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back to article Oi! 'Hands off America's Wi-Fi spectrum' yells, er, the cable lobby

America's cable broadband lobby has decided it doesn't like proposals for unlicensed LTE, claiming that LTE-U rollouts will interfere with citizens' WiFi kit. LTE-U is a hot topic among spectrum-hungry mobile carriers, since it would let a base station look around, and if it spots radio quiet in (for example) 3 GHz or 5 GHz …

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  1. PushF12
    Alien

    Because it overlaps with cable deployment plans.

    The landline monopolies only care about this because they paid the FCC for short-haul wireless privileges and don't want competing LTE solutions to get a free ride or be competitively inexpensive.

    The American Baby Bells (and their cousin Bell Canada) intend to replace rotting copper infrastructure with short-haul wireless. AT&T is already advertising the next phase of their U-Verse Wireless program in test markets.

    FCC recently decided that 911 requirements on POTS will be derated to let this happen, which was a major regulatory milestone. Legacy customers may be forced off their landline the next time it breaks if LTE short-haul is available.

    3 1 Reply
  2. Martin Summers Silver badge

    It might grab currently unused spectrum. But will it give it back when someone/something else wants to use it? If not, then it's just a land grab.

    1 0 Reply
  3. Adam Azarchs
    Boffin

    What's the point?

    The reason the wifi bands are unlicensed is precisely because they don't have much range. Unless you put a very powerful transmitter in, of course, which you don't want to do on a mobile device. So LTE-U will only get to use that spectrum for people very close (probably not much more than 100m) to the tower. Seems like they'd be better off focusing their efforts elsewhere.

    2 1 Reply
    1. Fatman
      Reply Icon

      Re: What's the point?

      So LTE-U will only get to use that spectrum for people very close (probably not much more than 100m) to the tower. Seems like they'd be better off focusing their efforts elsewhere.

      Chew on this for a second.

      If $TELCO can offline its traffic onto consumer broadband via the use of WiFi in SOHO routers and get that traffic off their networks, why would they NOT want to get THAT FREE LUNCH????

      Are they NOT crying the spectrum shortage blues???? ("Look at all of those 'data hogs', our 3G and 4G systems are SWAMPED!!!!")

      Food for thought.

      2 0 Reply

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