FCC Chief: 300MHz More Spectrum By 2015

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FCC Chief: 300MHz More Spectrum By 2015

Posted by Soulskill on Friday October 5, 2012 @04:37AM from the we-want-it-all dept.

itwbennett writes "On Thursday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski laid out plans to make 300MHz more spectrum available by 2015. Among the blocks that will be auctioned in the AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) band is a band between 1755MHz and 1780MHz, where a commercial user would share the spectrum with current government users." Genachowski's full speech (PDF) is available online.

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What I can't figure out... by Andy+Dodd · 2012-10-05 04:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

How is it that Europe has no problems using their existing spectrum allocations, while the USA seems to be resorting to insane band fragmentation?
The European 2100 MHz band isn't THAT big...

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1. Re:What I can't figure out... by ThatsMyNick · 2012-10-05 04:48 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Well, band fragmentation benefits the carriers. Phones made for one carrier cannot be used on the other, and hence discourages customers from switching to another carrier. No wonder the carriers are keen on spectrum fragmentation.
2. Re:What I can't figure out... by alen · 2012-10-05 05:04 · Score: 2
  
  every carrier has free on contract phones and cheap phones. and there is a used market for every carrier's phones
Re:70CM by jrmcferren · 2012-10-05 04:51 · Score: 4, Informative

I don't normally respond to trolls, but this is a government band and hams have secondary usage of this. It won't happen.

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Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-05 05:16 · Score: 4, Funny

640 KHz ought to be enough for anybody.
Re:Not in my back yard by Andy+Dodd · 2012-10-05 05:48 · Score: 3, Informative

Yup. It's next to impossible for anyone (even a person that knows they're there) to identify the antennas for Verizon's cell site on top of Cornell's Barton Hall.
Of course, the rather distracting Force12 HF antenna belonging to W2CXM helps a bit... But even without the Force12, the Verizon antennas (sector antennas painted to match the stone of the building) are nearly impossible to spot.
In any built-up area it's really easy to hide a cell site.

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C=B*log2(1+SNR): It's not just a good idea... by Erich · 2012-10-05 05:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

It's the law!
And you're getting very close to the Shannon limit with turbo codes. LTE isn't much more spectral efficient as compared to HSPA+, but it has wider frequency bands and so can get more peak speed to customers.
So you can increase the amount of spectrum you have, with the current infrastructure, to get more capacity. That will buy you a few years of network traffic increase.
But eventually you have to figure out how to get less capacity demand and more SNR. There's really only one way to do that: change the infrastructure topology. And that has lots of problems.
It's kind of like we're near "Peak Bandwidth".

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-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Re:70CM by X0563511 · 2012-10-05 06:00 · Score: 2

How about we take back some of 87.8 MHz to 108.0 MHz instead, since we're trolling?

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Re:Why not repurpose the AM Radio band? by xtal · 2012-10-05 07:02 · Score: 3, Informative

The AM band is very small.
FM VHF isn't very big spectrum either. You don't need a large carrier to move voice signals.
The fact these systems carry a long way works against them too. The line of sight / local bounce propagation from the microwave bands allows for a much higher density of cells that are all synchronized. More transmitters means more bandwidth / spectrum re-use. If the transmitters see each other with stronger signals, your noise floor and interference go up, and your throughput goes down.
Physics is a bitch sometimes.

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