American Cellular Companies Clamor For Fresh Spectrum

alphadogg writes "No one will ever say that America's wireless carriers are too proud to beg. This year's Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association Wireless trade show in New Orleans seemed less like an industry gathering at times and more like an infomercial dedicated to forcing the government's hand to free up more spectrum. Start with CTIA President and CEO Steve Largent, who dedicated the vast majority of his introductory keynote address to discussing the challenges carriers will face if they don't get fresh spectrum to use within the next few years. Execs from T-Mobile, Verizon and others also beat the drum. Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead, for example, said: 'Innovation is at risk today due to the spectrum shortage that we face. If additional spectrum is not available in the near-term, mobile data will exceed capacity by 2015.'"

Comments

Mobile Data cant exceed capacity

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Once you reach capacity, you've reached capacity, you can't go any higher than that

Re:Mobile Data cant exceed capacity

[Targon]

Demand exceeds capacity, not use exceeds capacity.

Re:Mobile Data cant exceed capacity

[realityimpaired]

Once you reach capacity, you've reached capacity, you can't go any higher than that

Yeah, but the US carriers are doing it wrong. How is it that with the same or less bandwidth available, carriers in Europe and Canada are able to deal with the same or higher subscriber density?

No, really. Look at the cellular spectrum situation in a country like Germany or France, and look at the number of complaints you hear about dropped calls or not enough speed available in Berlin or Paris. You don't hear about it at all.

Canada may have a smaller population, but there's really only four cellular networks in Toronto, which is in the top five biggest cities in North America, and probably 90% of the subscribers are using one of two networks: Rogers and Bell. And those two networks are using the same frequencies and technologies. (well, the Bell network has sympathetic CDMA/HSPA, but they're 3 years into a switch over to 100% HSPA, and most of their customers already have HSPA devices). We're talking more than 2 million cell phones in a geographic area not much bigger than the city of Washington, DC, not to mention the commuters who aren't actually counted as part of Toronto's population, and they're *all* using 850/1900 HPSA, and yet somehow the carriers aren't complaining that there's not enough bandwidth.

No. It's not that there's not enough bandwidth available in the US, it's that the carriers are doing it wrong.

(and my apologies to our European friends, but I live in Canada, and work in the telecomm industry, so I speak about what I know).

Re:Mobile Data cant exceed capacity

[glomph]

Totally correct; In Germany it's 3GB on a no-contract no-commitment prepaid SIM for €20/mo. (if you go over, you still get service, but 56k-ish speeds)
This is on the Deutsche Telekom network, probably the best in that market.

MORE importantly, in lower-use cases, you can get 200MB/500MB/1GB for €8/10/13 per month. Most users in the US really use little data, and have to pay out the ass for mandatory 'data plans'. This is where the real theft is in this FreedomLand scam.

Re:Mobile Data cant exceed capacity

[Teancum]

The problem here is with the notion that a free market is being used at all. That commercial entities are being involved should not confuse you with the idea that it is a free market where anybody can compete.

In the case of cell phone transmitters, I can't slap together a Linux box with some ham radio equipment and build a hobby cell phone tower without a ton of paperwork and the FCC breathing down my neck... assuming that there might even be remotely a way for me to have a prayer to get even a small slice of that spectrum to even try the experiment. Convince me that I might have a shot to even try something like that, regardless of the cost and the licensing paperwork involved, then I might be able to concede that it is properly a free market.

Re:Mobile Data cant exceed capacity

[tepples]

crap like that stupid Siri what a waste of time effort and energy

Siri takes no more network capacity than a short VoIP call, as I understand it, because it is a short VoIP call. What are you going on about?

Re:Mobile Data cant exceed capacity

[demonlapin]

You don't understand what "monopoly" means. Natural monopolies are things that involve serious disruption to construct - distribution of power, water, sewer, natural gas, cable television, and copper/fiber all fall into that category. Cellular service, generally, doesn't involve tearing up the streets or running a bunch more wires overhead. And even when there's a natural monopoly in distribution, there's not necessarily a natural monopoly in production (although the accounting is really hard).

The question is not whether free markets allocate resources efficiently (and fwiw, all resources are scarce). They do. They're really good at that. In fact, that's all they do. The question is whether or not you have a sufficiently free market for it to work. Given the barriers to entry in the mobile phone market - some of which the government has put up, some of which are natural consequences of the nationwide market in mobile service - it could go either way. Yes, it's really hard to get in, and Verizon and AT&T really kill you on price. Sprint has tried to compete on price and is dying. You can get excellent service at much lower rates through MVNO's and regional carriers, but then you're stuck with older phones and smaller service areas. The regulation that appears to have worked best in Europe was mandating device interoperability among carriers, but that's a regulation aimed squarely at improving the freedom of the marketplace.

In all the years of the US government-Ma Bell partnership, they never showed any interest in making things cheap for consumers. Why would you expect that to change now? Americans have the world's largest free roaming area, and we pay for it.

Efficiency

[TWX]

I would like to know how efficiently they're using what they've got, and from someone who isn't them or paid by them. A lot of companies build for new features and a rapid release schedule rather than for efficiency.

Re:Efficiency

[rusty0101]

At some point it will depend on your definition of efficiency.

At the moment none of the four major carriers in the US are using common protocols and frequencies for G3 service and above. They may be using some frequencies in common, or some protocols in common, but to differentiate their services, they don't use common protocols. A side effect of this is that you can take a walk with three other people, each of you using a different provider's phone, and walk through almost any major metro area, and see different carriers signal levels fluctuating all over the place. It's nearly impossible to roam on other carriers services, and almost no-one is providing general coverage service outside of major metro areas. In some parts of the US, you are better off having an Iridium phone than anything from a cellular carrier.

Yes, each carrier is working hard to provide solid coverage in the metro areas, but it's not going to happen. The frequencies that provide the best reach into where the customer is are either already in use, or don't have sufficient capacity for high bandwidth. 700mhz may seem like a magic bullet, but remember that a TV channel has about enough bandwidth for 45 mbps, one way, and to spread that across 100 customers for a cell (or worse) means that no-one is going to see 500 kbps, or less than 60kB/s. To get higher throughput, you have to go to higher frequencies. And higher frequencies don't reach into buildings as well. Great coverage out on the street, perhaps, but that reflective surface on the window to keep the temperature down in the glass building does a serious number on signal reception.

And since 800mhz analog has been eliminated, there are a lot of towers across the US that it just didn't make economic sense to convert to digital service. That may start changing if the FCC mandates that the only way that they are going to open more spectrum is if there is broader distribution of coverage across the US. But I'm not going to hold my breath for that. I figure the likelyhood of that is right up there with the FCC mandating that US carriers all start using common protocols and allow users to use any new phone on the market with any carrier, at the phone's best transfer rate. I just don't see it happening.

Smaller, Denser Cells?

[mhocker]

Is it not possible to make the cell sites closer together? Or would this require actual capital investment on the side of the carriers?

Re:Smaller, Denser Cells?

[backslashdot]

Uh they just have to build more towers and reduce the signal strength and the problem is solved. Notice how an apartment complex can have many wifi stations, or a cell phone works even in JFK airport or a football where many people are on the phone clustered together.

New Spectrum - New Terms

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Howabout the people elected to look out for the public interest take this opportunity to make sure that the lessons of the last decade or so are applied to any new spectrum licenses?

After all, if these businesses are desperate for what we have, we should use that leverage to negotiate the best possible deal. I'm thinking real net neutrality (not neutered neutrality), better inter-carrier interoperability (like all new spectrum must be used for only one type of signalling, say GSM only) and lets throw in a requirement that all phones which operate on the new spectrum can not be carrier-locked either. And that's in addition to what Google was able to wrangle on the last spectrum auction which required that the wireless telcos must also accept 3rd parrty devices on their networks.

It's very dangerous to exceed wireless capacity.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is difficult for most people to understand fully, but there are some pretty serious risks involved when exceeding the capacity of a wireless transmission medium. Although you can't see or feel them, the wireless network is made up of millions of miles of thin, flexible tubing, each called a "wireless spectrum". These wireless spectra run through the air, across our great nation, and around the world. In short, they're everywhere. They're above your house, they're inside your house, they're even next to you as you read this.

Like any tubing, it has an internal pressure threshold. The tubing walls are somewhat elastic, so they can take a slight amount of excessive data. But if you start exceeding the threshold significantly, and over a prolonged period of time, the tube could split, or even completely burst.

I shouldn't have to tell you about the dangers of a split or burst wireless spectra tube. If the data valve in the server room isn't switched off soon enough after a leak or a break, massive amounts of data may leak out of the damaged wireless spectra. While it's annoying to have your phone call dropped, or to have your Internet connection go down, the pollution caused by this leaking data is the biggest concern of all.

While purely telephonic data is easy to clean up if leaked, Internet data leakage or spills are a much bigger problem. This Internet data can be a very vile mixture of smut, gore, and atheism. So with more and more people using the Internet on their wireless devices, the data content flowing through the existing wireless spectra is extremely toxic and dangerous to handle.

I fully support increasing the size of the wireless spectra tubing, as well as the wall thickness. We have to do whatever it takes to prevent the environmental and social destruction that could be caused by even a single wireless spectra bursting or breaking. No expense should be spared to ensure the safety of our great country and its people.

Re:In Other News...

[WrongSizeGlass]

I get one for an equivalent of a tenner. It comes as an extra with my fixed 24/1 ADSL landline.

Of course, I'm from a different continent.

Oh sure, a magical place where you're not locked into carrier, where plans are reasonably priced and your providers aren't buying special consideration and favors from the government. Actually, that does sound pretty magical.

Verizon

[DaMattster]

It has been reported before that Verizon Wireless and AT&T are both begging for spectrum while they are currently holding spectrum that they haven't even used yet! This sounds like they want to grab as much as possible only to crowd others out of the market. The CTIA is an industry lobby group and is not there to benefit the consumer no matter how much they claim to benefit both.

Re:Verizon

[gstrickler]

Shhh! That's supposed to be a secret. Just because they hold licenses (for which they paid billions of dollars) to spectrum they're not using doesn't mean they're inhibiting competition or limiting availability, they're just "planning for the future".

Re:Grab part of ham radio spectrum

[ChrisMaple]

A quick look at ham allocations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_allocations shows that they have 5 to 10 % of the spectrum. That's not enough to slake the telco power grab.