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Sprint To Detail 4G Strategy: WiMAX?

Sprint plans to announce the details of its much-anticipated 4G network in a conference later today, and the company has been trialling various technologies including WiMAX, Qualcomm-backed technologies, and IP Wireless’ technology, among others.

Some are saying that Sprint has chosen WiMAX, partly to avoid the Qualcomm royalty ecosystem, where Qualcomm takes a percentage of every handset sold. We called Sprint and they wouldn’t comment on the technology choice, but we’ll bring you more details later in the day.

If it’s true, that’s another public strike against Qualcomm’s high fees, which seem to be riling carriers in developing markets. Though, Qualcomm also has a good business with Sprint for its CDMA network, and Sprint is even upgrading its high speed EVDO service earlier than expected by the end of this year. It’s not too big a suprise that Sprint would not want to keep shelling out money to the same company if there are other comparable technologies available.

If Sprint has chosen WiMAX it would be a major win for Intel and the like that have been trying to push the technology by massive investment. If a company like Nortel could manage to win the contract it would do wonders for its attempts at a turn around.

Sprint has been mulling over its technology choice for awhile. Last January Sprint’s COO Len Lauer made a speech at CTIA laying out Sprint’s plans for its 4G network, which will run over 2.5 GHz spectrum that the company owns. At that time Lauer said the company will use its partnership with cable for exclusive media content, and will transition its media and mobile TV services to the new network when the 3G network gets too crowded. He said the network could launch as soon as 2008 and the entertainment services might be sold for a monthly charge of between $20 and $40 a month.

In an interview later that day he told me the 4G network would likely cost upwards of $800 million to build — the fee that Qualcomm has said it is spending on its MediaFLO network in the U.S. With Sprint reporting pretty tepid earnings last week, does the company really need to be spending that much on an experimental technology that has yet to prove itself in the market?

Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 8th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and WiMAX and Cellular and spectrum and EVDO.

Spectrum Prices Down?

The wireless spectrum auction is next Wednesday, and analysts from UBS have a taken a look at the data and given us some of their thoughts. A key point is that the analysts predict that the overall prices paid for spectrum are likely to be lower compared to prior auctions, given the large amount of spectrum for sale is bigger than the demand from wireless carriers.

“We estimate that Auction 66 will bring in net proceeds of $7 to $10 billion, which equates to roughly $0.25-$0.40 per MHz/per POP.” Other estimates had previously put the total government take away as high as $15 billion.

The report also says that T-Mobile could be an aggressive bidder, as it tries to reverse its position as the weakest spectrum holder among the national operators. And Wireless DBS (the consortium tied to Echostar and DirecTV among others) is also likely to be an aggressive bidder, says UBS.

The lower prices are good news for the bidders, but not so great news for the government, which gets the proceeds. We’ll bring you more next week, before the big day.

Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Unwired and spectrum.

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Wireless Spectrum Bidders Put Down Billions

The FCC just released a list of 168 qualified bidders for the AWS spectrum auction coming up on August 9th, and also announced that the process will not involve the controversial blind bidding. We’ve been following the companies interested in bidding pretty closely, and there were a few surprises in the FCC filings, including a group tied to Rupert Murdoch, DirecTV and Echostar, which put down almost a billion dollars that it can use to bid on spectrum.

Wireless DBS, the consortium tied to Echostar, DirecTV, News Corp, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Echostar’s Charles Ergen, qualified to bid and paid one of the largest upfront payments out of the list of interested bidders, of $972.55 million. The group’s auction plans might involve WiMAX, and prove to be crucial to these companies future as triple play becomes common place. (The upfront payment is refundable if the company doesn’t win the specturm it desires, but could be an indicator of how much the companies are willing to spend.)

The cable consortium SpectrumCo, tied to cable companies Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner Cable and Comcast CEO and Chairman Brian Roberts, among others, qualified to bid and put down another large upfront payment of $637.71 million. Other cable groups like the Washington Post’s Cable One qualified and paid an upfront payment of $3.5 million. The Dolan Family, tied to Charles Dolan, Cablevisionâ€™s Chairman, qualified and paid an upfront fee of $149.98 million.

Most of the largest U.S. phone companies qualified. T-Mobile paid an upfront fee of $583.52 million, Cingular put down $500 million, and a company tied to Verizon paid an upfront fee of $383.34 million.

The company tied to Paul Allen, Bend Cable Communications, that we previously profiled, qualified to bid, and paid an upfront fee of $176,000. At least four companies backed by spectrum speculator “Super Mario” Gabelli qualified to bid, paid a total of $3 million in upfront payments. Controversial wireless bidder Allen Salmasi and Nextwave Telecom, qualified to bid through a company called AWS Wireless, and that group put down $142.83 million.

The group called POP Wireless, backed by BPL company Current Communications, which is funded by Google and Earthlink, that we profiled earlier, was listed as “not qualified to bid.” We’ll follow up with more on the upcoming auction before the big day.

Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 29th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Cablevision and Cable Cos and verizon and PhoneCo and spectrum and broadband over powerline.

Current Co. Eyes Wireless Spectrum

Today is the deadline for updating applications for the upcoming wireless spectrum auction, but we thought we’d dig through some more spectrum documents. One bidding team caught our eye. Telecom investor Willian Berkman couldn’t let Paul Allen get all the wireless action without a fight.

According to FCC filings a consortium backed by William Berkman, and the broadband over power lines company Current Communications Group that he co-founded and is Chairman, and including Current investors Goldman Sachs and TXU Utility Services, is looking to bid in the upcoming wireless spectrum in August. As you might remember, Current is also backed by companies interested in wireless–Google and Earthlink.

While Google’s and Earthlink’s individual investments are not disclosed Current has raised over a hundred million in capital to build its BPL network. There was a lot of speculation over Google joining the spectrum auction–this seems as close as the company was willing to get.

While Current refused our requests for the details on their wireless plans, wireless is already being used in conjunction with broadband over powerlines by companies like Motorola and Communication Technologies Inc (ComTek). BPL runs over electrical outlets and is touted for its ease-of-access, though has few deployments to date.

Wireless could help extend those deployments. ComTek’s VP for Broadband, Walt Adams, said in a few cases the company is already powering WiFi hotspots with BPL, and that the company is planning to grow its wireless offering later this year. So if Berkman and Current buy some wireless spectrum, the company’s slow-moving BPL plans could get a real boost.

For now how the consortium plans to use any wireless spectrum in tandem with their BPL plans remains unclear. The application is officially incomplete but the company has until 6PM today to update the filing.

Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 18th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Wired and Google and Earthlink and Wireless Broadband and spectrum and broadband over powerline.

Gabelli Loses $130M, Gambles More on Spectrum

FCC’s spectrum auction process is far from perfect. Mario Gabelli, a pundit turned spectrum speculator is a perfect example of someone with deep pockets can rig the game in their favor.

The FCC’s system of auctioning off the country’s spectrum is far from perfect. Yesterday a U.S. district court approved a settlement that said New York money manager Mario “Super Mario” Gabelli and his army of affiliate companies have to pay $130 million for gaming the auction system several years back.

According to the New York Times, the lawsuit was filed against the Wall Street investor by “whistle-blower, Russell Taylor III, a lawyer who was involved in the wireless spectrum auction,” five years ago under the False claims Act.

Gabelli, seemingly gamed the system by setting up small companies, whose sole purpose was to grab spectrum, possibly to resell that at higher prices. By claiming “designated entity” status a company can buy spectrum at a lower cost and then later resell it for a massive profit.

(We have put together a list of his new bets, and you can read them after the fold.)

While the FCC has changed some of these rules, we’ll soon see how effective the new plans are. That’s because Gabelli and his crew have once again filed to bid on spectrum for the Advanced Wireless Spectrum auction, which will take place in August.

Shouldn’t there be rules that should prevent anyone who has been fined for abusing the system for trying again. We checked the records, and found a whopping 12 companies backed by Gabelli. (See the list of companies backed by Gabelli gang after the fold.)

If any of these companies win big in the upcoming election, we can probably assume that the spectrum will get flipped shortly after. None of Gabelli’s applications were accepted yet and were all labelled “incomplete,” but the company can resubmit over the coming days. This time around Gabelli isn’t pleading the “DE” status as a leg-up, but will likely have some other money-making scheme to generate cash.

The list of names includes: