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.
