At 4:34 PM -0400 8/3/07, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
Hey, if TV broadcasting were as wasteful of spectrum as celluar is, we'd
have a real mess on our hands. When was the last time you had to buy a
TV set specific to one of many OTA TV services? I've never had to do
that.
Not a problem. The government only allows one privileged group the right
to broadcast TV; and "THEY" mandate the standards for broadcasting. At
least, up until now.
Having multiple system operators and standards for cellular telephony in
the U.S. may have some down sides, but inefficient use of the spectrum
is not one of them. I am very upset about the fact that the government
has allowed the cellular market to operate as an oligopoly with business
practices reminiscent of old Ma Bell. But the solution to this problem
is not more government regulation, but rather real competition.
The rules for bidding and use of the 700 MHz spectrum will be very
important. To this point, the incumbent phone companies have dominated
the process of obtaining more spectrum via FCC auctions. They have
circumvented rules intended to keep them from contending for what is a
very scarce resource - UHF band spectrum. The potential exists to create
real competition for wireless services, but history suggests that the
existing cellular operators will find a way to get control of that
spectrum, no matter how the rules are written.
At least now, competitors with the resources to compete with the telcos
could get enough spectrum to help bust the telecommunications trust. But
who is to say that Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Sun, Oracle,
et al, will succeed, and what THEY might do with us if they become a
serious competitor in the market to deliver broadband bits.
There is a point at which wasteful industries need to make whatever
compromises they deserve, for their own wastefulness. There is a reason
why the various Verizons, Sprints, Nextels, AT&Ts of the US cellular
industry must each have their own RF allocations, and that reason is
revenues to them. Not because this is the most efficient way to divvy up
spectrum. I'm pretty sure that a common RF infrastructure for cellular
service would save quite a bit of spectrum.
It may be inefficient to have multiple networks operating in a bunch of
bands, some less friendly to cellular service than other. But the
spectrum is NOT being used inefficiently. Networks are operating at very
high traffic levels and the industry is constantly increasing capacity
to keep up with demand. The result is that we have a fairly dense mesh
of transmitters, and many cells in urban areas are saturated. And the
service is not reliable indoors, especially for those operators using
frequencies above 1 GHz.
There is another reality about cellular which you conveniently ignore.
The industry has created a support infrastructure where most of the
transmission facilities are leased to companies that operate the
networks, typically maintaining all of the networks. this is very close
to the spectrum utility idea I have been discussing.
What the telcos lack is the ability to optimize traffic across multiple
networks in a dynamic fashion. Even that is possible with handsets that
support multiple standards...and now we are talking about adding OFDM
and Mobile VSB for video as well. Even this kind of optimization,
however, will not solve the basic problem - more spectrum is needed in
urban areas to handle the number of simultaneous users during peak
periods. The good news is that this capacity can be added to the
existing transmission sites and in new sites in urban areas to increase
the density of the mesh.
So, let's just agree that TV broadcasters aren't the worst offenders. As
far as I'm concerned, it's not govt anything that keeps OTA TV less than
great here. It is instead the deals made between broadcasters and
umbillical services, which are ALLOWED, rather than prohibited, by the
govt. We could have a super Freeview system here. It's only broadcasters
that need to make it happen.
You are simply not pointing your finger in the right direction.
Perhaps someday broadcasters will realize that they are no longer needed
by the conglomerates. For now, however, they still have a very sweet
deal, and the prospect of additional subscriber fee revenues from cable
and DBS. The market here is shaped by the cozy relationship between the
politicians and the regulated. The 1996 Telecom Act is a perfect
example. Most of this bill was written by the affected industries.
Hardly ANY of the attempts to legislate desired outcomes have worked.
- The DTV transition has been a disaster;
- Spectrum auctions have been thwarted;
- The cable MSOs and telcos fought off the legislated effort to allow
companies to connect to their broadband networks and sell competing
services.
- The cable industry has ignored effort to open up the market for their
set top boxes;
- Attempts to open the cellular industry via spectrum auctions have failed.
So PLEASE, don't try to sell me on the idea that the government can do
it better than the marketplace. We need less gerrymandering with the
markets, not more.
Regards
Craig
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