back to article FCC, Google cast eye over millimetre wireless

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is firing up an investigation into millimetre-wave frequency spectrum allocations, and Google has filed an application to fool around with the same band. The FCC “notice of inquiry” is intended to work out what the US's regulatory response will be to the use of frequencies beyond …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google 'invents' semi-microwave comms

    Patents pending no doubt.

    I seem to recall a project some 30+years ago called 'MetroWave' where an Ethernet network was exended to cover the whole of a Golf Course (yes it was in the USA) so that real time Stock Market data could be sent each Tee. Low power Microwave links were used. 80Ghz is getting close to microwave frequencies.

    This was when mobile phones were actually 'car Phones'.

    What goes around, comes around.

    But the Chocolate factory will have to be prepared for lots of NIMBYisms if/when they want to roll this out. Imagine Cell towers every 500M... Won't someone think of the Children?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is 5G actually necessary?

    R and D tends to overshoot requirements because of investment gearing up to generate indefinite future returns through a cycle of repeated refinements when the world is usually looking to solve a current problem that gets less urgent as the technology gets better.

    That's where we are with processors (Moores Law is dying well before technological limits because R and D costs go ever upwards while higher processing power just isn't as urgent as it used to be).

    It's where we are with smartphones (with new features getting ever less compelling).

    It's where we are with HDTV. Is 4k really going to shift stock the way HD did? I just don't see it.

    Similarly with bandwidth. I think there's an urgent need at the aggregation layer to get more capacity so that reliable 3 or 4g to a mass audience (of people and things) is possible but I just don't think anyone cares about downloading a film in 4 seconds on their phone or getting UHDTV delivered to a device that's too small for them to notice.

    If 5G licenses sell for silly money I can see lots of providers going bankrupt whenever they make a big marketing push and find noone cares.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      640K should be enough for anybody.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I'll take your '640k should be enough for anybody' and raise you several catastrophic examples of 'if we build a giant capacity fibre network then we're sure to find some customers before we go bankrupt trying to pay off the capital costs'.

        When the demand for something isn't pressing fronting huge amounts of money to get in front of it is pretty risky.

        Getting wireless services up to a reliable standard for video streaming and calling is pressing (not in the sense that the world can't survive without it, but in the sense that people will pay good money for the service). Getting it beyond there into uhdtv? I'm sceptical. Equally I can't think of any other service that is bandwidth hungry to the anticipated degree.

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Your failure of imagination doesn't define reality.

          I can come up with quite a few services that are highly bandwidth constrained in today's world, especially via mobile. But then, I'm not limited to conceptualizing mobile as an entertainment salve for the masses. We've a ways to go before we've reached the end of history, or even of innovation in computer science.

          But if you've a yen to stand up an say to us all that there is nothing left to invent to drive demand for 5G, please drop the Anonymous Coward and give us your real name. That way we can hold you to it. Until then, you're just one more voice afraid of the future, squeaking from behind the veil of anonymity hoping to hold it back.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            If I stand up, then typing gets more difficult (bad back and all).

            Unusually strident commentary on your part, though. I'll forgive the strawman that I'm claiming the end of history by pointing out that higher priorities for innovation are likely to spring up as the mobile sector matures and acknowledge the reasonable chance that I'm wrong (though I rate it at quite a way less than 50%, and predict problems ahead for mobile network providers when consumers resist higher data charges to get network capacity up to even 4G readiness).

            The veil of anonymity is work relevant, and the idea that anyone is going to remember what got said on a forum 5 years ago and come back to attribute it to you because you're using your real name is fairly silly, so that I can't do.

            1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

              So in other words "here is a vague assertion that bandwidth requirements won't grow to such a point that 5G is required, but I'm completely unwilling to back it up in any way save to assert my own lack of imagination". Wow. That's awesome.

              I love how you slipped in the "5G will inevitably cost more" there too. Brilliant. Can your next brilliant riposte please be in ALL CAPS or at least ranDomly Mixed casE? You can even throw in some really bad spelling too. Then I can nominate you for CoTW. And it's only Monday!

            2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

              I should point out that I have a list of uses for the kind of bandwidth - and small cell isolation - that 5G will bring. Starting with telepresence/telemedicine, but also moving into various elements of physical infrastructure automation and losing the dependance on fixed wire infrastructure, especially as portable computers and mobiles get to the point of being able to run multiple virtual machines and carry around terabytes of storage.

              Hybrid VDI instances are the next gen stuff. Where the VM is run locally but change blocks are synced back, and patches/centralized updated move down in the same way. Application, content and data delivery is increasingly occurring from "the cloud", and there's a hell of a lot more to mobile network device usage than the average smartphone.

              4G, even if fully realized, isn't nearly enough to meet today's demands. We're still hamstrung by these shared networks with low bandwidth. 5G just might get us to the point that we can do on mobile what we can do today on wired, but technology moves ahead, and at a rapid pace.

              It's insane to think that we'll just stand still because you can only conceive of data networks as being a transmission vector for entertainment. Our whole society is changing. We're moving away from cities designed for long commutes, and even from having to be in the office at all. That will change everything about how we use data. As will the coming "instrumentation" of our everyday lives and the ongoing boom in robotics.

              The age of information is not done. Not by a long shot.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                It all depends what 5G turns out to be. If it turns out to be a more efficient way of delivery 4G type speeds to a larger audience then I've probably irritated you unnecessarily and we agree on at least some of the details. If, as I suspect, it will turn into an attempt to deliver super-fast speeds to mobile devices then my original assertion stands.

                I don't see aggregate bandwidth demand going anywhere but up at an exponential rate with IoT and the increasing adoption of video for any number of things, I just think that the push will be toward getting adequate 3 and 4G services to a wider audience rather than touting ever faster speeds to a relatively small portion of the market who (I surmise) will become less willing to pay a premium for it as use cases become less compelling.

                It's possible that currently being in Bangalore where 3G services are both ultra-cheap and extremely patchy due to network overloading at peak times has coloured my viewpoint on this, but I do think that enterprise high bandwidth use cases such as VDI just won't see wireless as reliable enough for the foreseeable future and so won't be an investment driver for the technology.

                Enterprise use cases like telemetry for IoT will absolutely push up aggregate bandwidth demand and I don't see any let up in the age of information, but I think the ones that win out will be relatively light on data transfer and the limitations of my imagination can't find a mass-market use case for a super-high bandwidth Internet Thing.

                Running telepresence (and, by extension, telemedicine) on wireless feels like a current technology but flaky reliability thing, rather than a super-duper fast connection speed thing and especially given that thinly populated rural areas are a prime driver in both cases (ie. working from Cornwall for your London law firm or supplementing flying doctor services in the outback) I see the challenge as a classic infrastructure question of existing technology coverage and investment rather than a high technology question.

                That's why I said in my first post that building networks which can reliably support increased aggregate data flow and reach will add more value and make the networks more money than rolling out the first 5G service to great marketing fanfare (unless they pull in Kevin Bacon again, in which case all bets are off).

                Were there enough capitals there?

                1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                  "It all depends what 5G turns out to be."

                  ...you're trying to debate this without having researched the proposals that are on the table? Let's be clear: 5G is about delivering up to 10Gbit per cell to far more devices than 4G could dream, largely by using a much higher number of smaller cells scattered all over hell and back. That's why they want higher frequencies; so that you don't end up with cells overlapping in urban areas. Read this, then we'll have a talk.

                  "It's possible that currently being in Bangalore where 3G services are both ultra-cheap and extremely patchy due to network overloading at peak times has coloured my viewpoint on this, but I do think that enterprise high bandwidth use cases such as VDI just won't see wireless as reliable enough for the foreseeable future and so won't be an investment driver for the technology."

                  What can I say except "you're painfully, overwhelmingly wrong". 3G services run on long penetration waves. They are slower than sin, and the technologies themselves are utter shit for dealing with an overload of devices. That's like comparing a mid-urban 17th century cobblestone road to a fully modern 18 lane freeway. Even if the traffic volumes are radically different, the freeway is dramatically differently designed - off ramps, no vendors in the streets, banning donkeys and carts, etc - that it just moves traffic more efficiently.

                  5G is supposed to be the equivalent of taking a modern 4G network and cutting the cell sizes down to 1/10th, while boosting the theoretical maximum cell capacity by 10x. All with a layer of additional technologies to help prevent interference, signal degradation and ensure better handoff.

                  So yeah, you're just wrong. "high bandwidth" "enterprise" workloads like VDI - which by the way, is rather low bandwidth and increasingly used by consumers, at least here in North America - actually work pretty well over 4G. They'll work far better over 5G.

                  I'm sorry you live in a technological armpit. I really am. But much of the rest of the world simply doesn't suffer those issues. Canada, for example, has LTE that works like a sonofabitch, and 5G will be absolutely transformative for us.

                  So yes, people are going to use mobiles for more than checking mail and browsing webpages, slowly. Maybe, one day, they'll install mobile that's not shite where you are too.

                  But "mobile that's not shit" technology already does exist. You need carriers that aren't shite. (Ones that split the cells and size appropriately) and you need a frequency layout that allows for "not shite" (high frequencies in urban areas to allow for smaller cells, etc.)

                  Some of us have these. We thusly don't have the sorts fo problems you describe, even on modern technology. The issue isn't the tech. It's the implementation. Which means that when 5G comes around, and splits the cells even more, whilst offering far higher bandwidth per cell....

                  ...well, that'll change the world for a lot of us.

                  1. Charles 9

                    Key words being "UP TO". I'll believe it when their claims say "starting at" instead.

                    Remember, once upon a time, 4G was supposed to be "starting at 100Mbit/sec" for mobile applications. The only tech capable of doing that at the time was LTE Advanced, which was still a few years out (and even now isn't quite ready--infrastructure-wise, it's a smallish investment vs. LTE itself, but there's the matter of the phones).

                    And splitting cells? That's a MAJOR infrastructure investment at a time when cellcos are trying to avoid it, having just done the LTE rollout. Good luck convincing them to perform ANOTHER rollout that may not pay off because some new innovation may come along that require even more infrastructure. At this pointk, cellco purses are tight.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    “help get around the technological and practical obstacles”

    Unfortunately, millimeter waves aren't very good at getting around obstacles.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: “help get around the technological and practical obstacles”

      No but they are good for helping to see through clothes and walls!

    2. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      Re: “help get around the technological and practical obstacles”

      "...millimeter waves aren't very good at getting around obstacles."

      Obstacles including molecules of water vapour.

    3. R@ndom One

      Re: “help get around the technological and practical obstacles”

      Millimeter waves are good at seeing through clothes and walls though......

      1. Charles 9

        Re: “help get around the technological and practical obstacles”

        "Millimeter waves are good at seeing through clothes and walls though......"

        At centimeter-range. I don't know what happens when you extend the range to kilometers...

  4. Mage Silver badge
    Boffin

    Yawn

    5.8Ghz and 10.6GHz bands are used terrestrially. (WiFi and LOS Fixed Wireless).

    5.8GHz outdoors is really just Line of Sight. 10.2GHz to 10.6GHz band gives smaller aerial panel arrays and blocked easily by one tree.

    Both only good for roof top or wall fixed aerials.

    Above 10GHz to 400GHz you are looking at HAP, Satellite and Point to point Line of Site.

    5G doesn't exist. If it does it will be about more flexible infrastructure, not faster or higher frequency mobile.

    3.5GHz band has been tried for Mobile and Nomadic, it's rubbish compared to 1.8GHz. Propagation too poor except for fixed wireless.

    Mobile has various bands from 700MHz to 2.6GHz, Operators and Countries use spectrum poorly. There are good arguments that Mobile should be only 880MHz to 2.2GHz (with gaps for DECT and GPS) and a single wholesale infrastructure for best utilisation/spectrum efficiency.

    Regulators want to sell as much spectrum to as many Mobile operators as possible to maximise Licence Revenue. A truly stupid way to assign & manage spectrum

    1. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      Re: "Regulators want to sell as much spectrum..."

      Leases. Even with 10+ year terms. A much better concept than "selling".

      Automatic renewal (with another fee) assuming reasonable behaviour (customer service, reasonable pricing, efficient use). Public hearings for renewal. Warning mechanisms include a shorter renewal term.

      1. Charles 9

        Re: "Regulators want to sell as much spectrum..."

        Except some of the allocations aren't sold but reserved. For example, the US can't use the 1800Mhz bands (LTE band 3 among other things) because it was claimed decades prior...by the military. So there's no way to clear up the space without putting down big-time bucks to test and deploy replacement tech in a time when military budgets are under increasing scrutiny.

        PS. The carriers are not stupid. They don't want to be under the government's eye, so none of them will accept no less than a complete sale. So it becomes an impasse.

  5. Aerial 14
    Unhappy

    Don't forget the Diver

    In this case, the Radio Amateur. There are several blocks for the Ham in the microwave bands.

    Of course, it's a simple matter to take 'em away (as usual).

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