Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
Spectrum is the lifeblood of the wireless industry: without it, everything would die. So, with such an importance placed on something that while invisible is necessary for all “this” to work, you would think there would be some reverence placed upon naming spectrum. You, of course, would be wrong. Just take a look at the different names the government has given to spectrum it has auctioned off to wireless carriers over the years:
–Personal Communications Services (PCS) – This is spectrum in the 1.9 GHz band.
–Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) – Spectrum in the 1.7 GHz band for uplink paired with 2.1 GHz spectrum for downlink.
–Wireless Communications Services (WCS) – Spectrum in the 2.3 GHz band.
What do all of these have in common? Asinine names that all say the same thing, yet say nothing: this is spectrum for commercial wireless services.
Personal Communications Services? What the hell does that mean? Are wireless services not offered in this spectrum band not “personal?”
Advanced Wireless Services? Are the CDMA2000 services offered by some carriers in this band somehow more “advanced” than the LTE services offered in the 700 MHz band by others?
Wireless Communications Services? Why not just call it “Acme Cellular Service” and sell it next to the generic cans of beer at the liquor store?
Maybe as a report I should be thanking the government for providing “names” for these spectrum bands instead of forcing me to have to always type out the “numbers” when referring to specific spectrum bands. But, then what about the 700 MHz spectrum? That band is just calling out for some boring title that does not explain anything about it.
Don’t get me wrong, the wireless industry is no expert on handing out justified names and acronyms for its deluge of technological mumbo-jumbo, but to impart such a travesty on the life-giver that is spectrum is a crime.
Now, with the government threatening to at some point in the future unleash hundreds of more megahertz of spectrum onto an insatiable wireless market, I figured it would be a great time to remind those in charge of just how important this invisible spectrum stuff is and that it deserves some cool names. Throw in something awesome like “Turbo” or “Mega” or “Hyper” or “Bad Ass.” People love those things.
Heck, take it the next step and get a spokesman to tie their name to that spectrum. Imagine auctioning off some “Steven Seagal Wireless Spectrum,” or “Chuck Norris Approved Wireless Spectrum?” Sort of spices it up, don’t you think?
Yeah, it does. If you think $20 billion for 700 MHz spectrum was something, just wait until you see what carriers bid for spectrum dubbed “Chuck Norris Said Buy This Spectrum Or He Will Be Paying You A Visit Wireless Spectrum.” I am breaking out my check book immediately.
You see, it’s all in the name.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–I know when people ask me what mobile device they should buy, or what is the latest and greatest that the last thing they want to hear about is network coverage and battery life. They want numbers like screen size, processing power and memory with the only letters they want to hear being “iPhone.” I get it. Mobile is high tech and people love high tech.
But, when I do get those questions I can’t in good conscience offer more than coverage and battery life. These two features are at the core of how a mobile device performs and with poor performance in both of these categories, you might as well buy a portable gaming system.
I was reminded this week of the importance of these two features when attending a trade show where one of the devices I schlepped around struggled to register a strong signal on an unnamed carrier’s native network and thus the battery life of that device struggled, like myself, to make it past mid-day. No matter how high tech that device is, and it’s one of the highest tech devices on the market, without juice it was just a plastic block of frustration.
–Network strength, battery life. Those are the two vectors on which all device decisions should be made. Or, just get an iPhone.
–One more note from this week’s travels. I also was fortunate to have an LTE-equipped device from Sprint Nextel that could tap into the carrier’s recently launched network in the Dallas area. Or at least it should have been able to.
While milling around the downtown area of the city, LTE coverage for the device was certainly hit-or-miss, with more misses than hits. Out on the streets I was able to pull in a consistent signal, though network speed testing showed large fluctuations with a number of tests doing no better than what had been seen with the carrier’s 3G network. Moving indoors seemingly shut off all LTE coverage.
I know Sprint Nextel is still in the early days of its LTE plans and that its current spectrum support for that network is not ideal, but at a time when rivals are moving rapidly to near-network wide coverage, Sprint Nextel is rapidly falling behind from both a network and marketing perspective. This similar to what the carrier experienced with its WiMAX-based “4G” offering that managed to get out to a quick leadership position in the race for next-generation services – and some would argue forced rivals to hasten their own LTE builds – but that leadership quickly vanished. Compounding the WiMAX issue was that the carrier’s WiMAX partner Clearwire soon decided to stop expanding coverage to less than half of the country’s population leaving those that did sign up for the service and its initial $10 per-month premium paying for something that they were lucky to have access to.
The move to LTE should prove a different story for Sprint Nextel as it’s building out the network across its own network using its own spectrum. Plus, the carrier is set to receive a significant cash and possible technology infusion from Softbank that should see Sprint Nextel continue to move aggressively along the LTE deployment path. But, in the short term, customers are again having to remain patient in realizing the enhanced benefits of their shiny new devices.
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