

How the wireless spectrum crunch is squeezing carriers and hurting consumers - ukdm
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/106745-how-the-wireless-spectrum-crunch-is-squeezing-carriers-and-hurting-consumers

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guimarin
tl,dr; No new information about spectrum allocation just an overview of an
observer's perspective on the industry. Loosely conforms to the status quo
belief that there is a 'lack of available spectrum' and that this is and will
drive higher prices in the future/set the tone of the wireless industry.

My issue with these kinds of 'reports' is that more often then not they are
little more than scare tactics by the big telcos. This week it's probably from
AT&T trying to scare people into accepting their shit merger.

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iwwr
Is there a resource that details who owns what (and where) of the wireless
spectrum (ranging from kHz to GHz).

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ImprovedSilence
It's pretty packed:
[http://www.mobiletrax.com/Portals/mobiletrax/wheeler%20Oct_U...](http://www.mobiletrax.com/Portals/mobiletrax/wheeler%20Oct_United_States_Frequency_Allocations_Chart_2003_-_The_Radio_Spectrum.jpg)

I also heard Lightsquared (national wireless broadband company) is having
spectrum issues as well, as their band is right next to GPS, and there is much
lobbying going on now, as the govt is trying to buy back some satellite bands
and re-purpose them for terrestrial use.

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iwwr
What does "fixed" mean in the context of that chart?

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ImprovedSilence
Fixed wireless (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_wireless>). It's usually
point to point transceivers, probably mostly applicable for business and
industrial uses.

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ImprovedSilence
What? how did I get down voted twice here for being helpful? Did it just get
automatically flagged as a flame war because I responded too fast?

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nirvana
The tragedy, of course, is that spread spectrum technology could allow these
carriers to share bands, and actually operate over a wider band. IF the
700MHz-1GHz range was allocated to cellular and mobile voice and data
services, and any player who used spread spectrum could use it... then AT&T,
Verizon and Sprint would have all have:

1\. Vastly more total bandwidth to use, allowing for faster bitrates.

2\. More reliable services as the phones could adjust to the ranges within
those bands that have the best signal.

3\. A lot lower operating costs due to not having to tie up Billions upon
Billions of dollars in spectrum (which means cheaper for everyone else also,
due to competition).

4\. Standardized equiptment across the carriers, which means cheaper cell
towers, cheaper handset components, cheaper infrastructure in general.

5\. Brain-dead simple roaming agreements since everyone would be using the
same technology, or at least, would be pretty quickly if this scheme had been
implemented form the beginning.

6\. The opportunity to easily and cost effectively deploy secondary services
that don't need the full cellular modem capabilities, like GPS loggers, kindle
data feeds and even broadcast technologies we don't have now with the level of
regulation they have to operate under.

And consumers would win too, because you'd have a lot more regional carriers
like Cellular One and Cricket, etc. Companies like Virgin could build out
their network by contracting with multiple carriers-- using verizon in new
york and AT&T in SF, etc.

Apple and Google both could have built out their own networks and provided end
to end services, like its clear they wanted to.

There'd be a lot more competition, the quality of everything would be cheaper
and the prices would be a lot lower.

Everybody wins, right?

Well, no, the loser would be government. Government takes in Billions from
these auctions and that's why they auction of spectrum as if people needed (or
could) "own" it.

In a time when we're blowing billions a day on pointless wars that isn't
really big money, but it is certainly big money for the people involved in the
auctions who have favors they can call in industry after they leave
government, and it helps the big three that the spectrums were allocated such
that there could only be 3 national wireless networks (I remember this being
the plan way back in the late 1980s, 1990s... they said "by having three there
would be competition!" as if there couldn't be 30 competitors, and that
wouldn't be better.)

If WiFi can share spectrum with microwave ovens, a lightly regulated cellular
industry can share spectrum as well.

Spectrum scarcity is artificial, the result of a corrupt process, and keeps
prices higher and quality lower for everyone. But it does ensure the dominance
of verizon and at&t.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Interesting thoughts, and I always thought it would be nice to have a more
uniform arrangement for all the providers, but I don't quite think it's quite
that simple. Spread Spectrum isn't some magic buzzword that you can throw in
there and it instantly fixes all our technological woes. Yes, it works, up to
a point, up to a fixed amount of traffic on any particular channel, but when
you start getting into denser populations, you need to start getting more
complex. general wi-fi tends to crap out if there are too many (around 13)
operators in the vicinity, cell towers in urban areas need to handle hundreds,
if not thousands of calls at any one time. (yes I realize that isn't the best
analogy, as the technologies are quite different) And wi-fi sucks up a big
chunk of the unlicensed 2.4Ghz spectrum. Then you start to get into the
question of bandwidth, if you want more users, they are each going to have
less bw, thus you can advertise your 100mbs bw for 4G, but if any more than
one person is using it, you download speed is going drop fast.

Now i do agree that it'd be nice to have one standard, and open up all these
frequencies for common use. But it's more than just big brother out there
holding fast to the status quo. Companies use very different technologies.
(especially in the States) Companies like Qualcom (Verizon/Sprint CDMA
technology) invest enormous sums of money into protecting their IP, and aren't
about to share it, just so that AT&T customers can use their spectrum. Yes,
there is a merge towards LTE, but by an large, there is still the CDMA/TDMA
divide between companies, and the use of propriety chipsets means that two
different technologies can't really share the same spectrum, as there really
is so much traffic on each channel, SS isn't going guarantee there is no
interference. Also, you better believe the current networks are utilizing SS
technologies to their MAX already within the band they own.

