bigsnake49

I only have one wireline TV provider. And their TV services are quite laughable due to their decision of equipment. So in my eyes I really only have 2 pay-tv providers and that's DishNetwork and DirecTV.

 

I'm lucky to have one wired TV provider. Many areas have absolutely zero wired TV providers. 10 minute drive from my house and there isn't a wired TV provider for at least another hour drive. People living in metro areas live in caves I guess and think everywhere there are 3 wired providers. Take a ride to many areas west of the Mississippi River.

Yeah, what's that? 2% of the population? If you live on the farm, then sorry, that's what you get. Maybe if people didn't choose to live so far out in the boondocks they might have more choices. So much money wasted on freaking USF. The federal government could have created an end to end wireless network, covered 100% of the population for what they have spent on USF.

I highly disagree. That would create a monopoly in many areas. The level of technology with satellite tv would not be where it is at today if they allowed them to merge. I am so glad that was shot down. We would have DVRs that are 10 yrs old like Cox! Jeez.. Those things are horrible.

 

How would you feel having AT&T as the one and only wireless phone carrier?

 

Sent from a little old Note 2

The market is mature now. There is not a lot of new subscribers to be had. Most people have at least 3 TV providers to choose from. There cannot be more than 3 competitors in a mature market.

Ideally, all the carriers should do this. No more cross-subsidization of expensive devices and upgrades from people who don't upgrade or buy cheaper devices. Most European carriers sell plans this way.

This might prompt Samsung and Apple to become their own MVNO.

Dish and DirectTV should be allowed to merge. I don't think the market is big enough for two satellite providers. Then they can more effectively compete with AT&T/Verizon/Cablecos on the broadcast TV market.

I punched in my zip and two stores, not even one in Baton Rouge or the entire parish for that matter.

 

Sent from a little old Note 2

They just might have to reopen some of them. We had one near my house, but it closed. I thought it was pretty busy.

I'd like to see what they're going to do with this spectrum. If they plan to be yet another carrier, good luck to them, there's not enough money for 5 carriers in a mature market Even 4 carriers are one too many. Now if in addition to offering cell phone service they also used it for VOD and other OTT services, it might become useful. I personally think that they are making a feint to have somebody like AT&T buy off of them. If not and they actually develop a network, it will make it much easier for Sprint and T-Mobile to merge.

(DISH)’s Blockbuster will begin selling mobile phones in its movie-rental stores as a test for Dish’s planned entry into the wireless business, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Blockbuster recently started selling phones on its website under the banner “Blockbuster Mobile,” working with carriers such as Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) and T-Mobile USA. The effort will soon shift to Blockbuster’s roughly 850 retail locations, said the people, who asked not to be named because the plan hasn’t been announced.

For Dish, a satellite-TV service provider that acquired the Blockbuster chain last year, the move may be a prelude to offering its own mobile-phone service. Dish has acquired a swath of wireless airwaves and is awaiting rules from the Federal Communications Commission governing how it can use them.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-12-05/blockbuster-is-said-to-beging-selling-phones

Not a bad idea at all, since Sprint has no use for it anyway. Maybe they can swap?

I know that the control channel for IDEN (PCH?) has to be located in the 800 SMR spectrum. At least that was a requirement way back when.

I know from a business standpoint...AT&T isn't pleased with Southern Company's decisions...so would AT&T go into a (sensible, monetarily feasible) relationship with them on their SoLinc service...not sure..

 

Here's why: Southern is cancelling and not recommitting to hundreds of contracts that they've held with AT&T/formerly Bellsouth for years...they made AT&T come to each plant and pull ALL the copper out..and installed their own Cisco equipment. Now the plants run their own VOIP solutions, except for the few that can't switch over yet...so I bet there's a sour taste there with AT&T and the millions in revenue they lost when Southern Comp said "bye bye"...imagine how many lines a plant has...not including data service...they did away with and are doing away with AT&T completely..they want to do their own in-house telecom. (another instance where I've personally seen that Southern controls everything about it's operations...they dont want anyone to cause them to lose production..so they seemingly want to control every aspect of their operational status...

 

Is there any other utility provider like this around who owns spectrum like they do? I'm curious if there are others..

Southern Co, as well as FPL, have already strung many miles of fiber and or microwave, so it makes sense that they would provide their own voice as well. Both utilities also provide data services to other customers. Southern-Telecom has a lot of dark fiber.

That would entail moving external (i.e. non Southern Company) users onto an MVNO because SouthernLINC really does not have sufficient spectrum to run two airlink technologies concurrently. And that would further diminish the economy of scale and utility -- pun intended -- of the iDEN network.

 

AJ

What I would like for them to do is to sell Sprint the portion of SMR spectrum that limits Sprint to less than the 7x7Mhz they have elsewhere. In return Sprint can give them a big discount on LTE data. They can keep IDEN running for as long as they want for their own employees. Every utility runs some kind of LMR system but very few take 3.75x3.75MHz to do so. Too much spectrum for just LMR.

Cheap is one thing. Profitable is something else entirely.

 

SouthernLINC has fewer than 200,000 users. And considering the antiquated iDEN technology and the type of users it is likely to attract, device turnover rate is probably no greater than 50,000 per year. In other words, SouthernLINC provides device manufacturers very little economy of scale. Device procurement is a growing problem that SouthernLINC will face if it refuses to progress from iDEN.

 

AJ

NII will sustain that industry for a while with their 11.4M customers. Motorola is probably selling the handsets at cost if you sign up for their pretty expensive maintenance contracts.

The Motorola i930 was an iDEN/GSM hybrid, although it only supported 900/1800/1900MHz GSM frequencies. I'm sure that they can definitely construct a hybrid IDEN/WCDMA phone. WCDMA chipsets are a dime a dozen, so it will be relatively cheap.

Well that goes against what this article states and we don't have much open room to discuss anything else

 

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If you are refering to this portion:

"In order to address the gap left by Sprint's iDEN network shutdown, Horsley said SouthernLinc plans to offer a "nationwide solution" in the near future. He declined to provide details. SouthernLinc could be planning to offer an MVNO service."

It says that they will probably have a roaming solution. I personally think they will offer something running on AT&T's network since IDEN and GSM are using the same backend, MAP, with hybrid handsets. They might even offer nationwide PTT with a gateway between AT&T's Kodiak based system and IDEN.

We will see.

Pardon my blunt response..but you don't know what you're talking about. One of the stacks at my wife's plant burns coal...and the expelled "waste" is LESS THAN ONE PERCENT harmful (so of the coal burned, less than 1% of it is wasted and can't be captured.)

 

I won't even go into the huge (Federally funded, and operated) Carbon capture units they have on the plant site...

so obviously while coal USED to be nasty to burn...we get the prospectus each year that shows how much money they invest into "green" and efficient technology. And there are still some plants that aren't up to par..but they aren't a part of SoComp...so don't just assume ...

 

(then again..why in the hell would we want to use something that WE HAVE PLENTY OF on our own soil..when we can move towards full foreign dependency if we do away with it?)

We have plenty of natural gas and it emits a lot less carbon dioxide/MBTU.

Ok..back in September, in another thread..I said that SoLinc wouldn't just end iDEN when Sprint shut down..and they would do whatever to continue. I was blasted for my thoughts and told about how impossible it was..Do I think they are infallable? no way..but I just gave some insight from what I saw of the company since I have a personal relationship with them..

My insight wasn't taken seriously...and this is what I'm referring to..

Other than the SoLinc thing...I see a bunch of things I wish SoComp would do different..especially when it comes to unions, the IBEW..benefits...PAY...and seniority. I won't even get into the Credit union (employees federal) that SoComp operates.

They are a company, out to make money...and I didn't appreciate the union (IBEW) sending us a damn OBAMA sticker in the mail just before election -- especially when the guy wants to do away with coal (essentially making us pay MORE for electricity because they have to burn natgas.)

Well, unless they offer data along with nationwide roaming, I foresee them losing some of their non-Solinc employee customers. At that time, when the network is basically used solely by Southern Co, does it make sense to operate a network without anybody else sharing it?

I think the topic is worth a serious discussion, but SouthernLink's strategy here is seemingly nonsensical. Keeping a legacy public network on the air because it's convenient to the company's operations doesn't make much sense (especially when you consider nobody else in the same industry, or any other industry, feels the need to do the same), and this "national roaming" solution is implausible unless they're migrating everyone to existing CDMA/iDEN handsets or Motorola is going to custom-build a few thousand GSM/iDEN handsets for one operator. The only vaguely sensible idea is to convert SouthernLink's internal customers to an internal-only dispatch radio network on low-SMR and 900 and sell off the ESMR spectrum and external customers to Sprint, and focus on Southern's core business of being a regulated monopoly utility-plus-generator like Florida Power, APCO, Duke Energy, ConEd, etc.

No, I think the sensible path is for them to do whatever they are doing and provide roaming on AT&T with new IDEN/GSM handsets.

Eventually, they, along with everybody else will move to an LTE based PTT.

I wonder if DISH will also consider deploying IPTV Technology with its AWS-4 Spectrum.

I'm not sure if they have enough spectrum for that. But they probably have enough to do video on demand. Now if they can get Clearwire to sell them some spectrum, then they will have plenty of spectrum for OTT and VOD.

Probably not but I hate when spectrum bands are not divided up into nice 5 or 10 MHz blocks. Who cares if Sprint doesn't need the whole 5 MHz of the guard band. I would much rather have Dish have 20 MHz down and 15 MHz up than 20 MHz and 18 MHz up. Doesn't make any sense since the 3 extra MHz would be wasted anyways.

Dish does not need a full 20MHz of uplink bandwidth, since most data workloads are highly asymmetrical. So they're not really giving up a lot of useful bandwidth as eric suggested. Also remember they have 6MHz of unpaired lower 700MHz E-Block that they can pair with their AWS-4 spectrum.

Sort of interesting they didn't want to go for a shift up by 5MHz as proposed by Sprint.

 

Why? Did they not want to waste the time getting a new band created?

 

I feel like I am missing something...

Yes, they just want to get going with devices for the new network. I wonder who they're going to choose to partner with. T-Mobile?

Dish Network would be willing to accept changes to its spectrum holdings that would effectively make 5 MHz of its radio waves a guardband to protect spectrum that Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) has indicated it wants to bid on next year to use for LTE. However, Dish said that such a change would be acceptable as long as it was allowed to move ahead with the terrestrial deployment of the rest of its satellite spectrum as soon as possible.

The disclosure was made in a recent FCC filing by Dish that detailed meetings Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen had last week with FCC commissioners on the issue. Dish's new position represents a softening of Dish's stance from earlier in November, when it lambasted a proposal circulated by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Genachowski's draft proposal would define rules for Dish's spectrum band, known as AWS-4. The proposal would set power limits on the lower portion of Dish's spectrum to prevent interference with the adjacent 1900 MHz PCS H Block. Separately, the FCC also said it will propose auctioning the H Block in 2013, and Sprint has said it would like to bid on the H Block and use it for LTE.

First of all, you only have eHRPD, but have two separate measurements for 1x and EVDO. It could be that you are connected to two different sites for 1x and EVDO.

The nm isn't gonna matter here as we are comparing the battery use from cdma to volte... The chip used in both will be the same nm.... Thus you might last longer on the 28nm but CDMA would still trump volte...

 

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Just from a pure data point of view, just the fact that you're transmitting 8Kbits vs 64Kbits has some effect on the power consumption. More data usually means more power.

I hope it happens as well, even if it just forces Metro to divest the markets you mentioned to Sprint.

If Sprint could revive it, it could be a powerful differentiator. I do not understand the hate for PTT as a service. To me, Sprint needs all the positive buzz it can get. I completely understand the desire to retire IDEN but there's still some big clients who provide money for Sprint who can be served by the Direct Connect service.

Yes, they can, but let's not burden the rest of us with PTT features on all the phones. Those that need it should pay for it. I thought that Sprint made a major mistake lowering the price of plans for Nextel subscribers. It did not make them feel special enough .

That might be solved by a chip supporting it. Then handsets will simply support it even if its not yet there (without any cost penalty)... kinda like 1x advanced.

I think that the chipsets support it. But you still have to support it at the basestation level. For data, why would you go with Rev. B when you can use LTE?

I am sure that Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile have already performed these tests and that's why they aren't rushing to deploy VOLTE. The only one that jumped the gun is MetroPCS. Even they will cool down once the merger goes through.