FCC spectrum auction bidding ends at $19.6B
reuters.com
reuters.com
In June, the FCC said sellers had initially sought $86.4
billion for 126 megahertz of television airwaves taken from
broadcasters to be sold for wireless use.
Many analysts had expected broadcasters to earn
substantially more in the auction, with some forecasting in
2016 $30 billion in proceeds.
I guess the analysts don't realize that a lot of these guys don't need tons more spectrum, they just want to prevent others from using it.
Don't worry though, our FCC chief is on it: "FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the closing of bidding is a "major milestone," adding the spectrum will boost wireless service."
No idea how, since even with the fcc rules around use, they'll do pretty much nothing.
Hey, you know what also would have boosted it? Having the people who actually gave a crap, and were trying to make wireless available to everyone by using this, do it. Or worse, we'll see wonderful devices that only work with specific carriers.
To be fair though, congress literally forced them to auction it after massive lobbying from telcos and isps. I'm sure though, that those same congressman will not remember to ask why the hell the auction did so badly if they needed the spectrum so much.
This spectrum all would have been better off in the hands of people trying to actually boost our economy, and it would have been worth a lot more in 20b to help free people from the iron grip of broadband non-competition.
Given that it doesn't go as far as to say "most analysts had expected substantially more", it seems plausible that this the result is in fact in line with expectations.
I'm a bit lazy ATM, but when this boondoggle was sold to congress, the median forecast was done and was much higher. The broadcasters also were forecasting, as part of their earnings, much higher numbers.
Who are these people, who might "help free people from the iron grip of broadband non-competition"?
Ideally, the FCC. By licensing the spectrum to smaller providers with guarantees for service (e.g. we connect X customers in Y years or forfeit the license) and at very affordable rates (or free).
Except the new management at the FCC doesn't seem to be at all concerned with making things better for the average citizen...
Spectrum auctions were a good model when the FCC started doing them. Today we have the technology for devices to mediate spectrum use among themselves (maybe following very high level regulatory guidelines). To use an analogy: you don't "allocate road" to cars. You let drivers figure it out themselves against a background of rules for dealing with conflicts (e.g. Right of way).
I get your sarcasm in that you clearly seem to think that everyone just wants to lock everyone else in differently, but at least, the other envisioned use for this spectrum was, in fact, similar to WiFi today. Unlicensed use by spec compliant devices.
I don't think you can reasonably argue that 2.4ghz/5ghz wifi would have been better off being auctioned off.
In fact, wifi would be even better had it had more spectrum to work with.
It seems like such a hands off approach to spectrum that is meant to cover a larger area could lead to a situation where it's defacto assigned to whoever deployed in an area first, because deploying additional infrastructure makes no sense due to congestion.
The smaller players were the ones primarily interested in this auction, allowing them to roll more coverage to rural areas with less towers.
Most of the spectrum has some build-out requirement, so no.. it wouldn't make much sense for a company to sink $20billion into it to prevent others from using it.
There's other ways to screw over owners of spectrum. Follow the history of the 700A spectrum in the US. AT&T owned most of the lower 700mhz licenses (B and C but not A: that was T-Mobile and other rural carriers). Someone got someone to issue a report saying 700A might interfere with channel 51 television broadcasters. AT&T and the vendors created a subset band called band 17 that was wholly incompatible. This essentially screwed over the other carriers and caused a multi-year delay in band 12 deployment in the US.
Article on it: http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-report/will-fcc-requir... FCC report on the topic: https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/7021920804.pdf
https://www.wirelessweek.com/news/2016/11/sprint-board-globa...
If the telcos want to use high channel deploys on 5GHZ for LTE-U microcells, I say why not. It's not like it propagates very far and it gives an easy way to assist with capacity at stadiums, train stations, and conference halls.
You basically refuted yourself. As for why not? That was the entire point of my comment: because it radically reduces the channel capacity of existing public wifi systems due to them sensing it and shutting off to not interfere. Paid telco LTE-U with it's proxied to uselessness "internet" without any control or ports is no replacement. It's deployment hurts us all and the only good it does is create more profit for telcos.
Forcing? Nobody is forcing, they are requesting. In urban settings telcos are maxing out their midband spectrum. Running higher frequency microcells allow them to increase throughput dramatically in congested areas without having to worry about signal bleeding away very far. (properly installed antennas with down-tilt, etc)
>You basically refuted yourself.
Sorta, I guess. It's useless for most SoHo use since firmwares are buggy and if the AP detects cop radar nearby it'll unpredictably shift channel. Weather radar the issue is caused by directional antennas pointing up or towards the receiving radar antenna due to careless installation. It looks like this: http://www.ec.gc.ca/meteo-weather/2B931828-790E-4782-8BBE-CE...
>Paid telco LTE-U with it's proxied to uselessness "internet" without any control or ports is no replacement.
Sure it is, you're in the 0.000000000001% of people that care about running a webserver while mobile. Don't argue and tell me you don't own a cellphone. People want working LTE else they wouldn't bitch about congestion. LTE is much more efficient than WiFi in the given spectrum requested. I'd use VoWifi which my carrier supports, but the reality is most public wifi is both insecure and unreliable so I don't unless as a last resort. Get real.
As for directional antenna, the antenna doesn't effect propagation, which is a function of wavelength, which is what we were discussing. Obviously having more of the signal directed in one direction mitigates the marginal propagation at higher frequencies. But a sector antenna isn't exactly omni and down-tilt to limit cell horizon is still going to include lots of people and buildings.
Your scarecrow argument about webserver on a phone as the only reason for having a real connection is either laughable or intentionally disengenuous. There are a million other reasons from privacy to p2p and beyond.
And lets not forget that all wireless telcos have absurdly low data caps; that's the primary reason most people switch to wifi instead of staying on their LTE connection.
Have you never seen paid wifi hot-spot access?
>There are a million other reasons from privacy to p2p and beyond.
You still haven't given a real world example. It sounds like you're mad you can't seed on bittorrent effectively from your mobile.
>And lets not forget that all wireless telcos have absurdly low data caps
Sounds like you picked a bad plan. In the US all 4 national carriers offer unlimited (well technically softcap congestion depriority if you go >20-someGB) plans for under $100. I literally never switch my phone to wifi at home since LTE propagates better and I get more consistent speeds. (Carrier gave me a femtocell so I'm still using my cable ISP for backhaul there). I've scratched 20GB a few months and actively had to try to download livecd's in addition to my usual 320kbps spotify streaming to do it.
I have seen paid wifi hotspots. Luckily they don't absolutely destroy the wifi thoroughput like LTE-U does so I don't mind. Have you ever seen a free LTE service?
A real world example is my use of the Retroshare (application) for encrypted communcations. It uses the DHT network to bootstrap and requires accessible ports as do many other completely legit protocols. Not using centralized services to communicate takes lots of bandwidth and it takes real internet access, ports and all.
It sounds like you picked bad wifi equipment for your home network.
I think you're a fool if you believe their early TLPS marketing where they claim they could build an information SUPERHIGHWAY using what is effectively wifi channel 14 without fucking up or being fucked up by poorly filtered wifi devices. This is why they dropped the bid on licensing unlicensed spectrum...
In other news, there was a lot of misinformation on channel 12 and 13 use in the US. In CA it's allowed for indoor usage. The FCC clarified in its approval of the modified GlobalStar plan that 12 and 13 are not allowed in the US.
Could you explain how this happens? What's the reason for Globalstar (or anyone, for that matter) to pay for the spectrum, if at any point some joe shmoe can just build devices that introduce interference in that spectrum, thereby rendering it useless?
Keep in mind, Globalstar already owned half the originally requested spectrum. This is less of a 'paying for' and more of a 'being given value'.
Generally interference is unintentional. Operators of different wireless technology like to ensure a small buffer between their owned spectrum and a different technology. See my other comment about the 700A license elsewhere in this thread. In that case the potential for interference was between DTV and LTE. Read the FCC link, it will explain what was initially claimed.
Nothing technically stops someone with motivation from illegally tampering with spectrum. Years ago I used to carry a small cell jammer that could jam around 10 meters around me ($30 from china). But this behavior is actually enforced against now and I can name at least 2 situations (Florida car commuter guy, and Chicago train commuter guy) where people were prosecuted for jamming spectrum. Some hotels also had equipment to block wifi AP's but they ended up in court too. Fines/penalties are steep for this too, and rightly so since it's tricky to catch. But it's enough to stop someone with a novelty interest (like me) from doing it.
To be fair to the wireless carriers, they're paying for it. The broadcasters wouldn't give up their spectrum without getting paid to relocate or shut down. They wanted around $10B to clear the 84MHz (initially they wanted $86B to clear 126MHz). Without those billions, that spectrum would continue to be used for broadcast television. While wireless carriers might not be the best thing in society, I think they'll use that spectrum better than broadcasters who are heavily under-using that spectrum.
Personally, I wish that the FCC licenses were temporary and so they could re-evaluate every 20-50 years without having to do so much wrangling, but that also has problems in terms of corporate planning, consistency, device obsolescence, etc. and would get very political. Any holder of a temporary license would argue that their spectrum shouldn't be disrupted because they do such a great service to society.
The problem is that to provide competitive wireless service, you often need to assemble licenses for a large enough geographic area and many existing licenses will be geographically constrained. If I negotiate with Channel X in New York, that doesn't mean that same channel will sell to me in Boston. That makes it very hard to standardize a band. Worse, because of the spacing for broadcast channels, you might not be able to use a frequency in an adjacent market. Plus, how close to the boundary of the station's radius can you put a cell site?
Plus, with a UHF TV station, you're talking about a 6MHz block. Adjacent channels aren't available within a market. Maybe 6 stations in a market? The big 4 aren't likely to shut down, but are more likely willing to move, but then it's really the FCC that's accommodating a bunch of that value. It gets a little complicated.
I mean, this auction is going to be clearing 84MHz of spectrum without requiring a lot of stations shutting down by re-packing them. If you bought 4 stations in a market, you'd have 24MHz and be down 4 television stations (which a lot of people still use). By splitting off the band, they're able to use most of it rather than having to coordinate market to market with the old broadcast TV.
Honestly, I wish that the FCC could/would mandate that they can force in-kind trades for minimal money because $10B going to the broadcasters seems like a lot.
The process is easier when you own a band (like Dish) and can get the FCC to allow you to use it in a new way like authorizing terrestrial usage rather than just satellite.
Secondary markets can be great, but communication services often means band standardization and enough geographic area that people will use your service.
The FCC's page for the auction. Includes a nifty dashboard view of the bidding. https://www.fcc.gov/about-fcc/fcc-initiatives/incentive-auct...
The Wikipedia article has some of the history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_reallocation#Broadcas...
Apparently it is UHF channel 30-51, or 566-692 MHz.
Right now, Wifi is becoming practically unusable in large apartment complexes or open spaces like conference centers due to the large number of devices competing for spectrum. I'd be interested to hear if there are any FCC plans or open standards that could resolve this.
Spectrum auctions are one of the more famous results of economics theory, and the first thing that people think of when they think of Ronald Coase (who won a Nobel and is up there in the pantheon of 20th century economists).
So the problems are non-optimal spectrum utilization and pointlessly redundant cell sites.
You could extend the idea of municipal owned last mile broadband to wireless as it is more or less the same problem. But then there would be no point in having spectrum auctions. Governments have gotten used to the money they get for awarding spectrum monopolies so I don't see the municipal wireless idea going anywhere anytime soon.
There is this "pure capitalist" ring to allocating spectrum through auction but the practical effects have been devastating. It's trading $20B in income now for stifling the growth that dumb, unrestricted, fast mobile pipes would offer to the remainder of the economy.
The problem with this argument is that it presumes spectrum would be allocated productively (or "fairly") in the absence of an auction. But that historically wasn't the case, and isn't the case with any number of other scarce resources doled out by governments.
Even among good-faith claimants, there is competition, obstinacy, incompetence, and waste; those things are fundamental to all of enterprise. That's true of auction winners as well, of course, but at least we're (a) getting revenue for the resource, and (b) forcing people to put their money where their mouth is: you don't write a 9-10-figure check without having at least some earthly clue of how you'll put the thing you bought to use.
And why did that happen? They probably figured it was worthless to auction given the attenuation. So if something nets minus dollars in your auction scheme but trillions of economic value, hey, I think we're still waiting for some data to come in on this thesis.
What we really need is just a blacklist of low frequencies for emergency coding and military use, while the rest are open. Intentional interference would still be illegal as it is now, because that is a disjoint law independent of whether spectrum is private or public.
How much of that productivity is derived from the fact that support costs are externalized? Devices having issues connecting to WiFi, network occasionally disappearing for no good reason, neighbor stepping on your WiFi channel, Roku or PlayStation frequently buffering when playing online video? Tough luck, Google is your friend.
Carriers do not have the luxury of enjoying such laissez-free relationship with paying customers.
That has not been my experience. Where I used to live, there was line of sight to multiple towers, presumably enough to get every carrier. Yet service was spotty at best. My monthly data usage was like 70MB or less, not because I dodn't want to use it, but because the 3G speeds were so slow (LTE was even slower and flakier). 30% of the time web pages wouldn't even finish loading.
I still remember the exact place I stood in the locker room in 2000 when my manager remarked similar about the €50B auction in Germany in the wake of similar ones across Europe. It struck me odd. Over the next decade he was proven right. The debt load forced a consolidation of carriers and then suppliers. The effects are still visible in balance sheets.
The problem is that the amount bid is not so much a function of reasonable expected profits but more a question of how much money can be raised. Medium to long term profitability risks are discounted by managers as not bidding has an immediate impact on themselves.
If your low power and nobodies inbetween or in the overspill region then keep calm and carry on, if not reconsider getting licensed modems