Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) UHF

Readers Write - 700 MHz PCMCIA Cards?

Chris K. writes:

Hi Steve,

I found your article on the release of a wimax laptop card on www.bwianews.com and I've also read articles that claim that Clearwire and other entities are looking at the next 700 MHz auction as a way to improve the WiMAX mobile play.  Are you aware of any PCMCIA radios that currently work in the 700MHz band? The company I work for has ownership of the C block of the lower 700MHz band.  Any help you can offer would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Chris K.

Chris:

There's barely any Customer Premise Equipment at all for 700 MHz, and there usually has to be considerable maturity of a band / radio service to achieve the economies of scale necessary for compact,
low-power chipsets that are required for building PCMCIA cards.

I wouldn't expect to see PCMCIA cards for 700 MHz for at least two, perhaps three years. The economies of scale won't even begin until long after the 700 MHz band is finally unencumbered after 2/17/2009.

I'd be VERY surprised if Clearwire was seriously interested in 700 MHz; 1) anything deployed on 700 MHz wouldn't be able to interoperate with their Sprint WiMAX partnership using 2.5 GHz, and 2) they have
more 2.5 GHz spectrum and service areas right now to deploy than they have capital, manpower, or time available.

By Steve Stroh

This article is Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged.)

The Date Analog Television Goes Dead - February 17, 2009

The last day that NTSC (officially - National Television Standards Committee; unofficially - Never The Same Color) analog television will be broadcast in the USA is February 17, 2009.

After that date, to receive over-the-air television broadcasting in the US, for those approximately 10% of overall US television viewers receive their video signals over the air (rather than cable or direct broadcast satellite):

• Will require the use of a digital television broadcast television receiver or a digital television broadcast adapter
• No longer be able to receive television channels 52-69; all television transmitters operating in that spectrum are required to cease transmission (or be "re-channeled" to a new channel in the range of channel 2-51; but it's very, very unlikely for a reassignment to be within "VHF" channels 2-13).

Although the FCC is requiring labeling of television receivers being currently sold to disclose whether or not they are "DTV Ready", it's going to be a very acrid conversion as the date approaches when all of those tens of millions televisions will suddenly stop working. The DTV transition will probably be the most wrenching transition to US consumers since  AT&T was broken up.

The relevance to Broadband Wireless Internet Access is, of course, that on February 18, 2009, the 108 MHz of spectrum from 698 MHz to 806 MHz (as of that date, former television Channels 52-69) will be fully available and fully unencumbered to be used for a mixture of commercial and public safety communications.

By Steve Stroh

This article is Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged.)