It what has to be a positive move the FCC has released a query for suppliers for a database platform and service that will be part of the whole infrastructure. —

On November 4, 2008, the Commission adopted a Second Report and Order and Memorandum Opinion and Order (Second Report and Order) in ET Docket 04-186 that established rules to allow new, sophisticated, unlicensed wireless devices to operate in broadcast television spectrum at locations where that spectrum is unused by licensed services.1 This unused TV spectrum is commonly referred to as television “white spaces.” The rules will allow for the use of unlicensed TV band devices in the unused spectrum to provide broadband data and other services for consumers and businesses.

To prevent interference to authorized users of the TV bands, TV band devices must include a geo-location capability and the capability to access a database that identifies incumbent users entitled to interference protection, including, for example, full power and low power TV stations, broadcast auxiliary point-to-point facilities, PLMRS/CMRS operations on channels 14-20, and the Offshore Radiotelephone Service. 2 The database will tell a TV band device which TV channels are vacant and can be used at its location. 3 The database also will be used to register the locations of fixed TV band devices and protected locations and channels of incumbent services that are not recorded in Commission databases.4 The Commission decided in the Second Report and Order to designate one or more database administrators from the private sector to create and operate TV band database(s), which will be a privately owned and operated service. Database administrators may charge fees to register fixed TV band devices and temporary broadcast auxiliary fixed links and to provide lists of available channels to TV band devices.

Why a database is needed for a broadband low power spread spectrum channel? Well multiuse. The band(s) in some cases will have public service users in some areas. So any smart device must be able to discern that they reside in the same locale with say a fire dept siting on the open band between formerly CH 10-11. With that knowledge a smart device can map around and use other channels.

Its good news though. It means that finally the FCC is looking to see that white space systems are brought online. Personally I hope the Hams get in the act. We could see some wonderfully weird devices using the airwaves that might show commercial usage.

Linky.

Apple and AT&T have an agreement in principle that neither party would partake of supporting anything that injuries the other party in any material fashion. AT&T is concerned about users foregoing the voice components on iPhone and using the data component via VoIP. Google then shows up with an application for the iStore to do exactly what AT&T does not want. Is it rejected? Welllll, not exactly, but then you can’t download it either –

AT&T and Apple told the FCC that they did have an agreement that Apple would not help iPhone owners use VOIP calling services like Skype on the iPhone. VOIP calls use the data, rather than the voice plan, and would cut into the companies profits. Thus, Apple and AT&T agreed to cripple the Skype iPhone app so that it would only work when the iPhone used a WiFi connection.

The companies say they also agree not to let apps that stream live television, which AT&T says would strain its network.

As for Google and its app store?

Its FCC filing emphasizes that Android phone users can get apps from outside the store — unlike iPhone users. (Users can “jailbreak” their iPhones to do so, but this invalidates the warranty.)

It says only one percent of apps in its online marketplace have been rejected, mostly due to copyright or obscenity reasons.

Google did not, however, mention that it too crippled mobile apps at the request of a telecom.

T-Mobile asked Google to remove apps that let customers use their phone as a modem for a laptop, a practice known as tethering, and Google complied. T-Mobile, like all of the U.S.’s largest carriers, charges customers extra for that service. Google later re-allowed the app, but not for T-Mobile customers.

Is Google the unvarnished victim in this? The maiden for her prince to open the gates? Well not exactly either. Google is doing the same thing for T-Mobile on Android platforms. Google you can pucker up, but wash your shoes first, they reek of BS.

All this jockeying and “where’s the pea” is going for naught too. Wimax is continuing to rollout. The following cities are targeted this year — Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle. Wimax is already in Atlanta, NYC, Los Angeles and the outskirt of WashDC. So many of the mass market areas are in coverage. The upshot is the Wimax providers are not freaking out that VoIP will traverse their network. Fact some providers are offering bundles that include VoIP. So the cat’s already out of the bag. Fact some are considering using a “netbook-as-phone”.

By the way Who if on first and What is on second and Google is in the outfield. Google still has not understood how damaging their lack of 700mhz ownership means to them over the long haul.

Linky.

With the Clearwire consortium accelerating new launches in several major cities this year, 4G wireless has arrived. Verizon is sending signals that it will compete in this space with its own 4G offering sooner rather than later.

Verizon Wireless, the largest US mobile carrier, has just announced that it has successfully completed LTE (4G) data calls in Boston and Seattle – which currently have 10 functional LTE cell sites each.

Based on the 3GPP Release 8 standard, the data calls were made over Verizon’s 700 MHz spectrum, and involved file downloads/uploads, streaming video, Web browsing, and voice transmissions using VoIP.

Will two players be enough to create a competitive market? Probably not in wireless alone. But Clearwire intends to take market share from fixed line providers as well as 3G. Don’t expect Verizon to join in that attack until it’s fiber fixed line service has much broader coverage.  With the current pace of deployment, that time will not come soon.

Britain that glimmering island that in many ways is the birthplace of both man’s political aspirations and freedom from want is also in many cases the test case for mobile digital. Britain is somewhere around 3-5 years ahead of the US. Not in technology, but in how to deploy, market it and have politicians screw it all up. –

But wait a minute - why would this be? Are telecoms companies salting away billions of pounds of profits in a great offshore lair, somewhere? Or are they merely reflecting the market’s demand for data? Plain vanilla 2G is enough to make a phone call, and that’s everywhere.

If the telcos are hiding anything, it’s the level of their debt. They’re broke, and running on empty (hence the nonstop rounds of refinancing), which explains their renewed focus on mature markets where they can squeeze higher revenues by diminishing competition. The UK is reckoned to be a full 10 per cent less profitable than other European countries, because retailers such as Carphone Warehouse are in the chain, and because of all this pesky competition. It’s true that the 3G auctions didn’t help, either, sucking £20bn into Brown’s piggy bank, and onto quangos like, well… Ofcom.

Which is in a sense reflected in the current apathy of the FCC, irrespective of pending ‘investigations’. But there is more —

What we now know, thanks to the 3G map, is just how expensive building out a broadband infrastructure will really be. What it shows us is that the definition of “rural” is much broader than we supposed. An analysis conducted for the Broadband Stakeholder Group last year put the cost of rolling out fibre to every home at almost £30 billion.

During the media orgy of coverage around Carter’s Digital Britain report two weeks ago, I only heard one journalist ask the obvious question: why tax all of us for something that 70 per cent of people don’t want. That was Jeremy Paxman on the BBC’s Newsnight, apparently waking up from a deep slumber.

But it was a lone voice, and I didn’t hear anyone - not a single one - go any deeper and follow this to its logical consequence. Which is that maybe people aren’t stupid, as the political and media classes suppose, and many find what’s on offer from the internet somewhat wanting. Maybe it’s not offering compelling services.

The US is ramping for a similar head long rush to round one of a universal service offering with $4Bn in taxes to be doled out. Its a known fact that even if available some 30% will just refused to sign up as broadband is NOT critical to their everyday life. What’s worse is that I have yet to hear any voice other than ourselves pose the question — “why tax all of us for something that 70 per cent of people don’t want?” Why indeed?

What Britain is experiencing is like a canary in a coal mine for the US. We face similar questions and much larger expanse of ‘white space’ in the 3G map than they. For the US it is more problematic. We have 10x their real estate and a carrier base loathe to leave the urban centers as they know that is where the profits are.

Chirp!

Read the whole article here.

… and could still be if we got our heads out of the sand. All those large muni installs that never happened still could. But the muni itself has to give up the idea of WiFi as an income source. –

…just wanted to share the joy. This week we successfully completed the first 802.11n long range link in the network. Its not very far (only 4KM) but it is very promising. 80 to almost 100Mbit TCP Traffic with 20MHz channels and ~150Mbit with 40MHz. Currently we are dealing with the redesign of our feeders and trying to find an optimal soft/hardware set. We are all really excited to see what AWMN V3 will bring to us. The first link has been routing traffic successfully at 80Mbit since the 11th of June 2009.

That’s right, 80-100Mbit data rates on N channel commercial hardware and open source software. Happening here in the USA? Nope. Athens, Greece. They just happen to have one of the largest Muni WiFi installations on the planet. Web Page here. (Brush up on your Greek)

The logic here by many in the Muni world here is that WiFi should be like a toll road and everybody pays. The reality is they should be treating it like a freeway and charge nothing. Why? Same reason as the freeways — access. A Muni should not look at WiFi as a revenue source but a revenue enabler.

The reason Muni’s support freeways is that the improved access increases business interest in relocating there. The Muni benefits indirectly by increase in revenue volume and revenue velocity by those who relocate businesses there. That gets reflected in the increased sales tax revenues.

The same can be said for Muni WiFi. The WiFi presence increases the sales velocity of product. Need a restraunt? Geolocate one using the Muni system. Pablos Mexican restraunt business improves he pays more to the city. Its the same game. Of course you can play the tiered game as well. Open free base service at a given base rate. Become a subscriber and your base rate is raised. The subscriptions going to pay for the electric bill.

That model with a few exceptions is being deployed everywhere else but here. Why?

HT: saschameinrath.com

Its been a requirement for years, just like requirement for logging personal vs business use of automobiles. But now it looks like the IRS is really getting serious about the whole idea of taxing employer provided cells that are used for personal calls. To the IRS it represents a funded benefit –

The Internal Revenue Service proposed employers assign 25% of an employee’s annual phone expenses as a taxable benefit. Under that scenario, a worker in the 28% tax bracket, whose wireless device costs the company $1,500 a year, could see $105 in additional federal income tax.

The IRS, in a notice issued this week, said employees could avoid tax liability if they showed proof they used personal cellphones for nonbusiness calls during work hours. The agency also could decide on a set number of phone minutes as “minimal personal use” that would be untaxed.

In a third option proposed by the IRS, employers could use a statistical sampling to determine what portion of workers’ cellphone use is personal and how much is work-related. Workers would be taxed on the difference.

The IRS move, which is spurring efforts by the wireless industry and others to kill the idea, would mark a stricter enforcement of an existing rule that classifies employer-provided cellphones as a taxable benefit, rather than a 24-hour-a-day work tool.

Sounds all nefarious and that the tax man will get tons of new revenue right? Not so fast. There is a very quick and painless way to resolve this problem and give the IRS the finger at the same time.

Get a prepaid phone. You can go down to WallyWorld and pick one up for $50. Use it strictly for personal calls and treat it like a twit message via voice. You would be surprised how far $50 goes when you don’t talk all the way to your home on the commute. The phone your employer gives you? Use it just for that. Its 100% business. The tax man can’t come after you.

Two phones? Well yeah, but they are so small these days most people would not even notice they are lugging two phones around. Especially if you are using a computer bag.

Linky.

In a world swimming in wireless transmissions, how does one operate without it? Cell phone, WiFi, 900mhz phone, the list is endless. So is the FCC, hence the government’s right, to abrogate the 4th Amendment –

That’s the upshot of the rules the agency has followed for years to monitor licensed television and radio stations, and to crack down on pirate radio broadcasters. And the commission maintains the same policy applies to any licensed or unlicensed radio-frequency device.

“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers that use unlicensed spectrum, Fiske says.

The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts. That’s largely because the FCC had little to do with average citizens for most of the last 75 years, when home transmitters were largely reserved to ham-radio operators and CB-radio aficionados. But in 2009, nearly every household in the United States has multiple devices that use radio waves and fall under the FCC’s purview, making the commission’s claimed authority ripe for a court challenge.

“It is a major stretch beyond case law to assert that authority with respect to a private home, which is at the heart of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure,” says Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Lee Tien. “When it is a private home and when you are talking about an over-powered Wi-Fi antenna — the idea they could just go in is honestly quite bizarre.”

Alarmist? Well maybe. When you consider that the average consumer grade transmitter is running way less than a watt of RF output power, I don’t think you will be breaking the law nor the FCC being after you. The rule that the article points to was in place to go after large wattage stations and CB radios being upjacked to a 1000w linear amp.

But it is a tad troubling on the face. If a FCC guy came to the house asking. I probably would say come on in. I don’t have anything that does high watt RF transmission. But if they started acting like stormtroopers a call to my lawyer would be made long before they left.

Linky.

Orange Guinea Conakry and Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) are deploying more than 100 base stations fully powered by solar energy, connecting remote parts of rural Africa. Using Ericsson’s energy-efficient base stations, a hybrid diesel-battery solution and solar panels, Orange is increasing mobile coverage in rural and urban areas, while taking concrete steps towards its target of reducing CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2020. This enables remote areas without an established power grid to get access mobile communications.

Alassane Diene, CEO of Orange-Guinea Conakry, says: “We are reducing our energy bill. These base stations are also easier to install and require less maintenance than the traditional site. They also offer greater reliability and therefore considerably improved quality of service”

Jan Embro, President of Ericsson for sub-Saharan Africa, says: “It is extremely exciting to be able to run sites on alternative energy sources. Limiting dependency on fossil fuels brings many advantages, but the greatest is the ability to offer sustainable connectivity to low-income users in remote areas across Africa”

Ericsson’s hybrid diesel-battery energy solution replaces one of a site’s diesel generators with a bank of specially designed batteries that can handle a large amount of charging and discharging. This self-contained power solution can be set to meet the batteries’ optimal charging and discharging levels, extending the lifetime of the battery and the generator, and reducing energy-related costs by about 50 percent.

The Ericsson BTS 2111 radio base station is a main-remote solution without any active moving parts such as cooling fans. It reduces energy consumption up to 50 percent, allowing the site to be fully powered by solar energy, supported by a battery bank for 24/7 operation.

This is from an Ericsson press release — here.

First a marker. Kudos to all involved in moving forward with this project. Even the green aspects. Using solar reduces fuel costs and hence trucking and labor to keep the diesel plant going. That helps reduce overall subscriber rates.

Now for the rant. While even Africa moves forward with what appears to be a disjointed country by country deploy of wireless. We here in the US, a contiguous land and political mass are stuck in bureaucratic wrangling, antiquated mindsets and duopoly follies that hold back any serious attempt at a wireless deployment. Hell our own government has delayed the 700mhz deploy by its foolish delay of the DTV transition.

Question is, who is living in what Third World Country? Right now I don’t see a difference.

As part of the stimulus package, there are provisions for tax abatements for rural wireless broadband deploys. Now we have been saying here for years now that rural was ripe for wireless broadband. In fact so that they really don’t need the stimulus to make it. Anyhow here are some particulars –

The Senate Finance Committee later today is expected to make tax credits available to wireless carriers and others in the telecom industry that expand broadband networks to rural and low-income urban areas with little or no high-speed Internet access.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a senior member of the finance panel and chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, plans to offer an amendment this afternoon that provides a 10% tax credit to service providers that invest in current generation broadband (defined as at least 5 Mbps downlink and 1Mbps uplink) infrastructure in unserved and underserved portions of the country A 20% tax credit would be available to carriers that bring next-generation broadband (100 Mbps downlink and 20 Mbps uplink) networks to those areas. However, commercial mobile wireless carriers would be eligible for the 20% tax credit if they offer broadband service at speeds of at least 3 Mbps downlink and 768 Kbps unlink in unserved and underserved locales.

The irony for somebody like Verizon is that they have been selling off anything that even smells ‘rural’. So some WISPs might have a shot at this. Fact Clearwire ought to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this largess.

More here.

…Well to tell the truth, everybody. The bigger losers are of course the TV broadcasters. They spend all that time, money and effort and now its on hold for a couple of months. Another loser is the government itself. They spend a $1Bn in public awareness, enforcement, public policy to have this be a disaster –

This aggressive campaign has pushed consumer awareness rates well above 90 percent, according to Megan Pollock, a spokeswoman for the Consumer Electronics Association.

“We have been working for almost three years to educate consumers that this is the day,” Pollock said. “How do we re-create that? It will be hard to start over.”

It will also be costly - forcing the government and industry to pour more resources into additional public service announcements and outreach efforts.

For many television stations, a delay would also mean the additional expense of continuing to broadcast both an analog and a digital signal for another four months.

So lets run some numbers. There are ~90m households in this country. Lets assume that everyone of them has at least 1 TV set. Also assume that half of them have cable. That works out to ~$22/TV. Or roughly half the value of the $40 converter coupon. It seems reasonable to me that we could have just sent a $22 refund check via the IRS to everyone who filed either Joint or Head of Household and been done with it. Put a “redeemable for any converter purchase” on it and been done with it.

I hazard it would have been more effective than the boatload of effort that has been expended to date. Highly recommend you read the Wired article linked below.

Linky