The Next Decade of Bandwidth - Part I

The recent disintegration of the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile might seem like a victory for consumer choice versus telecom monopoly, but it was never really about that. Even if these two GSM carriers became one, there would still be the counterbalancing force of CDMA carriers Verizon and Sprint. It wasn’t about owning the space. It was about owning the bandwidth.

Is there any doubt in your mind about this? OK, consider that no sooner had the deal fallen apart than AT&T went out and bought $1.9 billion worth of spectrum from Qualcomm with the FCC’s blessing. Verizon just announced that they bought $315 million of 20 MHz AWS spectrum from Cox right after buying $3.6 billion for 122 spectrum licenses from Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

What’s with the bandwidth buying frenzy? It’s all about mobility. There are two laws of physics that must be dealt with to satisfy our appetite for everything on the go. First, you have to use wireless spectrum. You can’t be trailing a wire everywhere you go, even if it is a nice fiber optic cable. Second, the more bandwidth you want to support the applications, the more bandwidth you need to transmit through the air.

Not all bandwidth is created equal. We’ve gotten used to cell phone services delivered on the lower microwave frequencies around 2 GHz. The next deployments will be over the old TV frequencies around 700 MHz. That’s significant because the higher up the spectrum you go in MHz and GHz, the less those transmissions can penetrate into buildings. Light is really nothing more than a really high frequency transmission in the same electromagnetic spectrum. Just about anything will stop a light beam. At the other end of the spectrum are VLF (Very Low Frequencies) around 100 KHz that go around the Earth, hugging the surface. Those are used to synchronize our “atomic” clocks with national standards in Colorado.

The other thing you should know about the spectrum is that if you want more Mbps you need more MHz. If you want Gbps of Internet bandwidth for your mobile device, you need GHz of spectrum to carry it. This is why VLF isn’t much good for anything but sending low bandwidth voice and data long distances. Microwaves have the capacity to transmit massive amounts of data, but they tend to be line of sight. Even heavy rain or tree foliage will stop satellite TV in its tracks.

This is where life gets tough for the FCC. AM radio stations are flickering off and going dark one by one, but those frequencies aren’t of much use for video transmission. Shortwave radio is being usurped by the Internet. Only problem is that the shortwave channels don’t have massive data carrying capacity, either. What’s really desirable are those juicy frequencies between 200 Mbps and 2 Gbps. That range includes UHF television and GPS satellite bands. Note the big squabble between LightSquared’s 4G broadband and the L band GPS satellite systems. Both services want the same band around 1500 MHz for different purposes and they can’t both be there without interference.

What AT&T bought from Qualcomm was UHF channels 55 and 56, formerly assigned to broadcast television and repurposed for Qualcomm’s FLO TV. It wasn’t hard to see this coming. FLO TV was an idea that came too late. Who wants to buy a separate device that only picks up a few video channels now that you have a smartphone or tablet that can get anything over the Internet? AT&T will dump the FLO technology and press those channels into service for LTE, the 4G mobile broadband standard.

Mobile Internet is becoming a black hole for spectrum and 4G is the standard that will try to feed it. Nothing else is fast enough, although WiMAX and EVDO could be if they had the momentum behind them. It appears that nearly all carriers, including WiMAX pioneer CLEAR, are headed to the LTE standard within the next few years. Everything else will shutdown from lack of available transmission channels.

What everybody wants is a single big pipe from the Internet to whatever they are using. That could be a smartphone, a laptop or tablet computer, an Internet-powered radio, weather radar and information system in their car, high definition television set or applications still to come. Giving them that without turning over the airwaves completely to the Internet will be the challenge.

In Part II, we’ll take a look at what is likely to happen next in the battle for bandwidth, especially in the lucrative UHF TV spectrum being jealously eyed by cellular carriers for 4G expansion.

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Is Mobility Killing Your Company?

Everything was fine when just a handful of execs had company cell phones. It made sense to keep them connected at all times for the good of the business. Then a funny thing happened. What worked for the C-level execs also worked for the VPs and the directors and the department managers. Finally, somebody did a trade study and soon everyone had a company issued smartphone. Productivity went through the roof, right?

Well, certainly there is a lot more interaction among team members and faster response to customers and sales prospects. But, oh, the expense of it all. Since this was a phased-in process, each location cut its own deal with its own preferred provider. Even if one carrier is predominant, there are hundreds of contracts with hundreds of bills. Sadly, some of these bill are routinely paid each month while the phones sit uncharged and unused in empty desks. Hey, people come and go. Who has time to stay on top of all this?

Certainly, you don’t. Your business isn’t optimizing wireless accounts. It’s keeping your own operation afloat. That doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless. Why don’t you turn over the entire load of hundreds of phones, their contracts and their bills to a company that specializes in wireless cost control? It’ll be out of your hair and you are almost guaranteed to save money in the process.

The first step is getting a free, no-obligation analysis of your accounts. The company that does this, Advantix Solutions, will go over a few months or more of detailed wireless bills with a fine tooth comb. They know what to look for and how to keep an eye on the big picture. Are some of these resources going to waste? Are there ways to consolidate contracts and bills? They don’t do this by hand, the way your harried managers probably do when they have time. They use proprietary analysis software to crunch the numbers and make accurate recommendations for cost savings. You’ll need to have anywhere from hundreds to thousands of cell phones to make this work efficiently, but work it will.

You’ll get a detailed report in 7 to 10 business days. It will outline where the problem areas are and what the opportunities are to optimize your wireless costs. What you probably don’t realize is that every provider has both published and hidden rate plans. You may well be on the wrong ones for how you use your devices. A few changes here and there and, suddenly, you are paying less for the same benefit.

OK, how much are you going to save and what’s this going to cost? Would you be shocked to know that the average Advantix clients saves over 29% on their monthly wireless bills? That’s without having to change service providers and reduce usage. Here comes another shock. Advantix gets paid out of the savings they create. In other words, they get paid and you get paid. Your expenses don’t go up, they go down.

That’s just the start of the good times. Advantix will also take the management headache of administering those wireless phones off your back. They’ll expedite support and trouble ticket resolution for all your employees. They’ll also raise accountability standards for every location to lower your costs. Need to order new phones, replace old, lost or stolen phones, get accessories, activate new services, change rate plans or user names, or cancel lines of service? Advantix has a dedicated support staff for that. They know what they’re doing and they’re good at it because that is all they do.

Mobility is no longer a two-edged sword when you have the proper support to make it work optimally. It’s pretty hard to go wrong when the cost of this service comes out of the savings you didn’t even know were available. Can you really say no to having your expenses go down? I didn’t think so. Before you do anything else, lock in a cost savings for your company right now by requesting a free, no obligation analysis of your wireless accounts. Get that ball rolling, and you’re already ahead for the day.

So Many Free Phones Online

Your old cell phone is looking pretty shabby after two years. Even if you’ve kept it nice and shiny in a leather case, the functional capability just doesn’t begin to compare with what’s available now. You want one of those new models, don’t you? Well, before you fall into the trap that high-tech cell phones have to cost a bundle, take a look at what you can get for free from Cell Phone Plan Finder.



If you squint, you might be notice something amazing in that screen shot. All but one of the top phone models this week are available FREE. That’s right. There’s no need to shell out for a new cell phone when you order it with a new service plan online. That is, if you know where to look. Try Cell Phone Plan Finder right now and see for yourself.

These phone are no entry level basic phones, either. Look what you can get for free:

Verizon Wireless BlackBerry Storm2
BlackBerry Bold 9700
T-Mobile Nokia Nuron
Verizon Wireless Droid Eris by HTC
AT&T Samsung Mythic
T-Mobile Motorola Cliq XT
AT&T Motorola Backlip
Sprint BlackBerry Curve

What’s the one hottest selling phone that isn’t free? It’s the Verizon Wireless Droid by Motorola. For that, you’ll have to shell out all of $19.99.

Do any of those deals sound like what you had in mind for your next phone? They’re all available as of this writing at Cell Phone Plan Finder. You can review images of each phone and all the specifics at this site.

Here’s a bonus feature. If you’d like to keep shopping, you can check all the available phone at the “Shop Now” tab. Or, you can select the “Free Phones” tab and just see the phones that are free when you order them with a wireless service plan. There are new models available every week, so be sure to bookmark that site and come back whenever the mood strikes. You’ll be surprised by what you can get for free online.

3G 4G Mobile Bandwidth

The Internet long escaped the desktop and moved onto the mobile phone. The problem is that it has been following a similar learning curve that took us from 300 baud telephone modems to DSL & Cable broadband and now to high speed wireless and fiber optic service. Mobile bandwidth is undergoing a steady evolution, with the demand for higher and higher speeds pushing the technology. Let’s have a look at what’s available and what’s coming soon.

The benchmark today is 3G wireless. This service offers somewhere between 500 Kbps and 1.5 Mbps and is owned and operated by the cellular carriers. The same company that sells you your cell phone minutes also sells you 3G wireless Internet access. The signals come from the same towers, so if you are in a dead spot for phone reception you won’t be surfing the Web or watching videos either.

The 3G build-out has been proceeding at something of a panic level, especially since the introduction of the Apple iPhone. The first iPhone used the AT&T EDGE network, which is actually called a 2.5G network. That means it has considerably less bandwidth than the newer HSPA or High Speed Packet Access 3G network, perhaps as little as a tenth as much. HSPA is offered by GSM carriers AT&T and T-Mobile and is also known as HSUPA.

A competing 3G service is offered by CDMA carriers Verizon and Sprint using a different technology. Theirs is known as EV-DO and EV-DO Rev A. Download bandwidths are in the range of 1 to 2 Mbps, depending on signal conditions.

Note that 2.5G and 3G cellular broadband not only gives cell phones the ability to download videos and surf the Web but also gives you the option of adding 3G to your laptop computer. The functionality is added using a plug-in wireless modem aircard. These are sold with data-only service plans, since they don’t work as telephones. The aircard and wireless service has been a boon to field sales people who don’t always have the ability to set up shop within a WiFi hotspot.

The newest service on the market is called 4G mobile bandwidth. Right now the run away leader is the WiMAX service offered by Clearwire and Sprint under the CLEAR trademark. WiMAX is yet another wireless standard, albeit a global one not associated with the cellular phone system. WiMAX offers a powerful signal that covers an entire city. It’s strong enough to penetrate buildings so that you can have the same WiMAX broadband on your desktop and laptop computers. Download bandwidth typically ranges between 3 and 6 Mbps, considerably faster than 3G networks.

The cellular companies aren’t sitting still, though. Both AT&T and Verizon plan to deploy another standard called LTE to compete with WiMAX. It will likely be a year or two before these two 4G technologies are competing head to head in most populated areas. For now, WiMAX gives you the most mobile bandwidth at the lowest cost in the cities and states where it is available.