Bandwidth is Finite

Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

Bandwidth is Finite

I hear lots of cheering for WiMax, 3G, 4G, broadband, etc. HD Voice and all these mobile apps. Video calls and Internet TV. All that over a set of pipes that the owners have been unwilling to upgrade.

So we have all this promise with mobility and video. But reality is that the spectrum for 3G, 4G, LTE and WiMax is a finite amount. It is a shared resource off the tower. It has X amount of usable space. Easily we point the finger at AT&T's network being unable to handle the onslaught of the iPhone usage, but most networks are not built to handle millions of tweets, searches, video, etc. 

Originally, the network was designed for voice calls at 8K. You can get a heck of a lot of voice calls on 10 MHz of spectrum. But when you are talking about 768k streams - that tends to crush the spectrum.

Granted these companies have been sitting on unused spectrum - 2.x GHz, 700 MHz, AWS and more - for years, but it will take billions to build that out. AND your current handsets won't be able to take advantage.

Clearwire announced that we won't see a WiMax Android handset until 2011. Until WiMax chips start shipping in devices - handsets, laptops, what-have-you - there won't be much demand for CLEAR service. Period.

Even on terrestrial networks we are stagnant at about 2MB average download. And most users can't even sustain that. 

VSB (very small businesses with under 25 employees) do not want to buy T1's. They want broadband prices and speeds that match what is advertised. This is the bottleneck to innovation and communications in America. No mandate for building out true 4G networks on land and in the air.  That's why any BTOP or BIP money HAS got to go to small businesses who will actually deploy next gen networks.


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