[opendtv] Re: Will Femtocells Save LTE?
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 07:50:46 -0400
At 3:02 PM -0500 4/29/11, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
That's the whole point, Craig!
Spectral reuse is critically important when you need to provide
*two-way* services for the masses. It scales very well for THAT
purpose.
When you want to efficiently send one-way data *to* the masses, the
equation is entirely different.
Sorry Bert, but you are just wrong.
To send exactly the same stream to a million appliances, it makes
absolutely no sense to create a complicated cabled network and very
short RF links. Think about it. You would be dedicating the same x
MHz band from a zillion small towers, when you could be sending that
SAME x MHz from a much smaller number of towers, or even just one
tower, and *avoid* the whole cabled infrastructure.
I agree that the tower density does not need to be the same as for
the two-way LTE infrastructure, although this may be a moot point, as
once you site a tower, adding services in another frequency band is
trivial. And a very large percentage of towers are managed sites used
by multiple carriers.
But the one tower approach, with high power levels IS THE PROBLEM.It
forces broadcasters to waste huge chunks of spectrum as guard bands.
You can deploy the big sticks in rural markets to hit the wide open
spaces, but in heavily populated areas you need networks of smaller
towers to achieve high levels of spectrum reuse and to give
broadcasters the ability to reach sub-markets that will be critical
to location based services.
It is much, much more efficient to rely on a large RF coverage area
for one-way broadcast. The expense of the small-cell, complicated
infrastructure, belongs on those networks that actually benefit from
it, not on those networks that gain nothing at all from it. I
shouldn't have to pay for OTA TV service if the OTA TV service
doesn't need that expensive infrastructure. That's just a case of TV
service subsidizing your smartphone usage.
The other way around Bert.
Big sticks are very expensive:
Expensive site;
Expensive to build;
Expensive to operate.
We have all be subsidizing the construction of the new cellular tower
infrastructure, which is very capable of supporting broadcasters too.
Not for free, the free ride fro broadcasters is over.
But the money now spent on transmission infrastructure and power
bills will go a long long way toward a new business model where
broadcasters pay a third party for access to the transmission
networks.
And there are MANY existing sites (buildings) in urban areas that can
support the broadcast antennas. It is MUCH easier to put a low power
transmitter in a small space in an office building and radiate low
power levels than to install a MW transmitter and a big dual
polarization antenna.
For a one-way broadcast network, the only possible reason to use
more than one tower would be ease of reception. But even then, the
equation is entirely different from the two-way wireless to the
masses.
Wrong.
The reasons are:
Improved RF environment with uniform signal levels where there are
customers. (not just ease of reception, but significantly lower power
requirements).
Vastly improved network characteristics. Instead of Washington and
Baltimore being two huge markets that encompass dozens (perhaps
hundreds) of sub markets, it will be possible to reach all of these
sub markets. And with an available back channel via the companion
2-way services, broadcasters will be able to use their spectrum
INTELLIGENTLY to reach targeted markets and audiences.
The following paragraphs from the article Mark Aitken posted are critical:
"The ATSC is not tasked with figuring out how can we deliver
broadcasting to a wider area, but they are thinking about, within the
area that stations serve, how can we up the reliability in more
diverse receiving configuration like indoor reception," says Lynn
Claudy, SVP, science and technology, National Association of
Broadcasters, which is taking an active role in the next-gen push.
AND from Mark:
"It's no secret [the DTV standard] has never been what it was cracked
up to be," he says. "We need more bit capacity, we need more reliable
service and we need the ability to seamlessly stitch together markets
with a quality service that would support virtually any business
model."
In other words, when you create more distributed transmission
network, not only can you achieve improved spectral re-use, but you
can dynamically change the configurations and coverage areas of
"channels" to support different services and geographic areas.
As I said, aside from the practical limits of what a hand-over
protocol can do, for two-way comms for the masses, there is nothing
that scales better than shortening the RF link, and that can
ultimately (I'm speaking theoretically) result in just ONE frequency
allocation for that purpose. Therefore, those guys are the ones that
need to pay the freight.
Well actually WE pay the freight. They just cover the costs with a
margin for profit; the politicians get the windfall profits from the
spectrum deals.
We've been paying the freight for broadcasters far too long. In
return for the virtually free use of the valuable spectrum resource
we get to pay at the check-out counter and pay again via subscriber
fees for a government subsidized "FREE" service.
The reality is that we can have an appropriate infrastructure for
21st century communications with all parties sharing the costs, and
the marketplace determining how the spectrum is used on a real-time
dynamic basis.
Regards
Craig
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