No wonder China is postponing its decision on third-generation wireless licenses. They’re almost obsolete, if you believe the rhetoric thrown about these days.
OK, slight exaggeration, but new technologies are being developed at a faster pace than ever before. At the same time, new spectrum is up for grabs. These two items will bring about a market that I cannot yet imagine. Industry used to marvel at dual-mode, dual-band handsets and even tri-band phones. But that’s nothing compared with what we’ll see in the future.
- Sprint Nextel Corp. has spectrum at 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz. It is committed to iDEN in the near term at 800 MHz and 900 MHz, CDMA in the 1.9 GHz band and using WiMAX in the 2.5 GHz band. The carrier also holds a 5-percent stake in a cable joint venture that could get some significant spectrum at 1.7 GHz/2.1 GHz.
- Cingular Wireless L.L.C. holds spectrum at 850 MHz and 1.9 GHz, and is likely to get significant spectrum at 1.7 GHz/2.1 GHz in the auction and at 2.3/2.5 GHz through its wireline parents. The carrier also supports analog/TDMA/GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS and HSDPA protocols.
- Verizon Wireless holds a similar spectrum position to Cingular with spectrum at 850 MHz and 1.9 GHz, and likely will pick up some 1.7 GHz/2.1 GHz from the advanced wireless services auction. The carrier supports analog and CDMA2000-based protocols.
- T-Mobile USA Inc. holds spectrum at 1.9 GHz, and is picking up some 1.7 GHz/2.1 GHz spectrum in the AWS auction. The carrier also has significant Wi-Fi deployments using the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band. T-Mobile uses GSM-based protocols.
Build a bunch of devices for those carriers, baby. Make them scaleable so they won’t be too expensive. Surprisingly, research engineers say this can be done.
But wait! Wireless carriers want spectrum at 900 MHz too. Include a healthy dose of that in the chipset too.
And then there are network issues. Reuters last week quoted a Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. spokesman as saying 3G was a failure. And 4G, which puts the data before the voice, so to speak, will be a great success. Here’s the roadmap: global spectrum allocation, followed by standards-setting and then commercial rollout. Hmm, I can’t imagine any problems along that path. Nevermind that the United States struggles to follow other countries with “global spectrum allocations,” that the standards-settings process bears much similarity to the “peace process” in the Middle East, or that carriers are still paying for their 3G (failure) networks.
