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The New Wireless Wars
An anonymous reader writes "BusinessWeek has a story on the coming wireless wars. It's a look at how the upcoming government auction of wireless spectrum will open the door to a new crop of competitors. The new players, from Google and Microsoft to Intel and Craig McCaw's Clearwire, will compete in new wireless voice services and in wireless broadband. Look out Cingular, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint-Nextel."
This could be the last ingredient Google needs to build their network. They've got the backbone, the fibre communications. Buy up a large enough chunk of the spectrum and they could give everyone 100Mbps wifi through a $10 software PCMCIA/PCI card. I, for one, welcome our new wireless overlords.
Personally I'd not be surprised to see a lot of telcos trying very hard to find a way to buy up whatever bandwidth they can, by proxy or sponsored small company.
If they do, then's the time to cry "Foul" and sic the ombudsmen on them. Could end up another California Red Car Line if you don't (buy up and blow up -- Jim Fisk of Fisk Tires bought the Red Car Line -- go figure).
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Wow, more pay per megabyte, pay per message, pay per minute radio services - I can hardly wait. Or maybe they'll have unlimited-as-long-as-you-don't-use-it service for $80/month.
How about allocating some spectrum in this crucial range - low enough in frequency to go through walls and remain reliable in the rain, but high enough to transmit useful amounts of information - to unlicensed wireless networking? Looking at the multi-billion dollar industry that's developed around squeezing every last bit of bandwidth out of the 2.4GHz band, one could argue that unlicensed sprectrum is actually more valuable to the nation's economy than more cellular bandwidth.
I wonder what type of turnout it will be when the UHF/VHF Bands go to auction. Even though the transition to all digital was to be completed this year. Completing the Transition to Digital Television ... It doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon. We need to get away from 2.4ghz - way to crowded. Local ISPs are running freq. hoping on the full band, with illegal boosting ( >1watt) and claim otherwise when we complain about too much noise on a particular channel. Give me more freq!
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
Because certainly Cingular, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint/Nextel won't be buying any of these new frequencies ;)
Beauty is just a light switch away.
Auction 66 Summary Page
Auction 66 Fact Sheet (Lots of details on this page if you scroll down).
NOTE: These are not virgin frequencies; some relocation of existing users' bandwith is required in order to free up these frequencies. See the Fact Sheet for details.
Oh, you can already do it, if you are willing to spend some time, efford, and/or money.
I bought a T-Mobile MDA yesterday (without a contract). I'm a cingular user.
A few minutes on xda-developers, and I had a utility to remove the SIM lock, and the CID (bootloader) lock. Flashed the cingular firmware on it, and I was good to go.
I also unlocked my cingular treos (one I got from ebay), and flashed them with a customized version of the generic GSM firmware. No annoying carrier customizations, and I had a rock-solid, unlocked phone.
T-Mobile and Cingular don't lock their SIMs, so you are free to use any compatible phone you can get. Their phones can almost all be unlocked, and if you don't take the $150 subsidy in exchange for the phone, they will give you the unlock code. T-Mobile will give you the code on a subsidized phone after 3 months; I had no problem getting Cingular to give me unlock codes the day after activation (that was a business acct, FWIW).
You want beligerant, try Verizon. I had terminated the contract (and paid the fee to cover the subsidy) with Sprint, and had a free CDMA phone, which supported E911 and all other required technology. I flashed it with the stock Verizon firmware. It had Verizon firmware, settings, the works. They still wouldn't take it. Verizon will not take phones they didn't sell.
Sprint had no problem activating a ex-verizon phone for me, however. Go figure.
The bits per hertz problem throttles each and every kind of two-way wireless.
When multiple concurrent instances occur of those ugly, low-frame rate videos with the tiny rasters and 256-bit color, it's going to clog the backhaul. OFDM currently carries the best bit/hertz rate, and you can't make dense enough cells to support what copper or fiber carries.
You can get close, until the public uptake causes backhaul arterial sclerosis. Then you get the same problem you have today with EVDO, EDGE, and all of the other schemes--> unacceptable quality and carriers that have a telco mentality.
More spectrum != better quality, because the network backend hasn't been developed yet that meets future demands. These are all short-term plays with doomed future when they fail or have glaring delivery problems that can't be solved because of the bits/hertz problem. Until a miracle occurs in encoding capabilities, the front end fails; and if the front end works, then the backend infrastructure fails.
And organizations will go willy-nilly to the FCC and pay untold amounts of $$ to get spectra robbed from other services. And their stockholders will pray that it makes a return on the investment. And, like other schemes in the US, there will be bitter disappointment when people learn just how low speed these wireless 'broadband' connections actually are.
Until both the encoding schemes mature, and there's a re-investment in network backhaul, buying spectra isn't the answer, only a new set of problems.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.