bspectrumg

First they need to actually reband the spectrum so that it's contiguous. Then we will see. Again deployment costs are going to eat them up unless they deploy an innovative architecture to minimize them. A company called Spark already offers a cellular plan for $3/month for 1MB which is enough for 20,000 messages of 50 bytes or less. Each additional MB costs $1:

http://www.techhive.com/article/2889923/spark-electron-brings-cheap-cellular-connectivity-to-the-internet-of-things.html

For meter reading/control, that's plenty of data. I still think that already existing carriers have a built in advantage, since the deployment costs are already sunk. Same thing with FirstNet. Now if Sprint had their shit together they would have come to some agreement withe the other spectrum holders in that band and added the band to its supported bands and used it for M2M/IoT.

Thank you. I suspect the long-term plan is a sale of the contiguous spectrum in order to have a larger carrier gain advantage of economies of scale. I appreciate your thoughtful responses. 

Unless they can either piggyback off somebody else's infrastructure (i.e., Sprint's) or can reduce the number of towers required per covered area by turning up signal strength/and or beam forming) They will be swallowed by deployment costs. The utilities do not want to be paying a lot of money per meter for meter reading. Utilities can piggy back on FirstNet and basically help defray operating costs. The feds are underwriting deployment costs.

Thanks. I think eventually the idea is to eventually use the spectrum for IoT type applications. Utilities would just be part of the equation. 

I don't see how they could succeed

Why don't you think they'll succeed? 

I don't see what kind of advantage they have to run Push to talk on LTE.

They are looking to deploy a build to suit network for critical infrastructure with the LTE. I think PTT is a short-term plan for them until they can get it done through an NPRM. 

What kind of network are they building? iDEN?

They're trying to build a 3x3 LTE network. 

pdvWireless said that they now believe the FCC will issue an NOI instead of an NPRM. I know that when S sold their spectrum to pdv, some thought it was undervalued. I'm kind of surprised an NPRM doesn't look like it'll happen anytime soon. 

What do you think about the future of the band and pdv's spectrum?