5 ms·

The market rate for 400 MHz is $80 billion. There's only one industry with enough demand and revenue to justify that purchase price, which is mobile. 2.4GHz ma

by hctaw 6y ago

The market rate for 400 MHz is $80 billion. There's only one industry with enough demand and revenue to justify that purchase price, which is mobile. 2.4GHz may be crowded, but it's nowhere near as bad as mobile where the demand for bandwidth has been doubling yearly for two decades.

lukeschlather 6y ago
This is a part of the mobile market. They're the same market. 5G providers have frequencies that can't travel through walls and don't even make sense for a long-distance network. Those frequencies should just be part of the Wifi standard.
ohazi 6y ago
The FCC's job is not to get every last penny for every last Hz, it's to be a good steward of the commons. There is utility in the general public being able to use more unlicensed spectrum at home and in the office. We can argue about what the right breakdown might be, but I'll start by asserting that ~3 GHz in total between Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T, vs. only 250 MHz in total for the entirety of local, short-range wireless communication is absurd. On Wi-Fi, everybody just shouts at each other. On mobile, providers buy huge swaths of spectrum, partially as a monopolistic strategy to make life harder for competitors, and partially because they're still using cell allocation strategies from the '80s. They maintain exclusive rights to blocks that they are not using in a region, because the towers two cells away are using them, and it's just easier to use a fixed checkerboard allocation. Both Wi-Fi and 3GPP standards can and should be improved to make better use of temporarily unused spectrum. A good start might be to prevent carriers from having exclusive rights to any spectrum. At least one layer of the cellular protocols should be standardized across carriers allowing towers and phones to dynamically request and then relinquish spectrum on an as-needed basis. Today, if 500 people in a room use T-Mobile phones, but Verizon owns all the spectrum, then nobody gets to use anything. This is stupid. Verizon should have access to a fraction of spectrum proportional to their users in an area. More users, more spectrum, and vice versa.
- PaulHoule 6y ago
  I'd rather the telephone industry spend $1 on hardware than see them spend $1 on license fees. The story now is "$80 billion in license fees" and "$20 billion in hardware" and that seems the wrong way around -- when most folks play poker the stakes are supposed go up, not down.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    The money is made up! The FCC could sell spectrum for pennies, or give it away, or restrict access to The Right People, or wash their hands of it, or do another auction. They've done all of these things at various points. The license fees are made up.
    - bartvk 6y ago
      The way it's now done, will put the spectrum there, where there's the most value. However the result is that it's actually a tax which the consumer will indirectly pay.
      - krageon 6y ago
        > where there's the most value It's where there is the most money, not value.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  >Today, if 500 people in a room use T-Mobile phones, but Verizon owns all the spectrum, then nobody gets to use anything. This is stupid. Verizon should have access to a fraction of spectrum proportional to their users in an area. More users, more spectrum, and vice versa. That would require a fairly radical departure from the infrastructure of the existing cellular networks, wouldn't it? Right now, each provider has a monopoly on a portion of the spectrum within a defined geographical area, and provides the base station and backhaul infrastructure to support their network. It's not like "Verizon owns all the spectrum in a room"; it's that Verizon has better base station coverage of that room than T-Mobile does. The providers compete on, amongst other things, coverage and network performance. Sharing spectrum would effectively require mutualization of base station infrastructure. You would effectively have a single monopoly with the networks operating as virtual operators. It's very far from clear that would be a good outcome, to me, at least.
inetknght 6y ago
> The market rate for 400 MHz is $80 billion. If market rate were justified for everything then we wouldn't even have space reserved for HAMs. > There's only one industry with enough demand and revenue to justify that purchase price, which is mobile. There's plenty of industries with enough demand. There's just no way they can compete with the money that mobile offers. That's a damn shame given that money shouldn't be the only, nor even the main, driver.
- LeifCarrotson 6y ago
  I think OP was using a rather consequentialist and capitalist economic model, where the value of a thing is by definition equal to the money that you can get for it on the open market.
  - scarby2 6y ago
    Or maybe just that governments rarely pass up on that kind of revenue unless it's a huge PR win, in this case it wouldn't be very noticeable.
NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
It very much depends on which band that spectrum is in. If 400MHz was worth the same everywhere, it's doubtful that amateur radio would have >4.7GHz of it allocated on a primary basis in the EHF band, for example.
- fapjacks 6y ago
  Give it time. Once these bands become more utilized, and more hardware gets pumped into the system, this bandwidth allocation for hams will shrink just like it has in every other band. They'll find any reason to reduce these allocations in favor of some industrial monopoly that may or may not even use what it takes (cf. UPS).
TaylorAlexander 6y ago
It's our spectrum to sell or not sell. No industry needs to "buy" public bands, we can just decide to allocate them for the public.
scotty79 6y ago
What about 5GHz wifi? How does it work?
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  At that frequency, it becomes really hard to penetrate walls or travel without direct line of sight.
- betterunix2 6y ago
  It "works" but it is a mess. Large chunks of the spectrum require some combination of radar detection and power reduction, and if you live near a radar station you basically cannot use 160mhz wifi. I will also add that 60ghz works great, but it will not penetrate walls. I have found it penetrates my doors and thus makes a great replacement for 2.4ghz/5ghz mesh networking in my apartment, but not much else.
  - krageon 6y ago
    > if you live near a radar station This is actually incredibly annoying, especially in a residential setting where the 2.4GHz band is incredibly noisy (5GHz doesn't penetrate as well so it ends up being less noisy).
RIMR 6y ago
Kinda wild that there's such a steep market rate for being allowed adequately communicate over the open air.
wilde 6y ago
This would be more believable if Dish Network wasn’t squatting on a ton of spectrum.

by hctaw 6y ago

lukeschlather 6y ago

This is a part of the mobile market. They're the same market. 5G providers have frequencies that can't travel through walls and don't even make sense for a long-distance network. Those frequencies should just be part of the Wifi standard.

ohazi 6y ago

The FCC's job is not to get every last penny for every last Hz, it's to be a good steward of the commons. There is utility in the general public being able to use more unlicensed spectrum at home and in the office. We can argue about what the right breakdown might be, but I'll start by asserting that ~3 GHz in total between Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T, vs. only 250 MHz in total for the entirety of local, short-range wireless communication is absurd. On Wi-Fi, everybody just shouts at each other. On mobile, providers buy huge swaths of spectrum, partially as a monopolistic strategy to make life harder for competitors, and partially because they're still using cell allocation strategies from the '80s. They maintain exclusive rights to blocks that they are not using in a region, because the towers two cells away are using them, and it's just easier to use a fixed checkerboard allocation. Both Wi-Fi and 3GPP standards can and should be improved to make better use of temporarily unused spectrum. A good start might be to prevent carriers from having exclusive rights to any spectrum. At least one layer of the cellular protocols should be standardized across carriers allowing towers and phones to dynamically request and then relinquish spectrum on an as-needed basis. Today, if 500 people in a room use T-Mobile phones, but Verizon owns all the spectrum, then nobody gets to use anything. This is stupid. Verizon should have access to a fraction of spectrum proportional to their users in an area. More users, more spectrum, and vice versa.

PaulHoule 6y ago
I'd rather the telephone industry spend $1 on hardware than see them spend $1 on license fees. The story now is "$80 billion in license fees" and "$20 billion in hardware" and that seems the wrong way around -- when most folks play poker the stakes are supposed go up, not down.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  The money is made up! The FCC could sell spectrum for pennies, or give it away, or restrict access to The Right People, or wash their hands of it, or do another auction. They've done all of these things at various points. The license fees are made up.
  - bartvk 6y ago
    The way it's now done, will put the spectrum there, where there's the most value. However the result is that it's actually a tax which the consumer will indirectly pay.
    - krageon 6y ago
      > where there's the most value It's where there is the most money, not value.
NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
>Today, if 500 people in a room use T-Mobile phones, but Verizon owns all the spectrum, then nobody gets to use anything. This is stupid. Verizon should have access to a fraction of spectrum proportional to their users in an area. More users, more spectrum, and vice versa. That would require a fairly radical departure from the infrastructure of the existing cellular networks, wouldn't it? Right now, each provider has a monopoly on a portion of the spectrum within a defined geographical area, and provides the base station and backhaul infrastructure to support their network. It's not like "Verizon owns all the spectrum in a room"; it's that Verizon has better base station coverage of that room than T-Mobile does. The providers compete on, amongst other things, coverage and network performance. Sharing spectrum would effectively require mutualization of base station infrastructure. You would effectively have a single monopoly with the networks operating as virtual operators. It's very far from clear that would be a good outcome, to me, at least.

inetknght 6y ago

> The market rate for 400 MHz is $80 billion. If market rate were justified for everything then we wouldn't even have space reserved for HAMs. > There's only one industry with enough demand and revenue to justify that purchase price, which is mobile. There's plenty of industries with enough demand. There's just no way they can compete with the money that mobile offers. That's a damn shame given that money shouldn't be the only, nor even the main, driver.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago
I think OP was using a rather consequentialist and capitalist economic model, where the value of a thing is by definition equal to the money that you can get for it on the open market.
- scarby2 6y ago
  Or maybe just that governments rarely pass up on that kind of revenue unless it's a huge PR win, in this case it wouldn't be very noticeable.

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago

It very much depends on which band that spectrum is in. If 400MHz was worth the same everywhere, it's doubtful that amateur radio would have >4.7GHz of it allocated on a primary basis in the EHF band, for example.

fapjacks 6y ago
Give it time. Once these bands become more utilized, and more hardware gets pumped into the system, this bandwidth allocation for hams will shrink just like it has in every other band. They'll find any reason to reduce these allocations in favor of some industrial monopoly that may or may not even use what it takes (cf. UPS).

TaylorAlexander 6y ago

It's our spectrum to sell or not sell. No industry needs to "buy" public bands, we can just decide to allocate them for the public.

scotty79 6y ago

What about 5GHz wifi? How does it work?

ComputerGuru 6y ago
At that frequency, it becomes really hard to penetrate walls or travel without direct line of sight.
betterunix2 6y ago
It "works" but it is a mess. Large chunks of the spectrum require some combination of radar detection and power reduction, and if you live near a radar station you basically cannot use 160mhz wifi. I will also add that 60ghz works great, but it will not penetrate walls. I have found it penetrates my doors and thus makes a great replacement for 2.4ghz/5ghz mesh networking in my apartment, but not much else.
- krageon 6y ago
  > if you live near a radar station This is actually incredibly annoying, especially in a residential setting where the 2.4GHz band is incredibly noisy (5GHz doesn't penetrate as well so it ends up being less noisy).

RIMR 6y ago

Kinda wild that there's such a steep market rate for being allowed adequately communicate over the open air.

wilde 6y ago

This would be more believable if Dish Network wasn’t squatting on a ton of spectrum.