T-Mobile Pushing Commission for Mobile Broadband at 600 MHz

Finally a plan for the use of broadband spectrum at 600 MHz and above that makes some sense!

T-Mobile pushes its own plan for 600 MHz mobile broadband

T-Mobile supports much of the FCC's plan to reallocate and reassign 600 MHz spectrum from broadcast TV to mobile broadband use but is suggesting a number of tweaks, wrote Kathleen Ham, T-Mobile's vice president of federal regulatory affairs, in a blog post on the company website.

A group of wireless carriers, broadcasters and manufacturers recently suggested locating all paired spectrum above TV Channel 37. "While we are open to further study with the FCC on the best plan to maximize paired spectrum in the auction, this approach has the benefit of avoiding certain potential interference issues that exist with the FCC's lead plan and would encourage rapid development of devices that meet consumer expectations for cost and size," said Ham.

Read more: T-Mobile pushes its own plan for 600 MHz mobile broadband - FierceBroadbandWireless http://www.fiercebroadbandwireless.com/story/t-mobile-pushes-its-own-plan-600-mhz-mobile-broadband/2013-02-04#ixzz2Jy0BrUx9
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Vendor's getting anxious about FirstNet!

Seems that some vendors are getting a tad anxious and concerned about what they claim to be a lack of transparency in the FirstNet process.

From Fierce Broadband Wireless

The board of the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) will hold its next meeting on Feb. 12, giving it a chance to respond publicly to a barrage of complaints regarding the board's perceived lack of transparency and responsiveness. "We are concerned that there has been something of a cone of silence dropped around the process," said Brian Hendricks, global head of technology policy for telephone-equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks. Meetings with the FirstNet board are difficult to set up, which "leaves most of us with the sense that we're sort of fumbling around in the dark for the light switch, and that is a concern," added Hendricks, who was quoted by Bloomberg. "It seems FirstNet has kind of shut themselves off," said Donald Hairston, a senior vice president at Textron. "How do you build systems if you don't talk to your users?" Panelists expressed frustration that despite FirstNet receiving 133 NOI submissions before the end of 2012, there still has been no official acknowledgement of the suggestions that were offered, according to Urgent Communications. Read More

True Professionals at Work

Working on a telecom tower is always dangerous work, here is one "incident" that had a happy ending for this tower climber.  This guy is alive today because was smart enough to call for help and because his employers had well trained and responsible people to help him.

Sorry about the commercial but watch through it, it is short.  The tower rescue is just after it.

 http://wj.la/SCn3Q1


Marc

Sprint and Dish Fight over Clearwire

Interesting view of how the "big boys" fight over spectrum!

 Dish trumps Sprint with surprise bid for Clearwire

By Sue Marek

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Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) made an unsolicited offer to purchase Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR) for approximately $3.30 per share. The deal competes with a previous bid for the company by majority shareholder Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S), which bid $2.2 billion last month. According to a statement from Clearwire, Dish wants to acquire Clearwire spectrum covering approximately 11.4 billion MHz-POPs, which is approximately 24 percent of Clearwire's total spectrum holdings, for $2.2 billion. As part of the deal, Clearwire could sell or lease an additional 2 MHz of its spectrum to Dish and it could also provide certain services such as network management, construction and maintenance for a network in the AWS-4 spectrum.   Clearwire said a special committee made up of members of its board is reviewing the Dish offer but the company has not made any changes to its deal with Sprint. Sprint last month made a $2.97 per share, or approximately $2.2 billion, offer to buy 49 percent of Clearwire's shares that the company does not already own. In a statement, Dish confirmed its Clearwire offer and said it was looking forward to working with Clearwire's special committed on the proposal. Interestingly, Clearwire said that it received a response from Sprint in response to Dish's proposal to purchase Clearwire's spectrum. Clearwire said that Sprint "reviewed the Dish proposal and believes that it is illusory, inferior to the Sprint transaction and not viable because it cannot be implemented in light of Clearwire's current legal and contractual obligations. Sprint has stated that the Sprint Agreement would prohibit Clearwire from entering into agreements for much of the Dish proposal."  Sprint listed a number of reasons Clearwire could not enter into a transaction with Dish Network, including that Clearwire is prohibited from selling spectrum without Sprint's consent. "Sprint has made it clear that they will not sell their 63% stake, so Dish can't take control of the asset--what is their angle?" wrote New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin. "We can think of four things: 1) they are pushing for a higher bid from Sprint; 2) they are pushing for Clearwire / Sprint to sell them some spectrum and / or network assets on favorable terms; 3) they are pushing for a spectrum hosting deal with Sprint on favorable terms; 4) they are pushing for Sprint to buy DISH or their spectrum.  Whatever Dish's objective, this bid will complicate Sprint's acquisition of Clearwire, at least temporarily." Chaplin said he believes Sprint will ultimately acquire Clearwire. Other analysts were also puzzling through the motivations of Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen, who has said he would like to partner with a wireless carrier to help build out the company's planned LTE Advanced network using its 40 MHz of AWS-4 spectrum. "It's hard for me to imagine that what Dish wants is Clearwire," Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett told Bloomberg. "It could be a chess move to get a partnership with Sprint." Some analysts think the bid could just be a way for Dish to slow down the regulatory approval and close of the Sprint/Clearwire deal. Sprint and Dish tussled extensively over the FCC's review of Dish's spectrum. Dish has also signaled it will formally oppose Japanese operator Softbank's deal to acquire 70 percent of Sprint for $20.1 billion in light of the Clearwire transaction. Dish signaled that it is concerned about a foreign company owning so much U.S. spectrum and that the deal might give Sprint too much spectrum. Dish would get a great deal out of a partnership with Clearwire, but such a deal seems unrealistic at this point, wrote TMF Associates analyst Tim Farrar. "While Ergen's offer therefore seems like a deal that would be good for Dish, it's hard to see that Dish could realistically expect to succeed, given Sprint's majority ownership of Clearwire's equity and expressed intention to block this deal," he wrote.

Hurricane Sandy Exposed Flaws in Public Safety LTE

Hurricane Sandy exposed flaw in public-safety LTE plan

By Tammy Parker

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Hurricane Sandy's brought down numerous commercial cell sites on the Northeastern seaboard and may have highlighted a glaring flaw in plans for the nationwide public-safety mobile broadband network. In a Sept. 25 presentation, Craig Farrill, First Responder Network Authority board member, advocated for creating a diverse nationwide public-safety LTE network composed of multiple wireless networks, including commercial cellular networks, in order to facilitate widespread coverage quickly. However, those commercial cellular networks are the same ones that failed during Sandy due to a host of issues: downed towers, widespread electrical outages, flooded generators and drained backup batteries. One quarter of all cell sites across 10 states were estimated to have been disabled, at least temporarily, by the storm. "These networks failed when we would have needed them most," said Charles F. Dowd, a deputy chief who oversees the New York Police Department's communications division and is a member of the FirstNet board. "The idea of using commercial networks is a real concern for public safety," he told the New York Times. Other FirstNet board members who visited New York after the hurricane "clearly saw the difference between the performance of commercial and public safety networks," said Dowd. "They knew the new system cannot be built to commercial standards. It has to be at a higher level of redundancy and survivability." But building a nature-proof network would be costly as well as nearly impossible. "To think that you can build a network that can withstand anything and everything that Mother Nature throws at it is a bit unrealistic," said Bill Smith, president of AT&T (NYSE:T) Network Operations, according to the New York Times. "It's not impossible, but it would be incredibly expensive." Meanwhile, millions of dollars in federal grant money are sitting unused while local agencies hold off on plans to build out their own LTE networks at the behest of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which grew concerned in May that the networks those jurisdictions were planning might not be compatible with the future nationwide network. In July, the FCC announced the 21 jurisdictions that received public-safety broadband waivers in May 2010 allowing them to lease 700 MHz spectrum from the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST) would see those rights expire on Sept. 2, after which the entities needed to acquire a six-month special temporary authority (STA) from the FCC to continue operating. Only the state of Texas has been awarded an STA to use its PSST spectrum. "You can't expect local governments to just sit there and not use resources for several months while the federal government tries to make a decision on how to proceed," Barry Fraser, interim general manager for the Bay Area Regional Interoperable Communications Systems Authority in California, told the New York Times. "I don't know how much longer we can keep all of them on board."

Trouble in the VoLTE World!

This is going to be a serious problem particularly for those in the Public Safety world who think VoLTE is going to replace PTT radio networks.  It will be interesting to see how battery life will be expanded, maybe the VoLTE hand set will look like the old cellphone "bricks"!

1. Study: VoLTE slashes smartphone battery life by 50%

By Tammy Parker

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Operators hoping to engage in widespread deployment of voice over LTE in order to gain spectral efficiencies in their network may face some unhappy customers because one vendor's recent tests showed that VoLTE calls can slash a device's talk-time battery life by half. The study comparing device battery life for calls placed over an LTE network vs. calls placed over a CDMA network was conducted on an unnamed U.S. operator's network in two major markets using a smartphone capable of supporting both CDMA and VoLTE voice calling. "The device's estimated battery life was reduced by 50 percent or about 252 minutes of talk time when voice calls were placed over the LTE network, compared to voice calls placed over the CDMA network," according to the study, authored by Ardeshir Ghanbarzadeh, director, services development, for Metrico Wireless, which was acquired by Spirent Communications in September. "The significant difference in current drain between VoLTE and CDMA technologies for voice calling applications suggests further optimization of devices supporting VoLTE calls are needed in order to give end-users talk-time battery life expectancy levels similar to that of 3G devices," said Ghanbarzadeh in the report, a copy of which was obtained by FierceBroadbandWireless prior to its public release. The smartphone tested had a fully charged, lithium-ion 3.7-volt 1540 mAh battery. View a larger version on the Web. CDMA voice-only calls resulted in an average battery current drain of 183 milliamps (mA), and average power consumption of 680 milliwatts (mW). That was about 50 percent less than the power gobbled up by VoLTE calls, which produced an average current drain of 365 mA and average power consumption of 1358 mW. Interestingly, tests of multi-service simultaneous voice and data calls using just the LTE network revealed 11 percent less current drain than multi-service sessions using CDMA for voice and LTE for data. "This is possibly attributed to the fact that only the LTE radio is in use when using VoLTE/LTE, where as the CDMA radio and the LTE radio are in use when conducting the session in CDMA/LTE," wrote Ghanbarzadeh. Specifically, the average current drain for CDMA voice combined with LTE data was measured at 889 mA, and the average power consumption at 3280 mW. Employing VoLTE for calls along with LTE for data service produced an average current drain of 790 mA, and 2915 mW of power consumption. CDMA operators, such as MetroPCS (NYSE:PCS) and Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ) have led the charge into LTE and VoLTE as they seek to replace their older 3G technology with something more data friendly and spectrally efficient. In addition VoLTE enables carriers to set up a native mobile VoIP solution the can compete with over-the-top calling services such as Skype and incorporate new features, such as video, into traditional voice service. MetroPCS became one of the first mobile operators in the world to deploy VoLTE when it launched service this past summer in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. DespiteFierceBroadbandWireless' inquiries, the operator did not make a representative available to discuss whether MetroPCS' VoLTE users have suffered from the types of battery-life issues described in the Metrico/Spirent study. T-Mobile has said it will continue supporting MetroPCS' VoLTE deployments after the two operators' merger closes, likely in the first half of 2013, but has no intention of expanding the VoLTE service anytime soon. Verizon Wireless CTO Nicola Palmer recently disclosed the operator expects to begin consumer trials of VoLTE in late 2013 with commercial VoLTE service expected in 2014, two years later than initial commercial launch plans. Verizon has indicated a desire to sunset its CDMA networks by 2021. AT&T (NYSE:T), meanwhile, consistently targeted 2013 for its VoLTE launch. The operator intends to shut down its 2G GSM network by 2017 Related articles: Verizon pushes back VoLTE service until 2014 Updated: Verizon Wireless to sunset 2G and 3G CDMA networks by 2021 T-Mobile will support MetroPCS' VoLTE but won't rush to expand it AT&T will shutter its 2G network by 2017 The next generation of voice: VoLTE

Keep your Priorities in Order!

Stress is a Choice An Empty Pickle Jar A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a very large and empty pickle jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "yes." The professor then produced two glasses of chocolate milk from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed. The Moral of the Story - The professor waited for the laughter to subside.... "Now," said the professor, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things...your family, your children, your health, yourfriends, your favorite passions. Things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full." "The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your home, your car." "The sand is everything else...The small stuff. If you put the sand into the jar first, there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are critical to your happiness." "Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house or fix the disposal." "Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities, the rest is just sand."