However, LTE was developed from the ground up as a broadband data technology without a voice component. This is one reason it is fast and has lots of capacity for broadband services. The first three generations of cellular wireless technology were developed for voice, and data capabilities were tacked on to meet the growing demand for both voice and data. There is one exception. Qualcomm’s CDMA offers CMDA2000 1X, which is for voice and about 100 Kbps data, and CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, which is designed for data services only. CDMA operators usually deploy some 1X carriers and some EV-DO carriers in each cell site in order to provide both voice and data services.

The only way, then, to offer voice over LTE is to turn it into Voice over IP, or as it is now being called, Voice over LTE (VoLTE). Essentially then, LTE will have voice capability, but it will be analog voice converted to packet data with the packets intermingled and sent along with the broadband data packets. The only caveat here is that VoLTE packets are time critical and MUST be delivered quickly in order to provide voice that sounds like voice. Anyone using VoIP landline phones, usually from cable operators, are already using VoIP and know it works. Those using services such as Vonage and Skype are also using VoIP systems today. VoIP is the future of voice, so naturally companies deploying an LTE network are planning to convert their second and third-generation voice customers to VoLTE at some point.

One comment here before I continue. I have been told on many occasions by people who already have an LTE-capable phone that they don’t think this is a big deal since they are already using LTE and, therefore, voice over LTE. This might be a logical assumption but it is not true. Today’s LTE devices support voice services on the existing 2G and 3G networks NOT over LTE. When you are making a voice call you are using your network operator’s 2G or 3G network—not LTE.

Many engineers have stated that today’s voice over 2G and 3G networks is less expensive for the operator to provide than will be VoLTE. However, there are just as many engineers who don’t agree with that statement. For my part, I believe that it is less expensive to use existing, paid-for 2G and 3G networks for voice since they are in place and operational, and they generally offer better coverage than today’s LTE networks but this is changing rapidly. So why would a company such as Verizon or MetroPCS be acting quickly toward transitioning voice calls up to their LTE network?

The answer is fairly simple. MetroPCS is probably the best example of why and it also appears as though it will be the first in the United States to have VoLTE-capable devices. In its case, MetroPCS has limited spectrum available. Various articles say that in each market the company has about 22 MHz of spectrum. Today that spectrum is divided between CDMA 1X (voice and slow-speed data), EV-DO for broadband data with speeds up to 1 mbps or so, and LTE with much faster data rates and more capacity. Each CDMA 1X carrier requires 1.25 MHz of spectrum as does each EV-DO carrier. Today, the MetroPCS LTE system is based on 5 MHz by 5 MHz or 10 MHz of its total of 22 MHz per market. If it could close down its CDMA 1X and EV-DO networks, it would have the full 22 MHz per market available for its LTE network. This would greatly enhance its LTE data speeds and per-cell-sector capacity. By moving its voice customers to LTE, it can not only refarm its CDMA spectrum using LTE, it can reduce its overall costs by having to support only one technology instead of three. This makes sense not only for MetroPCS but for the other operators as well.

Verizon runs LTE networks on 700 MHz while it runs CDMA 1X and EV-DO on 850 and 1900 MHz. It also owns or is about to purchase some AWS-1 spectrum in the 1700 MHz band. By moving its customers to all-LTE-based devices for both voice and data it could also refarm its 850 MHz, 1900 MHz, and AWS-1 spectrum and convert it to LTE. This would result in less expensive devices (one technology supported, not three), more capacity per area, and less network operation costs.

Recently, AT&T warned users on its network that if they have only 2G phones (GSM/EDGE) they need to start replacing them with generation three and four devices as it is planning to move away from its 2G network (first), migrating its customer base to 3G and 4G networks. AT&T is supporting GSM/EDGE, HSPA and HSPA+, and now LTE. Moving away from GSM will open up some 850 and 1900 MHz spectrum that can then be used for HSPA+ and/or LTE (my bet is LTE).

The vision of all network operators, over time, is to replace all of their networks with a single LTE network (but on different portions of the spectrum). This makes sense for both the network operators and their customers. Hopefully, as more spectrum becomes available in the United States and around the world, the regulators of the spectrum will understand that LTE is designed to work in as little as 1.4 MHz (times 2), up to 20 MHz (times 2) in several steps. Add to that the fact that guard bands need to be built into the spectrum allocations and this means that a 10X10 MHz system (which is what Verizon is using) would really require an 11X11 MHz portion of spectrum (the amount that Verizon bought at auction), but that the spectrum AT&T bought in the A and B Blocks (5X5 MHz) is not ideal. In the future this should probably be 6X6 MHz portions.

However, as part of its evolution, at some point LTE will support aggregation of spectrum across different portions of the spectrum. When this happens, operators will be able to combine dissimilar portions of the spectrum for more bandwidth or keep their network in smaller segments. All this means is that LTE is being designed and evolved as a smart technology and since the back-end is all-IP, these types of spectrum consolidations will be easier and will result in more efficient use of the spectrum held by each operator.

It appears as though Voice over LTE will become the norm sooner rather than later. Obviously, network operators will have to be careful how they plan to move people. The norm for phone replacement is something like eighteen months, but as the network operators found out when turning off their analog cellular systems, some people buy a phone and hang onto it for years. Most of these people are not into texting, Internet access, or movies or videos. They simply want to have a phone to make calls and for times of emergencies. I hear complaints all of the time from my older friends about not being able to find a simple, easy-to-use voice phone in the stores. Perhaps the network operators need to look at this market segment as they move toward shutting down their 2G and 3G networks.

All of today’s phones and smartphones will have to be replaced and this will take time, for some network operators more than others, and there will be a cost associated with this transition as well. For networks with 5-10 million customers, this task will be easier but still expensive when compared to their size, but for the AT&Ts and Verizons of the world with more than 80 million customers each, this will be a longer-term and more expensive transition. Granted, new phones are coming into the market at a fast pace and some are upgrading their phones more often than eighteen months, but many are not, and corporations with thousands of customers are not likely to move to replace all of their devices at once.

There is an issue I have with this move. I fully understand the whys of it, and they are compelling for sure. But for more than thirty years of my career, I have seen a number of systems try to share voice and data on the same network and in many cases the results have not been what was desired. Voice MUST ALWAYS have priority if the calls are to get through. The more voice users there are on a common network and within the same cell sector, the less bandwidth is available for data services. I have to wonder if any network operator would put in two LTE carriers, one for voice and one for broadband data services. For example, if I had enough spectrum I could build out a 1.4 or 3 MHz LTE network for voice services and another 10 MHz network for broadband data services. I am guessing that no one will try that until later on in the LTE evolution when we have experience with mixing voice and data, priority levels, Quality of Service, and other LTE features.

The move to Voice over LTE is inevitable. The timetable for completion of the transition is anyone’s guess. Those who desperately need more capacity on their limited amounts of spectrum will move to VoLTE the fastest but everyone will be making the move because it makes sense. What does not make sense to me is that we will finally have a worldwide wireless standard in LTE, but we won’t have world LTE phones. As of today, LTE is being built out on 41 different portions of the spectrum around the world. Over time, as the 2G and 3G systems are replaced with LTE systems we will come closer to the ultimate goal of one technology and one device. However, until that time, in many cases when we roam it will be by making use of 2G and 3G networks and not LTE networks. I don’t plan to be in the early adopter pool when it comes to Voice over LTE but I know that I will be gently pushed and then shoved into it over time by the network operators.

Andrew M. Seybold

Network operators want to provide each customer with equal access to broadband data all of the time but with the demand growing so rapidly, they are hampered by network capacity and the time it takes to build new cell sites closer together, so they are trying other ways including off-loading data services to Wi-Fi and femtocells located in a customer’s home and, of course, initiating pricing models that will slow down the growth rate so the network operators can catch up. I am often questioned about why there are capacity restrictions for wireless networks and I have written a number of articles about this before. However, with the renewed clamor about wireless broadband capacity, I thought it would be worth restating the issues.

Wireless Bandwidth Is Shared Bandwidth

In order to better understand the issue, let’s start at the end-user and work our way into the network. Here are a few basics: The wireless link between a user’s device and the network is, in reality, the last mile, or ½ mile, or the distance from the user device to the nearest cell site. Once this communications link is active, the balance of the voice and data handling is completed within the network as the cell sites are connected to the network with high-speed wired, fiber, or microwave links.

The first bottleneck is this wireless link and here is why. Typical cell site coverage is a basic circle that extends around the cell site for ½, 1, or even up to 3+ miles. In order to provide more capacity per cell site, each site is usually divided into three pie-shaped coverage areas radiating 120 degrees from the site outward. The amount of radio spectrum that is licensed to the network operator and that is deployed within that cell site determines the overall cell site capacity. For this example, the outbound capacity is 5 Mbps for each sector and 3 Mbps of capacity for the communications link from the user device to the cell site. Therefore, the total capacity of that cell sector is 5 Mbps times three sectors or 15 Mbps down and 3 Mbps times three sectors up or 9 Mbps up.

Since a user is assigned only to a single cell sector at a time, the total available capacity is 5 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up. Therefore, if there is only one user within that cell sector, this user will have access to all of the capacity—in this case, 5 Mbps to the device and 3 Mbps up from the device. If there are a number of users within a single cell sector and they are all engaged in email, Internet surfing, and other activities that require intermittent data transmissions over the network, the perception will still be that all of the users have a very good data throughput as the total data capacity will be shared on an as-needed basis.

The issue with network capacity comes into play in one of two ways. The first is when there are too many people within the same cell sector, and the second is if some of those within the cell sector are streaming video either up or down. Since the total bandwidth is shared, if one user is watching a video that is being streamed at say, 2 Mbps, then the other users within the cell sector have effectively lost that 2 Mbps of capacity in the downward direction.

If three or four of the users within a cell sector decide to watch a streaming video, it is easy to see that the cell sector could run out of capacity. In this case, those who started watching their video first would retain some bandwidth while others would see their video slowing down, breaking up, or not being able to be streamed at all.

Newer technologies such as 4G LTE employ a number of methods in an attempt to keep up with cell sector demand. Quality of Service (QoS) is available and in some cases network operators can invoke priority service restrictions to favor some users over others. But the outcome at some point is the same. If the demand for uplink or downlink data within a single cell sector is exceeded, some or all of the users within that sector will experience much slower delivery of data or they may be denied service altogether.

Moving to another cell sector that is less congested will restore the data speed and capacity.

The over-demand for data within a single cell sector is the main factor that causes users to experience slower data rates or not be able to connect to their data at all. There are other factors that can cause the same problems, and some of them will affect not only a single cell sector but perhaps a group of sectors. Some network operators have added the capability to expand or shrink the size of a cell sector so that traffic in the overloaded sector can be routed into a less busy sector. This can be accomplished in many ways including the use of antennas that can be electronically tilted down or up. In this type of system, a busy cell sector might be made to appear smaller and the surrounding sectors made to appear larger, which results in a redistribution of traffic among the three sectors. In the newer network technologies, much more flexibility for real-time sector management has been built in and can be employed when needed.

Signaling Channel

In order for a wireless device to be able to operate on a network, the device must be registered on the network and the network must know in which cell sector the device is located at any one time. This form of communications between a device and the network is usually over what is called the signaling channel. This channel’s purpose is to keep track of the devices within a cell sector and to be able to route calls and traffic to and from the device. This channel is also used when a device is moving from one cell sector to another to help accomplish the handoff between the sectors. As a user’s signal level in one cell sector diminishes it will become “louder” in another sector. At exactly the right point, the network will move the device from being associated with the first cell sector over to the second sector. This happens so quickly that you don’t know it is happening and you don’t lose any voice or other information. In normal operation, as you move from sector to sector the user device will talk to the network on an ongoing basis and the handoffs will occur even if the device is on but not being used.

Depending on the wireless technology deployed, the signaling channel can also serve other purposes. For example, in some systems the signaling channel is where the text messages or SMS traffic is routed, and some network developers have found that they can also use the signaling channel to update the data in near-real time on the device. Both of these, as well as other uses of the signaling channel, can reduce the capacity. Think of the cell sector’s broadband capability as a fire hose spewing out lots of water over a given area while the control of that data and the devices is being handled by a garden hose. The problem is that if the garden hose becomes overloaded, the traffic to and from the network from devices may not actually reach the network. If the network cannot communicate with a device, essentially, the network does not know that a device is trying to connect.

This is exactly what happened in the earthquake on the east coast. All of the networks were up and running but too many people in on one area were trying to communicate with the same cell sector or site, overloading the signaling channels. Calls were blocked, text was blocked, and data services were blocked. Those that did access the network might have been disconnected and then could not reconnect. This was simply a case of network overload.

Leaving the Cell Site

Once your voice, text, or data call reaches the cell sector it is then carried via wire, fiber, or microwave into the network where it is then routed to where it is supposed to go—to another phone, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), the Internet, or wherever. Typically, cell sites are designed to be operating at less than capacity. If the cell site is operating close to capacity, the amount of capacity available to transport information from the cell site to the network might not be sufficient to handle all of the data. Another way to look at it is if the site (all three sectors) is capable of handling 15 Mbps of traffic (3-5 Mbps sectors), the backhaul might be designed to handle only 10 Mbps rather than the full 15 Mbps since 99% of the time all three sectors would not be loaded to capacity.

In this case, even though there was capacity available on the wireless portion of the cell site, the backhaul would not be able to transport all of the data to and from the network and the result would be the same as if all of the wireless capacity was being used. If this were the case with a number of sites in the same congested area, then those who could not access the network would be spread out over multiple cell sites. With the advent of 4G LTE, this situation is far less likely to happen since the backhaul for many 2G and 3G sites was a number of wired phone circuits while 4G networks are using fiber and microwave with much more bandwidth. Still, if the network operator does not plan for more than average data usage at some sites and skimps on the capacity of the backhaul, the result could appear to be network congestion.

Conclusions

Cellular networks were designed to be able to cell split. You might start with cell sites five miles apart from each other and as traffic increases you build a new site between the first to and then divide the area again and again. This is a great way to add capacity without having more spectrum available and it worked well in the early days of cellular systems. Today, with the public wanting coverage but not a cell site located near them, the time it takes to identify a new site and build it out has gone from a few months in the 1990s to 18-24 months or longer today. Further, the cost of a full-blown cell site is in the multiple $100K range or more depending on the location and the type of construction.

Network operators are using Wi-Fi, picocells, microcells, and femtocells to add to their capacity. The Federal Government is working diligently to find more spectrum so operators can have more, but this too is a long-range goal. In the meantime, as the demand for data continues to double year over year and those who are writing applications for these devices are unaware of the issues assuming that bandwidth will always be there, the problem of wireless network congestion will continue and in fact will become more prevalent. This is one reason network operators have gone to usage-based contracts.

There is no one easy fix. Rather, it will take more spectrum, more cell sites, more backhaul, more off-loading of data to Wi-Fi and other local-area technologies, and better behaved applications to help minimize the demand issue. The key word is minimize since there is no “cure” for wireless network overload. Regardless of how much more capacity we create, if the demand continues to increase, the issue of network congestion will continue to be with us.

Andrew M. Seybold

Home automation has been just around the corner for a very long time now. Over the past twenty years at least a dozen companies have come up with the vision that their operating system will be the one to make this happen. It even reached the point a number of years ago where a company (which one escapes me now and I can’t find anything about it on You Tube), ran a commercial where a repairman showed up at a house, rang the doorbell, and told the person answering the door that he was there to fix the refrigerator. “I did not call anyone to fix it,” was the answer and the repairman said, “No ma’am your refrigerator called us to report a problem.”

Over the years a number of software companies have come up with the idea of extending their operating system to office devices such as copiers, phones, and fax machines, and into the home. Your refrigerator, coffee pot, TV, audio, lights, and surveillance cameras would all be controlled by a single operating system, enabling you to use your wireless device and/or an Internet connection to make adjustments regardless of where you are, to be notified if someone has entered your house, and to make sure you turned off the stove or closed the garage door.

Microsoft with its BOB product, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Apple, and others have been here before. Home automation is supposed to be a big deal and make our lives easier. However, all of this costs money—sometimes a lot of money if you are not willing or able to do some of the installation yourself. Even if you are, many of the solutions offered today are not designed with ease of use on mind, but by engineers who expect us to be programming experts.

The adoption of smart home components and devices is very low in the United States. Eric is right that the vision is that our homes will become fully automated and we will be able to talk to our electronics and appliances and they will be able to talk to us no matter where we are. In our Wireless University presentations (the next session is the day prior to the CTIA show in New Orleans), we have had a section on wireless home automation for a number of years but the technology has been slow to develop and even slower on the uptake. In one of my sessions I wrote about the Chumby clock radio that is connected to your home Wi-Fi network to enable it to display lots of useful information such as weather, traffic reports, stock market reports, and other things you might find of interest as you awaken.

I then took the premise of the Chumby to its next logical conclusions. First would be the addition of heater and air-conditioning controls and the ability to control your coffeepot. The idea would be that if you set the alarm for 7 a.m., the Chumby would turn up your heater, say fifteen minutes before that, and start your coffeepot at the same time so when you got out of bed the house would be warm and the coffee freshly made. Next would be the connection of the Chumby to be able to interact with weather and real-time traffic reporting. In this case you would enter your route to work and the Chumby would check on weather conditions and traffic patterns, and then adjust your alarm plus or minus a few minutes depending on conditions, and that would also cause the heater and coffeepot to reset to new times.

Perhaps Google with all of its resources can finally make some progress in the home automation area. There is already a trend to buy HD TVs that include Internet connectivity, Google TV, Roku, Apple TV, and Microsoft TV. Others are providing an option to our cable and satellite services with streaming video over the Internet, enabling all kinds of additional services, AND we are now able to watch TV and movies on our wireless devices regardless of where we are. Eric seems to think that Wi-Fi in the home is what should control everything but there are already a number of other personal-area network technologies and devices on the market that may be better suited to some of the automation control functions.

A year or so ago, one of my clients was working on a device for the home that would include wide-area wireless, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and one of the other short-range wireless technologies used to control devices in the home. I do not have a clue as to the status of this type of device but it makes sense. It is a femtocell, Wi-Fi router rolled into one, it has access via Bluetooth, and it can act as the control hub for all of the lower-powered RF-controlled devices (or even signals over power line). Further, it could bridge between all of the technologies when needed.

BUT—There Is Always a But

Convincing people to embrace all of this technology in the home is the real challenge. As Eric and many others before him have stated, the vision is there. The real issue is how to make it easy to install and use in the average home and how to make it a must-have addition to the home instead of, “Gee that would be nice someday.” Let’s look at what is on the market today and then discuss how it could perhaps be made less expensive, easier to install, and easier to set up and operate.

For this example I am using the products in the Smarthome catalog (Vol. 126, Summer of 2011). Let’s start with the automation of home lighting. The section of the catalog that covers the options starts on page 14 and runs through page 50. Listed are a number of competing technologies that all do essentially the same thing: Enable you to control your indoor and outdoor lights either by selecting a scene with a control box or by programming a computer or other standalone device to automatically change lighting at given times of the day or night.

The oldest of the technologies listed is the X-10 control series. X-10 has been around for years and I have used it since the mid-1990s to control devices in my home and to turn on my outside lights at dusk and later to turn them off. The X-10 system sends signals over your AC power lines to control the various devices. One of the first things you will have to do is to buy a device that will enable the signals to cross over your 220 VAC main service so the signals are available on both legs of your 110 VAC wiring. When I first installed this system I had to use capacitors across the 220 main and install them in the breaker panel—not a job for the feint of heart. Today, for about $70 you can buy a device designed to plug into a 220 VAC box (usually in the laundry room for your dryer) and your dryer plugs into the box. The wall switches cost between $10 and $15 each because the technology is old and being replaced. You can buy a dual outlet, one part of which is X-10 controlled and one that is hot all of the time, and it also runs about $10. A manual controller for the system will run between $10 and $50 depending on the number of devices you want to control, and a computerized system will run about $100. The system requires that you replace each switch you want to control and the wiring is non-standard and takes someone familiar with AC wiring to get it done right.

Zwave

Next up is a fairly new technology known as Zwave. According to the Zwave Alliance, this is an RF technology that uses low-powered radio signals to control things such as lighting, door locks, security and alarms, window shades, thermostats, and more. It is based on a mesh network so that each device can repeat the control signal to other devices, which is a very efficient way to extend the range of the system in larger houses and offices.

Looking at the devices in the catalog, the most basic on-off light switch is $50 and one with a dimmer is about $80. Zwave companies also make wall switches that can control up to eight different sets of lights and these starts at $115. Control devices start at $100 for a table-mounted device up to several hundred for a computer-controlled device that will turn devices on and off based on time or on sunset and sunrise. They also need to be wired in to replace existing switches, and special switches are needed to control florescent lights and appliances.

UPB Systems

UPB stands for Universal Powerline Bus and it is a newer type of control signal over the power lines in your home. One caution here and with some of the other systems as well: At each location you want to put a switch there must be a neutral power lead. In some instances your house will have some switches where they did not run the neutral lead and you won’t be able to automate these switches. The cost of a single on-off light switch is $68 and the prices go up from there. Control devices run the gamut from a simple table-top box ($90) to computer-controlled systems $200 and up. Once again these devices require that you remove your existing switch and replace it with one of these. And you have to be careful about the type of lights you are controlling since each switch is designed to operate a specific type of lighting and special switches are needed for 3-way circuits.

Insteon Products

Insteon is the brand name developed by or for Smarthome. It is a combination system that will control existing -10 controllers as well as Insteon devices that are RF AND signaling over power line controlled in what it calls a dual mesh network. This is the system I have been using to replace my X-10 system. While it works well, it also requires a neutral power lead in each switch box and it is expensive. Each wall switch runs anywhere from $60 to $85 or more depending on the type of lights you want to control.

Insteon makes a host of products, including appliance modules and wall switches that control multiple light sources from the same panel and/or indicate the status of a different type of device. For example, I have the system wired so I can tell when the garage door is open because it lights one of the squares on the multi-switch panel when it is open. You can purchase door locks that can be opened via Insteon, download an app to control the devices from your iPad, iPhone, or other smartphone, or over the Internet, and you can program the system via your computer.

There are a couple of caveats here. One of the computer control systems requires that your computer be connected via a USB connection to the Insteon controller. Another more expensive device lets you program the controller from a computer, an iPad, or whatever, and not have to keep it connected to the machine. This is what I opted for and it is connected to my home LAN via Wi-Fi. I found that I had to give the controller box a static IP address but that is easy enough to do. Setting up the devices to be found on the network is not an easy task. If the device is not recognized automatically, and in my experience that is most of the time, there is a two-step process that requires an action at the wall switch and another action at the controller, not exactly easy for one person to install. The other issue I have with this system is that whoever wrote the interface software needs a lesson in KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!). It is difficult to set up, harder to change once it is set up, and it is not at all clear what steps you need to go through. I am still struggling with some of the nuances of the program.

Home Automation

When we remodeled our house and added a second story in 2003, I thought I was being smart. I ran a bundle of cables to each room, and in some cases to multiple locations in each room. In the bundle were two RG 6 TV cables and two Cat-5 cables. I also ran speaker wire to each room for whole-house audio (with individual volume controls in each room) and redundantly as it turned out, I also wired the house for an intercom system. Today, if you want to distribute HD around the house over wire you need at least two Cat-5 cables to do so, so I am short at least one Cat 5 in every room. I did run empty smirf tubing in some of the house for additional wiring because I knew that no matter how well I planned it, I would not have enough.

My goal now is to experiment with wireless options for all of the wires running around my house and replace everything with wireless devices at some point but the cost is still too high and the range of some of the systems is still not sufficient to accomplish all of that.

The Bottom Line

Eric Schmidt has a great vision. I am not a big fan of Android because I think it is the easiest of all operating systems to attack, but that doesn’t really matter. What does matter in this case is that regardless of what operating system resides in any device or set of devices, unless the actual task of adding automation to a home or business is made easier and the cost of the components come down it will remain a niche market.

Perhaps Eric is right on one thing though. Wi-Fi might be the way to distribute audio/video and even control signals. However, if the devices such as wall switches and other controls cost $50 or more each, and need to be installed by a professional or a homeowner with some basic wiring skills, it does not matter in the least which technology or operating system is used. Think about it this way: How many people would pay $50 per switch and several hundred for controls to keep from having to turn on a light switch when they walked into a room? How many people want to be welcomed home by their TV being on?

It would be really neat to have the house preheated and certain lights already on and it would be great if I could use my smartphone to disable my alarm system (you do set yours when you go out, right?). It certainly would be great if I could know if someone had broken in, but frankly I would rather have the police notified and find out after I got home!

There are only a few ways that home automation will really take off. The first is to make it easier all around, to make it more affordable, and to make it a must-have. The second is to build it into new homes as they are constructed. The issue here is whether the builder can charge a premium for the house because of whole-house automation or can the builder even cover the costs of installing this type of automation? So far the answer is no in both cases.

So while it is nice to visualize the future and to predict that Android will someday run everything electronic we touch or that works for us, there are practical impediments to this vision becoming a reality. A box of ten wall switches at home Depot is about $10 while ten wireless switches could cost me $600. Doing the math is easy no matter what operating system is used.

Andrew M. Seybold

This year that was the AT&T/T-Mobile merger agreement. Unfortunately, AT&T has now thrown in the towel on this merger. Both the FCC and the DOJ claim that this merger would cause wireless pricing to go up and would stifle innovation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Meanwhile, it is rumored that Dish Network has expressed an interest in T-Mobile if the AT&T deal falls apart. It is clear that in today’s wireless environment T-Mobile is at a disadvantage not only as the fourth nationwide network operator but also because of its lack of sufficient spectrum to compete in the LTE space. Spectrum is the currency of wireless, and is the driving force behind mergers and acquisitions.

Meanwhile, AT&T still has to obtain approval for its purchase of the Qualcomm 700-MHz spectrum and is busy rolling out its own LTE network to compete with the Verizon network, which is being deployed quickly. While Verizon has a nationwide license for 22 MHz of spectrum in the 700-MHz band, it is buying more spectrum as it builds out its system. Recently Verizon acquired the spectrum holdings of a number of cable companies. This is important for several reasons. First, it gives Verizon more spectrum for LTE services in large portions of the nation. Second, part of the deal is a resale agreement with the cable companies so they will be able to resell wireless voice and data services on the Verizon network.

These spectrum/reselling deals also affect Clearwire and Sprint going forward. Over the years, Sprint has partnered with cable providers time and time again, and many of them have resale agreements in place with Sprint and/or Clearwire. As the cable providers move over to Verizon to provide services, this wholesale income will be lost to Sprint and Clearwire, and it takes the cable companies off the table for LightSquared (see below), which is busy signing wholesale agreements with more than thirty companies when in fact LightSquared does not even have a network in place and may not receive FCC approval to build out a terrestrial network on its satellite spectrum.

LightSquared is playing Washington just as Nextel did a number of years ago. LightSquared is busy signing up resellers of its proposed LTE spectrum so it can show those in DC that there is a demand for smaller companies that normally cannot step up and bid in the spectrum auctions and, in my view, they are making grandiose claims about the number of new jobs that will be created and the amount of money that will flow back into the economy. LightSquared is doing all of this because it is not faring well on the technology front. The latest test results show that LightSquared would still interfere with GPS receivers, and I believe that it is not possible to build a terrestrial system on its spectrum that would not have a negative impact on the GPS community—an impact that could cost lives and property loss. To me, even the chance of this interference is not tolerable.

The FCC has promised to find 500 MHz of new (reassigned) spectrum that can be auctioned for broadband services. It now appears as though Congress will adjourn for the year without passing any spectrum bills. This means that the spectrum the FCC has now that could be auctioned quickly won’t be. It also means that, once again, the Public Safety community is not receiving the spectrum it needs. It also means that new jobs that the construction of a nationwide Public Safety broadband network would bring will not be happening, and that the final recommendation of the 911 commission to provide Public Safety with interoperable communications systems will not be realized this year, more than ten years after 911.

On the LTE front, the fact that both Sprint and Clearwire have thrown in the WiMAX towel and are moving toward LTE is good not only for these two networks but for the industry as well. With more LTE networks being built, pricing for devices and services should fall over time, even though the Sprint and Clearwire systems will be on different portions of the spectrum than AT&T’s or Verizon’s systems. It is interesting to note here that while we finally have a worldwide standard for wireless broadband in the form of LTE, at the present time it will be deployed on 42 different portions of the spectrum. This means a worldwide standard technology but no worldwide devices. Over time it is hoped that LTE will relocate to spectrum that is common around the world but this will take years if not decades to accomplish. In the meantime, it appears as though HSPA+ will be the common data standard for world (or almost-world) capable devices.

Devices

Another great year for Apple to be sure. The introduction of the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4GS kept it growing and well in the black. Android is gaining ground, or by some accounts has passed Apple in the number of devices available, while RIM continues to slip and has put off its new operating system until late in 2012. Tablets are still hot, and some of them, including the Kindle Fire, are giving Apple a run for its money, and those competing directly with the iPad continue to make small gains. Companies such as Amazon that are not setting themselves up to be iPad killers but rather can present their products in terms of meeting the needs of customers are having better luck in the market. It will be interesting to see how Ultrabooks stack up and if they will take some of the steam out of the hot tablet marketplace. My view is that they won’t have much of an impact but they could continue to erode the laptop market.

The number of new smartphones being introduced into the market is astounding. It seems as though every day one network or another is announcing yet another smartphone, and we have not yet seen the Windows 8 entries. You have to wonder how all of these different devices can survive, and if the life of a smartphone is now so short that the quantities of any given product are a lot smaller than the companies would like to see. I don’t see any slowdown in new products and expect even more smartphones to be introduced during CES in early January. Perhaps with all of these new phones coming into the market we will see some price reductions, at least one can hope.

One thing this industry seems to like to do is to dub years as “the year of…” e.g., the year of LTE, the year of mobile payments, etc. In reality, there is a lot of work being done with mobile payments across the industry but there is still a long way to go. Diverse types of mobile payments are being rolled out and experimented with and partnerships are being formed. Near Field Communications (NFC) systems seem to be gaining steam as well as others. I am still concerned about the security issues with carrying a phone with NFC embedded in it. I don’t think we have a handle on how secure or unsecure these devices are, nor do we have a clue, at this point, about how vulnerable the Android OS is. At this point, caution should be the operative word for all these different types of mobile payment technologies as well as Android itself.

Network Capacity

During the past year I have written many articles about data demand and how network operators are dealing with it. Broadband service is spreading rapidly around the world and networks are becoming more congested. Reports out of both Europe and Korea during this past year have also pointed out that many software developers are making use of the broadband signaling channel for data updates and that this type of usage is placing a strain on the signaling channels. The signaling channel is vital to the success of wireless. If you are trying to make a voice call, receive a voice call, or start a data session, your device must be able to communicate with the network and this is accomplished via the signaling channel. If the signaling channel is being heavily used for data updates you may not be able to tell the network you want to access it.

The other thing about network capacity that seems to escape many people is the fact that it is not citywide capacity that matters to customers but rather the capacity within the cell sector where they are located when trying to use the network for voice and/or data services. There are several important points when it comes to cell sector capacity. First, of course, is the total capacity of the single cell sector, then how many customers are trying to access voice and data services within that sector at any one time, how many other cells provide overlapping coverage in some of the areas covered by the sector, and how much traffic is being sent over the signaling channels (see above).

If you are the only person within that cell sector then you have access to all of the bandwidth provided. However, if there are a number of users within the same cell sector, you will be sharing the total capacity of that sector with the others. If several users are watching streaming video feeds rather than simply making calls or surfing the Internet, the capacity will be lower for all of the other users since streaming video is continuous use of some of the capacity. If the sector becomes overloaded the result is dropped calls, very slow data rates, or the inability to connect to the network. Network operators are constantly monitoring their networks and making changes, sometimes on the fly, in order to increase capacity in a given area. They sometimes assign users to other cell sectors, sometimes change the tilt of the antennas, or by other means, but the bottom line is that each cell sector has a finite capacity. Also, the further you are away from the center of a cell sector the slower your data rate will be, and at the edge of the cell, even with LTE the data rates can be less than 500 Kbps.

Conclusions

2011 saw yet another increase in wireless broadband demand from tablets and from the increased number of smartphones being purchased and used on the networks. Streaming video has begun to really take a toll on network capacity and the network operators are doing the best they can to handle the demand and manage their networks in the most efficient way. Spectrum is a finite resource and each network operator has a limited amount of spectrum available. Although the FCC has pledged to “find” another 500 MHz of spectrum for broadband use, its ability to auction even the spectrum it has available (AWS-2 and 3 for example) was hampered by the in-action of Congress. There are several provisions both in standalone bills and as part of other bills that were introduced in both the House and the Senate this year but in each case in order to get the funding bills passed the spectrum portions of the bills were stripped out, sometimes at the last minute. This not only effects commercial operators but also the Public Safety community, which has been working to gain additional spectrum and funding from Congress to build its own nationwide interoperable broadband network(s).

As this is written there is little if any chance that the spectrum and the ability for the FCC to auction this spectrum will be settled by Congress. Even if auctions are once again authorized early next year, the timeline for building out the spectrum and putting it online to help meet some of the demand for broadband services will be 3-5 years—if everything goes well. So the increased demand for broadband access will continue to create problems for network operators both in the United States and around the world.

There were many more important happenings in 2011, but the bottom line for wireless in 2011 is that it is alive and well, companies are making money, and customers have better access to more different types of wireless connectivity in more parts of the United States and the world than ever before. There are some rough spots ahead on the road to ubiquitous wireless services but the technology and those who deploy and maintain it will continue to find ways to better optimize the spectrum we have. Hopefully, Congress will enable the FCC to auction more spectrum for commercial use, assign the 700-MHz D Block to Public Safety, and perhaps allocate some additional unlicensed spectrum for use in off-loading the wide-area networks as well.

Moving forward, the increasing demand for bandwidth and capacity will have to be met with more spectrum, off-loading wide-area network-only Wi-Fi or other local-area wireless systems, and by new, smarter technologies including cognitive and smart technologies. 2011 was a good year for wireless and I believe 2012 will be even better!

Again, Best Wishes for the Holidays from all of us to all of our readers.

Andrew M. Seybold

WiMAX has suffered significantly in the past two years as LTE has been adopted by more and more commercial operators around the world. It should be clear to everyone by now that LTE will be the 4G technology of choice for worldwide deployment and that for the first time in many years we are on the verge of moving toward a worldwide standard for data (first) and later voice services. Support for WiMAX has faltered since Intel pulled the plug on its program to make WiMAX a world standard 4G technology and it stopped investing millions of dollars in supporting WiMAX around the world. Will WiMAX die? Will the next generation of WiMAX ever make it out of the IEEE and be deployed? Many people still believe in WiMAX so it is too soon to pronounce it dead. It has a place as a point-to-point IP-based wireless technology but since Clearwire and Sprint are both moving to LTE the devices that support WiMAX will be few and far between in the future.

So LTE is what we will have going forward. LTE will keep getting better and more spectrally efficient, which will translate to faster data speeds and better data rates at cell edges. Before too long we will be moving into the world of LTE Advanced, which truly meets the speed goals set out by the 3GPP a few years ago for 4G networks. So all is right with the world, correct? LTE as a standard should mean devices capable of using LTE anywhere in the world and providing fast data speeds and voice (soon) with a single device. Well think again. We are a long way from where LTE in a single device will provide us with worldwide wireless communications services.

Today, both the FDD and TDD flavors of LTE are being deployed on a total (depending on who you listen to) of somewhere between 33 and 41 different portions of the radio spectrum. This spectrum runs the gamut from 700 MHz (United States, Canada) to 800, 900, 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, and 2500 MHz, some of which is FDD spectrum and some of which is TDD spectrum. Obviously this promises to make life difficult for everyone: chip vendors, network equipment vendors, network operators, device vendors, and ultimately the customers of the service.

Today LTE phones in the United States, for example, already include 700, 800, and 1900-MHz radios and support CDMA 1X, CDMA EV-DO REV A and LTE on Verizon. On AT&T they will support 700, 800, and 1900 MHz GSM, HSPA, HSPA+, and LTE. Phones also include a GPS receiver, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. Soon some phones will also have to support 1700/2100 MHz (AWS-1 spectrum), and if they are to be world phones they will also have to support some of these technologies on 900, 1800, and 2100 MHz as well. That is a lot to cram into a small form factor device: lots of different antennas, lots of duplexers (used to enable transmitting and receiving on the same antenna), filters, and other RF components. We keep pushing the design engineers and they keep delivering devices that have all of this inside them. But as we move forward into the world of LTE on a global basis there will come a point where even the best engineers in the world will run out of ideas on how to make all of these bands work inside a single device while providing battery life that is acceptable to the customer.

So it is ironic to me that for the first time we are on the verge of having a worldwide standard for broadband services (data and then voice) yet because of the way spectrum is allocated around the world we still won’t have a true world phone on LTE anytime soon. The way spectrum is allocated around the world is a convoluted process controlled by the ITU, but for the most part, once it has been allocated how it is used is up to the various countries. The 700-MHz spectrum in the United States will be used by Canada and perhaps Latin America over time. Perhaps it will eventually be used for LTE in other parts of the world but that remains to be seen.

Once an LTE system is installed in a specific portion of the spectrum and devices are sold, moving LTE to another band would not only require building a new network, it would also involve replacing customer devices so they are capable of operating in the new spectrum. In other words, once a network is built out and devices are available for it, it is really difficult to move to another portion of the spectrum. But if we had a single or perhaps three spectrum bands that provided worldwide LTE coverage, the price of the devices would come down considerable because the vendors could build a single device they could sell into every market in the world. This would result in significant savings for the vendors, network operators, and customers.

But until this happens, if it ever happens, which is anyone’s guess, we will have to live with what we have, which is a worldwide standard for our wireless interface that will replace 2G and 3G networks over time. However, it will not be a world standard in the true sense of the phrase because of all of the different portions of the spectrum on which it is being deployed. Perhaps software-defined radio technology will help with this situation. However, because you can configure a radio using software does not negate the issues of filters, duplexers, and antennas.

Antennas in cell phones are not operating as efficiently as they should. This is one reason that land mobile radio systems employ external antennas or antennas mounted on vehicles. They are more efficient, radiating more of the signal generated by the device and receiving more of the signal sent from the fixed site. Antennas embedded into cell phones are very inefficient but they are good enough for the systems to work. The laws of physics for antenna design can be bent a little but not broken, and there is a relationship between antenna length for a given portion of the spectrum and its effectiveness. It is possible to use some antennas for multiple bands, it is done all the time, but if there is not a mathematical relationship between the length of the antenna and the portion(s) of the spectrum on which it must work then there is a mismatch that causes the antenna to function poorly on some of the portions of the spectrum on which it is being used.

The bottom line is that most countries are not interested in making it easy for roamers to enter their area of operations. Both the countries and their operators are more interested in taking care of local customers. In reality, only about 15% of the world wireless population ever leaves their home network for other parts of the world so it is not a priority for these countries to worry about the differences in the spectrum allocations for the various technologies. Hopefully, this could change over time but at the moment it is a fact of life. Even within the United States only 15% of the population ever moves from their home area to other parts of the country so systems such as MetroPCS and Cricket, even though they offer nationwide service, are successful by offering better pricing because most of their customers never leave their prime operating areas.

With all of the different portions of spectrum being used for LTE, the cost of the devices will remain higher than they would be if a vendor built a single LTE device that would be usable in most of the world’s markets. This would mean that the devices would be less expensive to build, would cost the network operators less to buy down (those that do), and consumers would get better pricing. The down side for operators is that it would also enable customers to quickly and easily move from one network to another without having to purchase another device. I am sure that the reason Sprint now has the iPhone 4s, in addition to its guaranteed order to Apple, is that the iPhone is already available on Verizon and therefore already capable of both CDMA 1X and CDMA EV-DO, and both Verizon and Sprint use 1900-MHz spectrum (although Verizon also uses 800-MHz spectrum).

Going forward it appears to me as though HSPA+ will be the worldwide fallback data service of choice for those who need a device capable of being used in most countries around the world. In Europe, Asia, and the Americas, HSPA+ is used on a number of different portions of the spectrum but not nearly as many as LTE. To produce an LTE-capable phone with world capabilities will mean making sure that HSPA and HSPA+ are supported on 800, 900, 1700, 1800, 1900, and 2100 MHz. Since these phones already exist it should be possible for U.S. LTE network operators to add 700-MHz LTE to the mix and still have a viable phone with decent battery life.

LTE on so many bands is problematical and it is an issue in the United States. Even in the 700-MHz band, AT&T’s and Verizon’s spectrum are separated from each other so a phone that will cover both networks will need additional filters and duplexers in order to be able to provide service on both networks. The first LTE 700-MHz phones on the market will provide service on one or the other of the networks but not both. If you add the components to cover both networks and you also want the phone to be a world phone, you have to add the other six portions of the spectrum and several different over-the-air technologies. All of this makes these phones very complex and it amazes me that the design engineers don’t simply shake their heads and walk away from the issue. Instead, they always seem to find a way to make everything work and work well.

As we approach worldwide acceptance of LTE as the 4G wireless technology of choice, we will probably still have compatibility problems for many years to come. It would be ideal if those who set spectrum policy at the ITU and then the national level would work on trying to harmonize LTE into only a few different portions of the spectrum. This would provide the best of all worlds, but as I mentioned above, since this issue affects only about 15% of the wireless population I believe it will be a long time in coming.

Andrew M. Seybold

In both of these cases there were network issues. During the earthquake the problem was simple: The networks stayed up but they were overloaded and could not process all of the requests for service. This is the same scenario that has been experienced with landline phones for years. Remember how difficult it used to be to get a dial tone on Mother’s Day? Perhaps you remember when after an earthquake in California or during the wildland fires you could not get a call through to your relatives using the wired network?

While the cause of wired and wireless phone system overloads are different, the results are the same. The network is up and running but the number of people trying to make calls simply overwhelms the network. In the case of wired phones, the reason is that after your dedicated line reaches the nearest central office your call is joined with all of the other calls on a cable or microwave link. This link transfers the requests and the calls overloaded the link since all of these systems are built on the premise that not all phone users will want to make a phone call at exactly the same time. Therefore, the wired phone systems were designed to handle a normal, expected traffic load with extra capacity for peak call periods, but they were not designed for times when demand is unusually high. The lines and switches were jammed and people could not get dial tone and had to wait until the demand subsided.

The difference between wired and wireless network overloading is that in the wireless network the overloading happens when too many people are trying to use the network in a small area. Each cell site is typically made up of three sectors, each covering a 120-degree portion of the surrounding area (see diagram below).

This diagram depicts three cell sites with each site divided into three sectors. Each of the sectors has the same capacity as the others.

Each sector can handle a maximum loading within it. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that within each sector the maximum number of voice calls that can be handled is 100. A sector’s normal traffic load might be thirty calls at the same time, peaking at sixty calls in a single cell sector during busy periods. Good cellular design dictates that reserve capacity be built into each cell sector so that others entering that sector from another have capacity on the new sector and are not disconnected as they move from sector to sector.

The sector becomes overloaded when demand for service exceeds the maximum number of calls that can be processed in that sector, in this case 100, so if there are 120 people within the sector some will not have network access. The way you gain access to the network is that your device (or the network in the case of an incoming call) sends a request on what is typically called the signally channel. This channel is not only used to request a call but also for the network to track the location of the device so it can be found during an inbound call as well as to facilitate the hand-off to the next sector when the phone is moving. In some networks this signaling channel is also used for SMS traffic, which uses some of the capacity of the signaling channel.

If there are too many devices trying to access the network within a cell sector, the signaling channel becomes overloaded and some customers’ requests will not even reach the network (this is one reason priority access for public safety is not a viable option). So there are two issues, the total number of calls a sector is capable of handling, and the amount of traffic on the signaling channel. Even if more spectrum is allocated to a cell sector, while the number of calls that can be handled by that sector increases, there is still a finite number the sector is capable of processing and completing.

On the data side, even fewer data sessions per sector are normally supported. In normal usage, data bursts to and from the device will permit more customers to make use of the broadband data side of the system. However, if a number of customers are streaming video up or down, the total number of broadband data users is diminished greatly. Even in normal times we have seen the results of cell site sector overloading. AT&T had this type of problem as the iPhone took off a few years ago and many of its customers started using a lot of data services. It is possible that one sector or multiple cell sites are completely overloaded due to demand but calls can still be made and received a few miles away where the demand is less.

What happened during the earthquake was that everyone reached for their phones at once. The networks worked perfectly during the aftermath of the quake but they were simply overloaded on both the voice and the data side. Calls could not be made or received, calls were dropped, video taken of damage could not be sent, and SMS messages did not get through. No matter how much spectrum we have or how robust the commercial operators build these networks, we will have network overloading during major events.

This is not a new problem. You might recall that during the Oklahoma bombing the radio and TV stations were telling people within the affected areas not to use their phones so the commercial systems could be used to augment the public safety channels. During the earthquake, I am not aware of a single cell site failure so the bottom line is that in this instance, the problems experienced were network overloading and this will never be solved no matter how much spectrum we throw at it and no matter how many more cell sites are built. It is not possible for anyone to build a commercial wired or wireless network that will not reach saturation at some point, due to some type of major incident. The same is true, by the way, with the Internet for all of you who plan to rely on it and store all of your data in the cloud.

One advantage to the commercial wireless networks is that the network operators can do some on-the-fly network management. Especially the newer 3G and 4G networks have tools built in that enable pro-active traffic management by changing antenna patterns to shrink the radius of a cell site, to overlap cell sectors in a given area, and to try to balance the load. However, even with all of this new technology there comes a point where a cell sector, and possibly many cell sectors, will be overloaded and this will happen over and over again. It is more severe during an event such as an earthquake because once the event is over, everyone reaches for their phones at once. During a longer incident, say a hurricane, the traffic does not usually peak as quickly and therefore the networks are generally able to handle the additional traffic.

Hurricane Irene

The other advantage to a natural disaster such as a hurricane is that there is advanced warning. In the case of Irene, you can review all of the press releases from the network operators and see that they were all preparing for the worst. They moved equipment around, made sure batteries and generators were operating and had their maximum capacity, and pre-dispatched people and spare parts to areas where the predictions were for the major damage from the storm.

From all of the reports I have seen, the commercial networks, for the most part, withstood what the hurricane threw at them. There were, according to the FCC’s records, a number of outages but they were not network-wide and were limited to cell sites that were damaged or flooded, or where the connection between the site and the network was destroyed. The result was that most of the East Coast was able to use the commercial wireless networks. I have not heard of any network overloads simply because the storm was both predicted and lasted so long in most areas.

The sites that went down went down because of wind damage or flooding, or as mentioned, because the link between the cell site and the network was broken. Today, many cell sites, but not all, have battery back-up and many have both batteries and generators. The number of sites with generators depends in large part on the network. Some networks won’t build a major site without a generator, others build out the network with key sites having both batteries and generators, but some sites only have battery back-up. Some sites are equipped with battery back-up and provisioned so that a portable generator can be driven to the site and connected. Some of the smaller picocell sites don’t have any back-up power at all and if you have a femtocell in your house or office and you lose power, you will probably lose the picocell as well.

It would not matter if every cell site in the United States had massive generators on them. First of all, generators do not operate underwater (one of the big problems during Katrina). Secondly, even if the generator continues to keep the site up, if the link between the site and the network is down then the site, while on and operating, is not functioning and might as well be off. The network operators do the best they can and are very responsive to restoring sites that go down, but sometimes they have to wait for the wired phone company, the fiber company, or even the power company to restore the link to the site before they can bring it back online. As you know, there are still some people without power in various parts of the East Coast and the power companies are working overtime to restore power.

Conclusions

Two different acts of nature caused incidents resulting in two different types of commercial network issues. During the earthquake, the networks stayed up but were overcrowded, a situation that will be repeated regardless of what we do, and the hurricane saw more spot outages due to power and communications links problems. In both cases these types of problems cannot be fixed by an FCC inquiry or a change in the rules, they will continue to happen. There is no such thing as a network that can withstand overcrowding or wind and flooding.

We have all come to rely on our wireless devices, and these incidents underscore our reliance on them. We have to learn to live with the fact that such disruptions will continue to occur. Mother Nature is to blame, not the network operators. In the meantime, what we can learn from this is to not rely 100% on a single form of communications. For my part, I keep four family radio handhelds with good batteries in them for local conditions within my family, and I have been a licensed amateur radio operator since my teens and our local organization provides emergency communications during disasters. We train and we prepare. Our slogan is that “When all else fails there is Amateur radio.” It worked during Katrina, in Haiti, and during the recent tornadoes; I will guarantee you that there were amateur radio operators on the air right after the earthquake and again during the hurricane.

Infrastructure-based communications systems will become overloaded or damaged, that is a fact of life. It is also one reason that the public safety community relies on what is known a simplex, or off-network communications (or peer-to-peer for IT types). If their infrastructure is down they are still able to communicate unit-to-unit no matter where they are, over distances of several miles in most cases. Their networks are designed to support this mode of operation and it is one of the reasons commercial cellular networks are not able to provide the type of communications needed by public safety. They simply cannot afford to be without the ability to communicate so they can continue to be effective during any type of emergency

We rely on our wireless devices but incidents such as these should make us more aware that we might not always be able to communicate with them. It is no one’s fault, it is a fact of life we have to learn to live with—part of smart disaster planning should include at least one other form of communications for times such as these.

Andrew M. Seybold

Adding more capacity means obtaining more spectrum or building out more cell sites closer together, or both. The issue with the first option is that in order to acquire more spectrum, wireless network operators must wait for the FCC to make more available, buy spectrum from a competitor, or merge with another network operator that also has spectrum. They can also add more cell sites closer together, which all of the network operators do on a regular basis. Neither of these options provides a quick fix to the capacity issues. New cell sites take months if not years to plan and build and they must be approved by local planning commissions. Finding new sites in a large metro area is tough, and finding new sites in suburbia not only means having to deal with the planning commission, they must also deal with the residents who are asking for more capacity and more speed but don’t want new cell sites built near them.

So these two options should be viewed as part of the long-term fix for capacity demand. However, the way demand is increasing now we will run out of capacity before more spectrum or enough new cell sites can be built. One of the reasons AT&T wants to buy T-Mobile is that it will gain access to both additional spectrum and additional cell sites and from that perspective the purchase makes a lot of sense (and it won’t hinder competition).

There is one more option using new technology available to network operators and if I failed to mention it here, I know I would hear from one of the cellular pioneers who is also a pioneer in the field of smart antennas. Smart antennas, which are not being deployed in large numbers except in LTE systems), are designed to basically track customers within a cell sector and using a technology called beam forming, extend both their capacity and the distance they can be from the cell site center and still have good data rates. The technology has been around for a number of years now, but for various reasons it has not gained wide acceptance in the industry, at least not yet.

Meanwhile, the FCC has promised to “find” an additional 300 MHz of spectrum suitable for broadband within five years and an additional 200 MHz of spectrum in the next five years. We cannot make spectrum, we can only reallocate what we have and use it more efficiently. If the FCC is successful, it will still be years before this spectrum can be placed into service. First it must identify the spectrum, then figure out where to relocate existing users, then put it out to auction. Only after all of that has been accomplished will the winners of the spectrum be able to build it out. That will take a few years, and then add more time to bring devices capable of using the spectrum into the market. Once again, this is one of the long-term solutions but it won’t help in the short term.

To make matters worse, Credit Suisse just issued a report stating that today’s wireless broadband networks in the United States are already operating at 80% of their capacity. This not only has an impact on the availability of bandwidth for customers, it can also affect the ability of a network to hand off a data session from one cell sector to another. If the customer is mobile and moves from a cell sector that has capacity to one that does not, the session could be dropped or the data rate could be lowered. Data usage is at an all-time high and continues to grow. The same report indicates that in Europe the systems are at 65% of capacity and quickly moving toward 70%.

What then, is left for the network operators in the short term? How do they manage the bandwidth they have, how do they serve as many customers as possible with the best possible capacity and data speeds? Off-loading broadband services from the network is one good way to help distribute the load of broadband and this is being done today using Wi-Fi and femtocells or in-building cell sites. Both of these methods really do help unload the wide-area networks since the backhaul for both Wi-Fi and femtocells is the customer’s own wired broadband connection. Wi-Fi or a femtocell in a home provides better indoor coverage and moves the data to and from the customer via a wired broadband connection and then the last 100 feet over a wireless link.

Only a few years ago, the major network operators did not want to consider using Wi-Fi because it is an unlicensed technology and they did not want their customers to move off the network. T-Mobile was the only network operator to embrace Wi-Fi early and today thousands of Wi-Fi hotspots are seamlessly integrated into its network. AT&T and then Verizon finally decided that broadband demand was building so fast that Wi-Fi off-loading really did provide a way to help manage the demand. Today, both AT&T and Verizon off-load a lot of their broadband services whenever possible. This has been helped by the fact that most smartphones today include Wi-Fi capability as a standard feature, and there are two ways data can be off-loaded. In the case of the iPhone, for example, customers are told by the device that there is a Wi-Fi hotspot nearby and asked if they want to connect to it. In some cases, the device is now totally independent from the wide-area network, but in other cases the two networks are joined at the back end so services such as email and other information exchange can still be used.

The next level up is the type of system run by T-Mobile. In its case, anytime you enter an airport or other place where there is a Wi-Fi hotspot your device automatically moves over to the Wi-Fi network for both voice and data services. (The voice is not Voice over IP but GSM voice that is encoded using the UMA standard.) This automatically frees up the wide-area network in any area such as an airport where there is a high demand for both voice and data services.

There is a lot of interest in femtocells as well. A femtocell is like a Wi-Fi access point in your home or office but it is on the wide-area network’s spectrum. You connect it to your wired broadband service (DSL, cable, fiber) and once activated it is connected to the back end of the wide-area network. Femtocells are seen as one of the hot technologies this year because they do off-load the wide-area network, the customer usually pays for the femtocell, and it uses the customer’s wireless Internet connection as backhaul to reach the operator’s network. Most femtocells offer both voice and data services, and most require the placement of a GPS antenna in order to meet the E911 mandate from the FCC.

There are a number of other ways to increase in-building coverage with Distributed Antenna Systems, Bi-Directional Amplifiers, and other technologies. However, none of these methods off-load the traffic from the wide-area network since they must be in range of a donor cell sector. So while they do increase in-building coverage, they do not off-load traffic from the wide-area network.

All of the above options are being implemented by the network operators as they race to meet the surging demand for broadband services. However, in addition to the technology options they need other ways in which to balance the demand for broadband and the amount of broadband bandwidth they have available. Technology advancements and increases in capacity are long-term fixes while Wi-Fi and femtocells are immediate fixes—but only for a given home or building. What other options do the network operators have to try to balance the demand and capacity of their network?

The Answer Is Broadband Pricing

Only a few years ago it was commonplace for network operators to offer all-you-can-eat broadband data pricing models. This was done to encourage customers to embrace data services and it worked very well. As speeds increased, devices became more broadband friendly and the demand rose. Along with the number of new customers attracted to wireless broadband is a class of users known as “data hogs.” These customers use much more than their “share” of the capacity available on a given network. Only a year or so after AT&T and Apple launched the iPhone, AT&T reported that 4% of iPhone users were using 50% of its network’s capacity.

Now that broadband is an established form of mobile communications and all of the Internet companies have “discovered” wireless broadband, the demand is soaring and by necessity the network operators are finding, one by one, that they have to use data pricing to help manage the capacity on their networks. AT&T and Verizon have switched to tiered pricing levels based on “normal” data usage levels. The low tier is normally 2 GB of data per month and the high tier is 5 GB per month. These numbers are based on a lot of research by the network operators on data usage and they should be sufficient to meet most customers’ demand.

Those who exceed these monthly limits are then charged overage fees on a per-GB basis. Many people think the network operators are simply being greedy, but in reality, the tiers are designed to accommodate 80-90% of all customers’ demand (today), and to better manage the data hogs that are using much more bandwidth every month. Remember that network capacity has to be broken down into cell sector coverage. A typical cell is divided into three 120-degree sectors and each sector has the same bandwidth capacity. If, for example, each sector in the network is capable of 15 Mbps of data and there is only one customer within that sector, he or she can use all of the available capacity. However, if there are ten people requesting data within that same cell sector, they will share the available bandwidth and capacity.

If all of these customers are using the network for email, surfing the Internet, and the like, the data packets are intermingled and each user has a good data experience. However, if several of the customers within the cell sector are streaming video, especially HD video, the amount of capacity available for the other customers in the same cell sector is diminished. If too many people are trying to stream content within that cell sector then the cell sector performance appears to be poor for all of the customers, even those simply trying to send and receive email. Add to this the fact that the further you are from the center of the cell sector the less the data speed and, therefore, capacity you have. Even with LTE the data rates at the end of a cell sector fall off to around 256 Kbps, which is why network operators attempt to build sites close together to minimize the number of customers who have to operate at the edge of a cell sector.

Real-World Data

In order to understand the issue, here are some data points for video streaming in use today:

• 420P or DVD Quality requires 2.3 Mbps
• 720P or HD Quality requires 5.8 Mbps
• 1080P or HD plus Blu-ray Quality requires 10 Mbps

Putting that into perspective, if you are a customer in a cell sector with a capacity of 15 Mbps and there are three customers in the same sector who are streaming HD-quality video, there is no bandwidth left for anyone else! These numbers are based on MPEG-4 data compression; another option is H.264, which dramatically reduces the bandwidth required. In the early days of computers, our firm was constantly asked to help vendors find the next “killer application” that would help drive the adoption of PCs and mobile computing devices. Back then a number of applications were considered to be killer applications including VisiCalc, Word processing, and Ashton-Tate’s database. Today we view a killer application differently: Streaming video is a killer application; it could easily kill wireless (and wired) broadband capacity.

Most of the network operators in the United States have started tiered pricing, which has almost always been the case in the rest of the world. It is interesting to note that in the United States we pay some of the lowest prices for wireless voice and data services in the world even though people gripe about the costs. I tell people they should not be surprised that we are entering the era of tiered pricing since most of us have been paying on a tiered pricing basis for our electricity and our water for many years. It is a common tool to help manage any resource that is limited; therefore it is natural that it has found its way into the wireless world.

But more and different types of pricing await us as network operators strive to make as much bandwidth available for as many of their customers as they can. Some of the options I expect to see coming in the near future include one-person, multiple-devices pricing that will save money for many of us who have multiple devices, but the total data usage will still be on a tiered basis and aggregated for all of our devices. Likewise, I think we will see family data plans similar to what we now have with voice plans and I would not be at all surprised to see time-of-day data pricing before long. It might work like this: Want to download a large file? At 2 pm in the afternoon you might have to pay a few bucks to download it but at 2 am the download might be free. The additional cost will be worth it if we need the file right now, but if we can wait until later it will be possible to set the download for an off-peak time or even for the application to measure network usage and download the file during slack times.

In Europe there are discussions going on now, at least among the network operators and the EU, about requiring companies that are heavy traffic users on the wireless networks (YouTube, Netflix, etc.) to be required to pay the operators in order to help with build-out and capacity improvement costs. I, for one, am strongly in favor of this approach and believe that those who create the traffic should pay part of the costs to ensure there is enough capacity for all of the customers on a network. It is unfair for them to congest the networks and not have to pay for the privilege of doing so.

There are those who still believe that both Internet and wireless bandwidth will be abundant for years to come. Cloud companies are betting their businesses on it and companies such as Netflix and many others are betting their businesses on it. Those who understand the realities of the limited bandwidth we actually have available today, the time it will take to increase it, and the sharp increase in the demand for services are working diligently to expand the capabilities of our networks and infrastructure.

There are grumbles about the end of all-you-can-eat data pricing but the reality of the situation is that network operators need to use all the tools available to them to manage the amount of bandwidth available. Technology upgrades, more spectrum, more cell sites, Wi-Fi and femtocell network off-loads, and yes, tiered data pricing are all tools that are being deployed by the network operators. They are trying their best to balance the capacity and demand for wireless broadband. One thing is certain: More people need to realize that wireless bandwidth is in short supply and we need to use it wisely. More importantly at this point, we need to understand that it may not always be there for us no matter where we are and no matter how badly we are in need of a wireless connection.

Andrew M. Seybold

Around mid-year we were approached by Walt Stinson, founder of Listen Up, the region’s high-end audio and video retail store, who along with a consortium of consumer electronics companies and content providers wanted to host the Rocky Mountain regional launch of digital CDs at our 1,200-seat venue on a week night. Digital music CDs? Who knew? Walt did. His small company would become the largest retailer of Sony CDs in the United States that year. Walt (W0CP) would also go on to become the Rocky Mountain Regional Director of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) and in 2009 was named to the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame along with Dr. Irwin Jacobs of Qualcomm and Apple’s Steve Jobs. In short, Walt recognized the potential for digital and radio far ahead of the curve.

The digital audio revolution of early 1983 would eventually become the category killer of the recording industry, devastating the market for vinyl 33-1/3 rpm albums. The new technology required a digital CD player, originally launched by a joint venture of Sony and Philips Consumer Electronics, to be hooked up to your home audio system. In a matter of months, FM radio stations were touting the broad collection of digital CDs they played and within a year or so some stations positioned themselves as “All CDs [digital], all the time.” That was a great positioning statement and differentiator from their competition, but it ignored a significant gap in the delivery channel. These all-digital radio stations might have played only digital CDs, but their broadcast signal would be analog for many years to come and home audio system receivers and tuners were also analog. Broadcasting digital content via analog signals to analog receivers offered no significant enhancement to the listeners. It provided little more than what we would experience today receiving a High-Definition (HD) video signal on a non-High-Definition monitor. You have to have end-to-end digital connectivity to be able to appreciate the benefits of digital technology.

Within the mobile audio space, there has been a chasm between the level of quality content creators are able to produce in the studio and the mobile device user experience. There is no end-to-end solution that allows mobile users to truly benefit from the enhanced audio quality generated at the source. Dolby Labs is working to change this inequity. For the past few months, Dolby has been demonstrating its 5.1 HD level surround sound for smartphones. A brief history of Dolby Labs establishes its audio credentials. It began providing noise reduction technology for consumer audio systems in the late 1960s and in the late 1970s it broadened its offerings to include stereo optical sound for 35mm film, attracting a lot attention with the release of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The battle for our ears on mobile platforms is well underway. In addition to Dolby’s presence in the mobile market, several other audio technology companies have joined the chase to satisfy the ever-expanding demand for a superior mobile user experience. With 3D gaming and video on phones such as the LG Optimus 3D P920 and HTC’s EVO 3D, consumers will demand the very best audio they can get. Both Audyssey and DTS, Inc. are working on improving audio quality in mobile devices. Audyssey, with a background in home, car, and theater audio is promoting its Premium Mobile Suite. Audyssey’s solution tweaks and optimizes voice and audio on the mobile device by enhancing the performance of the speakers and amplification process. Its solution claims to reduce volume swings and pump up the bass. In addition, Audyssey’s solution automatically compensates for ambient noise. DTS, formerly Digital Theater Systems, cut its teeth in the commercial and home theater audio markets. Its decoders are installed in many multi-channel surround sound processors. DTS is also focused on enhancing the audio experience on mobile devices. Both DTS and Dolby play in the 5.1 surround sound space, but on the mobile platform, DTS is focused on enhancing the users’ experience for games and sideloaded music.

Getting back to the digital CD to analog relationship, the content originally recorded in a digital format and released on digital CDs, is converted to analog long before it reaches the listeners’ ears. Digital, smigital. If you don’t have an end-to-end digital solution, you don’t have “the” digital solution. You only have a piece or two of it. It’s cool to be able to have a better experience listening to your sideloaded music or the audio on those games, but what about listening to Pandora Radio or My Heart Radio programs? There may be a better experience with tweaked onboard audio, but it’s not “exceptional.” Enhancing onboard audio and video solely on the device is great, but it doesn’t mitigate the audio degradation issues when the content is coming to you through content aggregators and the operator’s network. Operators and device manufacturers have to keep in mind the marketing adage, “It’s not just about meeting customer’s expectations. We must exceed their expectations.” Doing so will create the “exceptional experience” that will enable their products and services to excel in today’s high quality demand market.

This seems to be where Dolby is differentiating itself from its competition. Dolby’s plan is to implement its proprietary technologies all along the distribution/transmission channel, from creation of the content to its processing and delivery by aggregators to wireless operators and ultimately its retransmission over the network to end users’ mobile devices. Dolby’s four digital components, Dolby Media Generator, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Pulse, and Dolby Mobile stand to offer a real enhancement at the end user level. Dolby is demoing effective enhancements in audio quality at rates as low as 24 Kbps, and far better quality at 48-96 Kbps. And a Dolby enhanced phone is capable of driving 5.1 surround sound on a large LCD monitor. As impressive as the demos are, they are not fully end-to-end. The middle part is missing. Dolby’s challenge will be getting buy-in for its total set of solutions along the complexity of the content distribution channels. Every step, from creation of content to the mobile device, must be integrated. It took years for digital radio to really become digital radio. Given the motivation of operators to leverage and load their new high-speed networks, perhaps we’ll see the lightening-speed rise in smartphone ownership ignite the implementation of true end-to-end solutions such as Dolby’s. Better audio quality will generate more over-the-air video streaming, interactive gaming, and music downloads, which will be good for those operators that have the bandwidth to deliver.

Bob Chapin

GPS is a receive-only service that relies on the ability to “see” three or more satellites to report a current location. If more satellites are in view, the system can also determine the altitude of the device and the speed and direction of its travel. However, if the GPS signals are being interfered with near LightSquared’s cell sites (it is proposing more than 50,000), those who rely on GPS will have problems. Recent tests of the LightSquared network in New Mexico verified that interference issues do exist.

If people cannot receive a GPS signal, actually multiple GPS signals, then the system does not function. Not only do the people with GPS receivers no longer know where they are, neither does their boss. If they have to call 9-1-1 for an emergency, those answering the phone don’t know where they are either. The radio signals from satellites (GSP satellites and others) are not very strong and any interference to them will wipe them out and prevent them from being received. Except for those designed for military service, GPS receivers don’t have very good receivers. They are not able to filter out interference well (they have not needed to in the past), and in order to get the price point for GPS systems low enough to be built into every cell phone and handheld and dash-mounted device, the receivers have not been built to reject signals in the next band over. So if LightSquared is permitted to move forward with its nationwide rollout, the consequences could be devastating to anyone who relies on GPS services for location, attitude, speed, and direction of travel.

First responders use GPS on a daily basis for finding locations. For example, medevac helicopters are directed to a location to pick up seriously injured patients. If they cannot use their GPS system they are blind and don’t know where to respond. Taxis use GPS so their location can be known to the company, truckers use GPS to find locations, FedEx, UPS, and other delivery services use GPS, and many of us have GPS systems built into our vehicles or we own a GPS device that sits on our dashboard. If the LightSquared spectrum is built out, the chances of wide-spread interference are very real.

Since the FCC issued the waiver to LightSquared, the company contends that it can minimize any interference, but the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, and other Federal Government agencies have called for the rescinding of the LightSquared waiver to operate a terrestrial system in spectrum that was originally set aside for satellite communications. Even Congress is now in the battle with more than 30 Congressional leaders calling for the FCC to revoke the waiver. In recent New Mexico tests this interference was confirmed.

Meanwhile, LightSquared has indicated that it is heading for an IPO and that it has contracts to provide wholesale fourth-generation broadband to a number of smaller network operators including SI Wireless, Cellular South, Leap Wireless, and others. These companies, none of which have enough of their own spectrum to build out LTE or 4G networks, are planning on wholesaling network capacity from LightSquared. But if the spectrum LightSquared is counting on for its network is not available, what does LightSquared do and what does its partners do?

Well, LightSquared is in talks with AT&T and Sprint to wholesale 4G capacity on these networks. This seems like a logical idea until you step back and look at the economics involved. If LightSquared buys capacity from AT&T, for example, then LightSquared becomes, in reality, a Mobile Virtual Network Operator or MVNO. If it then sells this capacity to its partners, its partners will have to pay a premium for the capacity they could probably obtain directly from AT&T for less than they will pay LightSquared and LightSquared’s business model becomes even more tenuous than it was before.

If LightSquared builds out its network, even with tower sharing and other cost savings, a nationwide network will cost it about $15 billion to build and that is on the low side. Verizon has stated that it has already invested that much and it has existing infrastructure to use to help lower the costs of deployment. Once the network is built, the average monthly cost per cell site for rent, power, insurance, and other costs will be about $6K per month and that is also on the low side). This means LightSquared’s monthly site costs will run about $24 million or nearly $300 million per year. That is before profit and does not include company overhead and other costs. LTE requires either fiber or microwave to and from each cell site and that cost will also be substantial.

If LightSquared leases capacity on someone else’s network it will not have to pay construction or ongoing operational costs, but then its margins will be a lot slimmer, having to buy capacity and then resell it to its partners. I don’t think this business model is very viable either, and if the demand for broadband continues and the company LightSquared is buying capacity from starts having capacity issues of its own, will LightSquared actually get all the capacity for which it has contracted? My guess is that LightSquared becomes a secondary citizen on the network and that if capacity becomes an issue, it will be the first to have to give some up. The other capacity issue is that if LightSquared resells this capacity to four or five other network operators, will they have enough capacity to service their own customer base as broadband demand continues to increase? Either way, it seems to me that this is a very risky business model.

The history of MVNOs is littered with failures. The ones remaining have, for the most part, been purchased by the network operator that was providing capacity to the MVNO in the first place, and once it was determined that the business model was flawed, the MVNO either folded its tent and went home or its customers were absorbed into the parent network. Historically, the MVNO business has not been successful and I don’t see this model as one that leads me to believe things will be different this time around.

Adding all of these things together, my outlook for LightSquared is bleak to say the least. If I add in the fact that its spectrum, which has the potential to interfere with GPS receivers, has therefore lost most of its value as an asset, it is difficult to understand how the company believes it can succeed. Yet It remains bullish and is talking about a future IPO and how bright its income future is. I, for one, don’t believe LightSquared will remain a viable entity. It appears to have been blinded in its judgment by the fact that wireless broadband is growing rapidly, there is no end in sight for this increased demand, and the FCC has recognized that more broadband spectrum will be needed as soon as possible.

The FCC and others in the Federal Government seem to believe we need additional competitors in the wireless space; having more competition will continue to drive down the cost of voice and data services to business and consumer users. In reality, today’s wireless customers in the United States continue to pay some of the lowest rates for wireless voice and data services in the world. Yes, we are entering a new era where unlimited data plans are being withdrawn in favor of plans that limit the amount of data allocated to a single user on a monthly basis, but this is necessary in order for network operators to provide more of their customer base with more access to broadband, and it is one way that broadband demand can be managed in order to accomplish this goal.

The FCC continues to look for additional spectrum as it should since we do need it and we need it as soon as possible. I am sure that LightSquared’s proposal to the FCC was met with much enthusiasm since it would provide additional broadband capacity at the very time it is needed. But if the LightSquared spectrum is deemed unusable for terrestrial broadband service, as I believe it will be, then LightSquared does not bring additional capacity with it when it launches its service. It will simply place a bigger burden on the existing spectrum in terms of capacity demand.

LightSquared would be better served to try to purchase spectrum that is not being used for broadband at the moment. Clearwire has a lot of unused spectrum in the 2.5-GHz band and it needs money, the FCC can auction the AWS-2 and 3 Bands, and the FCC already has spectrum in a number of areas in the country that did not sell at auction or that was taken back because the winning bidder either did not meet the payment requirements of an auction or did not meet the build-out requirements.

We need more wireless spectrum for broadband and we need it soon; the AT&T/T-Mobile merger is about spectrum assets just as the Cingular/AT&T merger was before it. There are only a few ways to obtain more broadband capacity for customers—use more spectrum if it is available, build more cell sites closer together, or a combination of the two. Spectrum is, indeed, a finite resource and demand for wireless broadband services is growing quarter-over-quarter, but that does not mean we should jeopardize an important system such as GPS in order to help fill the void. Instead we need to look at how to get more spectrum that is better suited for wireless broadband into the market as quickly as possible.

We should learn from our past. When Nextel was born by converting spectrum used for land mobile radio systems (LMR) to a cellular architecture, the network caused a lot of interference to existing Land Mobile Radio systems in the same portion of the spectrum. The fix was to reband this spectrum and put all of the Nextel channels together so they would no longer interfere with LMR customers, many of which are public safety agencies. This fix has been in the works for more than five years, has cost Sprint/Nextel more than $3 billion, and will not be completed in some areas of the United States for a few more years. We cannot afford to have this type of interference issue surface again because a company or a federal agency believes that more broadband competition is vital to our wireless broadband future.

LightSquared should not be permitted to build a network in the spectrum adjacent to the GPS service. Every transmitter ever made transmits not only on the portion of the spectrum for which it was designed, it also injects noise into the adjacent spectrum. This is simply the way radio frequency devices work. If there are two broadband systems next to each other most of the time, this interference can be minimized. However, when you put a broadband system right next to the GPS service on which the receivers are searching for low-powered signals from multiple satellites, you are asking for trouble. The goal should be to provide additional spectrum for broadband without causing problems for other services. I do not believe that can be accomplished in this case.

Andrew M. Seybold

A week or so ago, the NAB issued a report by an “independent” third party (Onyeiju Consulting, LLC from Arlington, VA) which, in its executive summary, stated, “Many wireless carriers and their trade associations argue that the FCC must make hundreds of megahertz of spectrum available for wireless broadband in order to keep pace with customers’ growing mobile data demands. But this is not so. Capacity problems can be addressed in numerous ways that do not involve spectrum. So while additional spectrum is a tool that can help relieve congestion on mobile networks, the current rush to reallocate is not necessary.”

It goes on to say that prior to worrying about reallocation of spectrum for broadband services, the following can be used to address capacity concerns:

• “Deploying innovative network technology upgrades that will promote spectral efficiency;
• Establishing pricing and other fair-use policies to lessen network congestion;
• Migrating voice traffic to Internet Protocol;
• Leveraging consumer infrastructure such as femtocells and Wi-Fi;
• Investing in infrastructure to enhance capacity through the deployment of Multi-Antenna Signal Processing (smart antennas), picocells, modernizing network architecture, Distributed Antenna Systems, upgraded backhaul, sectorization and cell splitting;
• Prioritizing latency sensitive data packets;
• Employing caching;
• Utilizing channel bonding; and
• Encouraging the development of bandwidth sensitive applications and devices.”

The report continues in this vein but is very short on facts. The authors do not address, nor do they acknowledge the FCC’s own OBI broadband capacity report that shows a shortfall of spectrum of 95 MHz of broadband spectrum by 2012 and about 250 MHz by 2014. This report is designed to prove that the FCC is wrong to try to gain additional spectrum. The bottom line is that the NAB, with this report as “evidence,” is trying to protect the TV channels that could easily be cleared, and cleared quickly, to make more wireless broadband spectrum available.

TV channels are 6 MHz of spectrum each and the lowest frequency that would be usable for mobile broadband is about 500 MHz. It turns out that TV channels 20 (506 to 512 MHz) through channel 51 (692 to 698 MHz) are a good fit. This would free up another 192 MHz of prime spectrum for wireless broadband services. Analog TV needed 6 MHz of spectrum for each channel and no two adjacent channels could be active in the same area because of the potential for interference between the two channels since receivers in most TV sets are not good enough to prevent interference from an adjacent channel.

HD TV does need all 6 MHz of spectrum per channel and over-the-air HD TV does not work well on TV channels below channel 7 because of multipath and other noise, but that still leaves TV channels 8 through 19. Today, less than 20% of the U.S. population uses over-the-air TV as their only form of TV reception while 35-40% are using it as a supplement to pay-tv services. Add to that the fact that many TV stations are no longer making much if any profit, and that there is room for all TV stations within a city to operate within the 8 to 19 channel range, and it is easy to see why the FCC and others are looking at the spectrum between channels 20 and 51 for additional broadband spectrum. This spectrum is ideal for broadband services and even though the broadcasters did not buy it at auction, they don’t want to lose it.

The FCC has proposed, and some in Congress agree, that these auctions could be classified as incentive auctions with a portion of the proceeds going back to the TV stations that voluntarily move to a lower channel. The problem I see with this is that all of the spectrum must be cleared on a nationwide basis in order to make it available. If some stations did not voluntarily agree to move, they would have to be forced to do so. I am also opposed to paying the broadcasters to give up spectrum they never paid for in the first place, although I think that it would be fair to help them with relocation costs.

There are some advantages for TV broadcasters to move to lower channels: The lower you go in the TV spectrum, the better your coverage is and many of these stations would be able to reduce their power (and thus their electric bills) by moving to lower spectrum so they would enjoy either better coverage with the same power or the same coverage with reduced costs. In either event, it is a win for the TV broadcasters, a win for commercial wireless broadband customers, and a win for the network operators that are trying to provide more bandwidth to meet increasing demand for broadband services.

How much is this spectrum worth at auction? The upper 700 MHz of spectrum (TV channels 60 through 67) produced a total income to the Feds of more than $19 billion so if you do the math, each TV channel is worth $2.38 billion. Since broadband spectrum must be paired, each 6X6 MHz chunk of spectrum would bring in $4.76 billion. Therefore, the total auction proceeds would be at least $73.78 billion, and since the spectrum is more valuable than even the 700-MHz spectrum, chances are that the total income from the auctions would exceed $80 billion. This is a sizeable amount, but to put it in perspective, the U.S. debt is growing at the rate of $4.2 billion per day so this auction would pay off the national debt for 19 days!

More importantly, it would provide more needed spectrum, more jobs, perhaps more network competition, and additional money flowing into the wireless sector as these systems are built out. TV broadcasters would still have enough channels and the U.S. Treasury would gain $80 billion. Business and consumer customers would have more broadband spectrum to use so data rates over all the networks could be better maintained. It sure seems like a win for everyone to me.

Even if $12 billion of the proceeds went to fund the Public Safety broadband nationwide network that is being proposed, the total gross for the U.S. Treasury would still be $68 billion and Public Safety would finally be able to build out a nationwide broadband network and provide nationwide interoperability for the first time ever. An investment in the Public Safety network that did not impact the Treasury would go a long way toward helping our first responders.

The players are lining up on both sides of the field and the NAB will probably enlist some more big guns on its side. On the other side is the FCC, most of Congress and the administration, network operators, the consumer and business population of the country, and others who understand that having more bandwidth is critical to providing better wireless broadband services. However, before the game ends there will be a lot of action in the middle of the field and lots of posturing and positioning from both sides. Time is a critical factor here. If we are to identify and make available more broadband spectrum it has to be done sooner, rather than later. From the day it is identified to the day it is auctioned will be a year or more, then the TV stations will have to be relocated and that will consume at least another year, and then it will take network operators one to three years to build out these systems. So even if we started work on the auctions today, this spectrum would not be available for use until 2015 or 2016, well beyond the FCC’s projected spectrum shortfall for broadband services. If it takes two years to decide to auction the spectrum and craft the laws to accomplish all of this, it will be 2017 or 2018 before the spectrum is really available.

In the Meantime

While we are waiting and watching for how all this plays out, the FCC already has some spectrum in the bank that it can release for auctions. There is the AWS-2 spectrum, which, if paired properly, could add another 20-30 MHz of available spectrum and then in some parts of the United States there is some PCS (1900-MHz spectrum), which was either turned back into the FCC or the FCC took back because the auction winner did not meet build-out requirements. The NTIA (the organization in charge of all federally held spectrum) has some spectrum it could free up quickly. Quickly, in this case means the spectrum could make its way into the market in three or four years and would help bridge the gap between growing demand for bandwidth. Then the TV channel spectrum would become available.

The FCC and the NTIA will have to work together to help “find” more broadband spectrum. I hope they don’t spend a lot of time looking below 500 MHz because, as noted above, spectrum below 500 MHz is not well suited for mobile broadband services. The antennas, filters, and duplexers needed below 500 MHz are too big and battery life will be an issue. Perhaps some broadband usage can be made of lower spectrum for fixed broadband usage, but the real choices for mobile broadband spectrum are from 500 MHz up to about 3.5 GHz, and even that is a stretch. The number of cells required at 500 MHz versus 3.5 GHz is about a 1:15 ratio. For every one at 500 MHz, you would need fifteen at 3.5 GHz.

Within that range of spectrum, the TV stations now occupy 192 MHz, more is already allocated to broadband and cellular services, there are land mobile radio operators, first responders, GPS, satellites, microwave systems, government services, and many others. But it is all we have to work with at the moment so we need to be creative in where we look for spectrum and where incumbents can be relocated. The easiest of all of these is the spectrum occupied by the TV stations since they can be located to lower in the spectrum and in each city we are only talking about a handful of TV transmitters. Moving them down in frequency will not require more than having to purchase a new transmitter and antenna. Consumers will not need new TV sets, cable and satellite companies that take their signals off the air and convert them to satellite or cable systems can simply change the receivers they are using, and it is a clean, fairly inexpensive proposition.

When the AWS-1 band was reclaimed by combining military and microwave bands, the cost of relocation was paid for by the winning bidders. Costs were high, but only because there were many microwave users in the 2-GHz portion of the spectrum. However it, too, did not mean moving any consumers or users or having them purchase new equipment on a different portion of the spectrum. We are running out of areas such as those and other relocations could cost a lot more, which is yet another reason the TV spectrum is such a good choice.

The NAB is strong and powerful in DC, but logic is on the side of those who understand that we will need more broadband spectrum soon, and that the existing TV spectrum is the best choice over the short haul. I am not at all sure that even the NAB with all of its clout will be able to fend off those that want this spectrum for their own and those that have the power to have it reallocated. The FCC’s incentive auction plan, where the TV stations share in the proceeds, makes little sense to me since the TV stations did not pay for the spectrum in the first place, but if that is what it takes, then I can live with it.

We cannot make more spectrum, we cannot grow it or do anything but use it more efficiently. One might argue that giving a consumer better and higher-speed connections so they can watch a streaming video almost no matter where they are is not as important as providing the services TV stations provide, but I would argue that a lot of TV content is simply on the same level as the YouTube videos people watch. I think the NAB will lose this battle; the question in my mind is not if but when. The longer the NAB can hold onto these channels, the longer it will take for us to begin to address our broadband spectrum issues.

Andrew M. Seybold