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FCC to Reorganize 800mhz Band?
nick0909 writes "Years in the making, the FCC is finally
close to deciding if they will allow Nextel to pay for the reorganization of the 800mhz bandplan. In return the FCC will give Nextel a new band in which to operate their phones, where they won't destroy public safety communications. Other cell companies are angry because they had to pay millions for their GHz frequencies, and argue Nextel is getting off cheap. On top of this, if the 800MHz band gets re-sliced, will the FCC continue to push TV broadcasters out of 700MHz, which was supposed to go all to public safety in the coming years?"
I think the issue is pretty straightforward, and if their service is interfering with emergency bands then it needs to be reallocated. The good question is, what's fair for them afterwards? It doesn't seem like such a move should put them out of business, but some are trying to do so.
The FCC couldn't make up their minds at the last meeting, will things change at the next? I have a feeling this could get pushed around for a while.
Wireless News www.DailyWireless
They should have seen this comming before selling that spectrum to Nextel. It's too bad that it's interfering with emergency services but the FCC sold Nextel a license to use it and revoking that license w/o awarding equal bandwidth elsewhere will put Nextel out of business, which is just not acceptable.
Of course Verizon and Voadfone don't like it! They see this is a way to easily kill of some competiton.
Isn't the 800MHz band where many wireless household phones/headphones run at? You know, before the 1.2GHz craze or what not.
I would have grave doubts about the FCC being able to reorganize a sock drawer, much less the 800Mhz band.
Let the band-bidding begin, low cost appliances could be a thing of the past. ;0)
;o/
802.11x and blue tooth bands could be next...
O well, here is more BS for EEs to get a new thing to market... YEAHHHHHH....
Cable is immune to that crap being sheilded and running on the sub-band through hyperband anyway on most plants.
If cells are wrecking emergency services, I for one would rather an ambulance make it to me in time rather than the bitch driving a car knowing what Tammy wore yesterday and what color eye shadow to put on while driving AND yip yapping.
...it used to be 43MhZ!!
For a stupid European, can someone explain what Nextel is, who they are, and what services they offer?
Here in colorado, the government just gave a mountain top away for $875, that is valued at more than 16 Million. The funny thing is that they used an obscure law from 1872 to get it. But when they first tried back 1999, they were laughed out. huuuummmm.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
0.8 cycles/sec? Never heard of that frequency band before.
After all the founder of Nextel used to have what position at teh FCC?
It was a great move. Find a bit of frequency that had been allocated to old technology (the old mobile radio phones) and then buy up all the compaines that were losing busines to the more modern cell phones. By the time anyone had figured it out, he had bought out something like 75% of the frequency over the US.
Would resolve a lot of issues !
a. Lower prices ! The telco equipment, because of competition, is reasonnably priced
b. Interoperability ! 1billion GSM users, what should I say more
c. Frequency to choose from ! Available are : 850, 900, 1800 and 1900 Mhz. Adapt to local regulations!
d. Roaming ! When Nextel own service is not available, they could have local roaming agreements with t-mobile or at&t.
End the end the customer would be the winner !
One police officer recounted how he came upon a man who had been shot in the back and was laying there bleeding, when the officer tried to radio in for help he found that he had no radio reception, so he had to wander out into the middle of the street holding his radio up to the sky until he found a spot with reception.
AMW has a site here where you can sign an online petition, and a description of the problem here
Additionally here's a link to the Consensus Plan which is supported by emergency first responders to eliminate interference. Apparently there have been over a 1000 cases of interference nationwide in these states since the first case was reported 5 years ago.
FCC to Reorganize 800mhz Band? ...
reorganization of the 800mhz bandplan.
Uuh, what's mhz? milli-aysh-zee?
Or maybe the poster means MHz?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Getting a license from the FCC is like buying a house. It's in your interest to know your neighbors and to make an effort to be a good neighbor. With that in mind, here's a few notes on what this whole fuss over interference is really about.
1. direct interference - someone transmits on someone else's frequency. This happens occassionally by accident and usually gets fixed quick. Nextel was once fined for doing this unintentionally a few years ago near New Orleans, LA.
2. co-channel interference - two entities each have a license to use the same frequency in geographically overlapping areas. The two parties are mutually responsible for making equipment and operating adjustments to eliminate interference.
3. equipment mis-configuration (including co-located equipment) - different companies often share the same tower sites and often the signal from one company's transmitter will "leak" into another causing mixed products and emissions outside licensed frequencies.
4. receiver desensitivity caused by proximity to low elevation, high power transmitter sites (ie. cell towers).
Nextel is causing problems for other 800Mhz licensees mostly as a result of items 3 and 4. Non-Nextel cell towers (like Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T) also cause #4 above but the problem is more severe when near a Nextel tower site because the transmissions are in the same band as the other non-Nextel users' equipment.
-rickThe 1.9Ghz Band is far more worth than the 800 Mhz. This is why some are ready to offer 5 Billion dollard for it as a STARTING point. Read the FA. This is not even the highiest worth but a "floor" bid. Nextel choose to concentrate on the 800Mhz for some reason (which is as the article point out, less usefull and disturb public service).
The public service is the priority, to that I agree. But this is what is suggested as follow up which is downright anti capitalist. No Company has the RIGHT to claim compensation from the governement by getting a HIGHIER value spectrum. At best, they get back their money for the 800 Mhz and THEN the governement auction the 1.9Ghz.
Giving them something which is valued at 5 Billion at least for a paltry sum, is downright anti competiting and nearly a gift of some billion from the taxpayer into the Nextel's account.
Frankly I would not be surprised that nextel has some friends in the FCC and in the governement if this get thru...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
you utter creep...
You joke was feeble, it got modded as such. Get over it yet.
It may not be true that this is part of the proposal, but this not purely a joke either. Whether funny of not, it's on-topic.
I think congress should vote more bandwidth into existance. I seem to recall something from math that talked about unreal numbers that aren't used much. I propose that Congress pass a bill allowing bandwith in the unreal number ranges since the real number ranges have been used up.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Check out how small the 800MHz band is in comparison to everything else we currently know about: Spectrum
All of Nextel's bulky phones operate only on the 800Mhz band so if they FCC permits them to move to the 1.9GHz band, every one of Nextel's customers will have to get a new phone. Like most of the time, customers never pay full price for the phone, so Nextel would be taking another hit there. Also, moving to the 1.9GHz will put HUGE gaps in their current network.
Would you put your head in the microwave? No.
Well, how long will it be until a statistical survey shows that people near a lot of wireless communications have greater health problems.
This has already been shown for areas with high concentrations of granite.
What a deal:
Do a sloppy deployment job. (That's the only excuse for the interference.)
Lead the technologically clueless, politically motivated FCC down the garden path. "Oh, we can't fix this. We did the best we could. You just muffed the band plan. Think of the children".
Sell the FCC on a 'fix' that leaves you smelling like a rose in the eyes of your stockholders.
There are aspects to this game that are yet to be revealed. Follow the money!
They're doing corporate giveaways with these special "gifts".
Then they hide it by publically going after stupid DJ's and janet jackson's breast. Its like a slight of hand to fool stupid people.
"Think of the children".
Michael Powell is just another corrupt lackey in Bush's cabinet, and believe me, its full of corruption.
At work, I can tell when a user is on a Nextel phone by the noises, dropouts, co-channel crosstalk. But that is their issue. Nextel, as well as all the other cellphone providers, have to work on a cellular concept of spectrum reuse. They have a fixed amount of channels to use and as users increase, they have to get more cellsites to reuse the allotment. If my mind is working, most Public Service equipment in the 800 MHz band is using trunking and if the radio can't hear the controlling information because the radio's front end is swamped by the broadbanded, higher signal strength local cellsite, the radio usually refuses to transmit because it does not know where to go. As another feature, the people using the radio can't hear to other end of the conversation. Usually, the public services have one or a few transmit/receive sites for their coverage area of many square miles as where the cell services can have many cell sites per square mile depending on their conditions. I would say that the blame is square on the FCC's spectrum management group for this one and they are buying into what may end up being a spectrum grab by Nextel. I just keep being reminded of Jeffrey Pelt's line in "Hunt for Red October" .... "I am a politician. While I am kissing the babies, I am stealing their candy." This feels like the FCC is arranging this to get this monkey off their backs, they profit, and Nextel does a little "charity" and profits more. Just follow the money, the money,....
Nextel's poor behavior as a spectrum-sharer has worried many public-safety-communications officials whose ability to redesign their systems is subject to politics and shrinking budgets. Their proposal puts the public sector at a real disadvantage, no matter how much money they propose to throw at the problem.
Public safety agencies started to move up to 800 MHz frequencies in the early 1980s. In some cases, these moves were promped by spectrum scarcity, but in many more instances it was equipment manufacturers (especially Motorola and Ericsson) who convinced local agencies to buy complicated and failure-prone trunked radio systems. These systems were often (though not always) solutions in search of problems, and their performance has often been questioned. It's clear that advanced communications technology doesn't necessarily guarantee the safety of personnel; quite the opposite is true, in fact. (Try Googling "trunked radio system problems" for more on this.)
Since 9/11, loud voices have been calling for "interoperability" in public safety communications, in order that different agencies might better be able to speak with one another. New 800 MHz (and now 700 MHz) systems have been touted as a solution. Unfortunately, competing and contentious departments (like the NYPD and NYFD) won't talk with one another regardless of how much money is spent on systems to connect them. New York City had an interagency 800 MHz system working on 9/11 (the DoITT system, for those familar with NYC comms), and it saw very little use. Interoperability is most often a social and cultural issue, not a technical issue.
Nextel plays a problematic role in public safety comms in another way. Many agencies, especially those engaging in undercover ops and including key Federal law enforcement agencies, prefer to let their own expensive radio systems gather dust and use Nextel handsets instead. Nextel offers comparative privacy (citizens can't monitor iDEN transmissions), group call, and cheap equipment. Tto the problem is that no proprietary system is as robust and reliable as many dedicated public safety radio systems. I'd hate to have to rely on a Nextel handset if I was doing risky undercover work -- I'd be competing for bandwidth with SMS spam and teenagers (Nextel markets to youth under the name Boost Mobile).
Anyway, as most of us know, there are other ways to address communications issues than to lock up spectrum in the name of a few large corps.
This could also show a problem with the Emergency services equipment. There really is no reason for any (consumer/commercial/military) communications equipment to not use the latest state-of-the-art modulation techniques. The emergency equipment should just as well be running off of cellular equipment, as should any other communications equipment. Digital channels take up less bandwidth than analog channels, is clearer, and is secure.
It's also good to get rid of AM/FM radio, Analog VHF/UHF TV, and free up those bands for more digital broadcasting. I'm hoping they all go away in 20 years.
eee
(failure-prone: read this... It's by no means the only such incident...)
And, I might add, to a considerable degree the fault for the problem lies with these equipment manufacturers. They knew (or certainly should have!) that there would be commercial two-way communications in the channels adjacent to the public-safety channels, but they sold equipment that could be overloaded by such adjacent-channel operation.
Cell towers are relatively low-powered. If those adjacent channels had been assigned to regular two-way radio (or worse, for pagers), there would have been fewer transmitting sites but those sites would have been much more powerful.
=====
With regard to the transfer of the 700MHz band from television... Only four channels (24MHz) of this band are planned for transfer to public-safety communications. The rest will be auctioned for commercial use. I suppose the transfer of four 6MHz blocks, rather than various channels spread among the commercial users, will make 700MHz public-safety comms less susceptible to this kind of problem.
Of course, we (the taxpayers...) will have to buy another new set of equipment...
IDEN is a proprietary Motorola system afaik only used by NEXTEL.
Until 10 min ago I thought IDEN was using the same 800 MHz frequency band as all the other cellular standards in the US (AMPS, GSM, US-TDMA, CDMA) namely: Mobile transmit 824-849 MHz and Mobile Receive 869-894 MHz.
It looks like IDEN/NEXTEL for some obscure reason is using a lower frequency band namely: Mobile transmit 806-825 MHz and Mobile Receive 851-870 MHz. What a mess, why were they allowed to use these frequencies in the first place?
IDEN mobile transmit: 806-825 MHz
IDEN mobile receive: 851-870 MHz
US cellular transmit: 824-849 MHz
US cellular receive: 869-894 MHz
No wonder IDEN can cause problems the "normal" US cellular systems cannot.
For laughs I threw in some other frequencies.
World cellular transmit: 880-915 MHz (GSM900)
World cellular receive: 925-960 MHz (GSM900)
US PCS transmit: 1850-1910 MHz
US PCS receive: 1930-1990 MHz
World hi-band transmit:1710-1785 MHz (GSM1800)
World hi-band receive: 1805-1880 MHz (GSM1800)
UMTS transmit: 1920-2170 MHz (blocked in the US)
UMTS receive: 2110-2170 MHz (Blocked in the US)
Another twist to this story is the fact that Verzon has offered news.com article5 Billion in an effort to halt the spectrum swap to its competitor Nextel. This is in comparison to the only $ 850 Million that Nextel offered to help reband its network, and pay for retuning/equipment of public safety systems and others whom its towers interfere with. Why does Nextel want the spectrum at 1.9 GHz? It's because this is where it plans to roll out its future high speed technoloy (Flash OFDM) that it is currently piloting in the Raleigh-Durham metro area using hardware from Flarion. This spectrum will allow Nextel a huge advantage when it launches this service nationwide, essentially allowing it to jump right into and dominate the markets that Verizon (EVDO) and AT&T-Cingular(EDGE) are currently trying to capture. Company propaganda "With burst rate for the downlink is 3 Megabits per second (Mbps), and 900 Kilobits per second (Kbps) for the uplink. Typical user experience is 1 Mbps in the downlink, and 300 to 500 Kbps in the uplink, with average latency below 50 milliseconds." I beta tested EVDO for Verizon and when let me tell you its impressive. Nextel's foray into this space is serious and Verizon and other carriers want to prevent this from happening.
He! Must! Work! For! Yahoo!
What frequency where the fireman in the twin towers using that failed so horrorably? 800Mhz of course! And the failure was hardly NextTel interference. Unless you have antenna every few miles, it is an irresponsible place to put emergency anything. With the band being line of sight with no way for it to penetrate wall's, the old 150 MHz equipment's performance makes this stuff look like a bugger.
This is another example of why the 700MHz band needs to be given to public safety. The lower the frequency, the better the signal can penetrate into buildings, thru dense vegetation, and into low-lying areas that RF at 800MHz and above have a more difficult time reaching. 700MHz and 800MHz aren't really that far apart in the spectrum such that the basic radio hardware and antennas will have to change much at all, so the units (especially handhelds) can still be kept small and lightweight with low power consumption, but the slightly longer wavelength is just enough to give a noticeable performance edge to the signal penetration over 800MHz.
Another plus to the 700MHz band is that now that there is a need for more mobile data bandwidth for public safety, the "channels" can be allocated... and the new hardware designed, with this in mind. The old 800MHz trunked radio systems only provided a serial data channel about 4800 baud, which is utterly worthless. If the new 700MHz frequency allocations are done right, they should be able to make the "channels" a bit wider, and facilitate a consistant 64K or better baud rate, which can support enough TCP/IP bandwidth to be useful for mobile data terminals in the vehicles without having to resort to the public safety entities spending huges amounts of money to the cellphone companies to lease their wireless data service like they have to do currently.
Is there something special about Nextel's allocation? Or it the same story with Verizon and co.? For what it's worth, I have an 800Mhz Verizon phone.
Nextel needs to move to a next generation solution something with higher bitrates for data
It's coming.
Intelligent Life on Earth
If cells are wrecking emergency services, I for one would rather an ambulance make it to me in time rather than the bitch driving a car knowing what Tammy wore yesterday and what color eye shadow to put on while driving AND yip yapping.
Though harsh (and maybe sexist), your sentiment is understandable. You're right that emergency services should not be interfered with, especially by people who are just taking up the airwaves for no real purpose. However Nextel customers are usually businesses and contractors, not a "bitch driving a car". They don't buy Nextel for the phone either, they buy it for the "walkie-talkie" features. Your comment might be fair for a typical Verizon customer but it really isn't for a typical Nextel customer.
With the push-to-talk stuff NexTel is doing,
it sure looks like a cell phone would be a
suitable replacement for a police radio.
Maybe give cops extra priority or a bit of
extra transmit power.
Were you dropped on your head as a child? Statistical survey says: Yup.
Hey - FCC! We're gettin' the band back together!
Coming up: "Incorrect use of apostrophes!!" News at 11.
No .sig for you. Next!
Heh. A nice lucrative new way to profit for Motorola, GE, etc, and I can see the California bond ballot initiatives now...
"Pass this bond, or we might not be able to respond to your 911 call due to interference on our county radio system"
It is a difficult tradeoff between spectrum efficiency and coverage. A 150 MHz system would more or less cover New York City in one cell. On the surface this is cool, but it limits the available traffic.
In a city the size of NYC you might have mighty many police, firefighter, ambulance driver, national guard, Boy Scouts of America, etc etc that all have good reason to communicate with each other in case of an emergency. If you have a system that can only accomodate say 10000 calls at the time, that might not be enough for such a large population.
800 MHz will penetrate walls and buildings (You do have cell-phone coverage also in-doors) but you need a lot more antennas and smaller cell-sizes to get the coverage. This should not be a problem in urban areas since the cost of more cells is divided between more people.
It is a problem if the cells are not configured properly or if all antenna's in a local area is mounted say on top of the structure that is destroyed in an emergency. The system should be configured so the cells overlap and can withstand the fall-out of individual cells.
Dual band equipment could be an attractive feature, even though carrying a 150 MHz antenna around would ruin the Armani suits of most of the MIB.
Cellphone network coverage is for piss. My GSM phone gets squat for coverage. What kind of companies do we have that can't use multiple kinds of network, more coverage, should be considered a good thing, but as it is Cigular/ATT/Verizon have eratic support for dual mode phones.
The situation with emergency services and interference is being approached the wrong way.
These should be the services in which the message of open spectrum should be heard the loudest. Cognitive radios that cooperate to get the message through regardless of the environment of interference that they are in.
Instead the FCC is doing the exact opposite---allocating more "don't interfere here, please" spectrum. Does making it illegal stop it? no, instead it makes the whole system vulnerable to people wanting to disrupt the emergency services. By the time the damage is done the legal process that enforces this is irrelevant.
Think of this in a medical context and it gets scarier---a baddy with the right radio outside the hospital can effectively shut much of the hospital down.
Gradually removing the protection for emergency services would properly motivate the development of cognitive and interference robust radio equipment. A well known phasing out of these 'protected bands' is the right way to do this.
Just don't get yourself shot.
actually the gf and i saw something on tv 2 days ago about this.. and this is how i think it should go...
set up a meeting with all the carrier companies. if one doesnt attend, they give up their rights to have a say in it. propose 1 of 2 solutions for the companies to vote on
1) nextel gets the new frequencies for free because the emergency services need the ones nextel already has, and they shouldnt have to pay for having something taken away from them - yes they get better frequencies for free, its called compensation for them having to pay to move all their services to a new frenquency
2) if thats not good enough for the other companies, and they wanna be childish about it (they got more frequencies than we did, and for free, wah wah wah!) then i propose nextel keeps the frequencies they have, the emegency services move to the new frequencies, and all the carriers collectively pay for the move, ie: new hardware for every state trooper in the country. such is the price for pety jealousies and selfishness.
I can speak with a degree of experience here.
I have a Nextel phone, and I also work for the local police department who, like many others, are using Motorola's Astro (APCO 25) trunked radio system. I've had more problems with the Nextel phone interfering with OTHER equipment in the patrol car than I've had with the radio. I do know that the frequencies we use are close to Nextel's. I often have the phone and radio on my belt side-by-side, and I have not had any problems to date, luckily.
Ultimately the cheapest/easiest way to resolve this seems to be to pay to move the public safety systems to another part of the 800MHz band. There are fewer public safety radios than there are Nextel cell phones by far, and updating the public safety systems isn't that bad. Most trunked systems only use 20 specific frequencies for the whole group (police,fire,public works,etc). With Motorola being one of the most popular public safety systems provider, and the exclusive Nextel iDEN phone manufacturer, I am sure they can find a reasonable solution without having to worry about massively shifting what band Nextel uses or even the public safety systems. Just leave the politics out of it.
the fcc can go to hell.
Very true. After all, who can afford that extra 0.0000052 seconds of time in a life or death situation!
Actually (I was corrected on this myself a few months ago), what failed was the FD's 470 Mhz system. Part of the problem was that one of the main sites used to cover the WTC went down after the first plane hit. Also the first plane hit the tower with the majority of radio and TV equipment. It also all went down when the first plane hit.
Jim
The redundant has been metamodded unfair.