American Cellular Companies Clamor For Fresh Spectrum 103
alphadogg writes "No one will ever say that America's wireless carriers are too proud to beg. This year's Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association Wireless trade show in New Orleans seemed less like an industry gathering at times and more like an infomercial dedicated to forcing the government's hand to free up more spectrum. Start with CTIA President and CEO Steve Largent, who dedicated the vast majority of his introductory keynote address to discussing the challenges carriers will face if they don't get fresh spectrum to use within the next few years. Execs from T-Mobile, Verizon and others also beat the drum. Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead, for example, said: 'Innovation is at risk today due to the spectrum shortage that we face. If additional spectrum is not available in the near-term, mobile data will exceed capacity by 2015.'"
Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Interesting)
At some point it will depend on your definition of efficiency.
At the moment none of the four major carriers in the US are using common protocols and frequencies for G3 service and above. They may be using some frequencies in common, or some protocols in common, but to differentiate their services, they don't use common protocols. A side effect of this is that you can take a walk with three other people, each of you using a different provider's phone, and walk through almost any major metro area, and see different carriers signal levels fluctuating all over the place. It's nearly impossible to roam on other carriers services, and almost no-one is providing general coverage service outside of major metro areas. In some parts of the US, you are better off having an Iridium phone than anything from a cellular carrier.
Yes, each carrier is working hard to provide solid coverage in the metro areas, but it's not going to happen. The frequencies that provide the best reach into where the customer is are either already in use, or don't have sufficient capacity for high bandwidth. 700mhz may seem like a magic bullet, but remember that a TV channel has about enough bandwidth for 45 mbps, one way, and to spread that across 100 customers for a cell (or worse) means that no-one is going to see 500 kbps, or less than 60kB/s. To get higher throughput, you have to go to higher frequencies. And higher frequencies don't reach into buildings as well. Great coverage out on the street, perhaps, but that reflective surface on the window to keep the temperature down in the glass building does a serious number on signal reception.
And since 800mhz analog has been eliminated, there are a lot of towers across the US that it just didn't make economic sense to convert to digital service. That may start changing if the FCC mandates that the only way that they are going to open more spectrum is if there is broader distribution of coverage across the US. But I'm not going to hold my breath for that. I figure the likelyhood of that is right up there with the FCC mandating that US carriers all start using common protocols and allow users to use any new phone on the market with any carrier, at the phone's best transfer rate. I just don't see it happening.
New Spectrum - New Terms (Score:4, Interesting)
Howabout the people elected to look out for the public interest take this opportunity to make sure that the lessons of the last decade or so are applied to any new spectrum licenses?
After all, if these businesses are desperate for what we have, we should use that leverage to negotiate the best possible deal. I'm thinking real net neutrality (not neutered neutrality), better inter-carrier interoperability (like all new spectrum must be used for only one type of signalling, say GSM only) and lets throw in a requirement that all phones which operate on the new spectrum can not be carrier-locked either. And that's in addition to what Google was able to wrangle on the last spectrum auction which required that the wireless telcos must also accept 3rd parrty devices on their networks.
Re:Mobile Data cant exceed capacity (Score:5, Interesting)
Once you reach capacity, you've reached capacity, you can't go any higher than that
Yeah, but the US carriers are doing it wrong. How is it that with the same or less bandwidth available, carriers in Europe and Canada are able to deal with the same or higher subscriber density?
No, really. Look at the cellular spectrum situation in a country like Germany or France, and look at the number of complaints you hear about dropped calls or not enough speed available in Berlin or Paris. You don't hear about it at all.
Canada may have a smaller population, but there's really only four cellular networks in Toronto, which is in the top five biggest cities in North America, and probably 90% of the subscribers are using one of two networks: Rogers and Bell. And those two networks are using the same frequencies and technologies. (well, the Bell network has sympathetic CDMA/HSPA, but they're 3 years into a switch over to 100% HSPA, and most of their customers already have HSPA devices). We're talking more than 2 million cell phones in a geographic area not much bigger than the city of Washington, DC, not to mention the commuters who aren't actually counted as part of Toronto's population, and they're *all* using 850/1900 HPSA, and yet somehow the carriers aren't complaining that there's not enough bandwidth.
No. It's not that there's not enough bandwidth available in the US, it's that the carriers are doing it wrong.
(and my apologies to our European friends, but I live in Canada, and work in the telecomm industry, so I speak about what I know).
Re:Mobile Data cant exceed capacity (Score:5, Interesting)
Totally correct; In Germany it's 3GB on a no-contract no-commitment prepaid SIM for €20/mo. (if you go over, you still get service, but 56k-ish speeds)
This is on the Deutsche Telekom network, probably the best in that market.
MORE importantly, in lower-use cases, you can get 200MB/500MB/1GB for €8/10/13 per month. Most users in the US really use little data, and have to pay out the ass for mandatory 'data plans'. This is where the real theft is in this FreedomLand scam.