MuniWireless

“I believe that the biggest threat to the future of mobile in America is the looming spectrum crisis.” – FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, October 2009

Is the wireless world running out of available airwaves? From a certain perspective, it might seem that way. The struggles of AT&T’s attempts to keep its iPhone customers happy have become a national news story, and government officials are already working on plans to free up more wireless spectrum for use by mobile broadband providers, anticipating…

With one month to go in 2009, we still haven’t heard anything official about those live Long Term Evolution (LTE) trials that Verizon is supposed to be conducting in Seattle and Boston before the end of the year. But from repeat visits to the Verizon LTE informational website we are now learning that if and when Verizon does actually launch commercial LTE services, you will probably have to pony up for a “hybrid” 3G/4G plan that offers benefits both for…

When we heard Clearwire’s Hope Cochran was a no-show at last week’s Open Mobile Summit due to a last-minute trip to New York, we knew something was up — and since Cochran is Clearwire’s senior VP for finance and treasury, it (apparently) had something to do with money talks, specifically the kind that helps you keep building those costly consumer wireless networks.

On Sunday the Wall Street Journal was reporting that Sprint, Intel, Comcast and others will soon be investing another…

Reading through the very positive story in Telephony about how AT&T is “doubling” its network capacity, and wondering where reporter Kevin Fitchard — usually pretty solid in things telecom — gets the numbers to back up his assertation that AT&T “has reams of cellular and PCS spectrum” that it could throw at digital data should its 3G networks clog up more than they already are now.

For one, I don’t believe that AT&T has “reams” of spectrum, at any bandwidth that…