Telcotrash

Wireless Wars

June 29, the date of the FCC Auction 66, is approaching, and numerous non-industry players could potentially line up to acquire spectrum licenses in the 1710-1755 MHz and 2110-2155 MHz band. The permissible operations of this band comprise what the FCC calls "Advanced Wireless Services", which is

"the collective term used for new and innovative fixed and mobile terrestrial wireless applications using bandwidth that is sufficient for the provision of a variety of applications including those using voice and data (such as internet browsing, message services, and full-motion video) content"

In other words, there are virtually no limitations in terms of what technology and services can be deployed, which drives the option value of this spectrum (here and here) up. In fact, Clearwire's IPO seems to have been timed in a manner to allow McCaw's venture to use the IPO proceeds for acquiring spectrum in the AWS auction, at least so writes Business Week. I previously mentioned how TimeWarner has filed an application for the AWS auction, Business Weeks extends the list of the possible participants to Microsoft, News Corp, Leap Wireless and - tada - Google, though not directly, but through EarthLink, which declined to comment on any participation in the auction.

Bottom line is that possibly a lot of money might be thrown at these frequencies, with new players othern than the CellCos entering the market. My prediction though is that whatever services these companies are looking to deploy, voice will be among them. And given that the winners of the frequencies might turn out to be non-traditional wireless carriers, it could be a huge opportunity for wireless VoIP.

In addition, what I also find interesting is the Business Week article mentioning that Comsearch, a cosulting firm, is working with several of the bidders. The FCC rules prohibit that bidders communicate with each other, be it directly or through an intermediary. Comsearch better have some big Chinese Walls...

Clearwire IPO

Wireless broadband operator Clearwire is going public (link to the S-1 filing), with a proposed maximum offering price of $400 Mio. Om Malik has the complete story.

Some key 2005 data from the S-1 filing:

• $33.5 Mio. Revenues (of which only $8.5 service revenues, the rest comes from equipment sales, which I assume are related to NextNet)
• Total opex $160.7 Mio.
• Operating loss $127,2 Mio.
• Net loss $139,50 Mio.
• Net loss per common share $0.66
• Capex $132.7 Mio. (cumulative since October 27, 2003 ~$145 Mio.)
• Covered population in the US: 3.8 Mio
• Covered households in the US: 1.5 Mio
• Subscribers: 562,000

Some more math on these figures to follow.

Cequint raises series A for mobile city ID application

This is an interesting one, though I don't really what to think of it: Seattle-based Cequint has raised $505K of a $1.5M Series A round (via VentureWire). Backers include Alco Investment, BioNet Systems and The Benaroya Co. Cequint "develops and markets software and hardware applications that enhance wireless mobile devices". alarm:clock has more background information on Cequint's management.

In particular, Cequint has a technology that automatically displays the corresponding US or Canadian city and state of an incoming call. The value-add of this technology, according to Cequint, is that 95% of cell phone users would like to recognize the area code when receiving a call, but there are over 350 area codes now in the US and Canada, and they are impossible to remember. Cequint solve this problem as they have a database (let me guess, it comprises over 350 records?) which they access through a lookup algorithm (must be some very exclusive piece of SQL).

I think it is a fancy feature and I probably wouldn't mind having it. What I do not understand if Cequint is actually able to display the real location of a caller: let's say I live in New York, but have a Vonage account with a 415 area code (San Francisco) - would Cequint display New York or San Francisco in that case? If it displayed San Francisco, the information would be misleading. Maybe I am getting this wrong, but if they did however display New York, then this would be like a 911 feature - and that might get Cequint some positive attention.

In any case, the Cequint research indicates that people seem to value the information about a caller's location when receiving a call. I wonder if there are any other opportunities and ways out there to monetize this.

TimeWarner considering bidding for AWS spectrum

So the cable industry's worst-kept secret is out: according to BetaNews, TimeWarner, or more specifically its subsidiary Time Warner Cable is considering bidding in the AWS auctions, therefore going for spectrum and leaving the laborous home of digging and trenching.

"The company's chief executive Glenn Britt made the announcement at a meeting of investors, saying, "we're evaluating whether it would make sense for [us to bid on] wireless spectrum.""

Right. Only evaluating. Try asking John Garcia what he thinks about it - Garcia is heading a joint venture between Sprint Nextel Corp. and pretty much all the US cable companies. The venture is Sprint Nextel's and the CableCo's shot at delivering fixed wireline convergence. So one of the cables considering buying spectrum is basically a situation like back in the 90s, when Vodafone and Mannesmann D2 had a gentleman's agreement not to fool around in each other's backyard, and then Mannesmann D2 evaluated buying Orange, right on Vodafone's home market in the UK - the rest is history.

And since all the other important CableCos (Comcast, Cox, Advance/Newhouse) are in the JV as well, one might ask if their are only considering "evaluating" it, too.

Some background: The AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) auction, which can be looked up on the FCC's auction page, is taking place on June 29, 2006 and is putting the AWS spectrum (see plan as pdf) in the 1710-1755 and 2110-2155 MHz band up for sale, a total of 90 MHz. Great spectrum for wireless broadband, as it comes with a good mix of propagation characteristics and throughput, though it's "only" paired, so it provides somewhat less flexibility in terms of managing up- and downlink channel bandwidth compared to unpaired spectrum (paired spectrum basically pre-determines the use of FDD, which is considered to a less efficient duplexing method).

Note that the 2.1 GHz band is not covered by the WiMAX specifications (2.5 GHz, 3.5 GHz, 5.8 GHz). But the pockets and scale of a Time Warner could very well makes this possible. An alternative would be Flash-OFDM by Flarion/Qualcomm.

Bottome line is that after the 2004 boom and 2005 bust of wireless broadband, fueled by WiMAX, an announcement like this puts credibility into the market. But it probably gets some people pretty nervous, too.