So, basically, this was a complete and total bust:
In June, the FCC said sellers had initially sought $86.4
billion for 126 megahertz of television airwaves taken from
broadcasters to be sold for wireless use.
Many analysts had expected broadcasters to earn
substantially more in the auction, with some forecasting in
2016 $30 billion in proceeds.
This is the spectrum that would have been used for the "tv whitespace" wireless (except now you could do it amazingly better with clear spectrum)
I guess the analysts don't realize that a lot of these guys don't need tons more spectrum, they just want to prevent others from using it.
Don't worry though, our FCC chief is on it:
"FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the closing of bidding is a "major milestone," adding the spectrum will boost wireless service."
No idea how, since even with the fcc rules around use, they'll do pretty much nothing.
Hey, you know what also would have boosted it?
Having the people who actually gave a crap, and were trying to make wireless available to everyone by using this, do it. Or worse, we'll see wonderful devices that only work with specific carriers.
To be fair though, congress literally forced them to auction it after massive lobbying from telcos and isps. I'm sure though, that those same congressman will not remember to ask why the hell the auction did so badly if they needed the spectrum so much.
This spectrum all would have been better off in the hands of people trying to actually boost our economy, and it would have been worth a lot more in 20b to help free people from the iron grip of broadband non-competition.
The whitespaces project the FCC was involved in doing, for example, was open, and involved a very large number of non-telcos who wanted to produce devices, and in fact, produced working prototypes. It was open. Anyone could do it as long as they could produce a device that met specs.
I get your sarcasm in that you clearly seem to think that everyone just wants to lock everyone else in differently, but at least, the other envisioned use for this spectrum was, in fact, similar to WiFi today. Unlicensed use by spec compliant devices.
I don't think you can reasonably argue that 2.4ghz/5ghz wifi would have been better off being auctioned off.
In fact, wifi would be even better had it had more spectrum to work with.
I don't know too much about this topic, but WiFi seems different since the signal is meant to be pretty local, which has lead us to 5GHz which is meant to penetrate less.
It seems like such a hands off approach to spectrum that is meant to cover a larger area could lead to a situation where it's defacto assigned to whoever deployed in an area first, because deploying additional infrastructure makes no sense due to congestion.
> Who are these people, who might "help free people from the iron grip of broadband non-competition"?
Ideally, the FCC. By licensing the spectrum to smaller providers with guarantees for service (e.g. we connect X customers in Y years or forfeit the license) and at very affordable rates (or free).
Except the new management at the FCC doesn't seem to be at all concerned with making things better for the average citizen...
That's the opposite of what should happen. One of the reasons we're stuck with broadcasters parked on beachfront spectrum was that back in the 1930s spectrum was licensed based on what would serve the "public interest" (in some bureaucrat's judgment). Back then, TV was revolutionary something something education.
Spectrum auctions were a good model when the FCC started doing them. Today we have the technology for devices to mediate spectrum use among themselves (maybe following very high level regulatory guidelines). To use an analogy: you don't "allocate road" to cars. You let drivers figure it out themselves against a background of rules for dealing with conflicts (e.g. Right of way).
I've got a small local ISP by me that runs fiber to the home in rural areas and wifi as well. Them for a start. I would imagine Google and Elon musk if the price were right.
In one of the previous auctions they tried and failed to outbid Verizon and that was "only" $4.5 Billion or so. Imagine if Google Fi were based on a single country-wide chunk of spectrum exclusive to Google instead of them being an MVNO. Verizon did and made sure Google lost! If Google fiber is any indication, cell phone companies would have faced very stiff competition.
I believe you in this specific case, but how do you devise a rule for this that works in the general case, or a rule that determines when we should switch to the "let Google or companies it blesses" special case from that general case?
Fun fact: TV whitespace is where the wireless microphones used in most live events operate. Very large, big-budget sound companies and venues can get licenses, run extremely expensive digital gear that manages to be reliable while making efficient use of bandwidth, and refresh their inventory every few years. They'll be fine. Your average high school or nonprofit theater will not.
It would be more interesting if the article had reported the median analyst forecast.
Given that it doesn't go as far as to say "most analysts had expected substantially more", it seems plausible that this the result is in fact in line with expectations.
"Given that it doesn't go as far as to say "most analysts had expected substantially more", it seems plausible that this the result is in fact in line with expectations.
"
I'm a bit lazy ATM, but when this boondoggle was sold to congress, the median forecast was done and was much higher.
The broadcasters also were forecasting, as part of their earnings, much higher numbers.
I don't understand, if it would be worth a lot more than $20 billion to someone why aren't they bidding for it? I find it hard to believe that anyone is going to sink $20 billion to "prevent others from using it".
The major players already have enough low-band spectrum. Capacity issues will be solved by densification and securing mid-band spectrum for 4G and high-band spectrum for 5G deploys.
The smaller players were the ones primarily interested in this auction, allowing them to roll more coverage to rural areas with less towers.
Most of the spectrum has some build-out requirement, so no.. it wouldn't make much sense for a company to sink $20billion into it to prevent others from using it.
There's other ways to screw over owners of spectrum. Follow the history of the 700A spectrum in the US. AT&T owned most of the lower 700mhz licenses (B and C but not A: that was T-Mobile and other rural carriers). Someone got someone to issue a report saying 700A might interfere with channel 51 television broadcasters. AT&T and the vendors created a subset band called band 17 that was wholly incompatible. This essentially screwed over the other carriers and caused a multi-year delay in band 12 deployment in the US.
Was any of this allocated to unlicensed/consumer usage? There's a serious shortage of uncrowded public spectrum in cities, and a few good channels for 802.11something would do a lot more good than giving the same spectrum to a cell phone carrier.
To be fair to the wireless carriers, they're paying for it. The broadcasters wouldn't give up their spectrum without getting paid to relocate or shut down. They wanted around $10B to clear the 84MHz (initially they wanted $86B to clear 126MHz). Without those billions, that spectrum would continue to be used for broadcast television. While wireless carriers might not be the best thing in society, I think they'll use that spectrum better than broadcasters who are heavily under-using that spectrum.
Personally, I wish that the FCC licenses were temporary and so they could re-evaluate every 20-50 years without having to do so much wrangling, but that also has problems in terms of corporate planning, consistency, device obsolescence, etc. and would get very political. Any holder of a temporary license would argue that their spectrum shouldn't be disrupted because they do such a great service to society.
There is a secondary market. If you buy out a licensee and say "hey, I can offer newer more profitable service with similar emissions" the FCC will let you.
So, theoretically, you could start a wireless company by getting some spectrum from a TV station and then showing that the emissions will be similar enough that the FCC will be fine with it.
The problem is that to provide competitive wireless service, you often need to assemble licenses for a large enough geographic area and many existing licenses will be geographically constrained. If I negotiate with Channel X in New York, that doesn't mean that same channel will sell to me in Boston. That makes it very hard to standardize a band. Worse, because of the spacing for broadcast channels, you might not be able to use a frequency in an adjacent market. Plus, how close to the boundary of the station's radius can you put a cell site?
Plus, with a UHF TV station, you're talking about a 6MHz block. Adjacent channels aren't available within a market. Maybe 6 stations in a market? The big 4 aren't likely to shut down, but are more likely willing to move, but then it's really the FCC that's accommodating a bunch of that value. It gets a little complicated.
I mean, this auction is going to be clearing 84MHz of spectrum without requiring a lot of stations shutting down by re-packing them. If you bought 4 stations in a market, you'd have 24MHz and be down 4 television stations (which a lot of people still use). By splitting off the band, they're able to use most of it rather than having to coordinate market to market with the old broadcast TV.
Honestly, I wish that the FCC could/would mandate that they can force in-kind trades for minimal money because $10B going to the broadcasters seems like a lot.
The process is easier when you own a band (like Dish) and can get the FCC to allow you to use it in a new way like authorizing terrestrial usage rather than just satellite.
Secondary markets can be great, but communication services often means band standardization and enough geographic area that people will use your service.
In the 2.4 GHz spectrum the frequencies immediately above WiFi are owned by a Bay Area satellite company GlobalStar. The current plan is to monetize that via a nationwide (planet-wide) satellite network
And the 5 GHz ISM (wifi) band is being infiltrated by LTE-U from telcos. This is despite the fact that it causes loss of 80%+ of channel capacity when sharing with wifi. The telcos are doing everything they can to wipe out public wireless connectivity.
Most of 5GHZ was already fairly worthless thanks to the po-po and the weathermen using it. That DFS 'feature'.
If the telcos want to use high channel deploys on 5GHZ for LTE-U microcells, I say why not. It's not like it propagates very far and it gives an easy way to assist with capacity at stadiums, train stations, and conference halls.
It's worthless? So why are telcos are forcing their LTE-U into it then? It doesn't propagate very far? So how come it interferes with weather turbulence sensing and DFS exists?
You basically refuted yourself. As for why not? That was the entire point of my comment: because it radically reduces the channel capacity of existing public wifi systems due to them sensing it and shutting off to not interfere. Paid telco LTE-U with it's proxied to uselessness "internet" without any control or ports is no replacement. It's deployment hurts us all and the only good it does is create more profit for telcos.
>It's worthless? So why are telcos are forcing their LTE-U into it then? It doesn't propagate very far?
Forcing? Nobody is forcing, they are requesting. In urban settings telcos are maxing out their midband spectrum. Running higher frequency microcells allow them to increase throughput dramatically in congested areas without having to worry about signal bleeding away very far. (properly installed antennas with down-tilt, etc)
>You basically refuted yourself.
Sorta, I guess. It's useless for most SoHo use since firmwares are buggy and if the AP detects cop radar nearby it'll unpredictably shift channel. Weather radar the issue is caused by directional antennas pointing up or towards the receiving radar antenna due to careless installation. It looks like this: http://www.ec.gc.ca/meteo-weather/2B931828-790E-4782-8BBE-CE...
>Paid telco LTE-U with it's proxied to uselessness "internet" without any control or ports is no replacement.
Sure it is, you're in the 0.000000000001% of people that care about running a webserver while mobile. Don't argue and tell me you don't own a cellphone. People want working LTE else they wouldn't bitch about congestion. LTE is much more efficient than WiFi in the given spectrum requested. I'd use VoWifi which my carrier supports, but the reality is most public wifi is both insecure and unreliable so I don't unless as a last resort. Get real.
They're requesting to run commercial services on public spectrum.
As for directional antenna, the antenna doesn't effect propagation, which is a function of wavelength, which is what we were discussing. Obviously having more of the signal directed in one direction mitigates the marginal propagation at higher frequencies. But a sector antenna isn't exactly omni and down-tilt to limit cell horizon is still going to include lots of people and buildings.
Your scarecrow argument about webserver on a phone as the only reason for having a real connection is either laughable or intentionally disengenuous. There are a million other reasons from privacy to p2p and beyond.
And lets not forget that all wireless telcos have absurdly low data caps; that's the primary reason most people switch to wifi instead of staying on their LTE connection.
>They're requesting to run commercial services on public spectrum.
Have you never seen paid wifi hot-spot access?
>There are a million other reasons from privacy to p2p and beyond.
You still haven't given a real world example. It sounds like you're mad you can't seed on bittorrent effectively from your mobile.
>And lets not forget that all wireless telcos have absurdly low data caps
Sounds like you picked a bad plan. In the US all 4 national carriers offer unlimited (well technically softcap congestion depriority if you go >20-someGB) plans for under $100. I literally never switch my phone to wifi at home since LTE propagates better and I get more consistent speeds. (Carrier gave me a femtocell so I'm still using my cable ISP for backhaul there). I've scratched 20GB a few months and actively had to try to download livecd's in addition to my usual 320kbps spotify streaming to do it.
All of your arguments in this thread have been assuming that what is best for mobile users is the only aspect that matters. The 5 GHz ISM spectrum, for wifi or otherwise, is used by people at home more often then while traveling. Mobile is not the only thing that matters.
I have seen paid wifi hotspots. Luckily they don't absolutely destroy the wifi thoroughput like LTE-U does so I don't mind. Have you ever seen a free LTE service?
A real world example is my use of the Retroshare (application) for encrypted communcations. It uses the DHT network to bootstrap and requires accessible ports as do many other completely legit protocols. Not using centralized services to communicate takes lots of bandwidth and it takes real internet access, ports and all.
It sounds like you picked bad wifi equipment for your home network.
No, that isn't the current plan. They were given approval for low power proprietary spectrum they could launch a TDD-LTE network on to supplement their global satellite network in urban areas. The standard license is high powered use from bird to UE.
I think you're a fool if you believe their early TLPS marketing where they claim they could build an information SUPERHIGHWAY using what is effectively wifi channel 14 without fucking up or being fucked up by poorly filtered wifi devices. This is why they dropped the bid on licensing unlicensed spectrum...
In other news, there was a lot of misinformation on channel 12 and 13 use in the US. In CA it's allowed for indoor usage. The FCC clarified in its approval of the modified GlobalStar plan that 12 and 13 are not allowed in the US.
> what is effectively wifi channel 14 without fucking up or being fucked up by poorly filtered wifi devices
Could you explain how this happens? What's the reason for Globalstar (or anyone, for that matter) to pay for the spectrum, if at any point some joe shmoe can just build devices that introduce interference in that spectrum, thereby rendering it useless?
> Could you explain how this happens? What's the reason for Globalstar (or anyone, for that matter) to pay for the spectrum, if at any point some joe shmoe can just build devices that introduce interference in that spectrum, thereby rendering it useless?
Keep in mind, Globalstar already owned half the originally requested spectrum. This is less of a 'paying for' and more of a 'being given value'.
Generally interference is unintentional. Operators of different wireless technology like to ensure a small buffer between their owned spectrum and a different technology. See my other comment about the 700A license elsewhere in this thread. In that case the potential for interference was between DTV and LTE. Read the FCC link, it will explain what was initially claimed.
Nothing technically stops someone with motivation from illegally tampering with spectrum. Years ago I used to carry a small cell jammer that could jam around 10 meters around me ($30 from china). But this behavior is actually enforced against now and I can name at least 2 situations (Florida car commuter guy, and Chicago train commuter guy) where people were prosecuted for jamming spectrum. Some hotels also had equipment to block wifi AP's but they ended up in court too. Fines/penalties are steep for this too, and rightly so since it's tricky to catch. But it's enough to stop someone with a novelty interest (like me) from doing it.
This is the auction to consolidate television broadcasts, to free up some UHF space for other uses. Here's some background beyond what the article says. If anyone has a summary / picture of exactly what frequencies become available and what their bandwidth is, I'd love to see it.
It seems impossible to find what spectrum they have actually sold here, just meaningless bandwidth numbers (I'm happy to sell you 1 GHz of spectrum any time, I'll tell you the carrier).
Apparently it is UHF channel 30-51, or 566-692 MHz.
Actually, UHF TV channels 38-51 (614-698). Channel 37 is the radio astronomy hole which now gets to be part of the guard band between TV and wireless. So in one sense the outcome is fairly optimal in that there is less spectrum wasted on the guard band.
Is there any plan for the FCC to address Wifi issues with spectrum auctions like this?
Right now, Wifi is becoming practically unusable in large apartment complexes or open spaces like conference centers due to the large number of devices competing for spectrum. I'd be interested to hear if there are any FCC plans or open standards that could resolve this.
It is good news that the auction raised less than expected. It shouldn't be auctioned at all. The cell phone providers simply pass on the costs of spectrum to customers. The government should want to make cell phone use as low-cost as possible to encourage its use.
Not really. It tends to lead to a situation where in a particular area you can only use the spectrum that is owned by a service you subscribe to. So if you are on Big Bobs Phonz when it is busy (or you would just like more bandwidth) you can't pay to use Medium Sally's Wavz spectrum without a separate subscription. In rural areas things can get fairly weird, where every major company has to provide coverage (and redundant equipment) to ensure any sort of continuity of service.
So the problems are non-optimal spectrum utilization and pointlessly redundant cell sites.
You could extend the idea of municipal owned last mile broadband to wireless as it is more or less the same problem. But then there would be no point in having spectrum auctions. Governments have gotten used to the money they get for awarding spectrum monopolies so I don't see the municipal wireless idea going anywhere anytime soon.
Spectrum auctions are one of the more famous results of economics theory, and the first thing that people think of when they think of Ronald Coase (who won a Nobel and is up there in the pantheon of 20th century economists).
An extra $20B in income for the Government that the carriers will then spend the better part of the next 10 years recouping through their usual business practices like maintaining quasi-monopolies, ridiculous usage limits, massive over-subscription, anti-net-neutrality practices like "most favored streaming service" and other regressive, growth-inhibiting moves.
There is this "pure capitalist" ring to allocating spectrum through auction but the practical effects have been devastating. It's trading $20B in income now for stifling the growth that dumb, unrestricted, fast mobile pipes would offer to the remainder of the economy.
That's what the regulators told Coase when he proposed auctions.
The problem with this argument is that it presumes spectrum would be allocated productively (or "fairly") in the absence of an auction. But that historically wasn't the case, and isn't the case with any number of other scarce resources doled out by governments.
Even among good-faith claimants, there is competition, obstinacy, incompetence, and waste; those things are fundamental to all of enterprise. That's true of auction winners as well, of course, but at least we're (a) getting revenue for the resource, and (b) forcing people to put their money where their mouth is: you don't write a 9-10-figure check without having at least some earthly clue of how you'll put the thing you bought to use.
Yet we've put a bunch of 2.4 GHz spectrum out there with essentially "here you go, please channel hop, use up to those dBm" and it certainly has been a vastly, vastly more productive use than any single one of those carrier spectrum auctions.
And why did that happen? They probably figured it was worthless to auction given the attenuation. So if something nets minus dollars in your auction scheme but trillions of economic value, hey, I think we're still waiting for some data to come in on this thesis.
This is the reality of light frequencies. We restrict all of them, and have only a whitelist of actually usable open spectrum that everyone crowds in.
What we really need is just a blacklist of low frequencies for emergency coding and military use, while the rest are open. Intentional interference would still be illegal as it is now, because that is a disjoint law independent of whether spectrum is private or public.
Some wireless systems need to work. We cannot lose the lead in a Broadway show, security radio at a major event, time synchronization, air traffic control, or the ability to make a 911 call because someone wants to torrent a TV series in 4k. "Sorry, spectrum is crowded today, go home" is not a viable option for the many businesses and situations that depend on RF the way it is for WiFi in a crowded apartment complex.
Wifi spectrum usage is also managed to a large extent by spatial separation. There are still fairly strict power limits on 2.4GHz devices which ensure that they have a relatively short range, so while your neighbor might interfere with your wifi, neither of you are going to have any effect at all on someone even half a mile away.
> has been a vastly, vastly more productive use than any single one of those carrier spectrum auctions
How much of that productivity is derived from the fact that support costs are externalized? Devices having issues connecting to WiFi, network occasionally disappearing for no good reason, neighbor stepping on your WiFi channel, Roku or PlayStation frequently buffering when playing online video? Tough luck, Google is your friend.
Carriers do not have the luxury of enjoying such laissez-free relationship with paying customers.
Carriers do not have the luxury of enjoying such laissez-free relationship with paying customers.
That has not been my experience. Where I used to live, there was line of sight to multiple towers, presumably enough to get every carrier. Yet service was spotty at best. My monthly data usage was like 70MB or less, not because I dodn't want to use it, but because the 3G speeds were so slow (LTE was even slower and flakier). 30% of the time web pages wouldn't even finish loading.
Yes, this is $20B invested into virtual claims that could be invested into networking assets.
I still remember the exact place I stood in the locker room in 2000 when my manager remarked similar about the €50B auction in Germany in the wake of similar ones across Europe. It struck me odd. Over the next decade he was proven right. The debt load forced a consolidation of carriers and then suppliers. The effects are still visible in balance sheets.
The problem is that the amount bid is not so much a function of reasonable expected profits but more a question of how much money can be raised. Medium to long term profitability risks are discounted by managers as not bidding has an immediate impact on themselves.
I'm a little unclear about this. Is this a lease or a sale? As spectrum is part of the commons, then amortized over forever the price should be, well, infinite.
I guess the analysts don't realize that a lot of these guys don't need tons more spectrum, they just want to prevent others from using it.
Don't worry though, our FCC chief is on it: "FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the closing of bidding is a "major milestone," adding the spectrum will boost wireless service."
No idea how, since even with the fcc rules around use, they'll do pretty much nothing.
Hey, you know what also would have boosted it? Having the people who actually gave a crap, and were trying to make wireless available to everyone by using this, do it. Or worse, we'll see wonderful devices that only work with specific carriers.
To be fair though, congress literally forced them to auction it after massive lobbying from telcos and isps. I'm sure though, that those same congressman will not remember to ask why the hell the auction did so badly if they needed the spectrum so much.
This spectrum all would have been better off in the hands of people trying to actually boost our economy, and it would have been worth a lot more in 20b to help free people from the iron grip of broadband non-competition.