Congress Wants Federal Government To Sell 1755-1780 MHz Spectrum Band 88
GovTechGuy writes "With next year's reverse auction of TV spectrum not expected to sate the wireless industry's growing demand for mobile broadband, lawmakers are turning up the heat on the Obama administration to auction the 1755-1780 MHz band, which is considered especially desirable for mobile phone use. However, the Pentagon and other federal agencies are already using those airwaves for everything from flying drones and surveillance to satellites and air combat training. They say it would take ten years and $18 billion just to vacate the band so it can be sold."
Lobbyists (Score:5, Informative)
lawmakers are turning up the heat on the Obama administration
lobbyists are turning up the heat on Congress.
Fixed that for you.
Hint: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000076 [opensecrets.org] [AT&T profile at opensecrets]
Re:Lobbyists (Score:4, Informative)
That is the meat of it, Etherwalk. But it's worth noting there really is a bandwidth shortage. I was part of the "band clearing" effort for the relatively disused 1710-1755 Mhz AWS band and it's extremely painful.
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/report/2013/sixth-annual-progress-report-relocation-federal-radio-systems-1710-1755-mhz-spectrum-ban [doc.gov]
The military, and other Federal agencies, both buy and maintain equipment that lasts virtually forever and the cost of new equipment that uses more modern bands is enormous. In many cases my employer simply purchased it for them. It doesn't matter if the FCC has sold you the band, if using it is going to interfere with life-saving traffic you have to have a "fix" that is better than sending them repeated violation notices.
Much like with Linux, the basic problem is with the users. 8 years ago voice traffic was the largest use of a wireless carrier's spectrum with 15-25% shaved off for GPRS-EDGE (or basic 3G UMTS) data comm. Now voice is a trivial component, and "phones" spend hours a day streaming Netflix and doing other things that consume 20x more bandwidth than a mere voice conversation. While Moore's law has applied nicely to handset capabilities, the pace at which spectrum opens up has not kept pace. LTE makes better use of the new spectrum, but it already requires a much better SNR than it's predecessors, there is no jump to "LTE2" that will save us from being this spot again in a few years, and people already want high-def video on their tablets.
So, actually "now" is the right time to push for freeing up some more spectrum so it will be available in the nick of time, just like the 3G spectrum for Apple's IPad explosion wasn't.
Spectrum allocation (Score:5, Informative)
It's startling when you look at a chart of frequency allocation [doc.gov] and see how much is allocated to DOD, maritime, and obselete tech. Meanwhile you have everyone and their neighbor competing over 11 channels for Wifi.