Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Story Behind the 700MHz Spectrum Action

Story Behind the 700MHz Spectrum Action

700MHz spectrum itself is not so important as you image. But the story behind the 700M is much more important and critical.

700M spectrum is good for long distance radio transmission, but not appropriate for broadband highspeed transmission, and therefore it is mostly for voice and message services for cellular mobile communications. If you use 700M for fixed or local wireless access, the datarate can be high and up to tens of Mps, but with very limited mobility. Therefore, from the technical point of view, 700M is no different from 800M/900M which we have used in cellular mobile for over twenty years.

700M is also not the last spectrum to auction. We have more spectrum on the way including new ITU IMT-Adv band and future 4G spectrum, most probably around 2.5~3.5 bands.

The most important issue behind this 700M case is the attemping to open up the US mobile communication markets, which has been strongly urged by the governmant and the general public.

As you may know, US mobile markets are extremely closed. Users pay the handphone or free phone with long-term contracts, but their phones are still locked by the operators. A 12-months or 24-months service-contract basically PAY the mobile phone which is not FREE though the users did not pay it when signing-up. American people have been fooled by the telecom operators for long time. If you buy the TV and it is locked to Comcast only, do you accept this situation?

In 1997, Chinese law said "locking a mobile phone without subscriber's permission is a national crime". My US mobile phone has been locked since 2002, and is permanently locked now. I called the operator for more than 10 times to request unlock,was never successful. Eventually a customer service representative called me back to tell me follow her instruction to unlock the phone - she told me input 3-digits security code to unlock. After I tried twice with failure, she told me sorry that she gave the wrong code. After I tried the third time still not successful, she said sorry again and need to check with the technical support team. After 30 minutes, she called me back and said sorry that my phone had been permanently locked. I was very angry and filed complains to the service provider and operator (you can guess this operator). I visited the local store of the operator, and complained with the manager. He told me it was nothing to do with the operator because of three: first, I did input the wrong code myselfin unlocking the phone and it was my own responsibility, and the customer representative just helped me without taking any responsibility. Secondly, the phone has been permanently locked by the phone vendor (in this case, Sony-Ericsson), I should contact the phone vendor instead of the operator. Third, if I needed to file legal complains, I should talk to operator's lawyers rather than the local store. He further added, the operator has hundreds of lawyers, and he welcome any lawsuits.

Another story behind the 700MHz is the battle between the telecom industry and the computer industry, basically between the east coast and the west coast industries. As the future mobile device will be converging the computing, networking with wireless mobility, it is a very good opportunity for the computer industries to enter the wireless markets, especially to extend the Internet business to the mobile wireless Internet markets. However, the battle will last a while if the government does not stand out to enforce either side because the traditional telecom industry controls the infrastructure, and the netwok & computer industry focus on the user or access equipment segments. To be honest, this is a governmental regulation issue rather than a technical issue. Both West Europe, Japan, China and many other countries solved this issue very well, why can't America?

Last, but not least, this 700MHz will start a new initiative of dynamic spectrum planning in response to the continued exhausting of available spectrum. As no single wireless standard can do both broadband high-speed and seamless mobility, multiple wireless standards are to be converged and integrated into common mobile device in future which requires the spectrum be allocated dynamically and openly.

The global mobile markets are pretty open now, but US is still one of the very few countries locking the users' mobile phone. Openning up our mobile communications is a trend, not an option, and it is just a matter of time.

Prof. Willie W. Lu
Director, USCWC
Palo Alto, CA

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Sprint WiMax-Xohm Will Fail Again

Sprint WiMax-Xohm Will Fail Again

by Tao Zhang, Reporter, World Mobile Congress

Sprint had been trying to kickoff broadband wireless business for over decade. Starting from wireless and mobile ATM, to MMDS and LMDS, Sprint failed too many times. Sprint would repeat the failure story again in this WiMax trial for reasons as follows:

1. Sprint's management is too questionable to manage such a big technology movement;
2. Sprint does not have enough capitals to deploy such a money-burning project;
3. No big partners including Intel will invest dollars in Sprint Xohm movement which places Spring in a very risky situation;
4. There are still lots of technical arguments about Sprint Xohm's seamless mobility features because no single wireless standard can do both broadband high-speed and seamless mobility. Therefore, Xohm may become another lesson of MMDS if it only supports fixed broadband wireless access or limited-mobility wireless access;
5. The business model of Xohm is not clear in terms of how open the Xohm networks are and what is the targeted market segment - mobile handphone market vs. wireless laptop market?
6. The international standards are not clear for Xohm solution - LTE is gaining worldwide against WiMax, and some countries including China may support LTE instead of WiMax;
7. The long-term strategy of Xohm movement is not clear in terms of convergence of multiple wireless standards and open wireless infrastructure.

All these issues make Sprint Xohm very risky and challenging for investors and users. Therefore, I believe Sprint feels hard to deploy this network successfully. Without huge investment from key partners which is even harder at this economic situation, Sprint will fail in this business again.

WiMax is a very good technology, but Sprint is just not qualified to deply it.

Tao Zhang, Reporter
World Mobile Congress
Europe