The FirsNet Board met recently to kick off their new activities to build a nationwide 700 MHz LTE network in the D-Block but despite all the rhetoric floating around the industry about sharing with other critical infrastructure users, such as the nation's utilities, there was not even mention of utilities reported by the trade press at this meeting.
See Urgent Communications article here!
Marc
Welcome to Marc's Blog. - From time to time you will find comments, opinions, and discussions related to various topics of interest to me, and some of them may even be relative to the Wireless Industry. Let us hear from you! - Marc
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Is Solar fading into the Sunset?
The article below is indicative of the realities of solar energy, great product in theory but the economics just don't work, at least not yet.
Continuing lowering prices for less effective solar cells make it impossible to make money in the business as a manufacturer. Reminds me of the story of the Texas Aggie grad selling watermelons, he decided he needed a bigger truck for us his business. When asked why he said, "well I am losing a dollar on each melon but with this small truck I can't sell enough to even break-even, so I figure if I could just get a bigger truck I could make up the loss by significantly increasing my volume of sales!" Rumor has it this Aggie went broke, got into politics and ended up as the Mayor of large Texas City.
Marc
Continuing lowering prices for less effective solar cells make it impossible to make money in the business as a manufacturer. Reminds me of the story of the Texas Aggie grad selling watermelons, he decided he needed a bigger truck for us his business. When asked why he said, "well I am losing a dollar on each melon but with this small truck I can't sell enough to even break-even, so I figure if I could just get a bigger truck I could make up the loss by significantly increasing my volume of sales!" Rumor has it this Aggie went broke, got into politics and ended up as the Mayor of large Texas City.
Marc
| By Barbara Vergetis Lundin |  Comment |  Forward |  Twitter |  Facebook |  LinkedIn |
While low prices for PV technology have led to increasing installations, these prices are also likely to lower quality technology and installations, possibly resulting in a global backlash against solar power, Pike Research contends.
Solar technologies, including concentrated solar power, photovoltaic , and concentrated photovoltaic, are going through a significant correction as a seven-year period of capacity building, aggressive pricing, and promises of grid parity driven largely by feed-in tariffs comes to an end, according to Pike.
Given high levels of capacity, mounting inventory, and decreasing incentive levels, PV industry growth could be flat to negative for the next couple of years, Pike concludes.
"Low prices and generous tariffs have led directly to the expectation of even lower prices, even as manufacturing capacities have increased and new market entrants have flooded the industry, most assuming that the outcome would be high profits," said Paula Mints, Director of Solar Research for Pike. "For technology suppliers, the expectation that prices will consistently decrease has led to painful consolidation and failure. Certainly, selling less and losing less would be in the industry's best interests. Historically, however, the PV industry has behaved in a manner that indicates growth is the desired state, even if this growth is unprofitable."
All this aside, solar is not going away and will play an important part in the future energy mix, she added.
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Friday, August 31, 2012
FCC PLANS TO ENFORCE UHF/VHF NARROWBANDING MANDATE
FCC PLANS TO ENFORCE UHF/VHF NARROWBANDING MANDATE
Aug 28, 2012 5:26 PM, By Donny Jackson
With a little more than four months left until LMR systems operating on frequencies below 512 MHz are required to migrate from 25 kHz channels to 12.5 kHz channels under the FCC’s narrowbanding rules, licensees should be prepared for enforcement consequences if they do not meet their obligations or secure a waiver from the agency, a commission official said last week.
“In the past year, we’ve seen a lot of progress, as many licensees have migrated their systems to narrowband operations—this has been very gratifying,” David Furth, deputy chief of the FCC’s public safety and homeland security bureau, said during a session at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) conference last week. “But we still have thousands of public-safety licensees who are operating in wideband mode, and time is short.
“Let me reiterate what the commission has said all along: We are not moving the narrowbanding deadline. It is, and will be, Jan. 1, 2013.”
Furth said affected licensees have two choices to remain in compliance: make the transition to narrowband technology or get a waiver from the FCC. The commission has detailed the conditions for waiver approval, one of which takes into account when a waiver application is filed, Furth said.
“In order to obtain a waiver, you need to make a timely request—that means now, if you have not filed a waiver,” he said. “I cannot overemphasize that waiver requests that are filed at the 11th hour before the deadline will be viewed with skepticism and are very likely not to be granted.”
Affected licensees that fail to narrowband and do not obtain a waiver will suffer consequences, Furth said.
“Will the commission enforce its rules? The answer is emphatically, ‘Yes,’” he said. “We are already working with the FCC’s enforcement bureau to prepare for 2013, and the enforcement bureau plans to issue guidance soon, reminding licensees of their narrowbanding obligations and of the commission’s intent to aggressively enforce the narrowband mandate.
“It is important to get the word out to your friends and neighbors to make sure that everyone is taking this obligation seriously. This is serious.”
Harsh words from David Furth to the Public Safety world, but can anyone imagine the FCC actually shutting down a Public Safety Network in January 2013 because they did not narrowband? I certainly can't.
If you want an example of an FCC hard deadline in the Public Safety world I will refer you to the 800 MHz Re-Banding Mandate issued in August 2004 to be finished in December 2007, it is now August 2012 and it is still not done and the process has outlived not only Nextel, but the actual iDEN Network which is now being decommissioned.
It will be an interesting 2013 in the regulatory world!
Marc
It will be an interesting 2013 in the regulatory world!
Marc
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Sprint Crows about its Backhaul, made possible in part by the efforts of L&W's Steve Hill and Shane Dickson
Because of the efforts of L&W's Steve Hill and Shane Dickson, Sprint is telling the world about its backhaul network. Steve and Shane are of course part of Alcatel Lucent's design team that is planning and helping deliver this network for Sprint.
L&W has been a part of the Alcatel Lucent team for a couple years now and we are very proud of our team members and their contributions to both Alcatel's and Sprint's success. Nice work guys!
Marc
| By Sue Marek | Comment | Forward | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn |
Sprint Nextel's (NYSE:S) upgrade of its backhaul network from T1s to Ethernet will create such better efficiency for the company that it will reduce the cost of delivering data, even as consumer demand for data skyrockets. In fact, making the switch to Ethernet backhaul will give Sprint 20 times the bandwidth capacity at a cell site location, said a Sprint executive.
Speaking at the Pacific Crest Global Technology Leadership conference earlier this week in Vail, Colo., Sprint Nextel's Vice President of Strategic ProgramsMarty Nevshemal said that one of the goals of the company's Network Vision network modernization plan is to lower the cost of delivering data. As an example, Nevshemal said that the company might pay $1,500 per month for T1 backhaul at a tower site. That T1 might deliver 4.5 MB of backhaul capacity. When Sprint switches to Ethernet, Nevshemal said that for the same price of $1,500 per month, Sprint will get almost 20 times the backhaul bandwidth at that location. "Your unit cost for that part of the network--the backhaul--is 95 percent cheaper to put a bit of data through that backhaul. That is Network Vision," he said.
When asked whether Sprint can continue to offer its $79 per month unlimited data package, Nevshemal said that it's hard for the company to predict whether it will be able to offer unlimited data to customers indefinitely because it depends on how much data consumers will use--U.S. operators have seen data usage skyrocket as consumers rapidly upgrade to smartphones and those smartphones become more sophisticated in their capabilities. Sprint made headlines last month when an executive said that the company expects to offer unlimited data service for Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) LTE-compatible iPhone 5 when it comes out this fall--that is, if the rumored iPhone 5 actually launches and if Sprint gets it.
Interestingly, Nevshemal also said that the company will likely accelerate its launch of LTE markets in the fourth quarter. He said the carrier will have around 25 markets equipped with LTE by year-end. In mid-July, Sprint launched LTE in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and San Antonio. He said that Sprint will begin notifying customers of the impending LTE launch in a market about 30 days in advance of the service being commercially available.
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You didn't build that!
Those of you know me, realize that I am never politically
correct, nor reserved about my opinions.
Those of you who know me will also already know that I have ZERO respect
for President Barack Hussein Obama. And
my lack of respect has nothing to do with his questionable citizenship, it has
to do with his attitude that America is somehow the aggressor in the world and
that we owe the world an apology for our success.
So it will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that
I am livid about the President’s statement at a campaign rally in Roanoke, Va.
on July 13th when he was off teleprompter and in his full class
warfare mode and enthusiastically blurted out, “If you’ve got a business, you
didn’t build that! Somebody
else made that happen!”
Here is a man who appeared out of nowhere in 2004 when he
made a speech at the Democratic Convention. The only job he has ever had other
than that as a paid politico is that of a community organizer, aka an
agitator. He has lived his entire life
off of other people’s money. As best
anyone can tell, he has been a ward of the State living off of your and my tax
dollars for his entire adult life. Yet
he dares to tell businessmen that we have had nothing to do with building our
business and that if it were not for government, American businesses could not
survive!
So after he said that I went back and checked to be sure I
had not missed something over the last 40 years! I mean
I even went back to my high school yearbook, The Chieftain, to see if it was
really me in that SHS Class of 1968 picture.
It looked like me, it had my name under it, but now I question if I
really did graduate.
So I went on to my 1972 Texas A&M yearbook and looked
myself up and by gosh, there I was and my degree says I have an Electrical
Engineering degree. But now I don’t
know. Maybe it was someone from the
government that stayed up and studied all those nights to get through
A&M.
Then I went back and looked at the bank note’s I signed in
1979 pledging my personal assets and providing my personal guarantee for the
money that I borrowed to start my business and provide the paychecks, and yep,
that was my signature and I confirmed there were no government grants or
government loans. And I checked to see
if the banks really did have a lien on my assets, and sure enough they do!
But I thought hey everyone tells me that Obama is so
brilliant that we common folk just can’t understand him, so I decided to check
further, I went back and looked at all
the tax returns both personally and for the business that I filed paying our
personal and business taxes from the money we had left over from paying our
bankers, our license fees, and our employees.
Yep seemed to be my signature on all those documents.
I looked for pictures and other evidence of government
employees who were working with me day and night and while I found lots of
pictures of my family and our employees who were working hard, I simply can’t
find any evidence that my survivability, so far, can be attributed to anyone
from the government. Hell I can’t even
find any evidence that anyone from the government was around when I wanted them
to help.
During the downturn of 2009 (that would be after Mr. Obama
took office) I did experience new governmental regulations that made it even
harder to survive. Thanks to the Dodd
Frank Act, passed by Mr. Obama and his buddies, the banking relationships most
business owners had either vanished or changed significantly. Government regulations have made it
increasing hard to get anything done or finance any expansion.
So Mr. Obama you are just WRONG, businesses do not exist
because of government; businesses exist in SPITE of government!
However Mr. Obama did say something else that night in
Roanoke, “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some
help.” And he was right, in my case
there were/are great teachers such as Mrs. Welch, Mrs. Brinkman, Mr. Williford, Mr. Pinkerton, Dr. Linder;
great family and friends, Sue Ann my lifelong friend, partner and wife; my
parents who made my life easy and convinced me that I could do anything; Jimmy
Schoppe who not only let me do everything, he challenged me to do more; Charlie
White, a great mentor, friend and partner; Jim & Cindy Jennings who have been part of my business so
long they are now considered family; Walter Hinkle, who came into our business
in 2002 when things were really tough and helped me dig my way out; my kids who
were always my inspiration and best cheerleaders, and all the wonderful
employees who work their butts off everyday to keep our business going.
So yes Mr. Obama I will give you that, there are always
people who have given and continue to give people help along the way, but none
of them I know worked for the government!
Marc
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Milton Friedman - The Free Lunch Myth
Milton Friedman is a Noble Laureate Economist and fully understands and explains how the capitalist economic system works.
Enjoy and learn.
Marc
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Rudder From Leader to Legend
If you like inspiring biographies, if you like military
history and even if you have not previously,
if you are an American patriot, if you are a proud Texan, if you feel the Aggie
Spirit, if you have a passion for education, and if you believe in Divine guidance, this
book is for you.
Previously I knew Earl Rudder as the visionary President of
Texas A&M who had a military background and was the guiding force in transitioning
Texas A&M from an all male, compulsory military school to a co-educational
institution with no military requirement. The rest of his story is so much larger than
life. He never planned to go to college, but one event after another in his life kept him moving toward a destiny and place in history even he would not have believed had he not lived it. He was a very honorable man who made the absolute most of every opportunity that came his way, and in doing so had a rather large impact on the world.
The author, Thomas Hatfield, travels back to Earl Rudders
early life in Brady, Texas and writes in such a way, that he involved me in the
story and the individual, so that I, who had never read any military history,
could not wait to turn each page wading through and learning details of World
War II and the D Day Invasion with such rapt interest that, other than falling
asleep while holding the book, I did not put it down until I had finished.
I love to read and this is one of the most inspiring books I
have ever read. I think this is a book
every American should own. It is much
much larger than the story of a former Aggie President. It is about a man who, in his rather short
life of 59 years, left a legacy immensely larger than he ever could have
imagined for himself.
Sue Ann Lockard
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