In my initial reaction, I found the recent AWS spectrum auctions disappointing as essentially all the spectrum went to existing players — no new competitors emerged. But perhaps I shouldn’t be so disappointed.
The first bit of good news is that T-Mobile US picked up a substantial swath (20 MHz) of spectrum in areas where they lacked coverage. They are now in a position to provide competitive national coverage.
The second is the Sprint-CableCo joint venture (Spectrum Co.) that won spectrum is mostly owned by the cable companies (Sprint has only 5%). That means the cable companies are serious about participating, in turn suggesting we will have four viable national wireless competitors for some time to come — at least through the next capital investment cycle.
Their names may change. Sprint might be taken over by a cable consortium. But there should four national players:
- Cingular (AT&T) deploying W-CDMA with HSDPA and then HSUPA
- Verizon adding Rev A & then Rev B to their CDMA 2000 EVDO base
- Sprint plus cable partners deploying EVDO Rev A plus WiMAX on Sprint's 2.5 MHz spectrum
- T-Mobile US presumably deploying W-CDMA with HSDPA and then HSUPA
Besides the four national contenders listed above, many locations will have a 2nd tier mobile carrier (like Leap Wireless or MetroPCS), Clearwire Communications should have national reach and WiFi hotspots will continue to proliferate.
That's much better than fixed broadband access which remains hostage to a duopoly — actually two monopolies (cable & ILEC) operating under different legal and regulatory schemes, that are just beginning to compete.
How long will it take? Perhaps the turning point will be HSUPA technology (trials in 2008, widespread deployment by 2010?) which offers several hundred Kbps on the uplink. That's enough headroom for 3rd party VoIP to "just work." Competition will make it hard to maintain a walled garden. Expect some real turbulence in the market!
Of course wireless broadband access technology will always lag fiber access technology, but at least at the moment, it appears we'll have a lot more competition, and a lot more excitement, in wireless access than we'll ever get in fixed access.
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