BellSouth is expanding its wireless broadband service into five new markets. The carrier will turn up the service in the third quarter to select parts of Melbourne, Fla., Chattanooga, Tenn., Greenville, Miss., Charleston, S.C. and Albany, Ga.
BellSouth’s Wireless Broadband Service (FAQ) is a WiMAX-like service that uses the 2.3 GHz band. It delivers up to 1.5 Mbps downstream and up to 384Kbps upstream.
Bell South initially deployed the 2.3 GHz Navini service last August in Athens, Georgia, and has since deployed in Palatka, Fla.; New Orleans, La.; Gulfport, Miss.; and DeLand, Fla. BellSouth plans to expand the service to additional cities throughout 2006.
Navini also has three pre-Mobile WiMAX networks in Australia including the two largest cities – Sydney and Melbourne.
Separately, BellSouth announced that it would begin lab trials of WiMAX in the third quarter using Alcatel’s Evolium WiMAX system. Alcatel, based in France, bought Lucent, an American innovator in MIMO and other advanced technologies.
“The WCS band has only 30Mhz of spectrum with many carriers owning no more than 10MHz. “Navini’s Ripwave™ MX platform with Smart WiMAX™ (smart beamforming enabled mobile WiMAX) allows operators to deliver personal broadband solutions in the 2.3 GHz band and seamlessly upgrade to WiMAX 802.16e next year,” said Roger Dorf, president and CEO, Navini Networks.
In the U.S., the 2.3 GHz (WCS band) has some stringent FCC requirements for emission masks and limitations on providing mobility due to its proximity of powerful satellite radio repeaters (Digital Audio Repeaters) on one side, and NASA’s deep space network on the other.
Both XM and Sirius Satellite Radio use the DARS band. Each receives one-half (12.5 MHz each), with Sirius operating on the lower half (2.3200 to 2.3325 GHz), while XM uses the upper half (2.3325 GHz to 2.3450). GHz.
Satellite radio uses the DARS band for both direct satellite transmissions and for local terrestrial “repeaters” which fill in “dead zones”. Repeaters can have an EIRP of 2000 watts. The strong satellite repeaters, adjacent to 2.3 Mobile WiMAX bands, can desensitize the front end of WiMAX radios, reducing their effective range. It also makes interference-rejecting terminals more expensive.
But it looks good on paper.
XM Satellite Radio planned to essentially take over the 2.3 GHz band, paying $196 million for radio spectrum adjacent to their satellite radio service. WCS Wireless controls radio frequencies in the 2.3 gigahertz spectrum in 15 of the nation’s top 20 cities. XM announced plans to deliver new multimedia services using those frequencies.
WCS licenses in the 2.3 GHz band cover some 163 million people throughout the United States. The licenses would have nearly doubled the amount of spectrum, that XM could use in 15 of the top 20 markets, further complicating BellSouth’s use of 2.3 GHz for Mobile WiMAX.
In a May, 2006 announcement, XM Satellite Radio and WCS Wireless terminated their agreement to acquire 2.3 GHz frequencies from WCS Wireless:
At the time of the acquisition agreement between XM and WCS Wireless, announced July 13, 2005, the parties had expected to close their transaction by this time, with the timing dependent on receipt of necessary government approvals. Despite both parties’ efforts to obtain that approval, it has not been forthcoming to date. Accordingly, XM and WCS Wireless have agreed to terminate the acquisition agreement in order to free WCS Wireless to pursue other alternatives for its spectrum licenses.
In commenting on the termination, Gary Parsons, Chairman of XM, stated, “With the inability to obtain the necessary government approval for this transaction in a timely manner, WCS Wireless needed to pursue alternatives for its spectrum with greater certainty of regulatory approval.”
The FCC Ruled against the 2.3 GHz purchase by XM Satellite Radio, arguing the public interest would be harmed by interference to the WCS broadband wireless band:
As the record before the Commission in IB Docket No. 95-91 makes clear, XM and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (“Sirius”) have consistently demonstrated a cavalier disregard for potential interference to WCS licensees.
If, as WCA suspects it will, XM desires to operate its newly-acquired WCS authorizations at a higher power than permitted under Section 27.50(a), then XM will have to make its own case, explaining why it cannot operate in compliance with the current rules and explaining how its proposal will be benign towards other WCS licensees.
At present, however, it appears that XM is unprepared to disclose its intentions relating to WCS spectrum and thus consideration of any waiver of Section 27.50(a) to benefit XM would be premature
Navini is currently the only vendor to have commercial deployment of 2.3Ghz in the U.S., and also the only vendor capable of deploying within the constraints of all WCS blocks, including C and D.
Navini’s antennas form individual, independent signal beams optimized for a customer’s location, distance and QoS. With 80 simultaneous beams, this capability can be shared across a great many customers on each site.
Navini Networks announced the availability of its pre-mobile WiMAX Ripwave MX platform, in the 2.3 GHz frequency this month (pdf). “ We’ve had customers commercially operating at this frequency around the world since 2004, said Roger Dorf, Navini’s CEO.
Recently announced 2.3 GHz Navini networks include Scarlet Broadband in Curacao, QMAX in Singapore, Liberty Technologies in Panama and Meganet Broadband in Massachusetts. But 2.3 GHz is mostly an international play — BellSouth not withstanding.
Unfortunately, the range-killing satellite repeaters and restrictions by NASA’s Deep Space Network may make the 2.3 GHz band largely a “junk band” for Mobile WiMAX in the United States, relegated primarily to small towns without satellite radio repeaters. The international market, on the other hand, could be huge.
The NTIA and the FCC aren’t big on the vision thing.
Harmonizing with South Korea’s WiBro, would have been nice. The reality is this; 2.3 GHz satellite radio in the United States is not going away. Harmonizing 100 Mhz of bandwidth for WiBro/Mobile WiMax at 2.3 GHz in the United States is just not going to happen. Instead, the U.S. has 2.5 GHz with Sprint and Clearwire the duopoly owners of that spectrum. BellSouth (AT&T) has a comparative sliver on the “junk” band.
Clearwire and Motorola are teaming for Mobile WiMAX using 2.5 GHz with Intel chipping in $600M and Motorola buying Clearwire’s NextNet Wireless subsidiary. Motorola plans to start volume production of mobile WiMAX (802.16e) solutions, including network infrastructure and data cards, in 2007.
The AWS band, with a 20 Mhz chunk from 2.155 GHz to 2.175 GHz, could also deliver true Mobile WiMAX competition. But the FCC is holding back that auction. Too much competition is a bad thing, apparently. Unused tv channels (using IEEE 802.22) may be another alternative. In five years.
Sprint and BellSouth won’t compete fiercely against their own cellular networks. You could say the same thing about KT and SK Telecom, of course. But at least they have 100 Mhz to play with and a saturated 3G market. Cingular and T-Mobile will likely buy the bulk of the AWS band for 3G cellular although WiMAX is one-tenth the cost of 3G, says Sprint. AWS has little to do with WiMAX. It’s a 3G play. Real competition is discouraged by the FCC duplex (FDD) band plan.
It may be too early to tell if the FCC and NTIA have provided effective leadership. Their track record on DTV, WiMAX, creating Nextel interference and encouraging telco consolidation has not been good.
Consider the Aeronautical Telemetry Service Band (2360-2395 MHz), just below the unlicensed WiFi band (2400-2485). If that band (7th Report & Order) were dedicated exclusively for shared municipal wireless services, an interference-free last-mile connection might be possible. With Mobile WiMax, the 2.3 GHz band might then extend from 2.345-2.395 (50 Mhz). Municipalites might get half (25 MHz) and commercial providers might get half.
By comparison, 800 Mhz cellular frequencies use an uplink between 824-849 MHz with downlinks between 869-894 MHz. Cellular’s PCS frequencies in the 1.9 GHz band use 1850-1910 MHz for upstream with 1930-1990 MHz down. Cumulative, nation-wide cellular spectrum (in both the 800Mhz & 1.9 GHz bands), is now pretty much divided amongst Cingular (53 MHz), Verizon (48 MHz), Nextel (40 MHz) and T-Mobile (25MHz). So perhaps 50 Mhz would allow both municipality and commercial services to compete using 2.3 GHz Mobile WiMAX. This is just an off-the-wall idea based on idle speculation.
M2Z, a company funded by venture capitalists, hopes to launch a free nationwide broadband wireless network. They want to use the simplex part of the AWS spectrum (from 2155Mhz to 2175 Mhz).
M2Z argues the 20 MHz of bandwidth would lay fallow for years since they’re not paired with other airwaves. M2Z, which stands for “Move the cost of data transport to Zero,” has filed a 127-page proposal (PDF). It could also dovetail nicely with MVP’s satellite/cellular repeaters and Modeo’s DVB-H mobile television, which also uses the 1.7GHz band.
Will it wash with Cingular’s Martin? Why not. Adaptix Mobile WiMAX gear supports MIMO and Adaptive Antenna Arrays. Further out, Bell Labs Layered Space-Time (BLAST) and MIT’s WiGLAN project are developing 1Gbps wireless networks on the unlicensed 5.8GHz band. That might deliver the ultimate weapon — more than 10 Mbps per user.
The wireless triple-play.
Related DailyWireless articles include; Navini Mobilizes at 2 Dot 3, XM Buys 2.3GHz, AWS Auction: Does it Suck? and Navini Activates 2.3GHz in USA.
[...] ClearWire Launches Pre-WiMax, Clearwire’s Launch Party in Portland , Intel Inside Clearwire , BellSouth Expands WiMAX, VeriLAN’s Portland City Cloud, First Commercial 802.16a Switched [...]
Left by Clearwire Gets New Board Chairman | Tech Alps on January 18th, 2011