Most of us have been expecting Microsoft to counter Google’s promise to bid on the illustrious 700 MHz spectrum this January with some cash of their own. But according to Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer, the company is opting to pass on the opportunity to capture a piece of the sweet, sweet radio spectrum. At CTIA he explained: What would it buy us to buy a piece of spectrum, one piece of spectrum in one country…It would do a lot to alienate the [entire]telecom industry.
Wire haters can rejoice knowing IBM has entered the 60GHz wireless radio business, with partner MediaTek. They follow Georgia Tech and a whole bunch of TV makers into the space. IBM claims 2.5Gbps of bandwidth, plenty enough to shift 10GB of high-def movie in 5 seconds. [CNet]
Looks like Verizon’s alleged backdoor wheeling-and-dealing was for naught, as the FCC’s basically reaffirmed the open access provisions on the “C” chunk of the 700Mhz spectrum up for auction in what looks to be the actual final set of bidding rules. This should effectively end the ongoing back-and-forth venom-spitting between Verizon and Google, at least about the rules themselves.
AT&T’s agreed to drop $2.5 billion into the pockets of Aloha Partners for a sizable chunk of the 700Mhz spectrum—12 megahertz worth covering 196 million people in 281 markets. It’s the same frequency that the FCC will be auctioning off licenses to in just a couple of months. AT&T says they haven’t decided what they’re going to do with it yet—but honestly it seems like they’d have an idea of what they wanted to do with something they paid $2.5 billion for.
Fun fact about the 2.5Ghz spectrum Sprint and Clearwire hotly desire for their WiMax dreams: two-thirds of it is classified “EBS,” meaning it can’t be owned directly by businesses, so it’s in the hands of schools and non-profits. To make use of the EBS spectrum, which they need to make good on the coverage maps they’re plotting, Sprint has to lease a licence from a current holder, most of whom have been sitting on it, doing a fat lot of nothing. Now that Sprint’s knocking on their doors with checks, they’ve realised just what they’re sitting on.
Consequently, the FCC’s been inundated with renewal requests as licence holders look to cash in on WiMax trailblazing. Naturally, Sprint’s not too happy to be set up for a rolling extortion party, so they’re pushing the FCC to swat down the gold rushers, calling their requests an attempt to “hijack…valuable spectrum.” Harsh. Either way, the path to a WiMax wonderland looks like it’s going to be a little bumpier than anticipated. [MarketWatch via /.]
The FCC auction of the soon-to-be-vacated analog TV spectrum that everyone wants a chunk of will go down Jan. 16, 2008. [Broadband Reports]
Right now to enter the American wireless market, you pretty much have to go through of the Big Four wireless providers, who, as Columbia professor Tim Wu puts it, “tend to approve only established partners whose devices fit their business plans, which is why we have yet to see all those wireless devices that were supposed to be in our future.”
His solution? Mandate that future owners of chunks of the 700Mhz spectrum being auctioned off when analog TV goes kaput in 2009 make their networks neutral, allowing any “safe” device to attach to them, kind of like landlines.
