WiWavelength

Wired broadband duopoly? Who are the 2 players in that? I know that 3 baby bells still technically exist since CenturyLink owns one of them, and I thought that they are a relatively large player still in the telecommunications market.

The wired broadband duopoly/oligopoly is local to each market. It does not matter a whit that there may still be dozens or even hundreds of wired broadband providers (e.g. Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, VZ, AT&T, CenturyLink, etc.) around the country.

1. Wired broadband does not travel with you; it is tied to a specific location.
   
2. Many options are mutually exclusive -- for example, if you have the option of Comcast, then you do not have the option of Time Warner.
   

Thus, from a competition standpoint, what matters is the number of choices that you have at a specific location. And, for most, that tends to be two choices: one cable, one telco.

At my house, I do have exactly two choices: Knology (cable) and AT&T (telco). As I like to say, I get a tough choice "between a rock and a hard place." I begrudgingly choose Knology because it offers 10M/512k DOCSIS 2.0 service but with a 50 GB/mo quota, and I pay $47/mo for that privilege. I would pay only $36/mo, but Knology tacks on an unscrupulous "cable transport fee" (which is really just a protectionist, non bundling penalty) of $10/mo because I do not subscribe to its cable TV or digital phone services.

My other option is AT&T, but it is a non option for multiple reasons.

1. U-verse is not available at my address; my only choice is standard DSL.
   
2. The price is low at $20/mo but so is the DSL rate at 3M/512k; higher speeds are not available on my wireline.
   
3. Even if AT&T offered U-verse at my address and a low price, I refuse to do business with such an unethical, anti consumer company.
   

So, there is the wired broadband duopoly for you. It is patently ridiculous, almost criminal that we have allowed such a dysfunctional "free market" to dominate our wired broadband service. We traded away competition and consumer choice so that cable companies and telcos would have incentive to roll out wired broadband services quickly and widely. Yet, now, even though they face minimal competition, cable and telco want to reduce competition further through collusion (see the VZW-SpectrumCo cross marketing arrangements between VZ and Comcast and the end of FiOS).

Other countries are laughing at us that we sold ourselves to capitalism and got inferior broadband infrastructure in return. Big Cable, the Baby Bells, and their shareholders, too, are also laughing at us -- laughing all the way to the bank. What a joke.

AJ

It uses EVRC-B (8.33 kbps with half and quarter scaling options), which sounds better and is more efficient than AMR. I personally prefer good old EVRC (9.6 kbps) that Sprint (and Verizon in many places) still uses today.

EVRC is also an ~8 kbps (max 8055 bps) codec. The 9.6 kbps comes from the CDMA rate set (e.g. 9.6 kbps or 14.4 kbps), but the rest of the bits are FEC or just padding.

AJ

I agree but when my smartphone becomes a dumbphone everywhere but on Wi-Fi, I'm finding a carrier that works. When it comes to business, you either sink or swim. If you stop treading water, you're going to sink. Sprint stopped treading water in my town. They can either drown, or get back above water and compete again. If it was even close, I would still be with sprint, but they are so far behind ALL the other carriers here, I can't justify paying them good money for a garbage connection.

I understand your predicament, and I sympathize with it. But I also hope that you recognize your role in the dynamic.

When you give up on the competition and sign up with one of the dominant players, you -- at least implicitly -- endorse the status quo, as well as any further anti consumer policies that the oligopolists may then gain enough market power to impose, or you hope/expect that the electorate will step in and enact regulations to stem corporate practices that run counter to the public interest.

With VZW and AT&T the helm, we are heading toward a wireless broadband duopoly as bad as, if not even more dysfunctional than the current wired broadband duopoly present in most markets. If you are okay with that in exchange for better wireless service, then you have made your rational choice. I may not necessarily agree with it, but I can understand it.

AJ

I probably can say this in this forum, but I view switching to VZW or AT&T as "sleeping with the enemy." Doing so just gives the duopoly the mandate that comes from greater and greater market share. They lure us all in. Once they do, they can get away with almost anything because most/all the other choices will be no longer. And we will have none to blame more than ourselves, for we gave them the market power to do whatever they want.

AJ

I wish Sprint would systematically comp people on areas like Fort Wayne, IN that have struggled with unacceptably high voice and data block rates and capacity issues for months and months.

Fort Wayne likely will not get any better without additional spectrum because Fort Wayne is a PCS D block 10 MHz single license market. Sprint has probably deployed two 1X carriers and one EV-DO carrier, and that is all that 10 MHz can accommodate. Sprint has done a good job of shoring up other 10 MHz single PCS license markets (e.g. Albuquerque, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Houston, Memphis, Peoria, etc.) with spectrum swaps and later auction winnings. But Fort Wayne is not included and remains highly spectrum constrained.

AJ

LightSquared should try a "Hail Mary pass" by offering to relinquish its L band ATC pursuit, to continue its L band satellite operations (e.g. precision GPS augmentation), to build out with its own private funds the Upper 700 MHz D block + Public Safety broadband 10 MHz x 10 MHz nationwide allotment, to share that capacity with priority access given to public safety, and to stick to its original plan to sell wholesale access to the remaining capacity.

Otherwise, I foresee several problems with the political decision to deed the Upper 700 MHz D block directly to public safety.

One, funding for the construction of the public safety network is I believe predicated on the windfalls from future spectrum auctions, which may or may not occur -- or not occur in a timely fashion. LightSquared could obviate the need for any public funds for network build out.

Two, even if the public safety build out has the backing of ample public funds, expect delays and slowdowns that would not occur in the construction of a commercial wireless network. In short, LightSquared could build the network faster, especially as it would likely once again ride shotgun on the Sprint Network Vision platform.

Three, 10 MHz x 10 MHz LTE is far more capacity than public safety alone requires. Just wait for the news story about the police officer who uses the public safety LTE network to download 100 GB of pr0n to the laptop in his cruiser. Instead of giving public safety so much broadband capacity that human nature will attempt to fill it with unauthorized uses, LightSquared could share the broadband wealth with wireless carriers and subs who need greater capacity.

AJ

Specifically, the FCC waiver attachment had one letter singling out the Atlanta market to run EVDO in ESMR.

Yes, we are actively seeking more data on the Atlanta market specifically, as it should be a litmus test for how Sprint intends to coexist with SouthernLINC. I hypothesized to Robert that Sprint in Atlanta, Birmingham, etc., might be forced by spectrum constraints to deploy EV-DO Rev B (2X or 3X Multicarrier) in place of 5 MHz x 5 MHz LTE:

I remain a bit concerned that the presence of SouthernLINC in the reconfigured SMR 800 MHz band plan could preclude Sprint from deploying both CDMA1X Advanced and LTE, that Sprint would have to forgo one or the other or deploy EV-DO Rev B instead of LTE.

But early data from other markets show that Sprint has chosen a CDMA1X Advanced channel assignment (476) that is directly adjacent to where SouthernLINC's SMR 800 MHz allotment is located in its markets in the Southeast. I think that it is far more than a coincidence. Rather, it could be indication that Sprint and SouthernLINC have come to an interference abatement agreement that will allow Sprint to deploy the same CDMA1X Advanced and, later, 5 MHz x 5 MHz LTE channel assignments nationwide. But we wait for Atlanta Network Vision 3G plans in order to know for certain.

AJ

Excellent point. As I determined by reading the FCC approvals for the forthcoming LG LS-696 (3G only) and LS-840 Viper phone on Sprint, the physical room for the antennas is a limiting factor. The Viper had to lose EVDO capability in ESMR so that it could have LTE capability in the PCS band. The thing has 1 Tx and 2 Rx antennas for LTE 1900, 1 Tx and 2 Rx antennas for EVDO 1900, and 1 Tx and 2 Rx antennas for EVDO 850. There is 1 Tx and 1 Rx antenna for 1x/CDMA ESMR. There wasn't room for a 2nd Rx antenna in ESMR to do EVDO there.

The single Rx antenna for SMR 800 MHz is most likely an intentional design choice, not a compromise. Sprint has no current plans to deploy EV-DO 800, only 1X Advanced and eventually LTE.

AJ

That just sounds like the Jack Welch school of management: every year, get rid of the bottom 10 percent of your workforce.

AJ

This all being said, I fully acknowledge that fiber is better than microwave in its simplest sense. You are all right there. But microwave is not a poor solution or insufficient solution in any regard. And the biggest determining factor of how fast and how well the microwave backhaul is going to perform at any given site is the fiber connection at the central switching location that is feeding all these sites. Not the microwave links themselves.

Robert, you forgot to mention one of biggest bonuses of microwave backhaul: the RBOCs do not control it. That Sprint has to contract with VZ Communications or AT&T for much of its T1 or fiber backhaul across the country puts Sprint at a significant disadvantage compared to VZW and AT&T Mobility.

Sure, VZ and AT&T will say that they charge Sprint the same rates that they charge their wireless divisions. But money paid by VZW to VZ or by AT&T Mobility to AT&T is money just shifted from the left pocket to the right pocket. So, VZ and AT&T have every reason to keep special access rates high.

This is just one reason why it is almost unconscionable that we have allowed VZ and AT&T to retain direct ownership of their wireless wings. VZ and AT&T should be forced to split their respective wireline and wireless divisions into separately traded companies. The simultaneous horizontal and vertical oligopoly that the Twin Bells have going needs to go away yesterday.

AJ

Since Sprint upgraded from GSM to CDMA in 1999...

This is incorrect. Sprint did not upgrade from GSM to CDMA.

Are you thinking of the lone Sprint Spectrum GSM 1900 market in Washington, DC-Baltimore? That was a partnership among The Washington Post Company, several of the usual cable companies, and Sprint. It launched the first PCS 1900 MHz commercial network in December 1995.

AJ

I thought they had 20 MHz of AWS here-- don't they own the entire F block east of the Mississippi? Not that it's worth anything-- AWS with a 400 MHz spread will always be glitchy.

Why would the 400 MHz FDD offset make AWS "glitchy"? Sure, open loop power control might not be very effective, since uplink and downlink propagation are not highly correlated. But closed loop power control solves that problem. Plus, having longer wavelength spectrum, hence slightly stronger propagation characteristics on the uplink (compared to the downlink) is always nice for exceedingly power limited mobile devices.

AJ

1xAdvanced peak speeds are 507 kbps up and down.

1xRTT peaks at 153.4 kbps up and down.

For 1xRTT, RC4 on the forward link can allow up to 307.2 kbps at the expense of half the FEC. But few networks seem to enable RC4 (and all CDMA1X handsets that I have ever encountered have come with settings preconfigured to RC3 on the forward link).

AJ

Pretty much all 850-- specifically, channel 242 is most often what I hit for 1x. 37, 78, 119, 160, & 201 are all EV carriers here. They also run Ev carriers in PCS-- more toward midcity areas of town that are more densely-populated. NOLA is still mostly PCS for Ev also.

Since you idle most often on 242, you most likely hash to F2, since 283 (which used to be about as close a center frequency as a CDMA carrier could get to the AMPS control channels) is almost always designated F1 on the Cellular A-side.

And VZW uses 41 channel CDMA carrier spacing in your market. VZW does the same in my market, though I have seen others use 42 channel spacing.

AJ

4ringsnbr, is your VZW signal CDMA1X 1900 or CDMA1X 850? Prior to the VZW-Alltel merger, VZW in Louisiana was solely former PrimeCo PCS 1900 MHz. But now VZW holds some Cellular 850 MHz properties (e.g. your Baton Rouge CMA Cellular A-side) that are former Alltel and/or former Radiofone.

AJ

Hardware - The build quality and materials are first rate. The Qualcomm CDMA baseband provides excellent voice calls even wondering around my house which strattles 3 Verizon sectors at the limit (-86 dBm) of their range-- at least that's Verizon's limit... LOL!

Under most circumstances, -86 dBm should be perfectly fine RSSI for CDMA1X. In fact, it should provide fully a 15-20 dB margin before CDMA1X generally tends to break down. So, if -86 dBm is "at the limit...of their range," your three sectors must be heavily loaded enough to really degrade Ec/Io and cause some definite CDMA "cell shrinkage."

AJ

Ben, I think that we will hear more than normal. Remember, LTE is based off GSM...

Josh, not to harp on your statement, but I always take issue with the idea that "LTE is based off GSM" or "LTE is GSM." Rather, LTE is the 3GPP evolutionary path for 4G that GSM/W-CDMA and CDMA1X carriers alike have almost universally embraced. But that does not mean that VZW and Sprint are "converting to GSM," as some have said, nor that LTE is GSM, since LTE is both a new airlink and core network that have almost no connection to the original GSM airlink and core network.

Now, the reason that I take issue with this is because the GSM Association acts a bit like a cult. Anything that it can connect to GSM, it brands as GSM. A la, GSM is everything that is good in wireless, and everything that is good in wireless is GSM.

To me, the insistence of the GSM Association evokes the South Park episode "Starvin' Marvin in Space," in which everything is Marklar:

AJ

I'd like to see someone walking around with a 10 inch tablet to their ear, LMAO.

Using a 10.1" tablet as a phone, you could be the updated version of this guy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xut__-uXG8U

AJ

Just curious, because when I was driving to the airport today (I live in KC) I noticed several towers that had the radio behind the antenna, but there was an antenna right next to it without a radio directly behind it. I remember from the Lawrence drawings this looked like the case like it was done in phases. So my guess these towers are ready they just have to turn on the new antennas and remove the old, or am I completely missing the mark.

Yes, the legacy 1900 MHz antennas will remain mounted during a transition phase. My supposition is that -- even after the new 800/1900 MHz dual band antennas and radios have been mounted -- CDMA1X 1900 will continue to operate from the legacy 1900 MHz infrastructure during at least part of that transition phase. So, the mere presence of antenna mounted radios does not mean that you are experiencing Network Vision enhanced coverage -- yet. But I will leave it to Robert to chime in and confirm or correct my supposition.

AJ

40 Mhz!!! That would be epic! 20x20 LTE!

Dish's S band spectrum is fully 20 MHz x 20 MHz, but it has some adjacent services issues (though nothing remotely as bad as the LightSquared-GPS debacle). So, Dish will not likely be able to utilize the full 20 MHz in each link allocation. Moreover, Dish's band class 23 is spec'd only to 10 MHz x 10 MHz LTE; it does not currently allow 15 MHz x 15 MHz nor 20 MHz x 20 MHz LTE options.

AJ

They are going to have to sink money into Clear anyway with its wholesale business drying up, Sprint might as well put it into something it owns outright.

Why would you say that Clearwire's wholesale business is "drying up"? It has the potential for quite a bit of growth in the near future due to the demise of LightSquared. Already, a few former LightSquared wholesale partner have shifted their contracts to Clearwire in just the past week or so.

AJ

I believe they have some AWS spectrum which would have been a nice introduction for Sprint to get into that spectrum band.

I disagree on the AWS.

Recall that Sprint was a partner with Comcast, Time Warner, and Cox in SpectrumCo, which won nearly nationwide AWS 2100+1700 MHz spectrum at the AWS-1 auction in 2006. A few years ago, however, Sprint cashed out of the partnership. And now the cable companies are selling the spectrum to VZW. If Sprint had wanted to add AWS to its portfolio, then Sprint should have stuck with SpectrumCo.

Furthermore, MetroPCS would bring more than just PCS and AWS spectrum to the table. MetroPCS also controls some Lower 700 MHz spectrum. So, those would add two more to Sprint's growing list of band classes: PCS 1900 MHz, SMR 800 MHz, BRS/EBS 2600 MHz. And, honestly, Sprint has its hands full with its current bands, two of which are essentially unique to Sprint. So, Sprint would be unwise to fragment its spectrum holdings even further.

For those interested in MetroPCS' spectrum holdings, I just so happened to compile the top 100 markets a few weeks ago and produced this graph:

AJ

I have proposed that wireless carriers create an incentive system to encourage subs to offload heavy data usage to Wi-Fi. Carriers could maintain current unlimited or tiered data options and prices but offer data usage rebates to those subs who would keep their WWAN (e.g. LTE, WiMAX, W-CDMA, EV-DO) data usage below a predetermined threshold. In short, subs would pay their $30/month for data, but subs who kept their WWAN usage under, for example, 1 GB would get $5 or $10 knocked off their bills the next month.

I feel very strongly that, because WWAN data is a shared resource, people need to take responsibility for their WWAN usage. Continuous audio/video streaming, heavy downloading/uploading, etc., over WWAN is not okay. And throwing more and more spectrum at the "crunch" is not the answer, as that just leads to even greater band class fragmentation, carrier compartmentalization, and interoperability/competition issues. So, we need to use current spectrum more efficiently, need to utilize heterogenous cellular networks -- a mix of customer and carrier deployed microcells (Wi-Fi and/or LTE, etc.) for indoor high traffic, low mobility environments to take a load off of the current macrocell network.

AJ

This should allow Sprint to provision it for all of the frequencies they will be offering LTE, but there is no word on if it is a software provisioning or if it has to be in the hardware from the start.

Guys, keep in mind that there is a huge gap in between possibility and certainty. While the upcoming Qualcomm chipsets do make it possible to support any/many LTE band classes, that alone does not make it certain that devices will do so.

Chipsets are one piece of the interoperability puzzle. In fact, they are really the easiest piece to fit because they are small and light, not to mention that adding band class capabilities does not really increase size nor power requirements.

To illustrate, the iPhone 4S contains a Qualcomm chipset that fully supports T-Mobile's W-CDMA 2100+1700 (band class 4) airlink and many, many others. See this table (from Qualcomm by way of AnandTech):

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/4943/zjWXE.png

But, of course, the iPhone 4S as a whole does not support T-Mobile's 3G/4G W-CDMA 2100+1700 network because Apple did not follow up the chipset capability with suitable power amp modules and antenna(s).

So, in order to support Sprint's LTE 1900 (band class 25) and LTE 800 (band class 18) airlinks plus Clearwire's TD-LTE 2600 (band class 41) airlink, the multi band chipsets (as I have stated previously) should be easy to source, should not be a concern. However, devices will also need to include appropriate power amps and antennas. On the last count -- antennas -- note that is plural. MIMO is basically a standard feature in LTE devices, hence Rx antenna diversity is also practically a necessity. And cramming dual Rx antennas for multiple band classes into handheld devices while keeping size/weight to a minimum seems to be the real sticking point.

AJ

For those who have used or followed Sprint long enough, recall that Sprint plans originally offered no included roaming. Subs could prepay for roaming airtime bundles at reduced rates. Otherwise, all roaming calls were billed per minute (and long distance fees were charged separately). Then, circa 2004, Sprint started offering Free & Clear America plans that included domestic roaming. However, those roaming included plans (which were limited to voice roaming) upped the ante by $10 per month.

So, if you want unlimited domestic voice and data roaming, the relevant question is how much more per month would you be willing to pay for it?

AJ