Viewpoint: Understanding the mobile carrier spectrum plea

The wireless industry recently gathered at the annual CTIA trade show, and almost all we heard about was the need for more spectrum. Sure, there was a bit of talk about smartphones – in particular the progress that Android phones are making. All of the device chatter, however, took a backseat to the need to expand aggregate broadband bandwidth. But do the carriers really need the extra spectrum and why? I think maybe they do, but not because my mother is going to start watching video on her handset.

You see, the cry for spectrum was almost universally attributed to the need to serve more video. Smartphone users treat their handsets just like a computer and regularly consume music and video content. The prevailing wisdom is that the multimedia trend will continue to ramp bandwidth requirements.

At first glance, the facts may support the spectrum quest. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson claimed that data traffic on the AT&T network has increased 5,000 percent over the past year. That increase is largely attributed to the popular iPhone, and the implied expectation is that the ramp will continue.

My view is that the smartphone market is nearing a saturation point in the U.S. Certainly, we will continue to see robust smartphone sales, but that robust market will come from churn as vendors add features, and consumers buy the newest products. But smartphone prices have already sunk to a level that allows almost anyone who wants one to buy one. Many people simply do not want one. I could not convince my wife that she needed one last summer when we upgraded our cellular package.

If you buy my premise that the growth in new smartphone sales will slow, what does that imply when it comes to growth in consumed bandwidth? I don’t doubt that wireless broadband use will continue to grow, but I don’t expect another 5,000 percent this year.

I strongly feel that the analysts that are basing growth projections on video are wrong. The fact is that much of the video consumption will not happen via the cellular networks – especially TV services. For example, Qualcomm’s MediaFlo uses multicast technology in dedicated spectrum that is entirely separate from the cellular networks. Likewise, the MDTV (mobile digital television) service being pushed by the Consumer Electronics Association is based on a variant of the ATSC digital TV standard and does not use cellular networks. Even Sirius is providing satellite TV to car systems that do not impact the cellular networks.

Now, I understand that video and TV are separate concepts these days. Mobile subscribers will certainly consume from YouTube and other web sources. I simply believe that we have seen the bulk of that growth in bandwidth demand come to fruition.

Where I see huge growth is in so-called machine-to-machine bandwidth consumption. In fact, I am researching the subject for a future article. We will see a tremendous amount of applications move to the cellular networks that use different technologies today. For example, point-of-sale terminals are moving to the cellular system. Utilities will use cellular networks to read smart meters.

There will be tremendous growth in medical applications such as health monitoring devices that reside with the patient but communicate with the healthcare facility using the cellular network. The other source of growth will be from users that rely solely on mobile networks for broadband access eschewing wired services just as many are doing for basic telephone services.

So at the end of the day, I agree that we need a way to increase the available wireless bandwidth. So does the U.S. government, as the FCC delivered its National Broadband Plan to Congress in March. The initiative seeks to make an additional 500 MHz of spectrum available for broadband within the next 10 years.

Unfortunately, I do not know that the National Broadband Plan can come to fruition on time, and I am not sure it is the right approach. The cellular service providers do have other alternatives to boost aggregate bandwidth.

For starters, we need to make better use of Wi-Fi. In my home, I never use mobile broadband. My Palm Pre connects to my Wi-Fi network. I connect that way, because the user experience is far better. I get e-mail delivered faster, and if I need to look up a fact on the Internet while watching a sporting event, I get a great Web-surfing experience.

But even for cellular-delivered Web access, the carriers have the option of adding towers. The cellular scheme was conceived to allow reuse of spectrum in a honeycomb layout. The carriers can add more granularity and bandwidth by reducing the coverage area that an antenna serves and packing cells more densely. Admittedly, what I suggest may not work in dense population centers such as midtown Manhattan where the carriers have already done what I suggest. However, I ran a search on the Antenna Search Web and on Sprint’s Web site, and my carrier only has two towers within a five mile radius of my home.

We also cannot yet judge the impact of the 4G services. Spring and Clearwire are still rolling out their WiMAX services, and Verizon is poised to start an LTE deployment later this year. Sprint has been through some very tough times of late – losing subscribers faster than it can gain them. But it has an incredible amount of spectrum across the U.S. Purely from a broadband perspective, WiMAX may prove superior to LTE.

It could be that we have the needed spectrum allocated but just need the carriers to make the best use of that spectrum. The 4G services are a start. However, the carriers need to continue and expand their own participation in public Wi-Fi networks. AT&T is doing so, but the others are lagging. Finally, we need to remember that when available, a wired connection is almost always a better option. Indeed, I am more interested in when AT&T will get fiber-base U-verse service to my home than I am in when 4G service is offered.