A Visual Guide to AWS

Is there someplace we could download a visible copy of the Spectrum Allocation chart in this article, or is that something proprietary and not to be downloaded? I tried saving a copy and printing it but the details were not visible (it was too small). Thanks.

There are strong rumors that next year Cingular will roll out Wimax services. One of the first will be New York

Why no Alltel 🤨 ? They seemed to me to be one of the biggest players as far as non national providers. And yet no AWS purchases? Not even a newly created small company to help them buy it cheaper. To me that looks like they don't want to spend any of the companies revenue on spectrum possibly to maintain current company value? Perhaps Verizon is plaaning on buying more than just spectrum. Wink Wink 😉 Seeing as how they are already one of Verizon's biggest roaming partners that would explain them being absent from the auction. Verizon's goal seems aim at being the spectrum king.

In other words - in the chart above - phones "listen" on the blue bands, and "talk" on the green bands. Vice-versa for towers (which in industry lingo are called "base stations".)

Scenario:

I am talking to someone on my phone on the 850 band when static starts to come in the listening end, yet when I speak the other party hears me fine.

Is that because my voice is being transmitted in the lower half of 850, therefore able to punch through buildings and go further, but the tower signal, coming on the top half of 850 can't quite connect as well?

Am I putting 2 and 2 together properly, or does the difference of 5-10 MHz not matter nearly that much?

Great article, although it does raise one question for me. In the article, you claim that the AWS spectrum, as well as the spectrum T-Mobile bought, corresponds to the UMTS bands used in Europe (at least the 2100 part), which will make it easy for existing 3G phones to work on AWS spectrum. The quote from the article is: "The upper part does line up perfectly with Europe's UMTS 2100 band, and the lower part does line up with Europe's DCS band. Therefore manufacturers already building GSM+WCDMA "world phones" actually won't have to support any additional frequency bands at all."

In T-Mobile's recent 3G announcement, they claim the AWS spectrum they bought is unfortunately "a few megahertz off from the UMTS 2100 used elsewhere, meaning exis...
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Thanks for breaking these new spectrum details down for us. Very informative.

With the Verizon Wireless license in all of the eastern U.S., will VZW expand into new areas where Alltel already operates, to help competition with Cingular in some markets?

If so, this would be a great advantage to many people, including more choices for consumers.

First off, VERY informative article.

anywho, wasn't the FCC trying to discourage this by getting rid of blind bidding? Barat and that other co. just seem like corporate puppets.

Any word or thoughts on a possible merger btwn Cricket and MetroPCS? they offer the same type of service and i think they are affiliated in some way. if they merged they might be able to offer some better competition to the already established "big boys."