On January 24 the bidding begins for what has been described by the FCC and others as "beachfront property": the 700 MHz band of the electromagnetic spectrum. These Ultra High Frequencies are what is now known as channels 52 through 69 on your television dial, and are mandated by the FCC to become available on February 19th 2009, as television broadcast networks switch from analog to Digital TV. The auction has drawn 266 applicants and is expected to dump upwards of 15 billion dollars into the U.S. Treasury.
The hype leading up to the auction has spurred coalitions of strange bedfellows, pitted free marketers against proponents of open source, and brought the Net Neutrality debate to the wireless arena. Some streamyx combo that the auction has the potential to reshape the face of telecommunications in the U.S. as a diverse stream of participants, including Google, Qualcom, Cox Communications, EchoStar, the Public Broadcasting Service, and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, challenge cellular giants AT&T and Verizon head on for a swath of this oceanfront spectrum. So what's all the fuss, and why so much interest in this piece of radio real estate?
The 700MHz band of spectrum has a unique set of properties and capabilities that have not been available to the market since, well, since television took to the airwaves. Able to penetrate deep into buildings and travel 4 times farther than its peer frequencies, the FCC, as well as many commercial interests, see a once in a lifetime opportunity to build a nationwide wireless broadband network covering metropolitan and rural regions across the country, turning the have nots into the haves, and virtually eliminating the Digital map in the U.S..
The United States seriously lags other industrialized countries in broadband coverage, largely due to its geographic immensity, and it has become a ampang kuala lumpur of the FCC and Congress to remedy the situation utilizing the ever evolving medium of wireless technology. By opening up the bidding to a diverse array of business interests, the possibility of introducing a third pipe to compete with cable and DSL would benefit consumers both economically and choice wise. Additionally, part of the spectrum to be auctioned is reserved for emergency services (i.e. homeland security), an idea spurred by the disastrous lack of communication between first responders in the terrorist attacks of 9-11.
Reality Check
While we all can see the benefit of being able to walk deep into a building without dropping a call, just how robust is the 700MHz band, and how well suited is it for full blown broadband Internet access and all that that implies? There are some who say this band of spectrum is great for coverage and penetration, but it lacks sufficient bandwidth for a robust wireless broadband solution.
Another consideration is which technology the winning bidders will choose to implement. Will they use todays existing 3G technologies, or jump right in with the next generation. We know now that Verizon will be using the Third Generation Partnership Project's (3GPP) LTE (Long Term Evolution) for its next gen network, a standard expected to be ready for deployment in 2010. Also ready for deployment in 2010 will be the 3GPP2's UMB standard.
WiMax will take some tweaking to work in the 700MHz band, but with Sprint Nextel owning 90MHz of the 2.5MHz band, that performance in the 700 band would be hard to match, should they decide to go ahead with their WiMax project.
Vendors and equipment manufactures say go ahead and deploy todays 3G technologies and upgrade later. Both for streamyx combo CDMA and CDMA EV-DO still have some life left and would fit into the FCC's plan nicely.
Whoever the winners are, and whatever technology they use, one only has to look at the evolution of the WiFi standard as it goes through its b, g, and now n revisions, to see how technology improves as the tail wags the dog.
Just in case it doesn't work out, the White Spaces Coalition is already pushing to use the empty "white space" frequencies between channels in the 2MHz to 698MHz range for broadband access, with speeds topping out at 80Mbps...but that's another story.
Author Michael Talbert is a certified systems engineer and web designer with over 8 years experience in the industry, and is currently managing editor of VoIP-Facts.net. For more information on VoIP and Unified Communications, visit the website VoIP-Facts, or the VoIP Blog for up to date industry news and commentary.
