dailywireless.org » The 700 Mhz Club

The 700 Mhz Club

DailyWireless: Attention everyone. Attention please. The 700 Mhz Advancement Coalition has come to order. Our first order of business tonight is a guest speaker, the highly regarded Steve Stroh, who has news on recent developments on the 700 Mhz band. Steve?

Steve Stroh:

On February 18, 2005, buried in the typical minutiae of the FCC’s daily output of announcements, was the approval (PDF link) of a long-sought waiver request by Aloha Partners LP that allows them to commence Broadband Wireless Internet Access services using their 700 MHz licensed spectrum in the Tucson, Arizona market. While Aloha Partners has been very public about the submission of the waiver request, it was not a certainty that the waiver would be granted.
…In a related development, on February 1, 2005, Aloha Partners LP announced that it will purchase Cavalier Group LLC and DataCom Wireless LLC, respectively the second and third largest owners of 700 MHz spectrum in the US. Aloha Partners now has spectrum sufficient for a (mostly) nationwide network, including spectrum in the top ten urban markets and “84% of the top forty urban markets”.
In previous interviews, Aloha Partners has stated that they intend to use Flarion FLASH OFDM systems for their initial deployments. Flarion recently announced a significant advancement in its FLASH technology, which would seem to make it an even better fit for Aloha’s operations.
The waiver and proof-of-concept test is very significant. If Aloha Partners can operationally demonstrate a lack of interference to legacy television broadcast operations in auctioned 700 MHz spectrum, the various 700 MHz spectrum owners could commence new services such as (Fixed and mobile) Broadband Wireless Internet Access very soon rather than waiting indefinitely for legacy television broadcasting to cease operations in auctioned 700 MHz spectrum.

DailyWireless: Thank you, Steve. I think we all ought to sign up for Steve’s newsletter (any chance for a freebie, Steve?…only kidding). But seriously, what does it mean for us?

As you know, the FCC determined that all broadcasters could operate their DTV systems in Channels 2-51. That leaves the Upper 700 MHz Band (60 megahertz of spectrum corresponding to channels 60-69), and the Lower 700 MHz Band (48 megahertz of spectrum corresponding to channels 52-59), available for broadband wireless users. But there are still some tv stations using those frequencies — and they don’t have to move until December, 2006. Public service users already got a bundle of channels in the 800 Mhz band from UHF channels 70-83. And they’ll get some more when Nextel moves out.

Reliable service requires licensed bands, and 700 MHZ is the best of them all. The lower frequency travels 3-4 times further than 1.9 GHz cellular, penetrates buildings, resists multipath with OFDM, and can use IP all the way. Supporters say infrastructure costs are only one-tenth as expensive since fewer “cells” are required and they’re just glorified access points. Here are the 700 Mhz frequencies we’re talking about.

Flarion’s Flexbeam (below), can pack broadband bits into narrow channels on the 450 MHz or 700 Mhz band for 2-way broadband on the go. Aloha Partners got a ton of frequency pairs in the FCC auction a couple of years ago, so a two-way system seems likely and Flarion’s Flexbeam would be a good bet. But Aloha Partners is also a member of the WiMax Forum. They also like WiMAX in the licensed 700 MHz band.

Charles Townsend, CEO and general partner with Aloha Partners, owns 77 licenses in the 700 MHz band. Townsend says the key to making wireless broadband as ubiquitous as the cell phone is getting customer equipment costs under $200, the service itself under $50 a month and national coverage.

Aloha Partners was a big winner in Auction 44 in the lower 700 MHz Band (pdf & html), which packages 12 MHz on a pair of 6 MHz channels; one at 710-716 MHz (on UHF channel 54) and one at 740-746 MHz (on UHF channel 59). These dual (duplex) channels can be used for “3G” cell phones and are called the “C” block by the FCC. Flarion uses frequency pairs. WiMax can too, although simplex - as used in WiFi - is expected to be more common.

The diagram (above) shows 700 Mhz used in an urban area around a 5 mile circle. To prevent “spillage” beyond the jurisdiction antenna sites are placed at the edge of the service area using directional antennas to point in towards the center of the service area.

Aloha recently bought the second and third largest 700 MHz spectrum holders, Cavalier Group L.L.C. and DataCom Wireless L.L.C. for an undisclosed amount. That provides Aloha Partners with spectrum in 244 licensed markets, covering 175 million potential customers. That gives Aloha Partners 100-percent coverage in the nation’s 10 largest markets and 84-percent coverage in the top 40 markets.

Sprint-Nextel, on the other hand, has 90MHz of 2.5GHz spectrum in 80 markets, covering 85 percent of the top 100 markets.

Together, they could rule broadband wireless in the United States.

Only six (”D”) channels are available in broad sections of the United States, the size of time zones. That channel, at 716 MHz-722 MHz (UHF channel 55), is home to Qualcomm’s MediaFlo, a mobile TV service wholesaled to cellular operators.

QUALCOMM bid $38 million for the five available Economic Area Grouping (EAG) D block 700 Mhz licenses. With the five EAG licenses, QUALCOMM will have six megahertz of spectrum covering the entire country except areas on the pacific region where Aloha Partners won the license in the FCC s previous auction (Auction 44), completed in September, 2002. Aloha Partners picked up Portland’s channel 54 & channel 59 for $843,000 — a real bargain when a 5000 watt AM radio station in Portland goes for around $1.5 million.

Why Wi-Fi Wi-Fi is faster than other wireless protocols. Here’s how long it takes to transmit a 300KB image using three wireless standards:
TECHNOLOGY	DOWNLOAD SPEEDS
802.11b (Wi-Fi)	0.5 to 2.3 seconds
3G cellular (GPRS, CDMA2000 1xRTT)	24 to 48 seconds
CDPD cellular (used by most police)	up to 6 min., 40 sec.

Qualcomm’s Auction 49 holdings (pdf) on channel 55 will be used for their nationwide mobile tv service. Aloha Partners paid some $6.2M for the Pacific license on Channel 55 in auction 44. Whether Qualcomm will buy the Pacific license from Aloha is unknown. [Oops, guess they did; see comment] Besides real-time streaming capabilities, MediaFLO also offers “clip casting”, sending files during off-peak hours and caching them on a device.

Qualcomm’s Made for TV MediaFlo will bring dozens of mobilized television channels (320×200 at 30 fps) to a variety of mobile devices. Qualcomm bought a nation-wide footprint on channel 55 (see: Channel 54: Where are You?). It’s using COFDM rather than Qualcomm’s beloved CDMA technology. Meanwhile, Crown Castle also has a piece of Mobile TV action up at 1.6 GHz. TU Media and SK Telecom plan mobile TV service direct from satellite in the far East and XM and Sirius could join them in the United States.

Strategy Analytics claims the demand for television delivered to cell phones is uncertain and mobile carriers could get hurt if they invest too much money in it.

Still, in the currently used UHF television band (channels 14-51), there are lots of “white spaces” where unlicensed broadband might also be possible. The newly formed IEEE 802.22 is charged with developing a workable system to exploit it. Intel says TV channels 5-13, and 21-51 (pdf) can be shared for unlicensed broadband and independent ISPs. They can squeeze in without interference (using 802.22). It could be a competitive threat. But the channel changing, location-aware radios are only in concept stage.

Mobile WiMax, on the other hand, should be here in a couple of years - right in time for the great DTV channel migration and freeing up the 700 MHz band. Alcatel and Intel plan to offer mobile WiMax products by mid-2006. When 802.16e comes out, it will feature scalability. Scalable-OFDMA (pdf) has better indoor penetration and multipath resistance. SOFDMA is not backward compatible with OFDM256, which is the basis of most early “pre-WiMAX” equipment.

Last year, Nextel picked up MMDS (2.5 GHz) licenses for almost half the big cities in the U.S. for $214 million, mostly as part of WorldCom’s bankruptcy fire sale. McCaw’s IFTS/MMDS (2.5 Ghz) patchwork includes WatchTV, which controls 33 channels of ITFS and MMDS in Ohio; Speednet, whose licenses cover 500,000 households in north and central Michigan; and Gryphon Wireless, which uses ITFS channels in Nebraska. Steve Stoh says Airspan and Vyyo are shipping 700 MHz gear. Airspan and picoChip plan a product, called SoftMAX, for 802.16e mobility.

With WiMax Chipsets, McCaw’s Clearwire (or Sprint-Nextel) could offer a double-whammy; 700Mhz could handle public service radios (on their own frequencies or Aloha’s), while the 2.5GHz band (using 802.16e) could deliver mobile service to multi-media phones, music players, video-enabled PDAs and laptops.

Wavesat claims a base station will cost $2,000 per sector by integrating their WiMax DM256 chip along with a 1GHz processor and the RF front-end. Let’s say three sectors cost $10K and ten nodes could cover a city ($100K).

How much does cellular data service for police, fire and public service agencies cost taxpayers? Let’s say it averages $30/month times 1000 units ($30,000/month). That’s $360K/year. Gone forever.

Perhaps a public/private partnership would make sense. It could provide 700 Mhz for public service users and sublease the backbone to Wireless-ISP competitors. By 2007 it may be feasible. If Telcos, Comcast or Sprint-Nextel were really interested in the “municipal wireless” market, they might hang a couple dozen 700/2.5GHz WiMax nodes off utility poles and be done with it. Beats Cisco’s Airespace.

But who is Aloha Partners? And will T-Mobile, Clearwire, Earthlink, South Korea’s SK Telecom, Sprint or Qwest be involved? Stay tuned.

Pull the trigger, Mr. Chairman. Let’s get this show on the road.

Meeting ajourned.