Why Spectrum Matters | Epicenter. 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.
Few members of Congress spend much time thinking about it. These days, though, we all spend a lot of time talking about jobs. And every mobile technology and most major startup companies in the last 20 years could not have taken off without the use of spectrum in some form. Like land or pockets of natural gas, spectrum is a valuable limited resource. Smartphone users in major metropolitan areas eagerly purchase the latest mobile devices with their ever-growing capabilities, even as wireless network providers struggle to keep up with unanticipated demands for data. Like land or pockets of natural gas, spectrum is a valuable limited resource. Photo: Wifi! Opinion Editor: John C. Tiny Transmitters Could Help Avert Data Throttling.
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.
The gadgets are known as light radio cubes. Measuring just six centimeters on each side, they are miniature transmitters and receivers that can be programmed to work flexibly in different contexts to add capacity. Two devices together can serve a compact area such as a stadium or train station—handling just as much traffic, in that compact area, as a whole cell tower can serve a wider area. A cluster of 10 to 20 of them can form an array that replaces the transmitters atop a typical cell tower.
The demands on mobile networks are expected to explode over the next four years. Start thinking about 5G wireless - Mar. 8. 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. But soon, even 4G's efficiencies won't be enough. By 2020, industry analysts say the amount of cellular traffic created by smartphones and tablets will be dwarfed by the data generated from the world of connected "things. " That's a big problem for wireless carriers, which are hitting a point of diminishing returns on their network efficiency improvements. Any further improvements will be incremental, at best. Take LTE-Advanced. So what can 5G offer that 4G can't? So when will 5G be ready? AT&T CEO pay docked $2 million for T-Mobile debacle - Feb. 22. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson's paycheck is $2 million lighter because of his failed T-Mobile takeover bid.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- What's the cost of a $4 billion gamble gone wrong? For AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, the answer is, "$2 million. " That's the sum by which AT&T's board cut his 2011 compensation as a direct response to the failed T-Mobile takeover bid Stephenson led last year. AT&T offered $39 billion for T-Mobile, a deal that would have eliminated the fourth-biggest wireless carrier in the U.S. and made AT&T the nation's biggest by far. But the arrangement was a risky one that all sides knew would face heavy regulatory scrutiny. To entice T-Mobile to roll the dice, AT&T (T, Fortune 500) offered a whopping breakup fee: It agreed to pay T-Mobile $3 billion if the deal didn't go through, plus hand over another $1 billion worth of spectrum.
That's exactly what happened. Stephenson swung for the fences -- and missed. Stephenson still took home a pretty rich package. 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. Wireless spectrum -- the invisible infrastructure over which all wireless transmissions travel -- is a finite resource.
When, exactly, we'll hit the wall is the subject of intense debate, but almost everyone in the industry agrees that a crunch is coming. The U.S. still has a slight spectrum surplus. "Network traffic is increasing," says an official at the FCC's wireless bureau. How did we get here? The good news is that there are ways to buy time. U.S. Approves Verizon-Cable Spectrum Deal, With Restrictions. 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.
To calm those concerns, heavy restrictions on the deal prevent the companies from selling each other’s services in FiOS markets. “A rigorous review by the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice staffs revealed that the deal as proposed by Verizon Wireless and the cable company owners of SpectrumCo posed serious concerns, including in the wired and wireless broadband and video marketplaces,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement. Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C. Everything You Need to Know About Wireless Spectrum [INFOGRAPHIC] 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? I'm glad you asked. All wireless signals — TV, radio, GPS and, yes,mobile broadband — fly through the air on public, invisible signals called spectrum. Spectrum is most easily recognizable when you tune your car radio: is your favorite local station, say, 101.3 FM? In the U.S., part of the FCC's job is to ensure that no two signals are being broadcast on the same slice of spectrum in the same geographic area. Spectrum is such a crucial issue right now because it's finite — there are only so many available frequencies with which to broadcast in a given area. Want to learn more about spectrum? Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, PashaIgnatov. 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? Get used to it. Demand for wireless data services is soaring, forcing carriers to invest massively to keep up. Both approaches cost billions. Those expenses are getting transferred to you, the consumer. "The insatiable thirst for mobile broadband is going to force all of us to pay more," says Dan Hays, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers' consultancy. The price creep is already happening. Carriers are working the edges, too. The providers are also trying to contain their costs by curbing consumption. In 2010, AT&T (T, Fortune 500) became the first national carrier to switch to a tiered pricing model, charging customers for the amount of data they use.
There are tiny signs of that paying off. Spectrum crunch is creating wireless carrier mergers - Feb. 22. 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. That means fewer dropped calls and faster download speeds. Those that don't? "Wireless operators have to decide whether they spend money acquiring new spectrum or building tens of thousands of new cell sites all over the country," says Dan Hays, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers' consultancy. Both of those options cost billions. That can also cost billions, but it's a turn-key solution. There's just one glaring problem with that scenario: Regulators hate it. That leaves Dish. 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. Higher bills, fewer choices, and dismal service are enough to make even the casual cell phone customer furious. Making things worse, none of the solutions for easing the spectrum shortage are inexpensive or easy.
The good news, though, is that options exist -- and carriers understand that doing nothing would be disastrous. Reusing spectrum: One way to relieve capacity jams is "cell splitting," which involves either adding more cell sites or adding more radios to existing sites to increase the number of connections that a network can handle. The problem is that it's expensive and tricky. There are, however, some innovative solutions being developed. The tactic is working. 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. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, PashaIgnatov. 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. " "There is no practical way to mitigate potential interference at this time," said Tammy Sun, a spokeswoman for the FCC.
The problem is that LightSquared uses a swath of spectrum that sits just beside GPS signals. Major GPS providers, such as Garmin, have fought against LightSquared's approval. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, 7000. LightSquared blew it, and here's why | Mobile. 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. The start-up wireless provider was dealt a fatal blow yesterday when the FCC suspended a key waiver that would have allowed it to build its 4G network , citing concerns over potential interference with critical GPS equipment. The denial of the waiver effectively turned the company into the walking dead. While the FCC may have officially stamped out LightSquared's hopes yesterday, the company's fate was sealed a long time ago.
The company failed to play the political game well and let its opponents control the debate. By the time LightSquared got proactive in defending itself, much of the concerns had sunk in. LightSquared had also lashed out at opponents with claims of conspiracy theories, which didn't endear itself to its allies. 5 Paradoxes Shaping the Future of Mobile Commerce. 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. “Mobile is ramping up faster than any other technology we have seen in the past,” says Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins.
Mobile web adoption is happening eight times faster than traditional web adoption in the late '90s. With that growth comes a new set of user behaviors and consumer trends. 1. My company powers about 20,000 ecommerce sites. While multiple factors contribute to this data, the most important may be the power of the tablet, which has quickly emerged as the third digital screen in consumers' lives, in addition to desktops and smartphones.
The moral of the story for retailers? 2. 3. 4. 5. Looking Down the Road. 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). Those who received these data notes, however, seemed shocked to learn they're among the top 5 percent: those who use more than 2 GB of data a month.
One user, Fox News anchor Shep Smith, was apoplectic. Smith could not get his head around how he used so much data. You could say AT&T was brave in its transparency. What’s driving this growth? Location, Location, Location These small acts eat data. Photos Email The Cloud. Rogers promises to end internet throttling - Technology & Science.