Recently in Wireless Category

Ok, so yesterday I posted the witness list for today's Net Neutrality/Broadband hearing. I could have woken up at 5am to beat the line standers and get a seat with the lobbyists who pay people to stand in line for them in the halls of the Rayburn building, but I didn't. I could be listening on the Audio Webcast. I tuned in for about 10 minutes, and haven't been impressed yet. I've got other projects, other things to work on, so I'm listening but my attention has not been caught. Why? Have you ever turned on your favorite TV show expecting a new episode and instead getting a rerun, or worse yet, a 3 hour extended version of American Idol? You know what you'll be seeing and hearing. No surprises, nothing to discuss with your friends. Just the same, this hearing, despite a few new faces, was a rerun in a series over the past year or so, including a few at the FCC. 

Cox Communications is one cable company that is wasting no time and embracing wireless. Cox's wireless subsidiary, Cox Wireless, spent around $304 million and snatched up 14 Block A and eight Block B licenses as part of the recently concluded 700 spectrum auctions. Now, there is word that the company has given the contract to build the network to Chinese equipment maker, Huawei. UBS Research in a note to its clients notes that, Huawei is going to supply CDMA gear for a wireless network.

If not, they're sure putting up a good fight. IP Democracy has a great post about Google's petition, filed with the FCC to effectively deny Verizon's bid.

Verizon has taken the public position that it may exclude its handsets from the open access condition. Verizon believes it may force customers who want to access the open platform using a device not purchased from Verizon to go through "Door No. 1," while allowing customers who obtain their device from Verizon access through "Door No. 2." As Google previously made clear, Verizon's position would completely reverse the meaning of the rule such that the open access condition would apply to none of Verizon's customers, and thereby render the condition a nullity. Because this "two-door" position espoused by Verizon is contrary to the plain meaning of the rule, as well as the Commission's public interest findings and policy objectives set forth in the 700 MHz Second R&O, it must be rejected.

Fairly straightforward. Verizon can't allow "special access" for  applications by their own customers while denying it to others. How clear could the plain meaning of the auction rules be? I thought it was pretty clear what the Commission wanted: an open platform.

 700 MHz Second R&O, at ¶206 ("Specifically, a C Block licensee may not block, degrade, or interfere with the ability of end users to download and utilize applications of their choosing on the licensee'sCBlocknetwork,subject to reasonable network management."). 

Reasonable Network Management? Hmm. Where have we heard that term before? Seeing as Comcast-Vuze is settled and the Commission yet had a chance to define Reasonable Network Management (despite their recent hearings), does anyone else see the importance of them using the exact same phrase that they use in the Internet Policy Statement?

As Alex reported in the Weekly Mobile News Roundup, NextWave Wireless, Inc. (yes, THAT NextWave) is planning on selling off their 2.5GHz PCS spectrum licenses.

Image Credit: The New York Times
The Gray Lady's Brad Stone has a 3 pager in today's paper on everyone's favorite new holy war: RIM versus Apple. It comes complete with a cute historical reference to RIM's headquarters:

STEVE JOBS, Apple's chief executive and field general, has Napoleonic dreams of global conquest for his 10-month-old wonder gadget, the iPhone. So it may be fitting that he's encountering his most serious resistance in a city called Waterloo.  That is where, 70 miles west of Toronto in Ontario, 19 nondescript, low-rise office buildings comprise the headquarters of Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry.

Well, I, for one, have welcomed our Canadian overlords, having ditched my iPhone for a BlackBerry after 3 and a half months of swerving, sweating, and getting annoyed at the coolness of Apple's $400 screen.

In March, Mr. Jobs announced that Apple would take the rare step of licensingMicrosoft's corporate e-mail technology, to allow iPhones to connect directly to business computers -- a dagger aimed at the heart of R.I.M.'s strength in the corporate market. In Apple's quarterly conference call last week, Apple executives said that one-third of Fortune 500 companies were interested in giving iPhones to their employees.

I'll go out on a limb here and actually praise Microsoft for delivering a great product, Exchange, and RIM for leveraging it for the on the go email user (sadly, most of my mobile use is email, Instant Message or an even cooler feature, RIM's peer-to-peer BlackBerry Messenger follow, but I use email more than anything). Also, the calendar. Ah, the calendar. I can add an appointment and invite a friend and it hits their calendar and mine, I can edit it on my Mac and it hits the phone in the same way. Yes, ActiveSync does that but at what cost?

At CTIA, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin ("K-Mart") announced his intent to deny Skype's petition for a declaratory ruling that would apply "Carterfone" rules to wireless networks, meaning the Big Four couldn't interfere with Skype software on iPhones or BlackBerries. Maybe this was a message to Skype, "stay off their lawn."

Skype didn't get the message. According to this press release, they're testing mass-market VoIP software in a number of countries.

Following recent moves to extend Skype? conversations to a wide variety of new mobile and wireless devices, Skype is taking another major step as it continues to merge its internet communications software with mobile phones. Today, the company released a beta version of Skype for your mobile, a mobile "thin" client that works on about 50 of the most popular Java-enabled mobile phones from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

The beta version of Skype for your mobile is available worldwide with a feature set that includes chat, group chat, presence (seeing when your contacts are online), and receiving calls from Skype users, and through SkypeIn.* Additional features, which include the making of Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls from the mobile handsets, are initially supported in seven markets: Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

  Now, note that this doesn't include the US. Maybe because of K-Mart's intentions to let the Big Four block Skype traffic, maybe because they want to see how it goes elsewhere first. But no matter what, when that 700mhz phone market opens up, expect Skype to get huge. You'll be able to have a landline, mobile, and portable number on any device you can think of. Now that's competition.

...they've designated TracFone, a wireless carrier, eligible to be declared "lifeline service" for rural areas.

This would allow rural Americans who might not be able to afford wireless service to discontinue their wireline service and use TracFone, and TracFone can offer discounts to those consumers by receiving subsidies under the Universal Service Fund. Quoth the order:

We find that TracFone's universal service Lifeline offering will provide a variety of
benefits to Lifeline-eligible consumers including increased consumer choice, high-quality service offerings,nd mobility.In addition, the prepaid feature, which essentially functions as a toll control feature, may be an attractive alternative to Lifeline-eligible consumers who are concerned about usage charges or long-term contracts. 

 

Many have complained that Universal Service is just a slush fund for the old wireline telcos. Not anymore. On the other hand, TracFone first asked about this in 2004. Why did this take 4 years to be finalized?

Also, where are the big 4 carriers on this? Wouldn't some Universal Service cash help them bolster their coverage caps and say, use the savings to deploy next generation service faster? If Wireless is a "lifeline" now, shouldn't they get some help maintaining it and use their money to improve everything else?

Grant Gross at InfoWorld has said what I've been telling people for months: Google gamed the 700mhz auction system and won.

San Francisco - Three lawmakers complained Tuesday that Google "maneuvered" its way into an open wireless network without having to come up with a winning bid in the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) recently completed 700MHz spectrum auction.

Some lawmakers aren't too happy about that. In particular, Reps. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) and John Shimkus (R-IL) "suggested Google out-maneuvered the FCC when the agency required the winner of about a third of the spectrum that was auctioned to operate under open-access rules."

Um, guys? Let me tell you a secret.

Remember the last round of auctions after the 1996 Telecommunications Act? They were a disaster. Ensuing litigation from licensees who couldn't afford to both build out their networks and pay the FCC held up the deployment of PCS services for years. Does anyone remember NextWave? I suggest all of you, yes, every single one of you, go to Amazon and buy "A Tough Act to Follow?" by former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth.

Furchtgott-Roth, who incidentally, is an economist who used current FCC Chairman Kevin Martin (aka K-Mart) as a legal adviser during his tenure on the Commission, tells the NextWave story in great detail.

Now, let me tell you about Europe. Over there, GSM is the standard, because governments subsidized the built-out of wireless networks. So, instead of a patchwork of country-to-country incompatibility, they agreed on GSM and use it, with great success. Unfortunately, if someone tried that here, they'd be shouted down as communists before the idea got off the ground.

Enter Google. Their proposal for a reserve price and open access was supported by Chairman "K-Mart," who probably has nightmares about NextWave when he thinks of auctions. Why?

Easy. "K-Mart" can't order or ask for a subsidized network, but the FCC can order a reserve price, open access, and a build-out requirement.

What's the result? The 700mhz auction suddenly becomes a de facto low bid contract. Google hit the reserve, and the rest of the players simply bid enough to win, hoping the other would lose, because either way, the network would be open to everyone. The FCC won because they got their open network, allowing for more competition ("K-Mart" likes competition) and Google won because they can develop their Android phones and be assured that they will have a network to operate on.

This wasn't an auction. It might have started as one, but it finished as a low-bid RFP...and that's a good thing for all of us.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending an event hosted by George Mason University's Information Economy Project which was focused on the topic of unlicensed spectrum.

The 10 second version: if you use Wi-Fi or a cordless phone, you're using Unlicensed Spectrum. Those 700mhz bands considered "white space" are unlicensed because to use them for TV channels would cause all sorts of TV interference. On the other hand, letting them be used for cool stuff like wide-area networks would have the same effect that the Part 85 rules did in the past (opening the door to stuff like 802.11, which is now an international standard).

It is fair to sell licenses for the exclusive right to use a chunk of spectrum. On the other hand, it is just as fair, not to mention in the public interest (see Communications Act, 1934) for the FCC to allow White Spaces to be used to develop new devices which would use the White Spaces, which are by definition public property, to provide the public with new wireless applications.

Yesterday, I had the honor of speaking with Ambassador Richard Russell, who headed the U.S. delegation to Geneve in October and November of 2007 for the World Radio Telecommuncations Conference. Every four years, the U.N. mandates that the members get together and decide where they're going to put "new stuff" and how handle other issues, such as talking to satellites (and robots, although in the interests of security we didn't talk about that. because remember, persons denying the existence of robots may be robots themselves.) and standardizing usage to minimize international interference and maximize compatibility. This results in a binding treaty that, surprisingly, we really do care about honoring.

Ambassador Russell gave me a look inside what went on, and while I don't have any sound bytes or podcasts for you, I hope this will shed some light on why things are the way they are, and what we have in store for the future.

Two major issues came up at the outset, which were

1) where to put the next generation "Wireless Broadband" and what specific technologies would be used.

2) How to protect the new Wi-Max standard from Satellite interference.

First off, I did ask about White Spaces and unlicensed spectrum. He pointed out that at the last WRC in 2003, the U.S. successfully pushed for the 802.11 standard to be adopted for Wi-Fi internationally in an unlicensed band, and that internationally, there is an understanding that unlicensed is an important category.

Next, I asked about FCC Chairman Martin's CTIA remarks (re Skype) and how Ambassador Russell felt in his role as deputy director of OSTP how he felt we as a nation could continue to innovate and create an environment with a diverse marketplace.

He responded that we want to make sure that new technologies "get a shot," and steered us back to the WRC proceedings, where the U.S. took a position in defining what the "IMT" (International Mobile Telecommunications) standard would be in governing what would be considered acceptable for using that term.

With regard to Wi-Max, Germany and China wanted to specifically exclude it, but we were able to roll Wi-Max into the standard, which pushed the WRC to expand the spectrum reserved for IMT to include the 700Mhz band.

This is a big deal. While we're going to have that 700Mhz area available at this time next year, many countries aren't transitioning to DTV so early (Mexico is waiting until 2020). On the other hand, many developing countries are going straight to DTV. This means that 700Mhz won't be encumbered already and it'll be internationally sanctioned (including across the Americas, China, Japan, Singapore and India) for mobile broadband. Europe, on the other hand, is going to reevaluate this in 2015. Big picture? 700Mhz (and Wi-Max) is here to stay for  information services.

What did I take away? America is still the leader on many technlogical issues, and if we're on the right track, the world will follow our lead.