Wireless/Mobile Service Companies
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<img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-49085" title="hotspot_story" src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/business/2012/04/hotspot_story-660x495.jpg" alt="" width="660" height="495" /> As a former tech entrepreneur and a co-founder of Nextel, people often assume I know everything there is to know about spectrum. The fact is, I don’t. But what I do know is that esoteric debates about the government’s spectrum policy have a profound effect on innovation. Let’s face it: Spectrum is a dry topic.
Why Spectrum Matters | Epicenter
MIT Technology Review Major carriers, arguing that their networks are clogged with smart-phone and tablet traffic, are increasingly implementing data throttling, the practice of targeting heavy users by slowing down data-transfer speeds. Now a gadget invented at Bell Labs—a programmable, pint-sized transmitter that requires no new traditional cell towers—could rapidly add capacity and thus help avoid data bottlenecks.
Tiny Transmitters Could Help Avert Data Throttling
5G technology is going to bring a wireless Internet of 'things,' rather than just phones and tablets. BARCELONA, Spain (CNNMoney) -- Just as consumers are wrapping their heads around 4G, the wireless industry is thinking ahead to 5G. Soaring smartphone and tablet sales mean networks are growing clogged with cellular data traffic . For the time being, 4G technology can help relieve the congestion. Modern networks are able to cram more data into their airwaves than older technologies can.
Start thinking about 5G wireless - Mar. 8
Spectrum Crunch: The cell phone industry hits its limits - Feb. 21
This is part one of a week-long series on the cell phone capacity crunch. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The U.S. mobile phone industry is running out of the airwaves necessary to provide voice, text and Internet services to its customers. The problem, known as the " spectrum crunch ," threatens to increase the number of dropped calls, slow down data speeds and raise customers' prices. It will also whittle down the nation's number of wireless carriers and create a deeper financial divide between those companies that have capacity and those that don't.
The U.S. Justice Department allowed the sale of unused airwaves from Comcast and other cable companies to Verizon Wireless Thursday. Originally announced in December of last year , regulators raised anti-competitive concerns over the unprecedented purchase, specifically because it would allow Verizon and cable companies to cross-sell services. The rationale: If they were permitted to do so, then they would be able to drive up prices and drive out the competition for services.
U.S. Approves Verizon-Cable Spectrum Deal, With Restrictions
Spectrum is going to be a hot issue in the upcoming year. Freeing up spectrum is a major part of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) National Broadband Plan, and last week Congress passed a law allowing TV stations to auction their spectrum to the highest bidding wireless broadband companies. But what is spectrum , you wonder?
Everything You Need to Know About Wireless Spectrum [INFOGRAPHIC]
Why your cell phone bill is going up - Feb. 23
Cell phone bills are going up as a result of increased demand and a spectrum crunch that is limited the supply of wireless data bandwidth. This is part three of a week-long series on the cell phone capacity crunch. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Has your mobile phone bill jumped this past year?Big wireless carriers are all hunting for spectrum -- which often means buying out their rivals. This is part two of a week-long series on the cell phone capacity crunch. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- As airwaves become scarce, the spectrum crunch is turning a field of "haves" and "have-nots" into a sharply divided set of winners and losers. Those carriers with the biggest batches of high-quality spectrum have more bandwidth to satisfy customers' growing demands for mobile phone calls, texts and Internet usage.
Spectrum crunch is creating wireless carrier mergers - Feb. 22
Solutions to the spectrum crunch: Staving off the apocalypse - Feb. 24
The wireless industry is facing a capacity crunch. There is no perfect solution, but here are some actions carriers are taking to avoid a spectrum crisis. This is part four of a week-long series the cell phone capacity crunch. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It's easy to get frustrated about the effects of the spectrum crunch .
FCC Chair: U.S. Needs 'Spectrum Policy Innovation'
Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), told attendees of the GSMA Mobile World Congress on Monday that the U.S. needs to "enter the next era of spectrum innovation." In his address, Genachowski credited two former "major policy innovations" with creating economic value for people across the world: spectrum auctions and the freeing up of "junk band" spectrum for unlicensed use. A spectrum auction allows the government to sell the right to broadcast on certain frequencies to the highest bidding company in an open auction. According to Genachowski, these auctions raised more than $50 billion in revenue and created "more than 10 times that much" in other benefits. "Junk bands" are so called because they're heavily polluted, making them useless for communication over long distances. However, when the FCC freed them up for unlicensed use about 25 years ago, an unexpected thing happened - innovation.LightSquared, Would-Be New Cell Provider, Fights FCC Ban
LightSquared, a planned U.S. nationwide cell carrier, has been blocked by the FCC due to the interference its signal causes to GPS devices. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, or NTIA, announced late Tuesday that LightSquared's network can result in GPS glitches, regardless of planned fixes by the carrier's engineers. In a statement following the NTIA's report, the FCC said that it was committed to freeing spectrum for new mobile carriers, but it told LightSquared from the start that "harmful interference to GPS should not be permitted" and announced it would be halting the activation of the company's network "indefinitely."LightSquared blew it, and here's why | Mobile
LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja delivers a speech at CTIA 2011. (Credit: CNET/Marguerite Reardon) LightSquared today fired back at the Federal Communications Commission, saying the agency's decision to squash the company's planned wireless network would harm the American public. But it appears to be too little, too late for the embattled company.Igor Faletski is the CEO of Mobify , a web platform that optimizes ecommerce and publishing sites for mobile and powers more than 20,000 sites. Remember when it took 23 clicks to find movie showtimes on your mobile phone? While that may seem like an eon ago, in reality it’s just been a few short years. The mobile evolution has been advancing at a break-neck pace.
5 Paradoxes Shaping the Future of Mobile Commerce
Your Bandwidth Will Be Throttled. Here's Why
The days of all-you-can eat mobile bandwidth are already ending, and landline broadband could soon follow suit. You, my data-hungry friend, my not be ready for it, but your Cookie Monster-like habit of gobbling up data has made this a certainty. You may rail at the injustice of it all, but that won't stop it from happening. AT&T has promised to start throttling the top 5 percent—their heaviest data users. It began sending out texts last week to inform those users that the time had come to occasionally reduce their 3G speeds down to 2G (that is, the molasses-like Edge network).Rogers has promised to stop "throttling" internet traffic on its network by the end of this year, in response to an investigation by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. In a letter to the CRTC Friday, Rogers stated it would stop all traffic shaping including bandwidth throttling — limiting a user's upload or download speeds — through a phased-in approach that is to begin next month. "New technologies and ongoing investments in network capacity will allow Rogers to begin phasing out that policy starting in March 2012," wrote Kenneth Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs. "These changes will be introduced to half of Rogers existing internet customers by June 2012 and to its remaining customers by December 2012."