Raymond:
RE: your posting on the White House press release relating to spectrum reassignment to save
America from cellular diversity, a diversity that was originally blessed by the government.
"Time is of the essence," Mr. Clinton said today in a statement released
by the White House. "If the United States does not move quickly to
allocate this spectrum, there is a danger that the U.S. could lose market
share in the industries of the 21st century. If we do this right, it will help
ensure continued economic growth, the creation of new high-tech jobs,
and the creation of exciting new Internet and telecommunications
services."
First, on the issue of time. My experience in wireless telecom indicates that, roughly:
1. Government takes 8 years to make a change, and screws up 50% of the time.
2. A large standards body takes 4 years to make a change, and screws up 10% of the time.
3. A handful of companies take 2 years to make a change, and half of them screws up totally and
go bottom up, and half get lucky or get it right and do very well, often buying out the first half.
Thus in any discussion of Europe's wireless success while worrying about America falling behind, it
is important to note that this is not due to any other reason than the business case hasn't been made
for the services in America.
Technically, we can have multi-mode (amps/tdma/cdma/gsm/3g) and multi-frequency handsets for
the .001% of the world cellular phone customers that travels between Europe and the US frequency
enough to warrant it, but not frequently enough to have a second phone, and are willing to pay for
the roaming charges. I certainly would like an AMPS/xDMA handset in the US since I get better
coverage with legacy analog technology.
Technically, we can interwork IS-41 and GSM MAP standards, for that same .001%, and have
seamless roaming and services between these two wireless continents.
Technically, you can make in the US handsets, basestations, and mobile switches that work on
either or both standards, but they will probably be made where it is cheapest to make them (off
shore or Mexico) regardless of how the government allocates the spectrum.
Technically, you can do anything given time and money. All you have to do is show you can make a
buck doing it, and companies will offer it in two years. In fact, I suspect you get more innovation
and technology trying to interoperate all these diverse technologies and if you had one grand one.
Now more bandwidth would be nice, for congested areas to add more voice channels.
Having some extra bandwidth for data would be nice, but for those of us accustomed to
broadband, it will be for stock quotes and short messages and simple emails, I suspect, and not
"heavy lifting" browsing.
But I don't think this is why they are increasing or change spectrum.
While the auction
promises to raise tens of billions of dollars for the United States Treasury,
it may also require the government to make huge payments to companies
and to the Defense Department to shift their existing radio, telephone and
other services to new bands on the spectrum.
I expect they are really happy to raise the spectrum auction money to help upgrade the DOD, and
support the involved companies, thus keeping defense technology current without having to pay for
it out of taxes.
Actually, this a quite clever scheme, and I'm certainly for upgrading military technology. It is a
better idea than the digital TV spectrum giveaway, where we lost the spectrum and didn't get the
TV.
Lastly, to address your $.02:
My Two Cents Dept. - This appears to be an intelligent move on the part of the Administration
regarding the use of spectrum. I
hope that they have the wisdom to try to better co-ordinate with the UMTS spectrum allocation
than we've done in the past with
AMPS and GSM systems. While free markets are to be applauded, a bit of direction from the
top sure could help to avoid some
of the manufacturing headaches and waste brought about by dual and triple mode phones.
I believe a technical solution (multi-freqency handsets) can be rolled out a decade faster than a
global agreement on common spectrum. Hey, we have to give handset chip designer something
interesting to do next year.
Now the 'free market' solution to PCS certainly gave US a messy map of the US, with
AMPS/CDMA/TDMA/and US frequency GSM dotting the landscape, and the auctions have
imposed a really difficult business problem, particularly for smaller operators in rural areas.
On the other hand, if it had not been for this diversity there might have been no CDMA , and there
would not likely be a push for 3G (assuming that is a good thing). In other words, this free market
mess has driven innovation. |
