The Dirty Business of Assembling WiMAX Spectrum

go_jesse writes in to make us aware of a MarketWatch article reporting on the battles that WiMAX partners Sprint and Clearwire are fighting — sometimes with one another — to put together enough spectrum to fill in their planned WiMAX coverage map. The problem is that decades ago the FCC passed out licenses in what would become the WiMAX band to schools and non-profits nationwide. Once Sprint began knocking on their doors asking to license their spectrum — once they began seeing dollar signs in a forgotten resource — dozens, then hundreds of these organizations applied to the FCC to renew long-dormant licenses. The FCC has granted the first of these requests and Sprint has asked it to reconsider. Confusingly, Sprint's partner Clearwire has sided with the schools and non-profits. The article sheds light in one messy corner of the battle to provide a "third pipe" into US consumers' homes.

Comments

rural schools do use this spectrum

[mzs]

There are schools in very sparsely populated areas that still use this. Primarily they use it for tele-teaching types of things where the student sits in front of a TV while the teacher on the TV is giving a lesson to the entire district or even state. It should not just be taken away from them. These places often have no other way to do something like this. They have been investing into this infrastructure for decades. If the spectrum is taken away from them, then they should be paid so that they can create other forms of distance learning. Verizon doesn't want to pay for this, but they just can't wait for when the same schools will pay them for the services that they will provide over that spectrum later.

I first thought this was a case of RTFA...

[Pollux]

...But what you've just said proves that you didn't even bother to read three sentences into the article summary on Slashdot. You only read the headline and jumped to your own conclusion.

First, here's what you missed from the article summary:

Once Sprint began knocking on their doors asking to license their spectrum -- once they began seeing dollar signs in a forgotten resource -- dozens, then hundreds of these organizations applied to the FCC to renew long-dormant licenses.

The article itself goes on to explain further how these school districts never used this wireless spectrum, how some didn't even know they owned it, until Verizon came knocking at their door. Only after Verizon came asking for rights to the spectrum did the schools and non-profits step up and try to renew licenses that they already let expire.

On the one hand, these businesses are playing dirty pool and are only stopping Verizon's development of that wireless spectrum because of the money. On the other hand, that slice of the wireless spectrum (2.5 GHz band) was specifically reserved for school & non-profit use, and was never meant to be utilized for commercial development.

My personal opinion: let Verizon have it. Verizon's attempting to buy out a slice of the spectrum to develop a privately-owned wireless network. While they expect everyone to buy Verizon equipment to exclusively operate on that frequency, chances are the market will prefer public-access frequencies that are more widely available and cheaper. Let them waste their money.

And the stupidity didn't begin there.

[Z00L00K]

Because the FCC was unable to grant the same frequencies for GSM in the US as in the rest of the world effectively creating more expensive mobile phones for the consumers and also limiting the international relations.

Instead of using the GSM 900/1800 the US has gone for 850/1900. This has no technical merit since 900/1800 is more effective because they are allowing for a simpler antenna design than 850/1900.

I don't know if there is a yearly fee to pay for an assigned frequency or not, but if someone pays for a frequency and don't use it that's just stupid from an economic point of view. If no yearly fee is required that is effectively creating a waste of resources situation.

Re:Phased Arrays

[Doc Ruby]

I'm just saying that phased arrays are one kind of MIMO. WiMAX is using a little MIMO tech. If it used more MIMO tech, specifically the phased arrays we're discussing, it wouldn't necessarily need the higher frequencies and other features to get higher bandwidth. Though getting them all would be nice.