Ah, back to the question: Do we believe in Angels?
Bernard,
I have followed the Angel announcements and collateral information with interest since it first hit the trades, although no one outside the project could reasonably claim to be any sort of expert on the system capabilities, design considerations, or inherent flexibility. What I have noted is that Angel has been from its inception a PCS band implementation (reference the announcements concerning AT&T's "successful" aggregation of PCS spectrum over a very broad geographic range prior to the application announcement (ANGEL). At the time, it seemed curious that the patents that AT&T so proudly bragged on described a system embodiment in the 2.5 - 2.7 GHz range (MMDS). That picture, of course, is not limiting insofar as the patent claims, but it had always seemed to me that the patent coding scheme really needed more than 10 MHz of bandwidth to operate effectively -- there would seem to be just too many guard bands eating up capacity to create the FDMed subchannels for a 10 MHz slice to work well. I freely admit, though, I cannot hold myself out as any sort of expert on the possible applications of the patent, and there is no way for an outsider to know what sort of trade secrets or other patents pending supplement the embodiment described in the patent to make Angel the touted "breakthrough."
I found it curious that the smart antenna collaborator in the original Angel design team, RADIX, is now off the Angel team (completely, according to Radix), and the Radix proprietary smart antenna technology is claimed to be ready for prime time (productization) in early 2000. That suggested to me that there is more (or less!) than meets the eye with the application of smart antenna technology in the Mark I Angel technology.
I am not not close to believing that anybody is on the cusp of building 38GHz transceivers below a $1000 price point (<$800?). And if they could, Angel is designed for residential and small business, with up to 4 lines per transceiver unit, as I recall. Why would anyone go after that market through foliage with super high frequency equipment? That just does not compute for me. Also, infrastructure transceivers atop telephone poles do not spell SHF deployment to me. I think it's important to remember that AT&T has many simultaneous market and technology initiatives going at once, and I have never considered it likely that the 38GHz acquisition was intended to address any residential markets, with perhaps the exception of MDUs.
I don't challenge your observation that smart antenna technology could apply at higher frequency, I question the reasonableness of using SHF for thin route, low bandwidth (relatively) applications like suburban residential where trees are a factor and line-of-sight is essential. |
