Comments on: Reader Question: 700 MHz & The Buildout http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/ The Business of Technology Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:30:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=MU hourly 1 By: Venkatesh http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-764848 Venkatesh Tue, 11 Dec 2007 08:59:28 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-764848 <p>Qualcomm already owns a part of the spectrum and uses it for its mediaflo technology. Its being used as a part of the Verizon VCast offering. AT&T is current running trials to use this technology. The current technology is more suited for broad-casting than up-casting.</p> <p>About the gear being already in place. Its not in place with regards to mobility applications. It was there for traditional broadcasting and people moved away from it, not without a reason.</p> Qualcomm already owns a part of the spectrum and uses it for its mediaflo technology. Its being used as a part of the Verizon VCast offering. AT&T is current running trials to use this technology. The current technology is more suited for broad-casting than up-casting.

About the gear being already in place. Its not in place with regards to mobility applications. It was there for traditional broadcasting and people moved away from it, not without a reason.

]]> By: robert http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-764324 robert Tue, 11 Dec 2007 04:09:11 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-764324 <p>This begs the question that i have had for years, i too am not a rf engineer, but have always been curious about the cellular foot print....it would seem since sprint, att, etc....own their slice of spectrum and it is a distributed network, why cant they distribute the tower all the way down to the house via a wifi like set top? it would take a great deal of load off the tower giving it more capacity....just a thought that tickles the brain......</p> This begs the question that i have had for years, i too am not a rf engineer, but have always been curious about the cellular foot print….it would seem since sprint, att, etc….own their slice of spectrum and it is a distributed network, why cant they distribute the tower all the way down to the house via a wifi like set top? it would take a great deal of load off the tower giving it more capacity….just a thought that tickles the brain……

]]> By: RickMahn.com » Blog Archive » links for 2007-12-10 http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-762219 RickMahn.com » Blog Archive » links for 2007-12-10 Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:25:58 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-762219 <p>[...] Reader Question: 700 MHz & The Buildout - GigaOM Om asks some good questions about the buildout costs of a 700MHz network here in the U.S. (tags: wireless communications technology google om-malik giga-om) [...]</p> [...] Reader Question: 700 MHz & The Buildout - GigaOM Om asks some good questions about the buildout costs of a 700MHz network here in the U.S. (tags: wireless communications technology google om-malik giga-om) [...]

]]> By: Ignacio Berberana http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-762064 Ignacio Berberana Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:52:31 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-762064 <p>So many reasons for this not to be possible. A few more to those already indicated:</p> <ul> <li>The television antennas are much better than those that can be incorporated in a PC or in a portable device. They are usually located in favourable places (p.e., roofs) and are fixed, pointing to the transmitting station. Having television coverage does not mean that mobile or portable coverage is guaranteed.</li> <li>TV stations do not incorporate receiving equipment. Also, a number of functions required for an efficient operation of a cell system are not present: power control, handover support, etc. So you would have to spend some serious money upgrading TV stations.</li> </ul> So many reasons for this not to be possible. A few more to those already indicated:

  • The television antennas are much better than those that can be incorporated in a PC or in a portable device. They are usually located in favourable places (p.e., roofs) and are fixed, pointing to the transmitting station. Having television coverage does not mean that mobile or portable coverage is guaranteed.
  • TV stations do not incorporate receiving equipment. Also, a number of functions required for an efficient operation of a cell system are not present: power control, handover support, etc. So you would have to spend some serious money upgrading TV stations.
]]> By: Om Malik http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-761800 Om Malik Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:23:28 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-761800 <p>Another gentle reader sent this in via email:</p> <blockquote>The biggest issue with any two-way low powered radiotelephone system is the upstream power you can provide. Television station antenna/broadcast towers are used to spew data (in the case of HDTV) out at 200,000 Watts. They don't receive anything. A handset transmits at well less than a Watt typically, which travels all of about a mile or two in best circumstances. The reason you see mobile towers everywhere is because you don't need or want a lot of height. Channels are limited in capacity and throughput, if everyone saw a cell and tried to talk on it the whole network would come crashing down in a sea of unused bits. Simply put you can't reuse infrastructure from high-power broadcast applications in a low-power 2-way application. It won't work in a crowded urban environment.</blockquote> Another gentle reader sent this in via email:

The biggest issue with any two-way low powered
radiotelephone system is the upstream power you can provide.
Television station antenna/broadcast towers are used to spew data (in
the case of HDTV) out at 200,000 Watts. They don’t receive anything. A
handset transmits at well less than a Watt typically, which travels
all of about a mile or two in best circumstances. The reason you see
mobile towers everywhere is because you don’t need or want a lot of
height. Channels are limited in capacity and throughput, if everyone
saw a cell and tried to talk on it the whole network would come
crashing down in a sea of unused bits.

Simply put you can’t reuse infrastructure from high-power broadcast
applications in a low-power 2-way application. It won’t work in a
crowded urban environment.

]]> By: Scott Goldman http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-761244 Scott Goldman Mon, 10 Dec 2007 03:34:07 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-761244 <p>While it sounds good in principle, the fact is that the towers are nowhere near close enough to each other to create a functional cell-like system. TV broadcasters transmitted their signals at significantly greater power than mobile devices will and, as a result, the systems will need many, many more cell sites (towers) than currently exist on these systems. They are also located at much higher heights and have larger antennas than the devices that they would be servicing; from a sheer radio physics standpoint these towers would be a good start but wouldn't come anywhere close to providing all of the coverage that an operator of a wireless system would need.</p> <p>The other factor is the capacity... the thing that gives a cellular system its enormous capacity is the ability to reuse spectrum. Having a single tower eliminates any reuse and thus drastically reduces the number of devices that an operator could service.</p> While it sounds good in principle, the fact is that the towers are nowhere near close enough to each other to create a functional cell-like system. TV broadcasters transmitted their signals at significantly greater power than mobile devices will and, as a result, the systems will need many, many more cell sites (towers) than currently exist on these systems. They are also located at much higher heights and have larger antennas than the devices that they would be servicing; from a sheer radio physics standpoint these towers would be a good start but wouldn’t come anywhere close to providing all of the coverage that an operator of a wireless system would need.

The other factor is the capacity… the thing that gives a cellular system its enormous capacity is the ability to reuse spectrum. Having a single tower eliminates any reuse and thus drastically reduces the number of devices that an operator could service.

]]> By: Rob La Gesse http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-761156 Rob La Gesse Mon, 10 Dec 2007 02:23:33 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-761156 <p>The towers are there - and you can assume they are dispersed correctly to cover most of the country. Using the existing towers and contracts with the land-owners would actually significantly reduce build out costs and shorten the time to market.</p> <p>So while the back-end equipment needs replaced, and the antennas may need changing, there is still a potentially huge cost savings in using the existing infrastructure.</p> <p>Rob</p> The towers are there - and you can assume they are dispersed correctly to cover most of the country. Using the existing towers and contracts with the land-owners would actually significantly reduce build out costs and shorten the time to market.

So while the back-end equipment needs replaced, and the antennas may need changing, there is still a potentially huge cost savings in using the existing infrastructure.

Rob

]]> By: Matt Terenzio http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-761138 Matt Terenzio Mon, 10 Dec 2007 02:10:21 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-761138 <p>I'm not an expert on Radio/TV by any means, though I am a licensed Amateur Radio technician. However, high speed packet radio has been discussed for years</p> <p>http://www.qsl.net/vk3jed/future.html</p> <p>So what you are suggesting seems entirely possible, though a discussion with Doc Searls led me to believe that there wasn't enough spectrum to handle it all, but I never did enough research to verify that.</p> <p>Also read this Wikipedia page about packet radio and pay attention to the talk of bulletin boards.</p> <p>I often think that in the case of a global internet online disaster (if a serious disruption in line transmissions occurred), the world would still communicate via the free spectrum, but with computers, not voice as they did in the last century.</p> <p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio</p> <p>But one thing seems for certain, the spectrum we do have will be used for much differnt things in the future. It's too valuable to waster on one way TV transmission, I would think.</p> <p>Perhaps Twitter apps like the one I built yesterday will be the emergency communications devices of the future, and take place over radio, not lines. Ehhhhhhh. Could be! http://atlocals.com</p> I’m not an expert on Radio/TV by any means, though I am a licensed Amateur Radio technician. However, high speed packet radio has been discussed for years

(link)

So what you are suggesting seems entirely possible, though a discussion with Doc Searls led me to believe that there wasn’t enough spectrum to handle it all, but I never did enough research to verify that.

Also read this Wikipedia page about packet radio and pay attention to the talk of bulletin boards.

I often think that in the case of a global internet online disaster (if a serious disruption in line transmissions occurred), the world would still communicate via the free spectrum, but with computers, not voice as they did in the last century.

(link)

But one thing seems for certain, the spectrum we do have will be used for much differnt things in the future. It’s too valuable to waster on one way TV transmission, I would think.

Perhaps Twitter apps like the one I built yesterday will be the emergency communications devices of the future, and take place over radio, not lines. Ehhhhhhh. Could be! (link)

]]> By: Mike Sullivan http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-761083 Mike Sullivan Mon, 10 Dec 2007 01:29:35 +0000 http://gigaom.com/2007/12/09/reader-question-700-mhz-the-buildout/#comment-761083 <p>Most 700 MHz networks will likely rely on an architecture similar to a cellular system -- numerous smaller towers or antennas on buildings -- in order to reuse the spectrum many times in a metro area, an architecture that also facilitates receiving uplinked communications from low-powered subscriber units. TV stations, by contrast use a high-power, tall-tower in order to get a single uniform signal spread across as wide an area as possible. That arrangement is not an efficient way to engineer a high-capacity two-way network. However, it may well be a good way to engineer broadcast-like broadband networks that are beaming encoded video out over a metro area, as Qualcomm is doing using its 700 MHz licenses for the former TV channel 55. But this is unlikely to be used for networks oriented toward broadband access.</p> Most 700 MHz networks will likely rely on an architecture similar to a cellular system — numerous smaller towers or antennas on buildings — in order to reuse the spectrum many times in a metro area, an architecture that also facilitates receiving uplinked communications from low-powered subscriber units. TV stations, by contrast use a high-power, tall-tower in order to get a single uniform signal spread across as wide an area as possible. That arrangement is not an efficient way to engineer a high-capacity two-way network. However, it may well be a good way to engineer broadcast-like broadband networks that are beaming encoded video out over a metro area, as Qualcomm is doing using its 700 MHz licenses for the former TV channel 55. But this is unlikely to be used for networks oriented toward broadband access.

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