FCC Chairman Genachowski on Spectrum Crisis

"We can predict the crisis that is coming," says Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski. "Because demand is going up and supply is staying flat." "If we don't increase the supply of spectrum we're going to throttle the growth and the opportunity and the job creation we can get from mobile innovations," he says.  FCC Chairman Genachowski on Spectrum Crunch

FCC Chairman Talks About Need for More Mobile Spectrum

U.S. Wireless Spectrum to Double?

The amount of wireless spectrum available in the United States would nearly double over the next 10 years as the federal government prepares to gradually auction 500 megahertz of federal and commercial spectrum.

In past decades, new spectrum auctions have been the foundation for potential assaults on industry structure, allowing new contestants to enter the market. Whether that will be the case in the forthcoming auctions remains to be seen.

Clearwire and Sprint have plenty of spectrum, while AT&T and Verizon Wireless are launching new Long Term Evolution networks that are far more spectrally efficient than the third generation networks they will supplement and then replace.

T-Mobile USA needs more 4G spectrum, but probably cannot afford to buy new licenses. The issue is whether any truly-new contestants are willing to take a chance on disrupting the business.

Gov't plans to double available wireless spectrum - Yahoo! News

A Decade After the Bubble, Another Round of Spectrum Auctions

It has been roughly a decade since European mobile operators placed big spectrum bets on "third generation" mobile broadband, and then largely watched as killer apps failed to emerge, customer use of the new networks remained sluggish, and executives ruefully noted they had overpaid for spectrum.

Now European mobile operaters are about to embark on a new round of broadband spectrum investments for fourth-generation mobile networks. You can expect them to try to be more-prudent investors this time around. In the 2000 round the German government, for example, raised 50 billion euros, or about $67 billion, on 3G licenses. Some anticipate the government will raise five billion to 10 billion euros this time around.

We'll see. The difference between the 2000 auctions and the current 2010 round is that Internet access has emerged as the "killer app" for mobile broadband, and the difference between 3G and 4G is that 4G looks to be a potential replacement for fixed-line broadband.

"With LTE, mobile phone networks will become a real alternative to cable or DSL (broadband telephone connections)," says Herbert Merz, head of the German hightech association Bitkom.

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New Google White Spaces Proposal

Google now is proposing a new way of avoiding over-the-air interference for devices it and othe companies propose be run on vacated TV frequencies.

Google has told the the Federal Communications Commission it can produce an enhanced system to prevent interference between unlicensed devices operating in slices of local spectrum not used by over-the-air TV broadcasters, and licensed broadcasters actually operational in a local market.

According to dailywireless.org, that could mean 22 to 44 6-MHz slices of spectrum in markets as large as Los Angeles or as small as Juneau, Ak.

The FCC currently is testing equipment to see if, in fact, white space spectrum can be used by low-power data devices without causing interference to television broadcasts on adjacent or non-adjacent frequencies.

Supporters of the "white space" initiative include Dell, Intel Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Philips Electronics and Google.

The idea, as you might guess, is opposed by U.S. broadcasters and makers of wireless microphones, who fear the devices would cause interference.

If means can be found to identify and avoid interference, many megahertz of new spectrum with high ability to penetrate walls and buildings will be available for end user devices and signal trunking, presumably. If it can be shown that equipment can operate without interference, then application and device manufacturers will have a brand new play field upon which to operate.

Some fairly sophisticated technology will have to be developed, though, as the available white space will vary from geographic place to place. So the radios will have to be power sensing, power limiting and frequency agile.

After getting "open network" provisions adopted for C block 700-MHz networks, and then as a corollary getting Verizon and at&t more committed to similar "open networks," now Google is pushing the federal policy community to open up other significant chunks of unused spectrum for unlicensed use by any devices or services able to operate in interference-free fashion.

About which we must simply note that between them, on some levels, Apple and Google are having more impact on wireless innovation than just about everybody else put together.