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Verizon Reveals Plans For "C Block" Airwaves
eldavojohn writes "Now that Verizon has beaten Google in the 'block C' spectrum auction, what are they going to do with it? Well, as of today they've revealed their plans for world domination: they plan to speed up wireless internet connections. It may come as no surprise that they'll also be making this available for other manufacturer's devices. AT&T plans to do the same with their auction winnings, 'AT&T was second to Verizon, winning $6 billion in spectrum licenses, which it also plans to use for high-speed Internet service. But its executives said they didn't bid for the portion subject to the open-access rules. The parts it did land cost AT&T nearly three times as much per unit of spectrum than the portion Verizon bought.'"
...for wireless communication. News at 11!
Why create the semblance of a fight where one did not exist? All google really wanted was open air-waves.
Verizon didn't beat google, Verizon played right into google's hand.
AT&T got it's C-block spectrum in a Buyout not at auction. At auction they won B-block spectrum...
http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/3G/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207001878
and they plan to roll out early 4G phones and towers before 4G standards are done and who knows what kind of problems that will expose in the new standards and technology.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
It's not really fascinating so much as it is logical. Why pay more for something you won't have exclusive control over? The balance here is that Verizon has agreed to give up exclusivity, in exchange for not having to pay as much for the spectrum. As reported here earlier, Google was actually pushing up bids just to make the reserve price for the spectrum. Even though I think the bids were sealed, I'm pretty sure Verizon had a good clue that it was Google that was pushing up the bids on the C-band, and it would be in Verizon's interest for it to at least own the band even if it would not have exclusive control over devices on the band.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Wireless Internet on cell phones is completely useless right now. Sure, it would be a great convience to use the full Internet on your phone, but there is a huge problem here: phone companies are quick and eager to start these new services, but most customers are still on those dumb "1 cent per kb" deals! They are upgrading the technology, but not the business model.
If Verizon, or any cell phone company for that matter want to ever succeed in making these services popular, they have to change their lame fees. 1 cent per kilobyte, or fees like that, were good back in the days of GPRS when all you had was a text based Internet on phones, but this simply won't do now that you can easily transfer over a dollar in kilobytes in 1 website!
I don't even bother using the Internet or text messages on my older phone, waaaay to expensive!
So if these companies want to ever hope to attract consumers to use the Internet services that would come out of this, they have to change their lame business model, or they will lose money.
It could be your phone as well. I have Verizon also and the call quality is excellent for me.
Verizon (and all the other Telcos and ISPs) want us in C-Block all right. Right next to that big guy named "Bubba" with the twinkle in his eye.
Seriously, I don't believe a word of what's coming out of Verizon's collective mouth. I really hope I'm wrong, but "open access" and "Telco" really don't belong in the same sentence.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
What I thought was interesting is that in some big markets, Verizon purchased some A block or B block, and in some cases, both. That's in addition to their C block. They're clearly looking to make sure that they're going to have a lot of available bandwidth.
NYC, Chicago, and LA, they ended up with A, B, and C block purchases. In some other large markets (Washington DC, Dallas, SanFran) they picked up either an A or a B in addition to their nationwide C block.
So they're certainly thinking about capacity and customer density for their future networks.
I kind of wonder, though, to what extent they've squeezed the amount of bandwidth that AT&T is going to have in those major cities. I don't have the details on their previous acquisitions to know for sure, but Verizon certainly took some potential capacity away from them.
I've been c-blocked by many a young lady in an effort to gain open-access.
The neutrality of this sig is disputed.
The problem is when these carriers contract for their own custom handsets they lock these models to their own networks. That makes it hard to switch carriers without buying a new phone.
The networks are open already. It's the products that use them which are not. So, what really did Google do? I don't know. Google has always had the freedom to build a handset that runs on either of these networks. So where is it?
Son, someday all this will belong to your ex-wife.