I’m doing some research on this topic (i.e. asking lots of people). The general view seems to be that the C Block will be LTE.

WiMax .16e FDD is possible if a new entrant wins, with an upgrade to .16m.

No one seems to fancy UMB much, mostly due to IPR and ecosystems issues rather than technology.

None of these technologies will be commercially ready by 2009 or even 2010. As we know, it always takes longer than advertised to introduce a new mobile radio technology.

I asked about public safety because I’d assume you need more mature, tested technology. I guess it’ll be a question timing and when the network will actually get funded and then roll-out.

It’d be interesting to see public safety pioneer a new commercial mobile broadband technology — but that’s just seems unlikely.

I’m still doing the research, so my view may change.

I plan on checking back to what humorous “insights” will be presented for the open access provisions on the C-Block.

Any thoughts on what technology might be used in the public safety bands?

And how that might be influenced by whoever wins the D Block?

EV-DO looks the best bet for fast deployment (and is used more often by public safety groups in the U.S. than W-CDMA).

But since there’s the possibility of 10 x 10 deployment could you see some kind of next-gen OFDMA being used?

Every operator I know would trade walled-garden feature revenue (which outside of SMS is less than 5% of revenue) for shorter time-to-market for new phones. Mobile has always been a phone driven market.

Up until now, locked phones with proprietary walled-garden functions hasn’t created a time-to-market disadvantage. Witness the new Moto RAZR2. Even though they all have different OS, Apps and network services, they are released in sync. Why? It’s not because the major operators and Moto have conspired, but because Moto gave them all plenty of lead time and none of them wanted to appear behind the other.

Can you imagine VZ (or whoever on the D-block) being willing to release a device 6 months later than Sprint/Google/Intel (or whoever on the C-block) because they needed to get approval from DHS to put it on their shared closed network? I just can’t imagine it.

The DHS will definitely need to certify every public safety device (or at least the manufacturer). If they create a closed “custom” network, DHS will also need to certify every single consumer device to ensure interoperability.

This will present the private company a delima. They can’t afford to constantly negotiate with DHS to add new consumer features. The better answer is to pick an open standard, and agree that anything that meets a certain version of a published spec can be deployed. Obviously, DHS would still certify public safety devices for robustness and unique value added function.

The private company would be motivated to add value outside of the network to improve time to market. This is where Frontline failed in its explanation of its wholesale requirement. In their first plan document, Frontline said wholesale was needed, because operating a retail service would be a “distraction.” They needed to say, “creating an open network design would firewall the public safety network from retail services.”

While AWS spectrum is great — it would be EVEN GREATER if some of it were useable WITHOUT HAVING TO PAY LICENSES.

Of course the National Association of Broadcaster is FIGHTING it because they are concerned that ANYBODY could compete with them with a low barrier to entry. Of course that isn’t what their argument is. Their ARGUMENT is that it would interferre with DTV broadcast. Yeah, that’s what they said about cordless phones in the 700MHz range and that’s what they said about CABLE, etc….

Let’s FACE IT, un-licensed operations (like WiFi) HAVE BENEFITED TELECOM OPERATORS MORE THAN IT HAS HURT THEM. It’s added FUEL to the ADDICITION OF BANDWIDTH EVERYWHERE. So when it isn’t there PEOPLE PAY FOR IT OVER MORE EXPENSIVE NETWORKS. It’s called the “net” effect. Get it “net”?