1
Technological FOUNDATIONS FOR CONVERGENCE(3)
1. Digitization/Digital Storage 2. Networking/Broadband 3. WIRELESS/WI-FI 4. SPECTRUM MANAGEMENT
3. WIRELESS NETWORKS/WI-FI
What Is a Wireless Network?: The Basics http://www.cisco.com/cisco/web/solutions/small_business/resource_center/articles/w ork_from_anywhere/what_is_a_wireless_network/index.html
Five Qustions to Start With What is a wireless network? How is it different from a wired network? And what are the business benefits of a wireless network? The following overview answers basic questions such as What is a wireless network?, so you can decide if one is right for your business.
What Is a Wireless Network? A wireless local-area network (LAN) uses radio waves to connect devices such as laptops to the Internet and to your business network and its applications. When you connect a laptop to a WiFi hotspot at a cafe, hotel, airport lounge, or other public place, you're connecting to that business's wireless network.
What Is a Wireless Network vs. a Wired Network? A wired network connects devices to the Internet or other network using cables. The most common wired networks use cables connected to Ethernet ports on the network router on one end and to a computer or other device on the cable's opposite end.
What Is a Wireless Network? Catching Up with Wired Networks In the past, some believed wired networks were faster and more secure than wireless networks. But continual enhancements to wireless networking standards and technologies have eroded those speed and security differences.
What Is a Wireless Network?: The Benefits Small businesses can experience many benefits from a wireless network, including:
• Convenience. Access your network resources from any location within your wireless network's coverage area or from any WiFi hotspot. • Mobility. You're no longer tied to your desk, as you were with a wired connection. You and your employees can go online in conference room meetings, for example. • Productivity. Wireless access to the Internet and to your company's key applications and resources helps your staff get the job done and encourages collaboration. • Easy setup. You don't have to string cables, so installation can be quick and cost-effective. • Expandable. You can easily expand wireless networks with existing equipment, while a wired network might require additional wiring. • Security. Advances in wireless networks provide robust security protections. Cost. Because wireless networks eliminate or reduce wiring costs, they can cost less to operate than wired networks.
2
Introduction to Cellular Communications http://www.gsmfavorites.com/documents/introduction/gsm/
1. Mobile Communications Principles
Each mobile uses a separate, temporary radio channel to talk to the cell site. The cell site talks to many mobiles at once, using one channel per mobile. Channels use a pair of frequencies for communication one frequency (the forward link) for transmitting from the cell site and one frequency (the reverse link) for the cell site to receive calls from the users. Radio energy dissipates over distance, so mobiles must stay near the base station to maintain communications. The basic structure of mobile networks includes telephone systems and radio services. Where mobile radio service operates in a closed network and has no access to the telephone system, mobile telephone service allows interconnection to the telephone network.
Early Mobile Telephone System Architecture
Traditional mobile service was structured in a fashion similar to television broadcasting: One very powerful transmitter located at the highest spot in an area would broadcast in a radius of up to 50 kilometers. The cellular concept structured the mobile telephone network in a different way. Instead of using one powerful transmitter, many low-power transmitters were placed throughout a coverage area. For example, by dividing a metropolitan region into one hundred different areas (cells) with low-power transmitters using 12 conversations (channels) each, the system capacity theoretically could be increased from 12 conversations or voice channels using one powerful transmitter to 1,200 conversations (channels) using one hundred low-power transmitters. Figure 2 shows a metropolitan area configured as a traditional mobile telephone network with one high-power transmitter.
2. Mobile Telephone System Using the Cellular Concept
Interference problems caused by mobile units using the same channel in adjacent areas proved that all channels could not be reused in every cell. Areas had to be skipped before the same channel could be reused. Even though this affected the efficiency of the original concept, frequency reuse was still a viable solution to the problems of mobile telephony systems.
Engineers discovered that the interference effects were not due to the distance between areas, but to the ratio of the distance between areas to the transmitter power (radius) of the areas. By reducing the radius of an area by 50 percent, service providers could increase the number of potential customers in an area fourfold. Systems based on areas with a one- kilometer radius would have one hundred times more channels than systems with areas 10 kilometers in radius. Speculation led to the conclusion that by reducing the radius of areas to a few hundred meters, millions of calls could be served.
The cellular concept employs variable low-power levels, which allow cells to be sized according to the subscriber density and demand of a given area. As the population grows, cells can be added to accommodate that growth. Frequencies used in one cell cluster can be reused in other cells. Conversations can be handed off from cell to cell to maintain constant phone service as the user moves between cells. 3
The cellular radio equipment (base station) can communicate with mobiles as long as they are within range. Radio energy dissipates over distance, so the mobiles must be within the operating range of the base station. Like the early mobile radio system, the base station communicates with mobiles via a channel. The channel is made of two frequencies, one for transmitting to the base station and one to receive information from the base station.
3. Cellular System Architecture
Increases in demand and the poor quality of existing service led mobile service providers to research ways to improve the quality of service and to support more users in their systems. Because the amount of frequency spectrum available for mobile cellular use was limited, efficient use of the required frequencies was needed for mobile cellular coverage. In modern cellular telephony, rural and urban regions are divided into areas according to specific provisioning guidelines. Deployment parameters, such as amount of cell-splitting and cell sizes, are determined by engineers experienced in cellular system architecture.
Provisioning for each region is planned according to an engineering plan that includes cells, clusters, frequency reuse, and handovers.
Cells
A cell is the basic geographic unit of a cellular system. The term cellular comes from the honeycomb shape of the areas into which a coverage region is divided. Cells are base stations transmitting over small geographic areas that are represented as hexagons. Each cell size varies depending on the landscape. Because of constraints imposed by natural terrain and man-made structures, the true shape of cells is not a perfect hexagon.
Clusters
A cluster is a group of cells. No channels are reused within a cluster. Figure 4 illustrates a seven-cell cluster.
Frequency Reuse
Because only a small number of radio channel frequencies were available for mobile systems, engineers had to find a way to reuse radio channels to carry more than one conversation at a time. The solution the industry adopted was called frequency planning or 4
frequency reuse. Frequency reuse was implemented by restructuring the mobile telephone system architecture into the cellular concept.
The concept of frequency reuse is based on assigning to each cell a group of radio channels used within a small geographic area. Cells are assigned a group of channels that is completely different from neighboring cells. The coverage area of cells is called the footprint. This footprint is limited by a boundary so that the same group of channels can be used in different cells that are far enough away from each other so that their frequencies do not interfere.
Cells with the same number have the same set of frequencies. Here, because the number of available frequencies is 7, the frequency reuse factor is 1/7. That is, each cell is using 1/7 of available cellular channels.
Cell Splitting
Unfortunately, economic considerations made the concept of creating full systems with many small areas impractical. To overcome this difficulty, system operators developed the idea of cell splitting. As a service area becomes full of users, this approach is used to split a single area into smaller ones. In this way, urban centers can be split into as many areas as necessary to provide acceptable service levels in heavy-traffic regions, while larger, less expensive cells can be used to cover remote rural regions.
5
Handoff
The final obstacle in the development of the cellular network involved the problem created when a mobile subscriber traveled from one cell to another during a call. As adjacent areas do not use the same radio channels, a call must either be dropped or transferred from one radio channel to another when a user crosses the line between adjacent cells. Because dropping the call is unacceptable, the process of handoff was created. Handoff occurs when the mobile telephone network automatically transfers a call from radio channel to radio channel as a mobile crosses adjacent cells.
During a call, two parties are on one voice channel. When the mobile unit moves out of the coverage area of a given cell site, the reception becomes weak. At this point, the cell site in use requests a handoff. The system switches the call to a stronger-frequency channel in a new site without interrupting the call or alerting the user. The call continues as long as the user is talking, and the user does not notice the handoff at all.
4. North American Analog Cellular Systems
Originally devised in the late 1970s to early 1980s, analog systems have been revised somewhat since that time and operate in the 800-MHz range. A group of government, telco, and equipment manufacturers worked together as a committee to develop a set of rules (protocols) that govern how cellular subscriber units (mobiles) communicate with the cellular system. System development takes into consideration many different, and often opposing, requirements for the system, and often a compromise between conflicting requirements results. Cellular development involves the following basic topics:
• frequency and channel assignments • type of radio modulation • maximum power levels • modulation parameters • messaging protocols • call-processing sequences 6
The Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS)
AMPS was released in 1983 using the 800-MHz to 900-MHz frequency band and the 30-kHz bandwidth for each channel as a fully automated mobile telephone service. It was the first standardized cellular service in the world and is currently the most widely used standard for cellular communications. Designed for use in cities, AMPS later expanded to rural areas. It maximized the cellular concept of frequency reuse by reducing radio power output. The AMPS telephones (or handsets) have the familiar telephone-style user interface and are compatible with any AMPS base station. This makes mobility between service providers (roaming) simpler for subscribers. Limitations associated with AMPS include the following:
• low calling capacity • limited spectrum • no room for spectrum growth • poor data communications • minimal privacy • inadequate fraud protection
AMPS is used throughout the world and is particularly popular in the United States, South America, China, and Australia. AMPS uses frequency modulation (FM) for radio transmission. In the United States, transmissions from mobile to cell site use separate frequencies from the base station to the mobile subscriber.
Narrowband Analog Mobile Phone Service (NAMPS)
Since analog cellular was developed, systems have been implemented extensively throughout the world as first-generation cellular technology. In the second generation of analog cellular systems, NAMPS was designed to solve the problem of low calling capacity. NAMPS is now operational in 35 U.S. and overseas markets, and NAMPS was introduced as an interim solution to capacity problems. NAMPS is a U.S. cellular radio system that combines existing voice processing with digital signaling, tripling the capacity of today's AMPS systems. The NAMPS concept uses frequency division to get 3 channels in the AMPS 30-kHz single channel bandwidth. NAMPS provides 3 users in an AMPS channel by dividing the 30-kHz AMPS bandwidth into 3 10-kHz channels. This increases the possibility of interference because channel bandwidth is reduced.
5. Cellular System Components
The cellular system offers mobile and portable telephone stations the same service provided fixed stations over conventional wired loops. It has the capacity to serve tens of thousands of subscribers in a major metropolitan area. The cellular communications system consists of the following four major components that work together to provide mobile service to subscribers.
• public switched telephone network (PSTN) • mobile telephone switching office (MTSO) • cell site with antenna system • mobile subscriber unit (MSU)
7
PSTN
The PSTN is made up of local networks, the exchange area networks, and the long-haul network that interconnect telephones and other communication devices on a worldwide basis.
Mobile Telephone Switching Office (MTSO)
The MTSO is the central office for mobile switching. It houses the mobile switching center (MSC), field monitoring, and relay stations for switching calls from cell sites to wireline central offices (PSTN). In analog cellular networks, the MSC controls the system operation. The MSC controls calls, tracks billing information, and locates cellular subscribers.
The Cell Site
The term cell site is used to refer to the physical location of radio equipment that provides coverage within a cell. A list of hardware located at a cell site includes power sources, interface equipment, radio frequency transmitters and receivers, and antenna systems.
Mobile Subscriber Units (MSUs)
The mobile subscriber unit consists of a control unit and a transceiver that transmits and receives radio transmissions to and from a cell site. The following three types of MSUs are available:
• the mobile telephone (typical transmit power is 4.0 watts) • the portable (typical transmit power is 0.6 watts) • the transportable (typical transmit power is 1.6 watts) • The mobile telephone is installed in the trunk of a car, and the handset is installed in a convenient location to the driver. Portable and transportable telephones are hand- held and can be used anywhere. The use of portable and transportable telephones is limited to the charge life of the internal battery.
6. Digital Systems
As demand for mobile telephone service has increased, service providers found that basic engineering assumptions borrowed from wireline (landline) networks did not hold true in mobile systems. While the average landline phone call lasts at least 10 minutes, mobile calls usually run 90 seconds. Engineers who expected to assign 50 or more mobile phones to the same radio channel found that by doing so they increased the probability that a user would not get dial tone this is known as call-blocking probability. As a consequence, the early systems quickly became saturated, and the quality of service decreased rapidly. The critical problem was capacity. The general characteristics of time division multiple access (TDMA), Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), personal communications service (PCS) 1900, and code division multiple access (CDMA) promise to significantly increase the efficiency of cellular telephone systems to allow a greater number of simultaneous conversations. Figure 8 shows the components of a typical digital cellular system. 8
The advantages of digital cellular technologies over analog cellular networks include increased capacity and security. Technology options such as TDMA and CDMA offer more channels in the same analog cellular bandwidth and encrypted voice and data. Because of the enormous amount of money that service providers have invested in AMPS hardware and software, providers look for a migration from AMPS to digital analog mobile phone service (DAMPS) by overlaying their existing networks with TDMA architectures.
Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)
North American digital cellular (NADC) is called DAMPS and TDMA. Because AMPS preceded digital cellular systems, DAMPS uses the same setup protocols as analog AMPS. TDMA has the following characteristics:
• IS 54 standard specifies traffic on digital voice channels • initial implementation triples the calling capacity of AMPS systems • capacity improvements of 6 to 15 times that of AMPS are possible • many blocks of spectrum in 800 MHz and 1900 MHz are used • all transmissions are digital • TDMA/FDMA application 7. 3 callers per radio carrier (6 callers on half rate later), providing 3 times the AMPS capacity
TDMA is one of several technologies used in wireless communications. TDMA provides each call with time slots so that several calls can occupy one bandwidth. Each caller is assigned a specific time slot. In some cellular systems, digital packets of information are sent during each time slot and reassembled by the receiving equipment into the original voice components. TDMA uses the same frequency band and channel allocations as AMPS. Like NAMPS, TDMA provides three to six time channels in the same bandwidth as a single AMPS channel. Unlike NAMPS, digital systems have the means to compress the spectrum used to transmit voice information by compressing idle time and redundancy of normal speech. TDMA is the digital standard and has 30-kHz bandwidth. Using digital voice encoders, TDMA is able to use up to six channels in the same bandwidth where AMPS uses one channel.
9
Extended Time Division Multiple Access (E TDMA)
The E TDMA standard claims a capacity of fifteen times that of analog cellular systems. This capacity is achieved by compressing quiet time during conversations. E TDMA divides the finite number of cellular frequencies into more time slots than TDMA. This allows the system to support more simultaneous cellular calls.
Fixed Wireless Access (FWA)
FWA is a radio-based local exchange service in which telephone service is provided by common carriers (see Figure 9). It is primarily a rural application that is, it reduces the cost of conventional wireline. FWA extends telephone service to rural areas by replacing a wireline local loop with radio communications. Other labels for wireless access include fixed loop, fixed radio access, wireless telephony, radio loop, fixed wireless, radio access, and Ionica. FWA systems employ TDMA or CDMA access technologies.
Personal Communications Service (PCS)
The future of telecommunications includes PCS. PCS at 1900 MHz (PCS 1900) is the North American implementation of digital cellular system (DCS) 1800 (GSM). Trial networks were operational in the United States by 1993, and in 1994 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began spectrum auctions. As of 1995, the FCC auctioned commercial licenses. In the PCS frequency spectrum, the operator's authorized frequency block contains a definite number of channels. The frequency plan assigns specific channels to specific cells, following a reuse pattern that restarts with each nth cell. The uplink and downlink bands are paired mirror images. As with AMPS, a channel number implies one uplink and one downlink frequency (e.g., Channel 512 = 1850.2-MHz uplink paired with 1930.2-MHz downlink).
Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)
CDMA is a digital air interface standard, claiming 8 to 15 times the capacity of analog. It employs a commercial adaptation of military, spread-spectrum, single-sideband technology. Based on spread spectrum theory, it is essentially the same as wireline service the primary difference is that access to the local exchange carrier (LEC) is provided via wireless phone. Because users are isolated by code, they can share the same carrier frequency, eliminating 10
the frequency reuse problem encountered in AMPS and DAMPS. Every CDMA cell site can use the same 1.25-MHz band, so with respect to clusters, n = 1. This greatly simplifies frequency planning in a fully CDMA environment.
CDMA is an interference-limited system. Unlike AMPS/TDMA, CDMA has a soft capacity limit; however, each user is a noise source on the shared channel and the noise contributed by users accumulates. This creates a practical limit to how many users a system will sustain. Mobiles that transmit excessive power increase interference to other mobiles. For CDMA, precise power control of mobiles is critical in maximizing the system's capacity and increasing battery life of the mobiles. The goal is to keep each mobile at the absolute minimum power level that is necessary to ensure acceptable service quality. Ideally, the power received at the base station from each mobile should be the same (minimum signal to interference).
Glossary
AMPS advanced mobile phone service; another acronym for analog cellular radio BTS base transceiver station; used to transmit radio frequency over the air interface code division multiple access; a form of digital cellular phone service that is a CDMA spread spectrum technology that assigns a code to all speech bits, sends scrambled transmission of the encoded speech digital advanced mobile phone service; a term for digital cellular radio in North DAMPS America DCS digital cellular system extended TDMA; developed to provide fifteen times the capacity over analog E TDMA systems by compressing quiet time during conversations electronic serial number; an identity signal that is sent from the mobile to the ESN MSC during a brief registration transmission Federal Communications Commission; the government agency responsible for FCC regulating telecommunications in the United Sates. FCCH frequency control channel frequency division multiple access; used to separate multiple transmissions over FDMA a finite frequency allocation; refers to the method of allocating a discrete amount of frequency bandwidth to each user frequency modulation; a modulation technique in which the carrier frequency is FM shifted by an amount proportional to the value of the modulating signal FRA fixed radio access Global System for Mobile Communications; standard digital cellular phone GSM service in Europe and Japan; to ensure interpretability between countries, standards address much of the network wireless infra hertz; a measurement of electromagnetic energy, equivalent to one wave or Hz cycle per second kHz kilohertz; thousands of hertz MHz megahertz; millions of hertz MS or mobile station unit; handset carried by the subscriber MSU mobile services switching center; a switch that provides services and MSC coordination between mobile users in a network and external networks MTSO mobile telephone switching office; the central office for the mobile switch, which 11
houses the field monitoring and relay stations for switching calls from cell sites to wireline central offices (PSTN) MTX mobile telephone exchange North American digital cellular (also called United Statesdigital cellular, or NADC USDC); a time division multiple access (TDMA) system that provides three to six times the capacity of AMPS narrowband advanced mobile phone service; NAMPS was introduced as an NAMPS interim solution to capacity problems; NAMPS provides three times the AMPS capacity to extend the usefulness of analog systems personal communications service; a lower-powered, higher-frequency PCS competitive technology that incorporates wireline and wireless networks and provides personalized features public switched telephone network; a PSTN is made of local networks, the PSTN exchange area networks, and the long-haul network that interconnect telephones and other communication devices on a worldwide b radio frequency; electromagnetic waves operating between 10 kHz and 3 MHz RF propagated without guide (wire or cable) in free space subscriber identity module; a smartcard which is inserted into a mobile phone to SIM get it going SNSE supernode size enhanced time division multiple access; used to separate multiple conversation TDMA transmissions over a finite frequency allocation of through-the-air bandwidth; used to allocate a discrete amount of frequency ban
12
Wireless: The Next Generation
A new wave of mobile technology is on its way, and will bring drastic change
The Economist(Feb 20th 2016) http://www.economist.com/news/business/21693197-new-wave-mobile-technology-its-way- and-will-bring-drastic-change-wireless-next
THE future is already arriving, it is just a question of knowing where to look. On Changshou Road in Shanghai, eagle eyes may spot an odd rectangular object on top of an office block: it is a collection of 128 miniature antennae. Pedestrians in Manhattan can catch a glimpse of apparatus that looks like a video camera on a stand, but jerks around and has a strange, hornlike protrusion where the lens should be. It blasts a narrow beam of radio waves at buildings so they can bounce their way to the receiver. The campus of the University of Surrey in Guildford, England, is dotted with 44 antennae, which form virtual wireless cells that follow a device around.
These antennae are vanguards of a new generation of wireless technologies. Although the previous batch, collectively called “fourth generation”, or 4G, is still being rolled out in many countries, the telecoms industry has already started working on the next, 5G. On February 12th AT&T, America’s second-largest mobile operator, said it would begin testing whether prototype 5G circuitry works indoors, following similar news in September from Verizon, the number one. South Korea wants to have a 5G network up and running when it hosts the Winter Olympics in 2018; Japan wants the same for the summer games in 2020. When the industry holds its annual jamboree, Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona this month, 5G will top the agenda.
Mobile telecoms have come a long way since Martin Cooper of Motorola (pictured), inventor of the DynaTAC, the first commercially available handset, demonstrated it in 1973. In the early 2000s, when 3G technology made web-browsing feasible on mobiles, operators splashed out more than $100 billion on radio-spectrum licences, only to find that the technology most had agreed to use was harder to implement than expected The advent of 5G is likely to bring another splurge of investment, just as orders for 4G equipment are peaking. The goal is to be able to offer users no less than the “perception of infinite capacity”, says Rahim Tafazolli, director of the 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey. Rare will be the device that is not wirelessly connected, from self-driving cars and drones to the sensors, industrial machines and household appliances that together constitute the “internet of things” (IoT).
It is easy to dismiss all this as “a lot of hype”, in the words of Kester Mann of CCS Insight, a research firm. When it comes to 5G, much is still up in the air: not only which band of radio spectrum and which wireless technologies will be used, but what standards makers of network gear and handsets will have to comply with. Telecoms firms have reached consensus only on a set of rough “requirements”. The most important are connection speeds 13
of up to 10 gigabits per second and response times (“latency”) of below 1 millisecond (see chart).
Yet the momentum is real. South Korea and Japan are front-runners in wired broadband, and Olympic games are an opportunity to show the world that they intend also to stay ahead in wireless, even if that may mean having to upgrade their 5G networks to comply with a global standard once it is agreed. AT&T and Verizon both invested early in 4G, and would like to lead again with 5G. The market for network equipment has peaked, as recent results from Ericsson and Nokia show, so the makers also need a new generation of products and new groups of customers.
On the demand side, too, pressure is mounting for better wireless infrastructure. The rapid growth in data traffic will continue for the foreseeable future, says Sundeep Rangan of NYU Wireless, a department of New York University. According to one estimate, networks need to be ready for a 1,000-fold increase in data volumes in the first half of the 2020s. And the radio spectrum used by 4G, which mostly sits below 3 gigahertz, is running out, and thus getting more expensive. An auction in America last year raked in $45 billion.
But the path to a 5G wireless paradise will not be smooth. It is not only the usual telecoms suspects who will want a say in this mother of all networks. Media companies will want priority to be given to generous bandwidth, so they can stream films with ever higher resolution. Most IoT firms will not need much bandwidth, but will want their sensors to run on one set of batteries for years—so they will want the 5G standard to put a premium on low power consumption. Online-gaming firms will worry about latency: players will complain if it is too high.
The most important set of new actors, however, are information-technology firms. The likes of Apple, IBM and Samsung have a big interest not only in selling more smartphones and other mobile devices, but also in IoT, which is tipped to generate the next big wave of revenues for them and other companies. Google, which already operates high-speed fibre- optic networks in several American cities and may be tempted to build a wireless one, has shown an interest in 5G. In 2014 it bought Alpental Technologies, a startup which was developing a cheap, high-speed communications service using extremely high radio 14
frequencies, known as “millimetre wave” (mmWave), the spectrum bands above 3 gigahertz where most of 5G is expected to live.
To satisfy all these actors will not be easy, predicts Ulf Ewaldsson, Ericsson’s chief technology officer. Questions over spectrum may be the easiest to solve, in part because the World Radiocommunication Conference, established by international treaty, will settle them. Its last gathering, in November, failed to agree on the frequencies for 5G, but it is expected to do so when it next meets in 2019. It is likely to carve out space in the mmWave bands. Tests such as the one in Manhattan mentioned above, which are conducted by researchers from NYU Wireless, have shown that such bands can be used for 5G: although they are blocked even by thin obstacles, they can be made to bounce around them.
For the first time there will not be competing sets of technical rules, as was the case with 4G, when LTE, now the standard, was initially threatened by WiMax, which was bankrolled by Intel, a chipmaker. Nobody seems willing to play Intel’s role this time around. That said, 5G will be facing a strong competitor, especially indoors: smartphone users are increasingly using Wi-Fi connections for calls and texts as well as data. That means they have ever less need for a mobile connection, no matter how blazingly fast it may be.
Evolution or revolution?
Technology divides the industry in another way, says Stéphane Téral of IHS, a market- research firm. One camp, he says, wants 5G “to take an evolutionary path, use everything they have and make it better.” It includes many existing makers of wireless-network gear and some operators, which want to protect their existing investments and take one step at a time. On February 11th, for instance, Qualcomm, a chip-design firm, introduced the world’s first 4G chip set that allows for data-transmission speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second. It does the trick by using a technique called “carrier aggregation”, which means it can combine up to ten wireless data streams of 100 megabits per second.
The other camp, explains Mr Téral, favours a revolutionary approach: to jump straight to cutting-edge technology. This could mean, for instance, leaving behind the conventional cellular structure of mobile networks, in which a single antenna communicates with all the devices within its cell. Instead, one set of small antennae would send out concentrated radio beams to scan for devices, then a second set would take over as each device comes within reach. It could also mean analysing usage data to predict what kind of connectivity a wireless subscriber will need next and adapt the network accordingly—a technique that the 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey wants to develop.
One of the most outspoken representatives of the revolutionary camp is China Mobile. For Chih-Lin I, its chief scientist, wireless networks, as currently designed, are no longer sustainable. Antennae are using ever more energy to push each extra megabit through the air. Her firm’s position, she says, is based on necessity: as the world’s biggest carrier, with 1.1m 4G base stations and 825m subscribers (more than all the European operators put together), problems with the current network architecture are exacerbated by the firm’s scale. Sceptics suspect there may be an “industrial agenda” at work, that favours Chinese equipment-makers and lowers the patent royalties these have to pay. The more different 5G is from 4G, the higher the chances that China can make its own intellectual property part of the standard.
Whatever the motivation, Ms I’s vision of how 5G networks will ultimately be designed is widely shared. They will not only be “super fast”, she says, but “green and soft”, meaning much less energy-hungry and entirely controlled by software. As with computer systems 15
before them, much of a network’s specialised hardware, such as the processor units that sit alongside each cell tower, will become “virtualised”—that is, it will be replaced with software, making it far easier to reconfigure. Wireless networks will become a bit like computing in the online “cloud”, and in some senses will merge with it, using the same off-the-shelf hardware.
Discussions have already begun about how 5G would change the industry’s structure. One question is whether wireless access will become even more of a commodity, says Chetan Sharma, a telecoms consultant. According to his estimates, operators’ share of total industry revenues has already fallen below 50% in America, with the rest going to mobile services such as Facebook’s smartphone apps, which make money through ads.
The switch to 5G could help the operators reverse that decline by allowing them to do such things as market their own video content. But it is easier to imagine their decline accelerating, turning them into low-margin “dumb pipes”. If so, a further consolidation of an already highly concentrated industry may be inevitable: some countries may be left with just one provider of wireless infrastructure, just as they often have only one provider of water.
If the recent history of IT after the rise of cloud computing is any guide—with the likes of Dell, HP and IBM struggling to keep up—network-equipment makers will also get squeezed. Ericsson and Nokia already make nearly half of their sales by managing networks on behalf of operators. But 5G may finally bring about what has been long talked of, says Bengt Nordstrom of Northstream, another consulting firm: the convergence of the makers of computers and telecoms equipment, as standardisation and low margins force them together. Last year Ericsson formed partnerships first with HP and then with Cisco. Full mergers could follow at some point.
Big, ugly mobile-phone masts will also become harder to spot. Antennae will be more numerous, for sure, but will shrink. Besides the rectangular array that China Mobile is testing in Shanghai, it is also experimenting with smaller, subtler “tiles” that can be combined and, say, embedded into the lettering on the side of a building. In this sense, but few others, the future of mobile telecoms will be invisible.
16
What is Wi-Fi? (Router FAQ) https://www.flashrouters.com/blog/2015/08/07/what-is-wi-fi-router-wireless-router-faq/
What Exactly is Wi-Fi?
Wi-Fi is a term that most of us hear almost every day and is a service most would consider an integral part of our lives. From our smartphones to our game consoles and computers, most devices on the market today are equipped to use Wi-Fi. While WiFi has become critical to routines of many, a large portion of us don’t know anything more than the basics. Let’s explore the ins and outs of Wi-Fi and it’s history.
What is Wi-Fi? How does it work?
For most people, Wi-Fi is synonymous with an internet connection, however this is far from the truth. Wi-Fi is actually a wireless standard for connecting to a router from your device.
A router is a device that creates an internal home or office wireless network, and acts as the hub of this network. When you type in a website address from your phone or computer, it sends the address to the router. The router requests this page from the modem. The modem then connects to your ISP and sends the address to a DNS server.
A DNS (Domain Name System) server acts as a phone book, getting the numerical IP (Internet Protocol) address for the website address you typed. It then sends the IP to your computer, which saves it for later use and then requests the page from the ISP using the new address. When the ISP (Internet Service Provider) delivers the page, the modem sends it to the router. The router then sends it to your device.
How was Wi-Fi invented?
Wi-Fi was born in 1985 after the United States FCC opened up the wireless frequencies 900Mhz, 2.4Ghz, and 5.8Ghz to be used without a license. These radio bands were used by household appliances such as microwaves, and were assumed to have no practical application in communications due to interference from the aforementioned appliances. To make these frequencies useable for communication, the FCC mandated usage of spread spectrum technology over these bands.
Spread spectrum technology, (patented in 1941 by composer George Antheil and actor Hedy Lamarr for use in guiding naval torpedoes) is a technology in which a signal is spread over multiple frequencies in order to reduce interference. Spread spectrum improved wireless signals on these bands, however it did not resolve all interference, meaning that devices such as baby monitors or the radio in your phone still affected signal quality.
Around this time, WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) technology emerged, but the technology was proprietary, so wireless devices from one manufacturer wouldn’t work with technology from another. However, in 1988, the NCR Corporation wanted a WLAN standard for use in their wireless cash registers, and turned to Victor Hayes, author of many of their 17
data transfer standards. Hayes, along with Bruce Tuch, a Bell Labs engineer, asked the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) for assistance in utilizing these frequencies for a WLAN standard. A committee was created with the incredibly catchy title “802.11” to develop this standard. Nine years later, in 1997 the standard was published and was named after the committee.
The 802.11 standard was capable of transmitting data at a speed of only two megabits per second but was quickly enhanced. In 1999, a faster version called 802.11a was released, with a speed of fifty-four megabits per second, but with limited range and high production cost. Later in the year, 802.11b was released, which brought Wi-Fi into the mainstream with its cheap production cost and greater range.
The sudden popularity of wireless networking created a flood of new 802.11b hardware on the market. However, there was no way to ensure compatibility between devices from different manufacturers. In 1999, a group of six companies banded together to create the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance, or WECA, an organization that aimed to test Wi-Fi equipment for compatibility. In 2002, they coined the term Wi-Fi, a portmanteau of Wireless and Hi-Fi, a term used in the music industry as an abbreviation of High Fidelity, and renamed themselves Wi-Fi Alliance. Over the years, notably due to Apple’s inclusion of it into their products, Wi-Fi gradually became a widespread technology.
I KEEP HEARING ABOUT WIRELESS AC AND WIRELESS N. WHAT ARE THEY?
Recently, two variants of Wi-Fi have been released, dubbed Wireless N and Wireless AC. Wireless N, operating on the bands 2.4 Ghz and 5. Ghz, was released in 2009 and was an innovative standard due to the fact that it utilizes a technology called MIMO, or Multiple Input Multiple Output. A good way to visualize this is to imagine a highway. In order to increase the amount of cars able to go through at a time, you would add more lanes, or in the case of the router, more antennas. This brings the speed up to a maximum of 600 Mbps.
The newest Wi-Fi standard is Wireless AC, operating on the 5Ghz band, was released in 2014. Not to be confused with alternating current, Wireless AC is the 3rd revision of the previously mentioned 802.11a standard. It also uses MIMO, and the maximum amount of antennas goes from 4 to 8 in order to utilize multi-user MIMO.
With multi-user MIMO, up to four separate computers can receive and send data to the router simultaneously. The minimum speed is of 500 Mbps over a single link, and a multi- station connection can offer a massive 1 Gbit. For scale, it would take only 32 seconds to download a 2 hour movie in 1080p HD!
Check out the the differences between Wireless-G, Wireless-N, & Wireless-AC blog post for more info on the different WiFi/802.11 protocols. 18
What are the Best 802.11 Wireless Routers Throughout the Years?
We thought it might be useful to list out some of the most popular 802.11 wireless routers and how they compare on a wireless scale throughout the years. You can also see the evolution of WiFi routers through the years in the above chart.
Single Band Wireless-G (802.11g) Wireless-G 54 Mbps: Linksys WRT54G
Single Band Wireless-N (802.11n) Wireless-N 300 Mbps – Linksys E1000, Linksys E1200 DD-WRT, Linksys E1200 TomatoUSB, Asus RT-N16, Netgear WNR3500L v2 Tomato, D-Link DIR-615
Dual Band Wireless-N (802.11n) Wireless-N600 – Linksys Cisco E2500, TP-LINK WDR3600, Netgear WNDR3700 DD-WRT, Linksys E3000
Wireless-N750 – Netgear WNDR4000 DD-WRT, Linksys E4200 V1 DD-WRT
Wireless-N900 – Dark Knight Asus RT-N66U Tomato, Netgear WNDR4500 DD-WRT
Dual Band Wireless-AC (802.11ac) Wireless-AC1200 – Asus RT-AC56U, Linksys WRT1200AC – The Top Budget Wireless- AC Option
Wireless-AC1450 – Netgear AC1450 DD-WRT 19
Wireless-AC1750 – Asus RT-AC66U DD-WRT, Asus RT-AC66U Tomato , Netgear R6300 V2
Wireless-AC1900 – Netgear R7000 Nighthawk DD-WRT, TP-Link Archer C9, Asus RT- AC68U DD-WRT, Linksys WRT1900ACS DD-WRT
Wireless-AC2400 – Asus RT-AC87U DD-WRT
NEW! Wireless-AC3100 – Asus RT-AC88U DD-WRT – Top Wired Router, 8 Gigabit Ports
Asus RT-AC5300 DD-WRT FlashRouter
Tri Band Wireless-AC (802.11ac) Wireless-AC3200 – Netgear x6 R8000 AC3200 DD-WRT, Asus RT-AC3200 Tomato – Best Tomato Router of 2016
NEW! Wireless-AC5300 – Asus RT-AC5300 DD-WRT, Netgear R8500 DD-WRT – Top DD-WRT Routers of 2016
DOES WIFI OPEN MY NETWORK TO HACKERS?
As revolutionary as Wi-Fi is, it is not without its faults. In this day and age, it’s incredibly easy to spy on your internet connection. Hackers can utilize many tools to steal your personal information such as credit cards, email and social network passwords, and much more. In fact, in a study conducted by Symantec, the total cost of cybercrime in 2013 was $113 million!
Thankfully a FlashRouter can be the remedy to these problems, due to the inclusion of VPNs and encrypting your Wi-Fi signal/activity, along with a wealth of features such as power saver mode, graphing your network usage, managing network access restrictions and a firewall.
FUTURE VERSIONS OF WI-FI STANDARDS 20
Wireless AC is just starting to become a reality after its inclusion in the newest iPhone, but even more versions are on the way. Some future protocols have been names as extensions of the 802.11ac naming protocol: 802.11ah,(targeted for the end of 2016), 802.11aj, and 802.11ax (coming at you around 2019).
802.11ah is reported to boast lower energy consumption and other features adhering to the concept of “The Internet Of Things”, the concept of connecting objects such as blenders and coffee makers over Wi-Fi so you could, say, have your coffee machine send you an email when it needs its filter replaced.
Barely anything is known about 802.11aj, except for hints of improved performance. As for 802.11ax, reported Huawei 802.11ax device hit a max speed of 10.53Gbps, or around 1.4 gigabytes of data transferred per second.
Who knows what the future of Wi-Fi will bring? Whatever it is the FlashRouter team will be here to help you get the most out of your WiFi network!
(Editor’s Note: This post was written by our new contributor Theo, a writer with a deep interest in technology who just so happens to be 15. Sadly, he is a bit young for the internship he applied for at FlashRouters but we were more than happy to provide this space for him to explore his interests while providing some helpful information for our users. While this post was edited by our team, the content was written exclusively by him.)
The History of Wi-Fi
If you are under 21, you probably cannot conceive of an unconnected world. For many, mobile devices are literally an extension of their arm. How did we get to this world – 7.1 billion people and 7.2 billion mobile devices, where communication, pop culture, business, news, and personal social lives are completely intertwined – and completely ubiquitous? The history of Wi-Fi is really the history of modern communication. Following are some, although clearly not all, of the highlights that led us to modern Wi-Fi.
1896. World population is ~1.6 billion people. AT&T has about 500,000 telephones in the Bell System. Guglielmo Marconi develops the first wireless telegraph system, establishing the foundation for all future radio technology.
1947. World population is now ~2.6 billion. Most homes don’t yet have television, but the first ever mass audience of ~ 3.9 million people crowd into taverns to watch the first televised World Series. The merger of computers and communications is born with the invention of the transistor. Bell Labs scientists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley win the 21
1956 Nobel Prize for this epic invention.
1962. 9 out of 10 US households now have a TV – 52 million sets. Telstar, The first communication satellite, is launched into orbit.
1969. Over 125 million people tune in to watch the Apollo 11 Moon Landing – mostly in black and white. Arpanet, the first workable prototype of the Internet, is launched. It uses packet switching to allow multiple computers to communicate on a single network.
1985: Over 340,000 US citizens carry cell phones. The FCC releases 3 “garbage bands” for use without a government license: 900MHz, 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz, radiofrequencies then allocated to non-communication purposes like microwave ovens. The IEEE ((Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and WECA , (Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance) form soon thereafter. A set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specifications for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) called 802.11 (Max 2 Mbps) is developed..
1990. 12.5 million cell phone subscribers worldwide. Computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, with the help of Robert Cailliau, completes the first successful communication between a computer and a server, a critical step in the development of the World Wide Web.
1997 – 2000. World population has reached ~6 billion people. 140.2 million personal computers are sold worldwide; more than half of US households now have a PC. A committee, made up of engineers from NCR Corporation, Bell Labs, and IEEE agree on an industrywide wireless standard; a data¬transfer rate of two megabits per second, using either of two spread¬spectrum technologies, frequency hopping or directsequence transmission. 802.11a and 802.11b, (Max 11 Mbps) are released, and a big explosion in wireless capabilities occurs. In 1999, “IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence” is renamed “Wi-Fi” by cobrand-consulting firm Interbrand Corporation. Lucent develops a Wi-Fi adapter for under $100, and Apple introduces Wi-Fi on the iBook, under the brand name AirPort.
2003 – 2007. The number of mobile-phone users in the U.S. surpasses the number of conventional land-based phone lines. Steve Jobs unveils the very first iPhone, a Wi-Fi dependent computer that happened to make phone calls. 802.11g 802.11e and 802.11n are released (with 802.11n topping out at Max 600 Mbps).
2009 – 2015: Starbucks announces free Wi-Fi at all their shops. Mobile digital media time in the US is now significantly higher at 51% compared to desktop (42%). Social media plays a major role in The Arab Spring. Barrack Obama@POTUS sends his first Tweet. And the number of mobile devices now outnumbers humans. 802.11v, 802.11k, 802.11u, 802.11acI, and 802.11acII are all released. (With 802.11acII topping out at Max 6.93 Gbps).
So here we are. From the invention of radio frequencies, to a Wi-Fi protocol speed now 3548 times faster than when it was first invented. The history of Wi- Fi really is the history of all modern communication. UCOPIA and Wi-Fi were born at the same time, and grew up together with smartphones and mobile internet. We want to share our dreams with you, contribute to the next breaking innovations, and deliver to you a better mobile experience.
Bibliography
ZACHARY DAVIES BOREN, “There are officially more mobile devices than people in the world” The Independent, 10/7/2014, http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and- tech/news/there-are-officially-more-mobile-devices-than-people-in-the-world-9780518.html 22
“Imagining the Internet.” Elon University School of Communications, http://www.elon.edu/e- web/predictions/150/1870.xhtml
“Wireless History Timeline”, Wireless History Foundation, http://www.wirelesshistoryfoundation.org/wireless-history-project/wireless-history-timeline
“Apollo 11 in Popular Culture”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_in_popular_culture
“Arpanet, the First Internet” Living Internet, http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_arpanet.htm
Infoplease, http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933563.html
“A Brief History of Wi-Fi”, The Economist. Technology Quarterly. June 10, 2004, http://www.economist.com/node/2724397
“The Invention of the Internet”, History.com, http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/invention-of-the-internet
Apple’s iPhone: a History in Pictures, The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/iphone/5477324/Apples-iPhone-a-history-in- pictures.html
September 17th, 2015|Technology
802.11ad is the fastest Wi-Fi that you might not ever use
By Jon Gold(Network World, Sep 26, 2016) http://www.networkworld.com/article/3123428/wi- fi/802-11ad-is-the-fastest-wi-fi-that-you-might-not-ever-use.html#tk.rss_all
Millimeter-wave Wi-Fi technology, better known as 802.11ad, is a powerful new wireless standard, for which products are just beginning to hit the market – a router from TP-Link and a laptop from Acer are the only ones so far.
802.11ad is based on very high-frequency radio waves – where today’s 802.11n and 802.11ac standards use 5GHz frequencies, ad uses 60GHz. That means that it’s both capable of handling a lot more data than earlier standards, and a lot more short-ranged, since higher frequency signals dissipate much faster.
What this means is that 802.11ad offers the possibility of extremely fast wireless speeds over short distances – but experts differ sharply on its eventual role in the enterprise. The 23
differences center on whether 802.11ad will be used in the same way as previous Wi-Fi standards.
Those standards are primarily edge-to-endpoint technology, and while 802.11ad can potentially be used like this, Forrester Research analyst Andre Kindness suggests that this won’t be its primary role.
According to Kindness, it’ll be more of a wireless backbone technology, replacing cabled connections in various parts of the network thanks to its very high potential throughput.
“[It will be used] as a main connection to allow things to happen much more quickly, when you have things for which you can’t roll out cable and you need something slick like that,” he told Network World.
Different wireless technologies have different strengths, Kindness points out, and highlights that many businesses are already using several at a time for very different purposes. 802.11ad is part of Wi-Fi’s expansion, as it adds another use case to its portfolio.
“You don’t see Bluetooth being a generic Wi-Fi thing, what you’re seeing is Wi-Fi trying to expand itself to solve all those different problems out there,” he said. “This one, I would say, is definitely back-end infrastructure and not a common thing you’d use for connectivity.”
That dovetails with other new wireless technologies springing up under the aegis of the 802.11 working group, including 802.11ah, also known as HaLow – a lower-frequency, wide- area standard designed to act as a mesh network for the internet of things.
But not everyone agrees – Qualcomm, which is set to be one of the major silicon vendors behind 802.11ad hardware, argued that the 60GHz standard could see considerably more mainstream deployment than analysts like Kindness suggest.
According to Mark Grodzinsky, senior director of product management at Qualcomm’s connectivity group, 802.11ad will begin to supplement current Wi-Fi technology sometime next year, and it’ll be used in much the same way.
“I think by next year, every major PC manufacturer will have 11ad notebook SKUs available,” he said.
It’s a matter of performance as much as anything, Grodzinsky asserted. Bandwidth demands are still large enough to challenge even 802.11ac wave 2 technology, so there are still endpoint applications of 802.11ad that make sense.
“Everybody in the enterprise wants to see more performance to their seat,” he said. “All the numbers in the world are all nice, but people are pretty self-concerned when it comes to their networks, so they want to know that they’re getting more performance, and the way they get more performance is through more capacity.”
That’s a point underlined by HPE/Aruba’s vice president of wireless strategy and standards, Chuck Lukaszewski, who said that the demand for capacity remains high. Next-generation technology like 802.11ad could provide a “third layer” of spectrum for particularly demanding environments. 24
“This could be particularly important for industries with very high bandwidth needs that have not been able to fully convert to the all wireless workplace,” he told Network World. “Some examples would be healthcare PACS systems and computer aided engineering/design workers.”
However, Lukaszewski also noted that barriers to widespread use of 802.11ad as traditional Wi-Fi remain, and that it remains to be seen at what point the technology will ever take off in that sense. Simply put, the hardware currently on the market that uses 802.11ad technology doesn’t use it in “infrastructure mode,” or the endpoint-router model common to most present-day Wi-Fi.
“To date, the Wi-Gig products that are shipping in the market have been largely confined to peer-to-peer applications. Once infrastructure mode is widely available on Wi-Gig capable clients, enterprise radio vendors will rapidly follow,” he said.
And while Qualcomm’s Grodzinsky hinted at major product releases coming within the next couple of weeks, nobody is particularly clear on the timeframe for widespread 802.11ad adoption, whether as a traditional Wi-Fi technology or, as Forrester’s Kindness suggests, as a wireless backhaul carrier.
For the enterprise IT department, Kindness argues, it’ll be three years before decision- makers really need to get their arms around 802.11ad.
“It takes about a year to two years to become mainstream, because it doesn’t have product support, you have to understand where you’re going to use it,” he said.
802.11ad routers will be a growing market presence, but Kindness said that their appeal will be limited by a relatively small number of compatible endpoints – if your laptop can’t benefit from multi-gigabit speeds, what use is a 60GHz access point?
“I think it will keep them at bay, outside of backhaul – I don’t see it taking over ac’s job.”
Latest Wireless Network and Wireless Technology Developments http://wireless-head.net/latest-developments.html
RFID
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and tag readers make use of proximity and have automated ad hoc setup for transferring small amounts of information. The key features of the RFID tag are a fixed unique identifier and necessary proximity of tags to a tag reader. However, some kinds of RFID tags exist that cycle through a predefined list of identifiers. Also some manufacturers have developed RFID tags that are compatible with WiFi networks to extend location tracking to a whole WiFi network, avoiding the need for an extra tracking network. The cheapest variety of RFID tags are called passive, although 'reactive' would be a better term, because they draw their power to transmit from the radio signal of the tag reader. They are commonly used for tracking the movement of objects, typically at distances of up to a few metres, but potentially up to 200 metres with 'active' or 'semi-active' tags i.e. with their own power source. RFID tags are also widely used to control and monitor access 25
through door and gate entry systems and to 'tag' animals and occasionally people. They are increasingly being used in asset tracking and security applications. The ability to add a unique identifier to objects that can be tracked is very useful and should lead to further innovations, especially in combination with other technologies.
The Daily RFID Company has introduced its DL920 - a passive RFID tag reader with a range of up to 15m that averages less than 10ms for 64 bits from a single tag. Trimble claims it has an RFID reader able to read tags moving at up to 200kph. Murata Manufacturing have announced they are "going to launch mass production" of what they claim is the world's smallest (3.2x3.2x0.7mm) HF band (13.56MHz) RFID tag. They say it needs no external antenna and say it has "extremely high resistance to environmental conditions (high temperature, high humidity)". Our thanks to Virtual-Strategy Magazine for highlighting this.
NFC
Like RFID tags and readers, near field communication (NFC) is a short range wireless technology for transferring small amounts of information. However, NFC only operates at a range of up to 20 centimetres, but typically much less. As with RFID it differs from other wireless networks like WiFi and is useful party because it makes use of proximity and automated ad hoc communication setup. NFC is about to see widespread use in the UK in contactless payment systems with many new digital wallet companies keen to take a share of that market. An important feature of NFC technology is its very low power requirements that enable it to be always on at. The key advantage of NFC is the culturally universal simplicity of intentionally making things proximate to initiate some kind of action. It will become a starting point for many services.
Orange is providing NFC SIM cards to retrofit NFC functionality into mobile phones that do not have it and has announced participation in a mobile digital wallet scheme for contactless payments up to £20. Cisco use NFC in their Lynksys EA6500 router to simplify connecting wireless devices to it. Samsung TecTiles are NFC stickers that can be programmed to initiate a series of actions on NFC enabled devices that gets close to the stickers.
Bluetooth
There are several versions of Bluetooth with different characteristics, but it is intended for transfer of moderate amounts of information at up to 100 metres. The most recent version 4 of Bluetooth specifies three protocols: Classic Bluetooth - i.e. the previous Bluetooth protocol, Bluetooth high speed - based on WiFi, and Bluetooth Smart a.k.a. Bluetooth low energy - which has low power consumption and fast connection setup. The Beam feature of the Android operating system from version 4.1 pairs NFC with Bluetooth to provide short range point-to-point data transfer, thereby increasing the likelihood of more Bluetooth use in the near future. Bluetooth beacons are able to establish the position of Bluetooth enabled devices, providing new uses for Bluetooth in indoor real time positioning systems. The new low power version of Bluetooth (Bluetooth Smart) should mean that it is left running more of the time and so becomes useful for location services using Bluetooth. Bluetooth beacons also have potential to push information to proximate 'potential' customers for marketing, although this is unlikely to be popular with those receiving them. Real time location services are already extremely important, so establishing and tracking indoor location where GPS does not work well could easily become very important for Bluetooth. However, other technologies with different characteristics (e.g. WiFi, ZigBee, DASH7) are bound to be strong competitors for real time location services, especially when they too are embedded in mobile personal devices like smartphones and tablets. 26
Interaxon Inc. is developing a 'brainwave-controlled-interface' called Muse that connects to smartphones via Bluetooth. A range of apps are planned for "productivity, creativity, and fun". Interaxon are using crowd-funding to bring the product to market.
Apigy Inc. has a battery powered door lock called Lockitron that connects using WiFi. It can unlock when it detects recognised phones equipped with Bluetooth and send a notification that the phone was seen.
Wi-Fi Direct
Wi-Fi Direct was developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance to enable ad hoc communication between paired WiFi enabled devices using either the 2.4GHz or 5Ghz bands. It makes use of WPA2 implementation of the 802.11i amendment, and the Wi-Fi Alliance's own Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) interoperability certification - which provides 'quality of service' features and was based on the based on the IEEE 802.11e amendment. The Wi-Fi Alliance say of WiFi Direct: "The specification underlying the Wi-Fi Direct certification program was developed within the Wi-Fi Alliance by member companies. It operates on 802.11 devices but is not linked to any specific IEEE 802.11 amendment." Nonetheless, Wi-Fi Direct is obviously substantially based on standards developed by the IEEE.
Simplicity of transferring information quickly with minimum effort is its key advantage over other data transports that will see new ways of commercialising it being developed. WiFi Direct is advantaged by the deep and broad standardisation work done by the Wi-Fi Alliance and the ubiquity of WiFi enabled equipment. WiFi Direct is increasingly supported in new WiFi enabled gadgets, and support in the Android operating system from version 4 will be significant in increasing its take-up. Samsung have paired WiFi Direct as the transport with NFC to initiate communication for fast simple transfer of information such as pictures and audio files between proximate smartphones. It was brought to market first in their Galaxy S3 phones in a feature they call 'S Beam' - based on the Android beaming initiative that originally only used NFC.
When there are few products that have gained a particular certification the Wi-Fi Alliance can help find them. Their Certified Products webpage enables finding products that have gained the various Wi-Fi Alliance certifications.
Fast Roaming and WiFi Passpoint
Passpoint is a relatively new program developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance based on the earlier Hotspot 2.0 initiative. It enables moving devices to seamlessly handover wireless data transfer between wireless network infrastructure, behaviour already defined in the fast roaming standard. Passpoint also allows equpment to move between networks, even those owned by different service providers. Seamless handover is especially important where uninterrupted service is critical, for example in telephone conversations over WiFi networks. Passpoint certified products should be available in the fourth quarter of 2012 and fast roaming products from Cisco at least already exist. Seamless mobile broadband access is a very important step for WiFi, essentialy it provides a wireless broadband alternative to nascent LTE and 4G mobile services. Mobile internet service providers now plan to use WiFi Passpoint to provide an extra route to manage increasing volumes of data used by mobile computing devices like smart phones and tablets. BT already has a WiFi network in place for this purpose that is a good strategic fit with its wired network infrastructure. 27
An Aruba Networks press release notes that the combination of their Aruba 3600 Mobility Controller and AP-105 Access Point has been certified for interoperability with by the Wi-Fi Alliance's 'Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Passpoint Program'.
Voice and multimedia
The recent Wi-Fi Alliance 'Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Enterprise' program is concerned with enterprise-grade support for voice applications over WiFi networks. It specifies voice quality, mobility, power saving and security and is based on the 'Wi-Fi Voice-Personal' certification program. It also uses previous work on the Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM), WMM-Power Save, and WMM-Admission Control certification programs for quality of service, along with security provided by Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) Enterprise.
WiGig and WiFi Miracast
Miracast is a certification program for products that satisfies the Wi-Fi Alliance 'WiFi Display Specification' to provide wireless point to point audio and video content transport. Connections are established using WiFi Direct - so no WiFi network infrastructure is required. As it is based on Wi-Fi Direct, Miracast uses 802.11 technology but it is not standardised in any specific IEEE 802.11 amendment. Broadly Miracast uses a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi Direct connection to arrange a 5GHz Wi-Fi Direct connection. The IEEE 802.11ad 60GHz standard is a higher throughput shorter range alternative promoted by the Wireless Gigabit Alliance via its WiGi brand. The Wireless Gigabit Alliance defined three important protocols: WiGig Display Extension (WDE), the WiGig Serial Extension (WSE) and WiGig Bus Extension (WBE). The Wireless Gigabit Alliance became part of the Wi-Fi Alliance in March 2013.
The Wi-Fi Alliance launched the Miracast certification programme on 19 September 2012 listing 10 products that were "designated Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Miracast". Those products formed part of the 'test suite' for the certification program. Among the first certified consumer products were the Samsung Galaxy S III and LG Optimus G smartphones.
Hi-speed standardised wireless device interconnects defined by WiGig and others - such as Intel's WiDi which is broadly compatible with Miracast - will be very popular and eventually supplant wired interconnects in many scenarios. The Wireless Gigabit Alliance are concerned with promoting multi-gigabit-speed wireless communications at around 60GHz among equipment conforming to the IEEE 802.11ad standard.
The WirelessHD alternative promoted by the WirelessHD consortium also operates at around 60GHz. It has a broad following among equipment manufacturers, supports low power devices such as phones and tablets, also provides general data transport, offers transfer rates of up to 28Gbps, and support for 3D and 4K content. As radiation at this frequency has a short range, WirelessHD uses beam forming to extend its range up to about 10m.
Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI) is another wireless interconnect standard. It is promoted by the WHDI Special Interest Group which counts a number of equipment manufacturers as members. It uses frequencies around 5GHz so it has a lower maximum transfer rate of around 3Gbps (enough for 1080p content) but a longer range at around 30m than the 60GHz based standards.
28
ZigBee
ZigBee based wireless networks are designed with different characteristics to WiFi. They are particularly suitable for so called machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. Consequently ZigBee will be important in the powerful 'internet of things' that promises big changes to many aspects of life, and therefore business, through the hugely important 'second economy'. There are an increasing number of ZigBee based products so the name will pass into common parlance along with WiFi as its inclusion in products becomes a marketing feature. It is important for the progressive business to take advantage of the new opportunities that ZigBee creates. Recently a French company called TazTag released the first phone with both NFC and ZigBee capability. The ZigBee Alliance has two specifications and a number of standards covering a range of fields such as building automation, retail services, and healthcare.
ISA100.11a, WirelessHART, and MiWi are wireless networking technologies with similar uses to ZigBee. All three and ZigBee are based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. Z-Wave is a broadly similar technology but is completely proprietary to the American public corporation Sigma-Designs. X10 also produce a proprietary wireless technology focusing on home automation. Insteon produce home automation products that blend mesh networks using AC power lines and low data rate RF wireless operating at 902 to 924MHz. Insteon say that most Insteon compatible products are also X10 compatible - there are other manufacturers of Insteon compatible products in the 'INSTEON Alliance'.
The IEEE 802.11ah task group is developing standards that have similar objectives to Zigbee using sub-gigahertz frequencies. The 802.11 working group predicts it will approve these standards in January of 2016. Nonetheless, Antcor announced their 802.11ah IP availability on 19 Feb 2014 for use by chip developers. They claim it "employs a flexible architecture allowing a clear path to upgradability as the standard evolves". Meanwhile Zigbee products and standards are available and continue to develop.
A certain tension exists between the need to devise wireless networks that are specialised for particular scenarios, and the desire to consolidate them for simplified management or for transparent interoperability. Consequently it is important for those bodies that manage the various kinds of wireless networks to work on differentiating them from each other and on simplifying interoperability and unified control. A wireless network is as the name implies any kind of computing network that is not connected by wires. Most commonly electromagnetic radiation, particularly at radio frequency, is used to transfer data, but it is possible using other means - such as magnetic fields.
Bidgely are developing software to analyse data from ZigBee enabled smart meters. They require no additional hardware beyond ZigBee enabled routers and meters. Both are expected to eventually become commonplace along with ZigBee enabled home appliances. Bidgley analyses patterns in the data to discover useful information in real-time. One of the promises of this kind of monitoring and control is to automatically optimise efficient use of energy.
Green peak have produced the first controller chips for the RF4CE market. ZigBee RF4CE is a specification for radio frequency based remote controls using the ZigBee Remote Control standard. The specification was created by the ZigBee Alliance and the RF4CE (Radio Frequency for Consumer Electronics) Consortium. RF based remote control has different characteristics from IR based remote control and has advantages in some scenarios. In particular line of sight is not required and ZigBee RF4CE is not proprietary to a vendor. 29
The Wi-SUN Alliance is an industry association that promotes a Smart Utility Networking standard based on a subset of the IEEE 802.15.4 e/g standard. It is concerned with wireless monitoring and control of utilities and has compliance certification programs for products. However, it appears to have no relationship with the ZigBee Alliance. Wi-SUN recently announced that it has developed an interoperability test suite and related regional regulatory requirements.
DASH7
DASH7 technology is based on the ISO/IEC 18000-7 open standard. It works at a lower frequency than even the lowest frequency used by ZigBee so it is particularly useful to communicate through materials that strongly attenuate radio frequency signals. Despite using a lower frequency than ZigBee its low data rate may still be higher than that of the lowest frequency ZigBee. Like ZigBee it is well suited to roles such as wireless sensor networks and tracking moving objects. DASH7 equipment can operate without a formal network structure, providing a dynamic mesh network with device to device communications. Conveniently DASH7 can use the same frequency worldwide and supports AES 128-bit public key encryption and IPv6. That universality of frequency use is important for equipment that travels and to reduce regional homologation costs. DASH7 is overseen by the DASH7 Alliance.
On 2013-09-25 the DASH7 Alliance announced the public release of the first version of its protocol - which was ratified by its members in July 2013. It provides a framework for application development, interoperability, and security for DASH7-enabled transactions. The DASH7 Alliance are hoping that DASH7 becomes significant in the growing M2M market through the proliferation of wireless sensors.
RuBee
RuBee (IEEE 1902.1 and 1902.2 standards) modulates the magnetic component of its carrier wave at around 131kHz. This relatively low frequency means it has low bandwidth, but it also has low power requirements and is not readily impeded by materials. RuBee uses a peer to peer based active protocol like ZigBee and DASH7 and so is unlike RFID which is a reactive protocol in which tags react to transmissions from a reader. RuBee uses 128 byte packets a few of which are exchanged a second and has restricted power that gives it a short range of up to about five metres. The energy used by a RuBee base station is only about 40-50nw and being so low is intrinsically safe to life. That low energy requirement means RuBee asset tags typically have a battery life of 5 to 15 years. These unique characteristics make it useful for tagging assets and tracking movement, particular in environments which would attenuate higher frequency carriers such as one containing steel and water. There are commercial implementations of RuBee, that tend to be aimed at the military. RuBee is standardised by IEEE 1902.1 and 1902.2.
EnOcean
The EnOcean Alliance promotes self-powered wireless monitoring and control systems. Energy is collected from a number of environmental opportunities, such as heat, light, motion, and electromagnetic energy. This technology is primarily aimed at equipment embedded in buildings, such as switches, sensors, and controllers.
30
Cognitive radio
Cognitive radio is an example of wideband digital radio with dynamic spectrum management. It attempts to make the best use of the available spectrum by detecting areas of it that are unused and rapidly switching to use them. Rapid switching is important because spectrum may be used intermittently. Acceptance of this kind of equipment depends on it demonstrating that it will not interfere with frequency assigned services and so gaining approval from regulatory authorities. This is a complex solution to a lack of available radio frequency spectrum that will take some time to perfect. Nonetheless, as wireless spectrum comes under increasing pressure solutions like this will gain market share. An American company called Radio Technology Systems has an interesting example of this kind of technology.
The Radio Spectrum Policy Group, in a wide ranging Report on Collective Use of Spectrum and other spectrum sharing approaches, among other things endorses 'dynamic' approaches to spectrum sharing by Collective Use of Spectrum and Cognitive Technologies. It concludes that "a great part of spectrum is already shared between different applications, and at the moment there is no identified need for more dedicated spectrum...but there is a need to progress further on appropriate regulatory mechanisms in regard to sharing of spectrum and to foster more efficient use of it". The group propose a new spectrum licensing regime called 'Licensed Shared Access'. The European Commission supports the efficiencies of spectrum use that the report identifies, and is now seeking support from the European Parliament and European Council to advance European regulation.
White-Fi, also known as Super Wifi, is a Wi-Fi like technology operating in unused TV spectrum i.e. TV white space. Cognitive radio techniques enable White-Fi to avoid spectrum actively being used for TV and so prevent interference. White-Fi frequencies are much lower than Wi-Fi, so their radio waves propagate much further. This could become an effective 'backhaul' technology to supplement wired networks, especially where wires are expensive or otherwise problematic to deploy. The IEEE 802.11af task group is developing the standard. The 802.11 working group is expecting to approve the first version in 2014. Radio Electronics have a concise summary of White-Fi. In the UK two TV channels 36 (608MHz) and 51 (698MHz) are being actioned. Google and Microsoft have shown interest according to the telegraph. The daily wireless gives a more technical explanation and also mentions the US situation. The Wireless Innovation Alliance is a broad-based politically active American organisation that is concerned with efficient use of wireless spectrum to foster innovation in America and so America's global competitiveness.
Indoor location services
Indoor location services using active infrastructure
Indoor location services will become increasingly important to consumers, retailers, advertisers, and other businesses with large covered spaces, such as production environments and venues - especially those which are configurable. Naturally indoor location services require a wireless networks element and 'real time' location information is the ideal. The 'In-Location Alliance' has recently been launched by a number of companies to address this need. Most solutions use active 'wireless beacons' with known locations interacting with active moving wireless devices. The main disadvantage of this active wireless approach is the expense of installing and maintaining the active 'wireless beacons'.
31
Indoor location services using ambient magnetic fields
A company called Indoor Atlas use the non-uniform nature of ambient magnetic fields for its indoor real time location services, rather than use active 'wireless beacons' interacting with active moving wireless devices. All modern buildings contain metal and other infrastructural features that result in varying ambient magnetic fields. Once a building floor plan is mapped to those magnetic field perturbations, recognising the latter allows a location to be established. A key advantage of this scheme is that no technology needs to be deployed to the site being mapped and it uses sensors already build into mobile phones. Indoor Atlas claims an accuracy of 0.2m to 2m. Its key advantage derived from using ambient magnetic field perturbations is also its biggest weakness where those fields change.
Wireless personal area networks
The wireless personal area network (WPAN) exists as interconnected gadgets we carry, such as headsets, video cameras, pulse monitors, smart watches, pedometers, thermometers, and movement sensors. Soon we will be able to buy devices that display information in front of us using projection onto surfaces such as glasses and retinas. The IEEE 802.15 working group is developing WPAN standards.
A medical body area network (MBAN), which can use standards being developed by the IEEE 802.15.6 task group, can interact with a WPAN. A MBAN is principally a network of sensors, and so is a kind of body sensor network (BSN). Fujitsu have announced they have been working on MBAN technology using the IEEE 802.15.6 standards. The Swiss laboratory EPFL has developed a small under the skin implant that can report about a number of bodily conditions. MBANs and WPANs are gradually becoming mediators between us and the world. The existence of the Quantified Self movement demonstrates that there is a consumer base ready for this kind of technology. Smart businesses will use their wireless networks to interact with their employ WPANs and MBANs to help them improve how they work.
6LoWPAN
People increasingly have their own personal wireless network. So far this has been enabled by Bluetooth, WiFi, and NFC. 6LoWPAN is the name for a group working on the vision of wireless personal area networks that will take part in the 'wireless embedded internet' that is the wireless enabled aspect of the 'internet of things'. Specifically 6LoWPAN is working on a low-rate wireless personal area network (LR-WPAN) using IPv6 packets. WPANs will interact with other wireless networks to bring new opportunities to enterprising businesses. WPANs are just at the beginning of their development but will quickly become commonplace. The fastest early growth in use will probably be for communication, medical, and sports applications with personal environment, mood, and cognition following. The WPAN will eventually become an extension of our senses and enrich our contact with everything else to become enormously important on a personal and productivity level. The 6lowpan working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force has requirements that should promote ubiquity - such as small size, low power consumption, and low cost. It says the IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 1451.5 standards, along with some of the standards generated by the ISA100 committee have potential in meeting their objectives. The ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute is an operational group within Automation Standards Compliance Institute (ASCI) incorporated by the International Society of Automation (ISA) to provide certification, conformance, and compliance assessment activities in the automation arena. 32
Freescale Semiconductor Inc have announced an IPv6-Based Metropolitan Area Network Development Kit that is expected to begin shipping before December 2012. Freescale collaborated with Nivis on the kit which allows robust mesh wireless networks to be built and integrated with other hardware. It is compliant with multiple communication standards including 6LoWPAN. The kit is intended to contribute toward 'The Internet of Things'. Our thanks to Cloud Interoperability Magazine for highlighting this.
Standards and regulation for wireless networks
Wi-Fi standards
On 29 March 2012 the IEEE 802.11-2012 standard was published and is promoted under the WiFi brand by the Wi-Fi Alliance, so it is generally known as the WiFi standard. 802.11ac is an important draft amendment to that standard. Despite that draft status some products are already being sold that claim some sort of conformance to it. One of the main reasons 802.11ac is important is because of the extra data that it can handle. It will however require new wireless network hardware to be installed, and to get the best from that many wired networks will also need to be upgraded. While it is reasonable (with certain caveats) for consumer grade WiFi equipment to be sold as conforming to the draft 802.11ac amendment, it may not be wise for it to be used in costly wireless network deployments - such as for businesses. Although changes to the draft amendment are likely to be insubstantial, it could be an expensive problem to resolve if future equipment did interoperate with wireless networks based on equipment using the draft amendment. Currently the 802.11 working group predict that 802.11ac will be approved in November of 2013 and that an updated IEEE 802.11 standard will be approved in November 2014.
Cisco have addressed the problem of businesses delaying deployment of new wireless network equipment in anticipation of forthcoming IEEE 802.11ac compatible access points by offering access points with field-upgradability to the finalised standard. The Cisco Aironet 3600 series access points can accept an IEEE 802.11ac compatible module.
Marvel have announced their Avastar 88W8864, a 802.11ac 4x4 chipset. Quantenna were first to announce a 802.11ac 4x4 chipset, their QAC2300. Four spatial streams enables a theoretical maximum bandwitdth of 3.47Gbps (i.e. 4x 866.7Mbps) assuming 160MHz wide channels, 256-QAM encoding, and a 400ns Guard Interval. The Quantenna chipset claims a maximum bandwidth of 1.7Gbps (4x 433Mbps), because it is limited to 80MHz wide channels. The Marvell chipset claims a maximum bandwidth of 1.3Gbps.
The IEEE 802.11aa-2012 amendment to the IEEE 802.11-2012 standard enhances the audio/video streaming experience. It also improves connection reliability and performance when channel capacity is reached and when WLANs overlap on a channel. New Quality of Service features affect the flow of network management information and data traffic. They include a group-addressed transmission service, a stream classification service, management of overlapping networks, and support for the IEEE 802.1Q Stream Reservation Protocol.
The IEEE 802.11 working group has created their High Efficiency WLAN (HEW) Study Group to consider the efficiency and performance of WLANs. They will consider situations such as high densities of access points and stations. The HEW will have a broad based membership from business and academia that will define the scope of a future 802.11 amendment. 33
The IEEE 802.11ak General Link (GLK) Task Group has been created to work on a possible amendment for the IEEE 802.11 standard. It aims to "to provide protocols, procedures, and managed objects that enhance the ability of IEEE 802.11 media to provide internal connections as transit links within IEEE 802.1Q bridged networks". This inevitably means compatibility with aspects of the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard.
The IEEE 802.11aq Pre Association Discovery Task Group has been created to develop an amendment for the IEEE 802.11 standard that enables delivery of pre-association Service Discovery information by IEEE 802.11 stations. Their scheme intends to allow advertising and discovery of services on a 802.11 WLAN prior to a station associating with it. The group hopes to "avoid yet another service description scheme" by reusing other standards. The service discovery scheme will operate below levels provided by schemes such as Universal Plug and Play and Bonjour.
Wireless USB
The USB Implementers Forum has announced development of its Media Agnostic USB specification (MA USB) here in a "tech bulletin". The Wi-Fi Alliance announced it here because MA USB uses the WiGig Serial Extension specification which the Wi-Fi Alliance inherited it when it subsumed the Wireless Gigabit Alliance.
There are obvious advantages in combining a developed high speed wireless technology with the well-established USB protocol. The USB specification continues to develop with the latest version 3.1 (superspeed+) projected for availability in 2014. It doubles transfer speeds to 10 Gbps – more than fast enough to make full use of the current WiGig peak transfer of 7 Gbps noted here.
Consumer content standards
The UPnP Forum, which controls the UPnP standard for interoperability of consumer class equipment (version 1.1 architecture defined here) has announced that it is expanding the capabilities of that standard in their UPnP+ initiative. These capabilities include connectivity to equipment using ZigBee, Z-Wave, and Bluetooth wireless networks. UPnP+ will have implications for the Digital Living Network Alliance which defines interoperability guidelines for sharing of digital content between consumer equipment using UPnP.
Among other things this UPnP+ announcement demonstrates the importance of the trends for more mobile connected computing and the 'Internet of Things'. The UPnP+ initiative addresses IPv6, cloud services, access to UPnP equipment and services from web browsers, improved support for low-power and mobile devices, grouping or pairing of similar equipment and services, and bridging to non-UPnP networks.
Ofcom and 5G
The Telegraph reports that Ofcom is preparing for another spectrum auction to follow the 2013 800MHz spectrum auction. It is expected to force broadcasters to relinquish 700MHz spectrum which it will resell for mobile broadband use.
Ofcom on spectrum sharing
Ofcom has published a consultation on spectrum sharing for mobile and wireless data services. This consultation will end on 2013-11-09. Ofcom's aim is to better understand how 34
spectrum sharing will impact existing and new spectrum use. Its ultimate expectation is that this understanding will help it enable innovation.
Ofcom on 'TV white spaces'
Ofcom has published a consultation on use of spectrum currently allocated to TV broadcasting for more general wireless digital data transmission. This consultation will end on 2013-11-15 after a pilot test of technology. Ofcom's aim is to make more efficient use of this realtively underutilised spectrum.
Zigbee IP
Recently the Zigbee Alliance introduced their 'Zigbee IP' specification designed to enable Zigbee mesh networks to use IPv6 addressing along with additional control, security, and programmability options. IPv6 is important for the so called 'Internet of Things' which will require a radical increase in the number of internet addresses for the vast number of devices expected to be Internet connected.
What is Wireless Broadband (WiBB)? http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/wireless-broadband
Wireless broadband is high-speed Internet and data service delivered through a wireless local area network (WLAN) or wide area network (WWAN).
As with other wireless service, wireless broadband may be either fixed or mobile. A fixed wireless service provides wireless Internet for devices in relatively permanent locations, such as homes and offices. Fixed wireless broadband technologies include LMDS (Local Multipoint Distribution System) and MMDS (Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service) systems for broadband microwave wireless transmission direct from a local antenna to homes and businesses within a line-of-sight radius. The service is similar to that provided through digital subscriber line (DSL) or cable modem but the method of transmission is wireless.
Free Guide: Strategies to improve mobile data security
Are you an IT admin struck with the task of managing the countless amount of mobile devices that connect to your enterprise network every day? Find out how you can rest a little easier when it comes to MDM with this complimentary guide featuring tips on improving your Mobile data security.
A mobile broadband service provides connectivity to users who may be in temporary locations, such as coffee shops. Mobile broadband works through a variety of devices, including portable modems and mobile phones, and a variety of technologies including WiMAX, GPRS, and LTE. Mobile broadband does not rely on a clear line of sight because connectivity is through the mobile phone infrastructure. Mobile devices can connect from any location within the area of coverage. WiMAX supports both fixed and mobile wireless and is often predicted to become the standard for wireless broadband. 35
In the United States, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provides for funding to stimulate broadband adoption, with an emphasis on wireless broadband. The Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) was created to promote broadband access in unserved and underserved areas. Because such areas are typically remote or rural, deploying wired technology is much more difficult and expensive than wireless.
Wireless Broadband Alliance at a glance…http://www.wballiance.com/
Through the work of Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) and its members, our industry is continuing to make huge strides. Carrier Wi-Fi and other unlicensed wireless technologies are enabling the wireless ecosystem to develop new services for consumers and enterprises and to evolve new monetisation strategies and business models.
Unlicensed wireless technology has experienced a phenomenal growth in recent years. The huge growth is being supported by developments in Carrier and Public Wi-Fi, Connected and Smart Cities, Internet of Things, 5G and the convergence of licensed and unlicensed technologies, and the ongoing innovation in wireless technologies. The vision of the WBA is to champion and drive developments in this ever-converging wireless eco-system.
WBA has launched the Connected City Advisory Board (CCAB) in last year, and we aim to drive engagement and developments of Public Wi-Fi with Connected and Smart Cities, Regions etc. through best practices, creation of public-private ecosystems and collaboration mechanisms for resource contribution.
We are also proud to have launched World Wi-Fi Day for the first time this year, where we celebrate the importance of Wi-Fi in “Connecting the Unconnected”.
About the Wireless Broadband Alliance
Founded in 2003, the aim of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) is to secure an outstanding user experience through the global deployment of next generation Wi-Fi. In order to make this a reality, the WBA is currently championing various initiatives in the Wi-Fi ecosystem including Next Generation Hotspot (NGH) trials, Wi-Fi Roaming and its Interoperability Compliance Program (ICP). Today, membership includes major fixed operators such as BT, Comcast and Time Warner Cable; seven of the top 10 mobile operator groups (by revenue) and leading technology companies such as Cisco, Google and Intel. WBA member operators collectively serve more than 1 billion subscribers and operate more than 5 million hotspots globally. The WBA Board includes Arqiva, AT&T, Boingo Wireless, BT, China Mobile, Cisco Systems, Comcast, iPass, KT Corporation, NTT DOCOMO, Orange and Ruckus Wireless.
36
SPECTRUM MANAGEMENT
FCC’s Spectrum Auction: What it is and Why it Matters
By Mary Kate Leahy( ay 16, 2016). http://lawstreetmedia.com/issues/technology/spectrum-fcc-incentive-auction/
In the beginning (way back in the time of rabbit ear televisions) the Federal Communications Commission licensed wireless spectrum to everyone, professionals and amateurs alike. Licensing spectrum prevents overlap and interference between television and radio channels, but there was plenty to go around when broadcast technology was in its infancy, so there was little concern about running out. Networks like ABC and CBS were given spectrum, but so were government agencies like the Department of Defense, which still controls a large portion of radio spectrum. Smaller broadcasters, who operate on a local rather than a national level and primarily in rural areas, were also given spectrum access.
Then technology advanced and the amount of available spectrum is no longer enough to meet the demand. This is primarily driven by the proliferation of smartphones and the growing demand for wireless data. Like land in the Wild West, which was once so prevalent that it could literally be given away, wireless spectrum is now prime real estate. Wireless companies, cell phone carriers, and broadcasters are all eager to get their hands on more of it.
To combat this problem–which with the increasing demand for smartphones and streaming services is going to get worse before it gets better–the FCC proposed an incentive auction, which began at the end of March. The auction is sufficiently complex to warrant going through it step by step, but essentially, broadcasters have too much spectrum and wireless service providers don’t have enough. The FCC is going to act as a middleman to help facilitate the transfer of broadband spectrum from broadcasters to wireless providers to help feed their increasing demand. It is the first time that the FCC has tried an auction of this kind and it has the potential to yield billions of dollars in revenue for the federal government.
Everyone agrees that cell phone companies need spectrum and it is possible to free up some of it (potentially a lot of it) by consolidating broadcast television stations and eliminating some of them altogether. But should we be favoring cell phone companies at the expense of broadcast television or are their hidden, non-monetary costs involved in incentivizing the sale of spectrum? GOING DUTCH: HOW DOES THE SPECTRUM AUCTION WORK?
The spectrum auction is a very complicated process that has already been in the works for several years now and will continue to play out in various stages over the next several months. This video does a good job of explaining the basics of the process:
So step one is the “Dutch auction,” or reverse auction, between the various television broadcasters and the FCC. The FCC has offered to buy spectrum (the bidding started at the end of March) and broadcasters will then offer to sell if they are interested. The broadcasters are therefore the ones setting the initial price and bidding each other down until they reach a floor, then the FCC buys the spectrum. This part of the process is voluntary so broadcasters can choose not to participate if they wish to keep all or part of their allotted spectrum.
In the second step of the process, the FCC takes all of the spectrum that it purchased from 37
the broadcasters and sells it to wireless service providers and cell phone companies. This step is a traditional or forward auction, so the wireless companies will be bidding against each other, driving up the price. Wireless companies desperately need the spectrum so the FCC anticipates recuperating the cost of running the auction and the cost of the third step in the process. If there is any extra, that money will go toward funding other government projects.
The third step of the process is, however, mandatory. Referred to as “repacking,” this involves the FCC taking the remaining spectrum and reassigning it to the broadcasters in order to consolidate them to a tighter range of frequencies. A broadcaster, large or small, will be unable to avoid this process and since the auction just started, we really have no idea how many of them will be affected. Essentially, the FCC will have carte blanche to consolidate broadcast channels to make the most efficient use of the remaining spectrum.
POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES
The video below does a good job addressing some of the collateral concerns around the FCC’s spectrum auction. One of the key implications of this spectrum auction is how its success or failure will determine how we try to allocate spectrum going forward.
The incentive auction is a creative–if very complicated–solution to the problem of spectrum shortage for cellphone companies. By facilitating this exchange the FCC is allowing us to watch Netflix on our iPhones and maybe even make a profit for the government while doing so. It certainly is an attractive option and is much better than the alternative of spectrum shortages that would have unpleasant effects. Not just for entertainment but, as more users adopt these devices, on businesses and commercial activity as well. A first world problem would actually become a very real problem with heavy usage on an already stressed system, particularly in cities and congested areas.
But there are some caveats to consider. The initial steps in the auction process are voluntary–broadcasters and wireless companies are both choosing to participate (or not) in the auctions. But the third step, the repacking process, will happen to broadcasters whether they like it or not. Even those who chose not to participate in the auction will be affected and may be forced to move their broadcasting to different channels.
Repacking
This video goes into detail about this repacking process.
Aside from the logistical concerns that this is going to create for the broadcasters, repacking could have a huge impact on many small local stations and even private citizens. For example, let’s say that you are a private citizen who would like to start his or her own television broadcast to promote your political or social views. Right now the spectrum may be available to you and you can do that on your own, or with a small group of like-minded citizens. Alternative media sources, ranging from the real and credible Democracy Now! to the fictional and surprisingly relevant PTV on “Family Guy,” use this method to enter the marketplace of ideas. This is also particularly important for citizens who may not have easy access to cable or the internet and rely on broadcast television for their news.
Repacking the broadcasters will likely result in smaller broadcasters being winnowed out. The costs of switching to another channel may be too high and even if there is a possibility of reimbursement, those hurdles may be too complicated for some broadcasters to navigate. 38
Large broadcasters will be able to have teams working on their repacking transition and may also have additional access to the FCC to advocate to make the process go as smoothly as possible. Smaller broadcasters do not have those luxuries.
These changes may also push broadcasters who survive the repacking process to cut back on broadcasting in certain areas if the cost of building infrastructure there doesn’t make economic sense. For example, if a broadcaster is changed from channel 35 to channel 19 and it has to build new towers, it may choose to only do so in areas where it gets the most viewership. Large numbers of people could be left in the dark by that broadcaster and, if the situation is the same for multiple companies, they could be left out altogether. This will disproportionately impact rural Americans. It will also impact people without smartphones or broadband internet, which tend to be poor and elderly Americans, making it more difficult for them to access media, particularly news.
So what exactly are we incentivizing? If broadcast television is going extinct anyway, perhaps not much. The FCC may just be speeding up the natural process of eliminating broadcast television, starting with smaller stations that sell all of their spectrum or get driven out of the market by the high cost of transitioning. The number of broadcast viewers actually increased last year to 13.1 million, possibly because viewers wanted to get rid of their cable subscriptions or gain access to local television stations. However, that was a relatively small change in the context of the overall viewership numbers and the growth was nowhere near the explosion in smartphone growth. And if all communities gain access to the internet, broadcast television may no longer be necessary as online media takes its place.
If technology has evolved to the point where broadcast television is going to die out then it may not be such a bad thing for the federal government to make a profit while facilitating that process. It is the same sort of argument advanced by those who want to eliminate coal mining. Yes, a percentage of the population, one that is already at a disadvantage, will be harmed. But their industry is already dying and they are such a small percentage of the population that we are willing to let that harm happen in furtherance of faster progress. Buggy-whip salesmen were harmed by the invention of the car but we needed cars. In the end, their harm, however severe, may be a small price for society to pay.
CONCLUSION
The FCC Spectrum Auction is not an issue that is going to be resolved anytime soon. The original plans for it started in 2012 and changes to the system could take several years after the auction closes. It’s a complicated concept and like most plans it is unlikely to survive implementation unscathed. Yet even if it succeeds and yields a profit, it may ultimately fail by working too well–by opening up too much spectrum to cell phone carriers at the expense of smaller broadcasters and the populations that rely on them. While it’s hard to guess exactly what exactly the auction and subsequent repacking will mean for broadcast networks, the FCC’s plan marks a bold step that will shape future efforts to redistribute wireless spectrum.
RESOURCES
Primary
FCC.gov: Wireless
FCC.gov: Incentive Auctions 39
Additional
TheVerge: How the FCC’s Massive Airwaves Auction Will Change America—and Your Phone Service
Chicago Tribune: Spectrum Auction Underway to Shift Airwaves from TV as Mobile Demand Soars
Recode: Making Sense of the Incredibly Confusing Spectrum Auction
Forbes: FCC’s Tangled Web
Fortune: Blackstone FCC Airwaves Auction
Fortune: FCC Incentive Auction
Wall Street Journal: FCC Releases List of Bidders For Wireless Airwaves Auction
TechTimes: FCC Auction Starts Strong, Reaches Spectrum Goal
Bloomberg: Wireless Fever Cools Before FCC Auction With No Dark Horse Seen
Variety.com: TV Spectrum Auction FCC
IBTimes: Binge What? FCC Spectrum Auction
PBS: FCC Auction FAQs
Corporation For Public Broadcasting: Spectrum
How the FCC’s Massive Airwaves Auction Will Change America — and your phone service. The broadcast incentive auction will take years by Colin Lecher(Apr 21, 2016) http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/21/11481454/fcc-broadcast-incentive-auction-explained
The system that underpins wireless communication in the United States is about to dramatically change. In a massive, complex undertaking that will be unfolding for years, the federal government will shuffle the airwaves that carry TV and wireless signals to consumers, making room for the next generation of service. Billions of dollars will change hands, giant companies will fight, and the machinery of transmission will be overhauled across the country — ” all to make sure you'll keep getting a good broadband signal on your phone, with (ideally) little change in how you watch TV.
Last month, the Federal Communications Commission kicked off the broadcast incentive auction, starting the chain of events that will lead to the restructuring. By the end of the month, the FCC is expected to finish an early round of the auction, an agency spokesperson told The Verge. Here's a brief look at how the auction works, and how it'll affect you. 40
What is the auction?
The broadcast incentive auction is a never-before-attempted (at least, not in this way) plan to free up wireless airwaves. The basic outline looks like this: TV broadcasters will sell their licensed airwaves — ” known as spectrum — ” to make room for wireless service providers, with the FCC acting as the middleman to determine prices and organize the handover.
Okay — so, why?
One big reason is something called "spectrum crunch." In short, people are using wireless data at a rate that could eventually lead to slower speeds, as there isn't enough spectrum to meet demand. To fight back that nightmare scenario, Congress authorized the National Broadband Plan in 2012, tasking the FCC with conducting the auction. By some clever rearrangement in markets around the US, airwaves set aside for TV broadcasts will be repurposed for wireless, hopefully offsetting that problem.
Step one is a "reverse" auction
Where did the broadcasters get their spectrum?
Decades ago, the FCC freely gave away spectrum to local stations, and now they have the opportunity to sell off some space. Many will be looking at a huge pay day, either by vacating that space entirely or by doubling up through channel-sharing technology on spectrum already occupied by other stations.
So how does it work?
It's complicated. Step one is a "reverse" auction. In your standard auction, bidders offer the maximum they're willing to pay, driving up the price of the product. In a reverse auction, or "Dutch" auction, a single buyer makes an offer of payment to multiple sellers. The buyer slowly lowers its offer, and the sellers unwilling to sell for the lower price drop out of bidding, until a final selling price is reached.
That's what the FCC is doing with the TV broadcasters, which include independent stations or local affiliates of major broadcasters, such as CBS or ABC. Before it does anything else, the agency needs to know which broadcasters are willing to sell their airwaves, and at what price. The TV broadcasters are sitting on valuable spectrum real estate that the FCC can change into much-needed wireless service. To that end, the agency has already issued notices to broadcasters across the country, making initial offers and asking broadcasters if they'd like to participate. (One New York City Telemundo affiliate was offered $900 million by the FCC to start.) Soon, those prices will drop and drop, until the FCC has spectrum it can work with at the right price. The TV broadcasters — whether they participated or not — can either elect to go off the air entirely or move to share space with someone else on the spectrum. Eventually, all of the broadcasters will be pushed together on the spectrum, freeing up room for the second phase of the plan.
Which is?
A second, "forward" auction. Once all of the broadcasters have made their bids or have decided to sit out but have been assigned a slot in the airwaves, the FCC asks companies interested in buying spectrum for wireless service to start bidding. In traditional auction format, the buyers make offers for the airwaves that the FCC has opened up in markets 41
around the country, and will dole out spectrum space based on the bids.
There's also a "forward" auction
Once the bidding hits a certain dollar amount, the FCC will also organize a "reserve" spectrum auction, where just the smaller wireless providers can bid against each other, away from the bigger players. The FCC is setting up the reserve to encourage the smaller companies to duke it out with bigger companies, increasing competition to ultimately improve options for consumers. However, how much spectrum to allot for the reserve has been the subject of some controversy among wireless providers.
The money the FCC earns from that auction will be turned around to pay for the FCC's expenses to run the auction, and pay for any expenses broadcasters have for switching over to their new spots on the spectrum band. Anything extra goes to the federal government. It's expected that the auction will pay for itself, and maybe raise billions of dollars extra as well.
Who's involved in all of this?
Companies running local TV broadcasts across the country, big communications companies like Comcast, as well as Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile (Sprint has said it's sitting out), along with several other, smaller wireless providers hoping to make an impact.
Any extra money goes to the federal government
So the wireless providers have what they wanted, the TV broadcasters have been paid, and we're all done.
Not even close. The last part — ” transitioning the TV broadcasters — will take 39 months, and the FCC is still working out exactly how to do it. The changes will require a schedule across the country, as replacing equipment will need to consider factors like weather (which months will it be difficult to make those equipment changes?) and geography (if a broadcaster makes a change in Seattle, how will it affect TV service in surrounding areas?). We're looking at around 2020 before it all shakes out.
And then wireless service providers will set up shop?
Yes, which will take some time, too.
What does this mean for you?
For TV, not too much. Some local stations may cash out and go off the air entirely, while others who need to change spots on the airwaves may go out of over-the-air access in some areas. As for wireless service: if all goes according to plan, the FCC hopes the auction will position the US to meet mobile broadband demand, meaning you should have speedy data on your devices well into the future.
42
Report Shows U.S. Ahead on Freeing Up Spectrum by Joan Engebretson(3/1/2013) http://www.telecompetitor.com/report-shows-u-s-ahead-on-freeing-up-spectrum/
In the last year or so we’ve been hearing more and more about an impending spectrum shortage, with some network operators and the FCC saying demand threatens to outpace spectrum availability – a situation that has arisen as a result of burgeoning mobile data growth. But according to a report issued this week by the FCC, the U.S. is ahead of at least eight other large countries in freeing up licensed spectrum for mobile broadband use — and depending how much spectrum is freed up in the impending voluntary auction of broadcast spectrum and through repurposing spectrum from or sharing it with government users, the U.S. could lead the pack.
The report also found the U.S. ahead of Europe in freeing up unlicensed spectrum for mobile broadband use.
According to the report, titled “The Mobile Broadband Spectrum Challenge: International Comparisons,” the U.S. has at least 663 MHz of licensed spectrum available or in the pipeline for mobile broadband. That includes 608 MHz of spectrum currently available for mobile broadband use, with at least another 55 MHz in the pipeline, not counting spectrum that will be freed up through the broadcast spectrum auction or federal repurposing.
The only country that currently has more spectrum available is Germany, which has 615 MHz available currently but has none in the pipeline.
Australia, meanwhile, has just 478 MHz available today but has another 230 MHz in the pipeline for a total of 708 MHz. 43
Other countries studied include Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and the United Kingdom. All of these countries had at least 500 MHz available or in the pipeline, with several having more than 600 MHz.
On the unlicensed side, the U.S. has between 724.5 and 874.5 MHz currently available for mobile broadband. The variation depends on how much TV white spaces spectrum is vacant in a particular area. In addition the U.S. has at least 295 MHz of unlicensed spectrum in the pipeline.
In comparison, Europe has 665.5 MHz of unlicensed spectrum available and none in the pipeline.
The report defined spectrum as “available” if providers have legal authority to build networks and provide mobile service even if those networks have not yet been built out or spectrum has not yet been cleared. Spectrum was considered to be in the pipeline if the government has plans to make the spectrum available to providers within the next three years.
The report also looks at the degree to which various countries have made available the same or similar spectrum blocks for mobile broadband use and finds considerable commonalities.
44
FCC Auction Promises Bonanza for Small TV Broadcasters
As momentum tilts toward Web, airwaves go on the block for billions in boon to tiny stations like those in Lima, Ohio
Thomas Gryta(Jan. 5, 2016) http://www.wsj.com/articles/fcc-auction-promises- bonanza-for-small-tv-broadcasters-1452046575
LIMA, Ohio—Workers accidentally struck oil here in 1885, putting this tiny city on the map as the world’s biggest oil field—a valuable patch that John D. Rockefeller later controlled.
Now Lima, (pronounced lye-ma), a rust belt town of 38,000 people, has another highly sought-after resource. This time, the riches are above ground and the deep-pocketed buyer is the U.S. government.
The Federal Communications Commission recently set opening prices for an auction of airwaves it gave away to many local TV stations across the country more than half a century ago. And by next week, broadcasters have to decide if they want to join the auction that will let wireless carriers like AT&T Inc. T -0.61 % and Verizon Communications Inc. VZ -0.68 % acquire those station rights for tens of billions of dollars.
The process gives small TV stations a chance to cash out just as their business faces challenges from online video, wireless services and shifting audience behavior. After multiple delays, the process is expected to begin in March. Nearly 2,000 stations across the country could join the auction to sell their broadcasting licenses.
In giant media markets like New York City and Los Angeles, the bidding will start out high. One station broadcasting in Manhattan, an affiliate of Telemundo, has an opening bid of $900 million. But smaller cities may hit the jackpot, too. In Lima, the first—and maximum— offer for its most-watched station is about $110 million.
Changing habits
The auction demonstrates the shift in technology taking place across the media landscape— and resources being adapted to meet new needs. Momentum is tilting from over-the-air television to the Internet. As people use their smartphones to stay connected and watch video on the go, more bandwidth is needed to provide that connectivity.
“The FCC’s goal is to make the most efficient use of the spectrum,” says Lawrence Chu, an investment banker who worked as an adviser to the agency. “It is in high demand.”
The process will start off similar to a Dutch auction, in which values are set at a high level and then diminish until the FCC gets the licenses it needs at the lowest possible price. Once it determines the amount it will pay for each station, the agency will then turn around and sell the licenses to carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile US Inc. TMUS -0.51 % in a traditional auction with rising bids. Sprint Corp. S -0.77 % has decided to skip the auction. Any difference in the amount paid out to the broadcasters and the resale will go in the U.S. treasury. If the bids from the buyers are too low, the whole process will restart.
Television stations that agree to sell their spectrum have two options: Take the full payout and go off the air, or be moved to another frequency for a lesser cut of the money. Either way, those channels could still be viewable on systems like cable and satellite. Stations that 45
decide not to join the auction may be relocated to another spot on the dial whether they want to or not.
The FCC’s auction is optional but the participation of certain stations in smaller markets could unlock important licenses in much larger markets. For example, channels relinquishing their airwaves in Lima could give the government more options for moving around stations in Toledo, which in turn could free up space in Detroit.
In Lima, stations could pull in as much as those in much bigger cities like Phoenix, a city nearly 40 times its size.
Like any auction, the outcome isn’t a sure thing for any participant. Some stations could be frozen immediately, meaning their sale is accepted, while others could ultimately find that they aren’t in demand.
Local media mogul Allan Block is one owner who has a quandary on his hands. The 61- year-old is the scion of a 115-year-old media dynasty which owns nearly all the local TV stations in Lima, a small cable television system—as well as the Toledo Blade newspaper and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His twin brother John is editor in chief and publisher at both.
In a quirk that could only happen in a small-town market, Block Communications owns all four network affiliates in Lima. The same live nightly local news program is simulcast—both at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.—across its NBC, CBS CBS -1.76 % and ABC channels. The stations, including the local FOX channel, broadcast from a single 550-foot tower that sits in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
“Lima has never been a great growth market,” says Mr. Block, who lives in Toledo, about an hour-and-half drive away. “But it is very steady.” 46
Block’s portfolio of local broadcast stations, which includes the Fox affiliate in Louisville, and an NBC station in Decatur, Ill., have opening bids of more than $1.2 billion from the FCC, he says. He has hired lawyers and financial advisers and is planning to jump into the auction.
To drum up interest in the auction, officials at the FCC spent months on the road trying to convince stations to give up their licenses. They even took the unusual step of enlisting Mr. Chu—now a managing director at investment bank Moelis MC -0.95 % & Co.—to make the pitch directly to station owners. The agenda for the roadshow listed Lima among the roughly 50 markets whose participation the agency deemed as potentially crucial.
The airwaves being shuffled around are prime for sending signals far into the countryside but are also good for penetrating deep into buildings, both qualities that are attractive for wireless service providers. The government’s last airwaves auction—the first major sale since 2008—closed in January 2015 with bids of nearly $45 billion.
The dollar amounts connected to the auction are staggering for some of the stations in the government’s sights, especially outfits such as PBS affiliates and religious broadcasters that are used to operating on shoestring budgets.
“We have spectrum and we always need money,” says PBS Chief Executive Paula Kerger, referring to member stations. She is worried that some areas could lose their access to local PBS stations, noting that some of its member stations have 20% of their audience receiving an over-the-air signal.
“There are no do-overs,” she says, “once you sell your spectrum, it is gone.”
Tough choices
In Pittston, Pa., a town of 7,700 nestled between the bigger markets of Scranton and Wilkes- Barre, local PBS channel WVIA has decided to enter the auction after months of deliberation. The FCC’s opening bid for WVIA’s broadcast license is more than $300 million.
The station occupied two rooms in a church at a local college when it was founded in 1966. It now resides in a small one-story building on a side road with few other businesses nearby. One of its most popular shows is “Pennsylvania Polka,” which features locals dancing to a live polka band.
But it won’t consider going off the air, President Tom Curra says, because it would lose its PBS affiliation and go against the station’s stated mission of serving the public.
Jason Johns works inside the WLIO television station control room. Block Communications bought local station WLIO for about $1.5 million in 1972. PHOTO: J.D.POOLEY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 47
The channel, which has a $5 million annual budget, estimates its signal covers about a third of the state and that 10% to 15% of its viewers watch using over-the-air reception.
Although bids will likely fall from the opening price, a station like WVIA could still walk away with substantial funds. In a report, the FCC estimated in October 2014 that the median compensation for channels in the Pittston area would be $140 million—more than the $120 million projected for stations in Chicago and enough to cover WVIA’s strained annual budget for decades.
The issue is delicate. In Bowling Green, Ohio, PBS station WBGU triggered public outcry when it said it was considering entering the auction and shutting down its broadcast. The station’s signal covers Lima, but it is considered to be in the Toledo market. Feedback at local town hall meetings helped convince the station’s owner, Bowling Green University, to keep it on the air—but it will enter the auction nonetheless.
“It is a very complicated issue and one of the challenges was separating the emotion from the facts,” says university spokesman Dave Kielmeyer. “It was a painful process but it was a good process.”
Back in Lima, nonprofit religious broadcaster WTLW could get an almost unthinkable amount of cash from the auction. The station, with 12 full-time workers and an annual budget of $1.3 million, hired consultants to help it reach a decision to enter the auction. It prefers to stay broadcasting but hasn’t ruled out going off the air, says station President Kevin Bowers.
WTLW operates out of an old airport, a relic of the days when the city was served by commercial flights. Its programming tends to be family oriented, ranging from local sports and Christian-oriented shows, alongside reruns of The Donna Reed Show and The Beverly Hillbillies. The station’s sports editors work out of the old waiting room and the studio was once the airplane hangar.
The station gets a third of its donations from over-the-air viewers and 12% of households in the viewing area depend on antennas. That has made the station sensitive to cutting off viewers, but it says it plans to use proceeds from the auction to invest in ways to deliver its programming other than on cable and satellite systems.
“We aren’t blind to changing technology,” says Mr. Bowers. “How people view is changing.” The station, he says, is looking into wireless streaming and over-the-top options that would allow people to continue watching its offerings. “Even older viewers have an expectation of video on demand.”
Weighing options
For Mr. Block, the issue is whether the final bids will be high enough to relinquish the airwaves above Lima. With four affiliates going over the air, he could free up some bandwidth by downgrading to standard definition from high definition for some of the over- the-air signals.
Mr. Block expresses frustration that a station’s market share or community role won’t factor into the amount of money being ultimately paid by the government. Struggling or failing stations could get the same bids as more successful channels. “Some of these people did nothing but run bad stations,” he says. 48
An FCC spokesman says the bid prices strictly reflect the licenses’ value in the auction.
WLIO has always broadcast from the same small brick building. PHOTO: J.D.POOLEY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Block Communications first arrived in Lima in 1972, when it bought local station WLIO for about $1.5 million. In 2008, it reached a deal to buy the other affiliates in the city, which were being broadcast at lower power, for $2.3 million.
WLIO has always broadcast from the same small brick building, which resembles a ranch house, and could blend into the surrounding residential neighborhood except for the 34 satellite dishes on the lawn. During the 1969 Moon landing, it provided a live video feed to U.S. networks from Neil Armstrong’s parents’ house in nearby Wapakoneta, Ohio.
One possible solution for some broadcasters may be a channel-sharing agreement, which would let a station sell its spectrum in the auction and share a signal with another local broadcaster.
Mr. Block acknowledges he owns excess spectrum in Lima and that his business may vanish with the opening bids.
“I’d rather not have to deal with this,” he says. “I suppose the day after we get the check I might think differently.”
Spectrum in 600 MHz auction dwarfed by 5G spectrum being made available by the FCC
By Sachin Chhibber(July 18, 2016) http://www.auction600mhz.com/?p=194
Last week, United States became the first country in the world to open up high-band spectrum for 5G networks and applications when the FCC adopted new rules for wireless broadband operations in frequencies above 24 GHz.
The new rules would open up almost 11 GHz of spectrum for flexible use wireless broadband. In contrast, the current spectrum plan to auction 600MHz is only for 100 MHz of spectrum. For non-engineers one GHz is 1000 MHz of spectrum. So new 5G spectrum in MHz terms is about 11,000 MHz of spectrum compared to 100 MHz of spectrum being made available in first round of forward broadcast incentive auction. 49
Out of this 11,000 MHz of spectrum, 3,850 MHz of spectrum will be licensed spectrum. That is huge, 38.5 times the licensed spectrum available in first phase of broadcast incentive auction. In fact, this new 5G licensed spectrum is four times the total amount of flexible use spectrum the FCC has licensed to date.
Here is a breakdown of new 5G spectrum made available by 5G.
So as you can see in the graph above, a total of 3.85 GHz of spectrum has been made available of which 850 MHz is in 28 GHz band, 1600 MHz is in 37 GHz band and 1400 MHz is in 39 GHz band. In addition, 7 GHz of spectrum has also been made available in 64-71 50
GHz band on unlicensed basis and 600 MHz made available in 37 GHz band on a shared basis.
License details of these licensed bands is provided below:
As can be seen in the graph above, consistent block sizes of 200 MHz have been defined for 37 GHz and 39 GHz bands. The area for the license size for these blocks will be Partial Economic Area (PEA). The Partial Economic Areas divide EAs into 416 service areas. As the visitors to Auction600MHz.com will be aware, 600MHz auction license areas are also PEAs.
For non-engineers, it should be pointed out that there is a big difference between propagation between these high band spectrum made available and spectrum that is currently being used by traditional wireless companies for their wireless coverage. Generally high band spectrum does not propagate far and can not penetrate buildings but there are newer techniques coming up that make use of massive MIMO techniques at high bands to make up for the poor propagation by adding a number of additional transmit and receive antennas. The FCC has also defined high power limit for base stations and mobile stations. The FCC have adopted 43 dBm as mobile transmit EIRP. Currently most of traditional LTE mobiles only use about 23 dBm power. Only the future will tell how this huge swath of new spectrum made available will drive the broadband innovation. Nevertheless, this move is being welcomed by most in the wireless broadband industry including Auction600MHz.com
Disclaimer: ‘Sachin Chhibber’ wrote this article in his personal capacity. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other entity.