A few comments on towers---take a look at Qualcomm's website at the presentation on HDR. If you poke around the links on the page that details the presentation, you will get to some pictures of the base stations. Handy little devils, the size of a shoebox. They are designed to cover a neighborhood, able to be tacked up on telephone poles or any other non-tower apparatus. If HDR is a hit for wireless data that operates alongside the cell/PCS systems, the tower companies won't benefit. If we advance to the future where some propose that everyone's handset will act like a mini-basestation, then towers are toast. None of this happens quickly though, so it will be long term toast, with the short term possibly divine.
If the hype surrounding MMDS/LMDS is correct, we are in for a robust demand for tower space, the choicer the location the more valuable it will be. Line of site will still be a key despite the OFDM claims to the contrary. As for satellite, I think it rules the periphery, and the unending rural spaces. There aren't towers there now, and there never will be. Take a drive in the midwestern plains or up in the mountains of Colorado. The DISH Network and DirecTV dishes are standard now. The people on the edge will get broadband access from satellite, as they have the same bandwidth craving as their urban cousins, but I agree with Frank that satellite will have little impact on the expansion of fixed wireless elsewhere.
|
