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Wireless Carriers looking for Elbow Room
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."
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...
The gomment should be renting spectrum, not selling it outright. That way we would have an income stream , not just one payment to squander.
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 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).
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 companies can use those frequencies so long as they don't interfere with the person/group who is the legal user of it (the DoD in this case). The garage door manufacturers are knowingly using those frequencies and as such whenever the Military broadcasts in those areas the openers are overwelmed by the power. Several other groups use frequencies like this. Such as car remotes, In home wireless CCTV systems, security systems and others. The Military is probably using standard power for those freqs, its just that the remotes are so much weaker they don't get through.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
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.
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.
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.