allows low-power electronic devices to operate on military frequencies if they don't cause interference. It was a good frequency for garage-door openers because transmissions can penetrate the doors."

      The article goes on to say the military is trying to make more ef
    • DTV is allowing the consolidation of all TV stations to about 2/3 the previous number of channels. Previously they needed all the chanels to keep stations from interfeering with each other in adjacent markets. The top 20 or so channels (49-69?) frequencies are no longer going to be in use. They are auctioning off all those frequencies that each channel (6mhz each) used.

      As for the military and the garage door openers, the Military has certain frequencies set aside for its use. By FCC rules other companie
    • I think you have it the wrong way. Your question should be: Where exactly did all this bandwidth to just give away come from when garage door opener manufacturers are polluting spectrum that the military owns? The answer would be Section 15. Garage door openers can operate on pretty much any frequency as long as they are Section 15 devices. Many companies just happened to use a portion of the spectrum that the military owns.

  • Coverage obligations! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by grahamsz ( 150076 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:37PM (#11010384) Homepage Journal
    Lets hope they do something like the UK where 3G bidders are obliged to cover 80% of the population by 2007.

    That way citizens of the US get more out of the deal.. as a european living in the us i'm appalled at how frequently i loose reception.

    http://www.cellular-news.com/3G/uk.shtml
    • While, I know Italy is not the same as the UK, their cell systems are owned by the same major players. What I have found is that you get great reception in the Cities but once you go outside the cities you are screwed. In the US you get some coverage even in the middle of nowhere if enough people are traveling through that area. Population coverage at 80% is probably already avaliable here in the US but you don't realize that when you lose signal you are not in a high population area. Just my 2 cents.
      • 2G networks in the UK cover 99% of the population. This includes big sparse areas and motorways. The only real problems you get are when going underground or in tunnels. Other than that, coverage is pretty good on Vodafone, O2 and Orange. T-Mobile lacks a bit, but is still not bad.

        3G phones can automatically fallback to 2G when there is no 3G reception. As such, you can use your phone pretty much everywhere. You can only use video calling and high-bandwidth apps in the 3G area though.
      • I'm not sure what the US standards are for population coverage. I live in a highly populated area and lose t-mobile reception just by walking to the windows on the other side of my office.

        Likewise i need to keep my head at a particular angle to keep reception in my appartment.

        Perhaps if you aggregate all networks then you get 80% coverage - but i doubt any one does.

  • Is the shout-out to manifest destiny intentional? "We need more wireless elbow room! These primitives don't realize you can own bandwidth! They'll give it up for pretty beads and mp3 ringtones invoking pop idols! We'd be fools not to auction it off!"

  • 3G isn't going to work... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:42PM (#11010440) Homepage Journal
    ...if they still charge too much for the content.

    I'm talking $3 for a 125x125 background picture, only allow people to keep it for three months and that kind of crap.

    I'm not paying $10 a month for slow internet service to same phone with 125 resolution either.

  • 3G (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ... so-called 3G services to take off

    Isn't this what many people said about the last auction that occurred a couple of years back?

    Instead of selling it to private companies, why don't they create more public spectrum? IMHO more has come out of WiFi in an unlicensed spectrum than in most private telco networks. Give more space to WiMAX (802.16) and let people figure out what to do with it. They'll be a lot more creative than the incumbents.

    WiFi proved that the commons doesn't have to be a tragedy. Let's
    • Thing is... the purpose of the expansion is for cellular. It's a pretty good idea to restrict which companies can use which frequencies, and that's why the licensing.

      Think about it... unlicensed frequencies on a cellular network means that *anybody* can set up a radio on that frequency. A cell phone is basically a two-way radio, and the only way the cellular network works is by having a set of ranges that the phone can switch between when you're making a phone call. Have you ever lost a call when moving be

  • Great! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    More brain dead drones walking around with their camera phones saying "Can you see me now?"
  • Sounds like a great way to burden the industry with debt so future investment is minimal.

    What matters most here? revenue for the state or service for consumers?

    --
    Toby
    • What makes you think that even if they didn't spend all the money on the spectrum, that they would spend it on future investment? Most likely, instead the CEO or board director's pockets will be lined with quite a bit of it.
  • Will they offer more unlicensed bands, or is this the other half of the deal?
  • How much is my cell phone bill going to go up to cover it this time?
  • Short term, it should improve the quality of Cell-phone, long term, it should open up opportunities for so-called 3G services to take off. ... and ultimately it'll prevent people from setting up long distance, flexible, high bandwidth national and international wireless networks devoid of government oversight.

    Hear that soft rumble? It's the bureaucracy expanding to fill in the gaps.
    • I should have added that this auction will set a price on a realistically free medium. It'll be nothing but an economic bubble protected from collapse by our tax dollars because collapsed economies drive the dollar down.

      Software also falls under this economic category more often than not, except that Microsoft didn't buy in an FCC auction the chance to fill 90% of the computers in the country with their operating system. Thanks to that other operating system are able to edge into the market. See what happe
  • Isn't this the spectrum that television broadcasts run over?

    As we all know by now, the FCC will likely give most of this to the phone companies, some to the media moguls, and then slop off about .001 Mhz worth fo spectrum to the public domain.

    Thanks Mr. Powell...

  • Move to a Leasing Model (Score:3, Informative)

    by PingXao ( 153057 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @07:11PM (#11011917)
    The FCC raises $50 to $70 billion. Once. BFD. They should move to a licensing scheme whereby these spectrums are allocated on a renewable basis. With the U.S. national debt at near back-breaking levels wouldn't it make more sense for the public - who ostensibly owns the "airwaves" - to reap benefits on a recurring basis from giant communications compamnies? As it stands now once the blocks of spectrum are auctioned off they're gone forever. The public no longer "owns" them. The FCC needs to stop giving this precious commodity away.
  • I foound the elbow room a couple months ago it's a bar 2 blocks away http://www.ypsirocks.com/

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