Obama Recognises Importance of More Spectrum. Comreg does not!

Sponge Bob

Obama urges FCC to find another 500mhz of spectrum by 2020.


In a speech yesterday Obama urged his telecoms regulator to get the finger out to find and allocate spectrum. Meanwhile in Ireland Comreg still haven't shifted eircom out of the 100mhz in the 2.3Ghz band that they have squatted since the 1990s, much less the near 50mhz squat in the 3.5ghz band.

An orderly shutdown of the MMDS band should start as soon as possible with MMDS being shutdown in the Inner Pale and in Dublin by end 2011 as a precursor to total closedown by end 2014 and freeing up 100mhz of spectrum at that time.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100628/tc_pcworld/obamawantstofreeup500mhzofspectrum

Time for us here in Ireland to admit that Commercial Digital TV is a very dead duck and to IMMEDIATELY look at licencing the 700mhz band for US standard LTE gear and shifting all DTT TV down to UHF Channel 51 at the highest. RTE have just visited the Dept of Communications to say that they are truncating/slowing their DTT rollout. They can hardly claim they need the spectrum in view of that.

As long as the UK is prepared to tolerate such a plan we can easily do it. Importantly the LTE gear is low energy and will not interfere with the UKs own plans...although there would be problems with interference on our side of the border...but only within about 30km of the border meaning parts of Louth Cavan Leitrim Donegal and Monaghan only and not in the rest of the state where most of the population lives. We can live with that particular dead zone all the same.

Here is the US Band plan. Even half of it would be most invaluable in rural areas once RTE bugger off out of it

watty

Also the GSM at 890 to 960MHz is expiring.

I'd like to see a sensible plan for 700MHz to 960MHz. That's over 290MHz

There is also unused spectum/wasted spectrum 175MHz to 275MHz (We don't need DAB and VHF TV is overdue to close, it should close 1st as those sites ALREADY have UHF DTT).

There is a chunk unused at 450MHz also.

Wireless Broadband is cheaper and better if the uplink uses a lower band.

There should be a single LTE operator selling to MVNOs to make best use of Mobile. That should be 100MHz + 100MHz (5 x 20MHz FDD channels) so as to have x5 better performance than 3G/iHSPA. Chopping it up for different operators and less spectrum would mean that lightly loaded it would be no better than 3G and heavily loaded only 250kbps instead of 120kbps.

The LTE would leave 90MHz free for WiDox which capacity wise is like 800MHz of LTE/Mobile Wimax! This would could also be paired with 12.8MHz in 450MHz band ( 8 uplink channels of 1.6MHz) or even with 64MHz in 211MHz to 275MHz band, or ideally both.

700MHz

---

960MHz
widox up 28.8| LTE up 100Mhz |LTE guard=WiDoxRural 28.8| LTE down 100MHz| WiDox Down 40MHz

Total 297.6MHz
Channel Planning Downlink
WiDox N = 6 (8MHz)
LTE N=5 (20MHz)

Guardband is 9 x 3.2MHz or 18 x 1.6MHz DOCSIS uplink or 4 x6MHz directional Downlink (high gain directional Yagi rather than normal Sectors) or Mix


The guardband could be used for uplink on longer range Rural Fixed Wireless. The rest of the spectrum should be WiDox/Metro type Fixed chimney aerials for "proper" rural broadband as that DOCSIS over wireless with outdoor fixed aerials outperforms Mobile/Nomadic Wimax or LTE by a staggering x16 and outperforms fixed WiMax by upto 20% (costs less and more flexible on channels allowing 2, 6 or 8MHz downlink and multple or single 0.8, 1.6, 3.2 or 6.4MHz uplink channels in any combination with downlink).

Off the shelf gear for 750MHz / 850Mhz for WiDox and easily modified for ANY pair of bands from 50MHz to 100GHz. The new Kasat will use DOCSIS also. WiMax and LTE only have advantage over WiDox (DOCSIS over Wireless) for MOBILE /Nomadic use.

Sponge Bob

watty wrote: »

There should be a single LTE operator selling to MVNOs to make best use of Mobile. That should be 100MHz + 100MHz (5 x 20MHz FDD channels) so as to have x5 better performance than 3G/iHSPA. Chopping it up for different operators and less spectrum would mean that lightly loaded it would be no better than 3G and heavily loaded only 250kbps instead of 120kbps.

The rural west with mickey crap technologies like rurtel, bad 3g, critical reliance on 2g and sub 1ghz spectrum for communications should have 1 MVNO ( 1 physical cell network) resold by all operators under their own brand and with its running coats paid pro rata subscribers.

Let the networks compete where they want to , IE Big Towns, main roads and flat areas like the midlands. It is manifestly evident from every communications rollout in the history of the state ( and before there was a state ) that none of them want to complete their network on the western seaboard.

With LTE they have no excuse not to do so as a Unified MVNO. Comreg cannot possibly find any evidence of a functioning market.

banquo

watty wrote: »

Also the GSM at 890 to 960MHz is expiring.

I'd like to see a sensible plan for 700MHz to 960MHz. That's over 290MHz

There is also unused spectum/wasted spectrum 175MHz to 275MHz (We don't need DAB and VHF TV is overdue to close, it should close 1st as those sites ALREADY have UHF DTT).

There is a chunk unused at 450MHz also.

Wireless Broadband is cheaper and better if the uplink uses a lower band.

There should be a single LTE operator selling to MVNOs to make best use of Mobile. That should be 100MHz + 100MHz (5 x 20MHz FDD channels) so as to have x5 better performance than 3G/iHSPA. Chopping it up for different operators and less spectrum would mean that lightly loaded it would be no better than 3G and heavily loaded only 250kbps instead of 120kbps.

The LTE would leave 90MHz free for WiDox which capacity wise is like 800MHz of LTE/Mobile Wimax! This would could also be paired with 12.8MHz in 450MHz band ( 8 uplink channels of 1.6MHz) or even with 64MHz in 211MHz to 275MHz band, or ideally both.

700MHz

---

960MHz
widox up 28.8| LTE up 100Mhz |LTE guard=WiDoxRural 28.8| LTE down 100MHz| WiDox Down 40MHz

Total 297.6MHz
Channel Planning Downlink
WiDox N = 6 (8MHz)
LTE N=5 (20MHz)

Guardband is 9 x 3.2MHz or 18 x 1.6MHz DOCSIS uplink or 4 x6MHz directional Downlink (high gain directional Yagi rather than normal Sectors) or Mix


The guardband could be used for uplink on longer range Rural Fixed Wireless. The rest of the spectrum should be WiDox/Metro type Fixed chimney aerials for "proper" rural broadband as that DOCSIS over wireless with outdoor fixed aerials outperforms Mobile/Nomadic Wimax or LTE by a staggering x16 and outperforms fixed WiMax by upto 20% (costs less and more flexible on channels allowing 2, 6 or 8MHz downlink and multple or single 0.8, 1.6, 3.2 or 6.4MHz uplink channels in any combination with downlink).

Off the shelf gear for 750MHz / 850Mhz for WiDox and easily modified for ANY pair of bands from 50MHz to 100GHz. The new Kasat will use DOCSIS also. WiMax and LTE only have advantage over WiDox (DOCSIS over Wireless) for MOBILE /Nomadic use.

Is there a 500 word explanation of these terms that i could read and understand more about this kind of thing?

Sponge Bob

All new mobile licence will be for 4g, in fact every new wireless licencefor the next 3-5 years in fact. 4g is euphemistically called 3g LTE but is actually 4g. These licences will issue from 2011 or so.

4g works best when used in large blocks , 40mhz or 50mhz chunks . Comreg types slice the blocks up for more money which means they allocate 5mhz down and 5mhz up which is very limiting. An empty cell will manage 15mbits or so with a 5Mhz block of spectrum. Add people and it slows down.

They should bundle the lot together in rural areas and make large blocks of it and only have one network shared by all operators. A Virtual or MVNO network that appears as Voda to Voda customers and O2 to O2 customers. That is because sub 1ghz spectrum goes a long distance ( if required) and penetrates buildings very well unlike current 3g at 2.1ghz which is crap at doing all of that.

Some very usable bands are coming up for rural broadband but they should not be broken into 5mhz chunks in areas where a persistent historic deficit is clearly identifiable.

watty

banquo wrote: »

Is there a 500 word explanation of these terms that i could read and understand more about this kind of thing?

Google/Bing and Wikipedia.

Sponge Bob

Note that another country with a lot of rural population in dispersed locations has already shared the 4g network build to the satisfaction of a Regulator. Technically the solution is called "RAN Sharing".

http://www.ovum.com/news/euronews.asp?id=7830

both companies said they will form a 50:50-owned joint venture to roll out a nationwide 4G LTE network in Sweden. Not only will they share their active network components - essentially the RAN - but they are sharing the spectrum too. The deal includes both the 2100MHz and the 900MHz spectrum bands, ensuring that the network will have nationwide coverage. By sharing their RAN and spectrum, Tele2 and Telenor will effectively operate as mobile virtual network operators on their jointly owned network.

But the key is sharing the spectrum between 800mhz and 1000ghz and maybe the special Irish Digital Divedend between 700mhz and 800mhz later or else below the UHF band as Watty suggested for the uplink channels, equipment availability allowing.

But 700mhz in Ireland looks like a runner in rural areas a respectable distance from the border and we can use cheap US gear in that band ...or in all operational bands if the gear is quadband as some phones have been since the 1990s.

The Germans are not above RAN Sharing either. In Principle. All of Three Voda and O2 have done it in at least one other country.

http://considerations.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/deutsche-telekom-ceo-we-are-open-to-4g-network-sharing/

Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann said that the company must remain open to cooperation on 4G. Specifically, he said that the company would considering sharing a network in regions where capex costs of building a network would be enormous.

But spectrum sharing is the single greatest public utility from Network/RAN sharing wher eIreland has a communications density problem and if they simply want to share the other network elements eg mast/comms room/ Node B / sectors/ backhaul ...then they can feck off as far as I am concerned.

watty

Yes. Sensible Nordics.

USB dongles or Handsets are expensive to engineer. You need to be sure of selling a Million. Thus for LTE (likely) or Mobile WiMax(dead end) Spectrum will only be used if it already has Handsets & Dongles. The frequencies of the Dongles and Handsets can't be changed easily.

So the non-Standard frequencies need to be Fixed Wireless. Because it's an outdoor aerial and a box, it can be economic in the 20,000 off quantity. In addition WiDox uses a standard cable modem with cheap coax that can run huge distance to a very cheap outdoor twoway radio in a box at the aerial. This box can be economic at even 5,000 quantity bceause the Duplex filters to separate Uplink and Downlink don't need to be minaturised custom parts like a handset or dongle. Also its electronics is simple as it is no different to an LNB on dish (€6) or MMDS downconverter stalk for receive. The transmit part is similar but just with a Power Amplifier to transmit.

The other advantage of WiDox over Fixed WiMAx (or indeed Mobile Wimax and LTE) is the the Modem part doesn't change and can do 0.8MHz to 6.4MHz uplink and 2, 6 or 8MHz downlink. But since it's for cable, the actual channels can cover x10 the band of WiMax or LTE. So the one design of outdoor "Radio" and indoor Cable Modem can cover easily the entire UHF & GSM bands and with small additional expense the 175MHz to 275MHz and 450MHz.

In fact the built in radio on the Cable modem AUTOMATICALLY searches from over 900MHz down to 110MHz looking for a channel. The CMTS (on cable, but in this case on radio) is sending "background" information on each channel so a Modem can call hello and what upstream frequency and channel to do it.

This is the most efficient and also mature Wireless Broadband there is. Of course mostly it's piped on Cable. Cable Broadband must be close to DSL in user numbers and supports longer distance (up to 160km) and higher speed than DSL.

Fixed WiMax and other non-DOCSIS (non-WiDox) systems have the modem and radio as a single unit and thus need about 500,000 units of order to customise the frequency. Even then it would not cover the huge Band(s) that WiDox can.

http://www.arrisi.com/products/wireless/index.asp
http://www.arrisi.com/products/widox/widox_forum.asp

Arris is one of the major suppliers of CMTS for Cable Broadband.

TeleBarbados deploys Arris wireless system
By Brian Santo
CedMagazine.com - December 09, 2008


TeleBarbados has deployed the Arris WiDOX 700 MHz broadband access solution to deliver high-speed data service to its customers throughout the island.

“We are very excited to be deploying a high quality, reliable and secure high-speed internet experience for our residential customers,” said TeleBarbados CEO Brian Harvey. “Using this 700 MHz solution from ARRIS allows us to differentiate ourselves from the incumbent provider and uniquely positions TeleBarbados to easily expand our service offerings in the future.”

Arris WiDOX technology employs DOCSIS protocols in a wireless environment to deliver high quality data experience to customers in rural environments. The system provides fixed wireless solutions from a single tower to cover large geographic areas. Arris said several operators worldwide are using the system, supporting as many as 20,000 subscribers per installation. The topography of Barbados lends itself well to this technology by virtue of its terrain and population density, the company said.

Sponge Bob

Of course installing 700mhz Docsis gear on a mast where RAN sharing applied means you CANNOT RAN Share as such. But that is OK.

One can share everything but the Radio Gear ( mast backhaul etc) and one can install the 700Mhz Docsis transmission gear lower than the Shared LTE gear on what would be a sub optimal location for LTE gear at slightly higher frequences anyway.

So yes, running 700mhz Docsis on mast subject to a spectrum shared RAN arrangement would make perfect sense unles the mast were 10 foot high.

The possibility of Docsis or LTE leaves the 700mhz band technologically neutral for now while the Digital Dividend refarm can be pushed ahead above 800mhz. A vague possibility exists that 700mhz will be an LTE band in the EU as well but the momentum for that may not be there ...ironically give the general success of DTT elsewhere in the EU.

Making perfect sense means Comreg and DCENR will inevitably make a complete balls of it For now we simply need to get RTE off the 700mhz band they do not require and devise a Spectrum/RAN sharing regime for around half the state minimum and that before the most universal network, Vodafone 2g , is turned off in a few years potentially with disastrous consequences.

watty

DOCSIS supports VLAN, MPLS etc. You can easily have virtual operators on Cable. Not something UPC wants Regulators to know