T-Mobile wants part of 700 MHz

[jones]

Senate Panel OKs DTV Transition Date


By Susan Rush
October 21, 2005


Wireless and technology companies got what they were after, a date. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation set a firm date of April 7, 2009, for getting all broadcasters out of the 700 MHz band.

Earlier this week, Motorola's Senior Director of Congressional Operations Bill Anaya urged the Senate panel to take action and set a date before the 2005 recess. "Congress should take the necessary steps now to best prepare our first responders by ending the DTV transition and investing in interoperability tools," Anaya said.

Motorola was not the only high-tech company putting pressure on Congress. Last week, a group of 31 CEOs and presidents from various companies, including Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and T-Mobile USA, sent a letter to the House and Senate urging for a hard date.

On Thursday, the Senate panel voted 19-3 in favor of the Digital Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005, which includes a completed transition date of April 7, 2009. "This hard date establishes a date certain by which public safety personnel will be able to use an additional 24 MHz of spectrum recovered from the digital transition," the panel said in a prepared statement.

The Senate bill also calls for the commencement of the auction of recovered spectrum on Jan. 28, 2008. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that auctions will raise a total of $10 billion.

The House of Representatives is expected to act on its own legislation dealing with DTV transition next week.


http://wirelessweek.com/article/CA6276861.html

[ShoresGuy]

Ok and just what does T-Mobile want to do with the 700 Mhz band?

[Matt]

Originally Posted by ShoresGuy

Ok and just what does T-Mobile want to do with the 700 Mhz band?

TM needs the specturm, and being at a low frequency it helps offset all the 1900

[ShoresGuy]

So they want to introduce a 3rd GSM band to the US?

[Matt]

I haven't seen any other reference to 700 other than in this thread, but I can only guess that TM just wants whatever spectrum they can find.

[Matt]

Maybe for FLASH_OFDM by Flarion? TM just introduced that in Slovakia (or CZ not sure), IIRC...

http://www.dailywireless.org/modules...ticle&sid=4339

[ShoresGuy]

Wow, that certainly looks like an interesting development to say the least.

[Fire14]

Originally Posted by Matt

I haven't seen any other reference to 700 other than in this thread, but I can only guess that TM just wants whatever spectrum they can find.

The Govt. wants to free up the 700 Mhz for Public Safety radios & Wireless services, which is better then going into the higher frequencies which means more towers closer for the coverage so we can have even better in building coverage.
I read something similar about this but can't recall how they plan on using this for wireless carriers or how they plan on splitting the band up, the original date was 07 for freeing up the frequencies, but too many people still are using old sets with antenna's & not cable or satellite.

[ShoresGuy]

Hmmm ok so then what's the sense of investing in trunked public safety systems between 824 Mhz-840 Mhz and 851 Mhz - 868 Mhz? Motorola stands to lose a bit here since they make almost all of the trunked systems (TETRA and APCO 25-compliant systems etc) operating in those frequency ranges.

[bobolito]

Originally Posted by Matt

TM needs the specturm, and being at a low frequency it helps offset all the 1900

They also need some building penetration which 700Mhz will provide.

[Matt]

True, but they have to convince the handset and equipment makers to support the band....

[Gideon H]

So there could be a reality in Pent-band phones, huh?

Is it really a good idea to introduce a new band, though? As Matt said, it could be difficult to convince manufacturers to make new phones with this band, and it could limit T-Mobile's selection if they only wanted phones that were at least capible of this band, or make people only want phones in this band (which will have a very limited selection at first I imagine).

[Critic]

Originally Posted by Gideon H

So there could be a reality in Pent-band phones, huh?

Is it really a good idea to introduce a new band, though? As Matt said, it could be difficult to convince manufacturers to make new phones with this band, and it could limit T-Mobile's selection if they only wanted phones that were at least capible of this band, or make people only want phones in this band (which will have a very limited selection at first I imagine).

Actually, we're looking at SEPT-band phones now, since you have to take into account the 4 existing GSM frequencies (850, 900, 1800, 1900), the 3G UMTS frequencies (1900 and 2100), and now 700. Given the number of frequencies involved, could we be facing the second coming of the bag phone?

[agentHibby]

I don't think this band will be used for wireless telephones, probably data or backbone.

Bands in US
800 MHz Celular
1900 MHz PCS
1700/2100 MHz AWS

Bands outside of US
450 MHz
900 MHz
1800 MHz DCS
2100 MHz UTMS

anybody know what the lower 700 MHz is for ??
they use the Cellular Market Area (CMA) for boundaries {This is the same boundaries as cellular}

[Gideon H]

Originally Posted by Critic

Actually, we're looking at SEPT-band phones now, since you have to take into account the 4 existing GSM frequencies (850, 900, 1800, 1900), the 3G UMTS frequencies (1900 and 2100), and now 700. Given the number of frequencies involved, could we be facing the second coming of the bag phone?

But this is T-Mobile we are talking about... no UMTS yet. And Ii don't think that American UMTS phones will have 2100 in the beginning. The AT&T phones didnt.

[ShoresGuy]

Makes you wonder if this is a move on T-Mobile's part to make more spectrum on GSM 1900 available for a larger amount of customers who will need better voice services on one band instead of combining data and voice traffic into 1 band.