Verizon Outbids AT&T For Nationwide 5G Wireless Spectrum (theverge.com)

Verizon has agreed to pay $3.1 billion for wireless spectrum holder Straight Path Communications, beating out rival AT&T, which had offered to buy Straight Path for $1.6 billion in stock. Verizon's acquisition will give it access to the frequencies necessary to build a 5G network across the U.S. The Verge reports: The news that AT&T was aiming to buy the Glen Allen, VA-based Straight Path was first reported last month, prompting a bidding war between the carriers that the WSJ describes as "unusually intense." Straight Path's purchase gives Verizon access to millimeter wave frequencies that are set to be used by 5G networks across the United States, making it a useful purchase from the start. Experts have also noted that the company's owner may also be afforded even more spectrum in future auctions with the FCC, potentially giving Verizon access to the entire 39GHz band down the line.

Comments

WSJ

[Anonymous Coward]

Breaking the story wide open!!!!

$3.1 billion and 9 employees

[Anonymous Coward]

nice payday

can you hear me now?

Well now, this can't be good

[rsilvergun]

either Verizon over extended itself and is now ripe for the picking (e.g. merger, which with our current administration is a very real possibility) or they're gonna jack prices like crazy. Either way this won't end well.

Re:Well now, this can't be good

[unixisc]

I'm guessing that once they deploy 5G, all the phones on their network would have to be VoLTE enabled to use it, right? Else, it would defeat the purpose.

Re:Well now, this can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes Verizon announced they were going to kill their old networks a couple years ago.

Re:Well now, this can't be good

[squiggleslash]

It already charges the highest prices of the big 4. The major issue is whether it can continue to do so - it succeeds right now by marketing itself as the highest quality network (it isn't, in my experience, I've yet to meet a Verizon customer who didn't sound like they were talking through a garden hose stuffed with paper, but the counter to that is their coverage is good), but the price difference between it and, say, T-Mobile, is so massive, and the coverage difference today so minor right now*, I don't see it lasting.

* Yes, I know {random Slashdotter hitting the Reply button} tried T-Mobile 10 years ago, or even three years ago, and lost coverage in "teh boonies". First of all, all networks have blind spots, and your experience matched what you thought it would, people who didn't have problems with coverage don't tend to mention that. BUT MORE TO THE POINT T-Mobile has massively, massively, improved coverage over the last 2-3 years, and continues to do so. They also didn't have any 700MHz spectrum 3 years ago. They do today and they've been rolling out 700MHz spectrum like crazy. If you go out to the same place you lost coverage last time, the chances are you'll get a signal: if you don't, it's infinitely more likely you have an older phone without band 12 support than it is that there's no signal there.

Re: Well now, this can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy obviously works at T-Mobile

Re:Well now, this can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

Every wireless carrier loses coverage in the boonies.

If you actually look at a cell site map, you'll find that vast swaths of Eastern Washington, Montana, North Dakota have ZERO coverage. This is because it's expensive to build a cell tower in a place where there is only one customer and the occasional car or train passing by.

Even in Canada, you can drive for miles without coverage once you leave a metro area.

The biggest loss to everyone was when the Analog 850Mhz network was shut down continent-wide, because that went from people being able to use their cell phone from 20 miles away, to needing to be within 500ft to get full bars, and fuck you if you're in the basement or parking garage.

Bye Bye fiber, we loved you so

[Dorianny]

Well this all but puts the proverbial gravestone on FIOS expansion

Re: Bye Bye fiber, we loved you so

[WarJolt]

You're assuming that current bandwidth demands are adequate for future technology. At one point it 56kbps was considered fast. I'd argue that we've yet to invent the next bandwidth hogging media. It's going to make Netflix look like a joke. FIOS is still necessary to offload the wireless spectrum.

Re: Bye Bye fiber, we loved you so

[Dorianny]

Oh the cherry picked, high income neighborhoods will still get Fiber to home but the rest will be stuck with whatever speed you can get. Your neighbor doesn't want to keep his trees pruned, well tough luck, not their problem. No line of sight between your apartment and the access point, put in a request and maybe in 10 years they will put up another tower

Re: Bye Bye fiber, we loved you so

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon wouldn't be the only one. AT&T is done with building out their fiber network as well. They are both banking on high speed wireless rather than wired connections due to the costs. A mistake but that's where they are going.

Re:Bye Bye fiber, we loved you so

[AHuxley]

Wireless is all PR fun until a company runs out of other peoples spectrum.

Re: Bye Bye fiber, we loved you so

[erapert]

Why couldn't a local group put up a small tower that can see Verizon's, or maybe tack one onto the side of a telephone pole, and then squids cables out to the nearby houses?

Interesting we are the only 39GHz user in our area

[pcjunky]

About a year ago we got approached by Straight-Path with a deal. They would give us a pair of 39GHz radios if we would deploy them in this area. Seems no one in this area was using any of their licensed 39GHz spectrum and they were at risk of losing their license due to non-use. It is spectrum that is rather hard to utilize in any area that gets much rain. Links over 1 mile with even 2 foot dishes would drop in even moderate rain (too much absorption), and a wet leaf would almost completely block the signal. This is the reason almost no one in Florida uses this spectrum. I can't imagine what Verizon thinks they can do with it as it's seems useless for providing any kind of cell service. Even if used to back haul point to point links it's range is extremely limited.

We did in the end enter the deal and deploy them on a 300 meter link that has perfect line of sight. At that range they work pretty well.

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy, this sure does help consumers out a lot. We're overjoyed.

Yet another article about RF without info

[speedlaw]

OK, what frequencies are being discussed...and in what areas...

$0.10 per hertz

[Anonymous Coward]

Our new gold standard.

Re:Interesting we are the only 39GHz user in our a

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't imagine what Verizon thinks they can do with it as it's seems useless for providing any kind of cell service.

MIcro-cells. If you deploy a 39GHz radio on every other (light/telephone) pole you have potentially great coverage. Not so sure that it will work well in some parts of North Dakota, but that is a different issue (for Verizon to solve).

Regrettable, more CDMA.

[Zombie Ryushu]

As someone who has been an international GSM Traveller, it makes me sick how the US Doubles down on CDMA. CDMA is severely patent encumbered, only one company can legally make CDMA Radios. CDMA is not supported outside the US.

CDMA makes getting unlocked Phones prohibitively expensive. The carriers charge more, its just a big scam. If the FCC carried about USians, they would mandate GSM for all carriers, and discontinue CDMA

Re: Regrettable, more CDMA.

[corychristison]

No doubt.

Here in Saskatchewan, Canada, our government owned carrier gave up on CDMA about 10 years ago, and finally shut down the CDMA radios about a year ago.

I like being able to change carriers by swapping the SIM out. My next phone will be Dual-SIM for sure.

Carrier locked phones are still a problem, but there is a fairly big market online of factory unlocked phones so my needs are covered.

Re:Regrettable, more CDMA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon just uses CDMA as an excuse to get their branding, apps, etc. on their phones, and except for the occasion when VoLTE doesn't work, all modern verizon phones run pretty much exclusively over LTE (which is a GSM system and uses a SIM card).

On Verizon, I've often left my android phone in LTE-only mode (as opposed to the default LTE/GSM/CDMA auto setting in the android "Phone Testing" app) and noticed no issues except sometimes I can't make regular phone calls out of network.

AT&T and T-Mobile have always been GSM, and you can stick a sim in pretty much any phone and it will work.

Sprint (and Boost Mobile and other cheap MVNOs) on the other hand are a CDMA clusterf*** because Sprint is too cheap to license any new spectrum. I would just recommend to stay away from any carrier that gives you a cheap 5 year old android phone without sim slot for free with contract.

Re:Regrettable, more CDMA.

[Mr.Radar]

CDMA2000 is a dead technology even without government mandates. Verizon can't wait to dump it since it uses up so much of their spectrum that would be better used for 4G LTE and the upcoming 5G standard. They are planning to shut down their 2G CDMA 1x network in 2019 and will likely kill their 3G CDMA EVDO network in the mid 2020s. They initially intended to start rolling out handsets without CDMA radios last year but I don't think they've been able to implement that due to their rural roaming partners having not fully overlaid their CDMA coverage area with LTE and/or activated VoLTE support on their networks yet.

Re:Regrettable, more CDMA.

[squiggleslash]

All of the carriers are moving to the 4G/third version of GSM, LTE. So that's happening anyway. Verizon and Sprint are treating cdmaOne/cdma2000 as a legacy technology.

So I wouldn't worry about this in the long term. In the short term, there are two nationwide carriers that support the first two versions of GSM (GSM and UMTS) as well as LTE (at&t is phasing out 2G GSM though) so there's absolutely no need to get a combination cdmaOne/GSM phone for traveling.

Nobody should "own" spectrum

[AK Marc]

The government should start a non-profit corporation not unlike the FDIC. "owned" by the federal government (FCC) and run by a joint government/private cooperative. All standards should be carrier independent. Towers, spectrum and connections to POPs should be 100% owned by the FSMC (Federal Spectrum Management Corp). The carriers can buy calls from the FSMC. All connections will be equal, and the competition will be for the best customer service and other things separate from the technical details.

Selling a shared resource for a private corporation to profit off of is a bad idea, and rarely works out well.

Re:Nobody should "own" spectrum

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the VA is so great at healthcare? No, that's not a good option. Much better would be 7 year leases instead of indefinite leases of spectrum.

Re:Nobody should "own" spectrum

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. What was that spectrum sold for initially? Therefore how much have citizens been gyped out of getting, if their representatives hadn't sold those frequencies, but rented them out?

Re:Nobody should "own" spectrum

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazingly enough there are somethings that do well with regulated oversight that ensures equal access for it's services. The problem is when things become political someone HAS TO LOSE. That is where shit gets bad and regulations begin to strangle the things it was supposed to protect or guide. The VA is a great example of many things government can do wrong. Hell you can pick just about any that are doing things wrong but there are plenty of unheard of government committees or departments you don't know about simply because it is working the way it was supposed to and does only what it needs to do.

Re:Nobody should "own" spectrum

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd argue the spectrum was never the government's to sell since they have no business "owning" it. Regulating it - sure - that's their job, but owning? No.

I mean they are basically taking the air we breathe and selling it for profit. We don't like it when they do that with land (eminent domain), we shouldn't tolerate it for the RF spectrum either. Their job is to govern society, not to be selling our natural rights back to us for a price.

Re:Interesting we are the only 39GHz user in our a

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be easier to just run fiber? The big cost of fiber is not running it. It's the licensing of the poles. I was able to get fiber installed from a junction box that was a mile away for a mere $3,000. I had a friend who lived closer to a junction box that was 1/10 of a mile away. I could practically spit at it multiple junction boxes from his house and hit them that were about 1/10 of a mile away. Installation cost $17,000. The problem seems to be licensing of the poles. If the poles are already licensed then the cost of running the fiber is reactively small. If not the licensing costs dwarf the costs of running fiber or installing radios on every pole that run at 39Ghz.

Verizon has been selling their towers

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this is why.

BRAIN-Frying and CANDER-Causing RADIATION

[Anonymous Coward]

Cancer:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/federal-study-links-cell-phone-radiation-cancer

EMF Expert:
https://www.emfanalysis.com/about/

EMF Interview on Gaia:
https://www.gaia.com/video/creating-emf-free-oasis-jeromy-johnson?fullplayer=preview