Deploying any kind of service on WCS has been cluster-you-know-what for any operator that has made the attempt. ExtremeTech provides an excellent description of the problems of making WCS workable for mobile broadband:

WCS licenses were auctioned off by the FCC in 1997. The FCC hoped that it would be used rather quickly, but the restrictions that WCS imposed on licensees caused issues. For one, the power and emissions restrictions made it nearly impossible to deploy any sort of terrestrial network technology.

The other issue was that satellite radio (officially known as the Satellite Digital Audio Radio Service, or SDARS) lived in between two halves of the WCS frequency range. That meant that terrestrial network technologies would easily block out satellite radio signals from receivers. This alone has severely paralyzed efforts to make the WCS frequencies usable.

AT&T and BellSouth, which was eventually acquired by Ma Bell, experimented with the band for years, launching trial pre-standard WiMAX networks in several markets (Oddly, one of those markets was Pahrump, Nev., the brothel capital of the U.S.). But neither company could make the technology work, and both were constantly running up against the protests of Sirius and XM, which themselves merged in 2008.

But apparently these old antagonists have come to an accord. From the FCC filing:

In order to resolve these issues, AT&T and Sirius XM met to discuss whether their differences could be bridged and have reached an accommodation with significant concessions on both sides. The accommodation, if accepted in its entirety, will enable the adoption of technical rules satisfactory to both interests and allow licenses in the 2.3 GHz band to exploit the most efficient new mobile broadband standards, including LTE, while limiting the potential interference to satellite radio reception to respectable levels.

The major concession appears to be on AT&T’s part. The carrier has agreed to carve out a 5 MHz guard band on either side of Sirius’s satellite spectrum, creating in essence a no-man’s zone where no transmissions can travel. That’s quite a big deal actually: As little as 10 MHz can support a full-fledged HSPA network and is equivalent to half the LTE capacity AT&T has deployed in most markets.

But AT&T figures it is better than not being able to use the spectrum at all — and risk losing it. In fact, AT&T has been trying to sell off the same WCS airwaves it now proposes to make guard bands.

If the FCC grants AT&T’s request it will be left with between 10 and 20 MHz of remaining spectrum over which to launch LTE. It may seem like a win for all parties involved, but this won’t be an automatic approval for the FCC. AT&T is the largest spectrum holder in WCS, but there are other licensees that could potentially get screwed by this proposal. As satellite broadband analyst Tim Farrar points out on his blog, NextWave owns a lot of WCS, and nearly half of its holdings are in the same blocks that AT&T wants to make off-limits.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Nicolas Raymond

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• A look back at mobile in Q1
• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• Consumer privacy in the mobile advertising era

So let’s take a look at some simple ways to clear through your pile of old files — in your file cabinet, on your computer, and online.

Paper Files
The first thing to do is to look at the scope of work you’ve got in front of you: I only have a drawer’s worth of files, but if you’ve got several cabinets of files, you may want to limit your scope to the most active files or drawer. If you just have a drawer or two of files, you can do this in less than an hour (probably).

Now that you’ve figured out your scope, find an hour of free time and do the following:

1. Take all your files out and pile them. If you need to do it in 2, 3 or 5 piles, that’s OK. The key is to clear out your file drawer(s) and get everything in one area.

2. Go through the files one at a time and make quick decisions. Start with the top file, make a decision on it, and then go to the next one. Don’t put off any decision on any file. When you make the decision, you’re going to place it in one of the following piles:

• Active. If you’ve used this file any time in the last 6 months (you can set the time frame to a year if that works better for you), put it in the active file. If the file looks bloated, you can weed out any unnecessary documents to thin it down if you like.
• Archives. These are files you don’t use anymore, but you might like to keep for possible reference. But be vigilant about these files, as you don’t want to keep a bunch of files you’ll never use again. Financial documents are a good bet, as are anything else that’s not easily replaceable or that you can’t find online or somewhere else.
• Trash. Try to get rid of as many files as possible. It feels good to clear out old files you’ll never need again.

3. Clear out your drawer. Now that your file drawer is empty, clean it good. It’s nice to start with a clean drawer.

4. Put your files in order. Trash the files you won’t need, and find another place to store your archives. Then put your active files back in your file drawer. It should be much less full than before. Alphabetize your files before putting them back.

You should be all cleared out and ready for a great new year!

Computer Files
If you’ve got a ton of files on your computer, it can be useful to clear out the clutter here too. Set aside 30-60 minutes for this.

Basically, you want to repeat the same process. Take all your various folders and put them in one place, if they’re scattered. Then go through them, one at a time, and sort them into three folders:

• Active. All the projects you’re currently working on.
• Archives. Within archives, you should have subfolders (unless you’re the type to search instead of file). Don’t keep archives if you’ll never need the files again.
• Trash. Delete all the trash instead of creating a new folder.

Online
What files do you have online? Take a quick inventory, and set aside 30 minutes for each type of file. Some of my examples include:

• Email. Now is a great time to clear out those old emails, especially the ones with large files or emails before 2007.
• Google Docs. I store most of my files online instead of on my computer.
• WordPress. As I write a blog, I have a lot of files stored in WordPress. Whether it’s old image files I don’t need, old posts that are worthless, or plugins and themes that I’ll never use again, I can weed through the unnecessary stuff.
• Box.net. I store a lot of files online. Same process as above.
• Flickr or Picasa. Whatever photo service you use, you might have ones you don’t want anymore. Same thing with YouTube or other video.
• del.icio.us. Or other bookmarking services. Are you ever going to need all of those bookmarks? Weed through them if you have time.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Personal tools lead to practical business
• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce
• A 2011 NewNet Forecast

DivX Pro gives you the DivX Converter and DivX Pro Codec. Unless you are making videos there is no reason for you download this, even though it’s free. If you are a video maker editing on an Apple have at it. The Pro version gives you a high end codec allowing you to tweak everything in the encoding process from bitrate to quantization. The Converter is useful for converting large video files from whatever format to DivX with extra control and ability to batch conversions.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How consumer media will change in 2013
• OTT technologies and strategies for broadcasters
• What the shift to the cloud means for the future EPG

Wall Street Journal has a great editorial this morning on the current India-Pakistan cricket series. While it has nothing to do with broadband or technology (except that i watched the damn series in a tiny window on my laptop over a DSL connection), this is about a game which changes the real game in South Asia.

bq. The public mood reflects not merely a weariness with the seemingly unending conflict between the two countries; it reveals, also, a genuine political optimism, the result of the recent rapprochement between Islamabad and Delhi. It was this summit-level warming, of course, that laid the ground for the Indian cricket team to visit. And given the passion for the game on the subcontinent, it was the Indian government’s willingness to let the cricketers tour Pakistan that convinced Pakistanis that Delhi’s apparent conciliatoriness was sincere. No more proof of India’s good faith was needed.

bq. But the Indian cricketers appear to have contracted the verve and self-belief of contemporary India: If India can take on the world on the high-tech front, the thinking seems to be, it can do so on the cricket field as well. The Pakistanis, by contrast — and reflecting, also, their national mood — are uncertain, torn between different ideas, and seemingly in transition to a new order. Their team, like their country, is talented and robust; but it is, like their country, deeply unsettled.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013
• How HR can make the case for workforce analytics
• The 2013 task management tools market