Tag: wireless

FCC Votes To Ease Wireless Infrastructure Deployment

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This is how government should be behaving. They should be removing the hurdles for business and society to advance.

By: John Eggerton

The FCC voted unanimously Friday (Oct. 17) to make it easier to deploy wireless infrastructure, yet another step in the commission’s broader move to spur broadband deployment.

The item extends various exclusions from environmental and historical impact restrictions for wireless buildouts, including co-locations of new equipment on existing structures, and clarifies that shot clocks and other measures to ease infrastructure buildouts extend to distributed antenna systems and small cells.

State and local entities won’t be able to deny further modifications of existing sites that do not change the physical dimensions, and fixes a 60-day deadline for action.
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Google Reportedly Wants to Launch Its Own Wireless Network

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Google is reportedly considering running its own wireless network. Sources tell The Information that company executives have been discussing a plan to offer wireless service in areas where it’s already installed Google Fiber high-speed internet. Details are vague, but there are hints that it’s interested in becoming a mobile virtual network operator or MVNO, buying access to a larger network at wholesale rates and reselling it to customers. Sources say that Google spoke to Verizon about the possibility in early 2014, and that it talked to Sprint about a similar possibility in early 2013, before the company was officially acquired by Softbank.

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American Tower Joins Rural Cellular Association

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Rahul Gaitonde, Deputy Editor, BroadbandBreakfast.com

WASHINGTON March 10, 2011 – American Tower, the Boston-based wireless and broadcast infrastructure company, announced Thursday it had joined the Rural Cellular Association.

“American Tower is glad to join RCA, and we support their mission — advocacy for rural and regional wireless carriers,” said American Tower’s Steven Marshall, Executive Vice President and President, U.S. Tower Division through a statement.

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Slow Internet Could Drive Away Nearly Two-Thirds of Student Residents

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Dormitory at Pusan National University's Mirya...

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HOUSTON – Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of students would consider relocating if Internet speeds in their apartment didn’t meet expectations. This finding, from a survey by J Turner Research, confirms that access to fast Internet speeds is no longer an amenity in student housing – it is now an expectation. And it’s not hard to understand why – 56 percent of students said they spend between three and five hours a day on the Internet, and another 16 percent said they spend five to six hours a day online.

A majority (53 percent) of the 10,000 student respondents said the Internet connections in their apartments were slower than at their college or university; however, their satisfaction levels with Internet speeds remain high, with 43 percent of respondents ranking their satisfaction at a 7 or above, based on a scale of 0-10.

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The Flaw in Obama’s Wireless Plan

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Main Street in Ten Sleep, WY

Main Street in Ten Sleep, WY

The President hopes an increase in Internet access will result in more economic development. Fiber networks would do that better than mobile broadband

By Brendan Greeley

The residents of Ten Sleep, Wyo., know the meaning of rural. They didn’t have phone service until the 1950s, when Tri-County Telephone Assn., a municipal cooperative, used federal subsidies to string copper wire to every home. In 2005 the co-op upgraded to fiber-optic cable, giving the town’s 300 residents Internet access at 20 megabits per second. For the technically unfamiliar, Chris Davidson, Tri-County Telephone’s general manager, describes this as “smoking fast.”

Even President Barack Obama is impressed. On Feb. 10 he rolled out a national wireless plan, pointing to Ten Sleep as an example of what he wants to replicate nationally: Because of the town’s high-speed fiber network, one company has been able to hire locals to teach English to Asians by video chat over the network. Obama hopes his plan will result in more such economic development by providing 98 percent of Americans with access to high-speed wireless Internet. “Ten Sleep,” Obama mused. “I love the name of that town.”

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Mobile Broadband Shouldn’t Replace Fixed Broadband – Report

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3G Wireless Broadband Mobile Router http://www...

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Here’s a warning about jumping too far onto the mobile broadband bandwagon. Selling it as an alternative to fixed broadband will fail in both the U.S and Europe. That’s according to a new survey from Analysys Mason.

The report, The Connected Consumer Survey 2: Mobile Broadband, says there is a strong, and correct, perception among consumers that mobile broadband is slower, less reliable and more expensive than fixed broadband. Seventy percent of those surveyed had that opinion. Where consumers have a choice between fixed and mobile broadband, mobile broadband, the report says, should not be sold as the primary means of access, but as a complement. Six-thousand consumers were interviewed for the study.

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Open LTE network in the US reaches next phase – now find a tenant

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Philip Falcone of Harbinger Capital Partners is a step closer to his American dream: a national open access, wholesale-only, net-neutral LTE network. He first unveiled the plans in March and now the venture has a name (LightSquared), a management team (headed by former Orange CEO Sanjiv Ahuja) and a supplier (Nokia Siemens Networks). Falcone brought a number of assets into the company (SkyTerra, Terrestar), giving LightSquared generous spectrum resources of 59 MHz. The assets are valued at USD 2.9 billion, and the company said it has an agreement for another USD 1.75 billion in debt and equity financing.

NSN won the contract to build a network of 40,000 base stations within five years, to cover 92 percent of the US population, with the remaining coverage to be provided by satellite. The project is expected to create around 100,000 direct and indirect jobs. The order is worth USD 7 billion (EUR 5.5 billion) over eight years to NSN. The company’s sales were EUR 12.6 billion in 2009, so the contract adds an average 5.5 percent to sales each year. After acquiring Motorola’s networks business for a nice price, this is another good deal for NSN.
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