Next Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission in Washington will start taking bids to auction off television spectrum to wireless phone companies.
That spectrum could allow wireless providers to offer cell phones that do much of what hardwired broadband connections do now.
In the meantime, Fairpoint Communications officials have promised New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont regulators that if they take over Verizon’s traditional phone service, they’ll extend the reach of its broadband coverage.
But it’s an open question whether this strategy will succeed given the future direction of wireless phone service.
New Hampshire Public Radio’ David Darman has more.
Talk to a representative from the wireless phone industry, and the spectrum that the FCC will be auctioning can’t help but lead to great things.
Here’s Joe Farren of CTIA the Wireless Association.
The radio waves can travel much, much farther in this spectrum band. It can travel through concrete and just generally allow for the continued rollout of internet broadband services that more and more people are getting from their wireless phone.
Wireless customers are already using their phones to send pictures, listen to downloaded music, and send text messages.
The new phones will just extend that ability and get to hard to reach places, such as rural areas.
Many big firms, like AT&T, Verizon, and Google have gotten in line at the FCC to possibly bid on pieces of the spectrum.
Patrick Donovan of the Telecommunications Industry Association says if you want to know what new phones might do, look at service that Sprint Nextel already provides to some of its customers.
You’ll feel like your using wifi technology. But instead of being wifi where you have to sit in a coffee house or…you’re just in your house on your computer, WIMAX…it travels a few miles. And so you can be basically sitting on a train and on a train from D.C. up to boston and never lose internet access.
In testimony before state regulators, Fairpoint Communications officials have promised to extend the availability of DSL services to parts of New Hampshire that lack high speed internet.
The company would provide that service on the wired network it wants to buys from Verizon.
Blair Levin (Le Vin), a telecommunication analyst at Stifel Nicolaus in Washington says companies like Fairpoint have to offer high speed broadband to survive.
He says that’s because about eight percent of customers leave the traditional phone system every year.
If I were running any wireline company anywhere in the united states I would be worried long term about where the voice business is because it seems to me that voice is moving toward a mobile, wireless service. The question is whether there is a broadband service that by virtue of the wire you can do better than the wireless service….so, …the auction itself wouldn’t worry me as much as the general trend of voice revenues moving from wires to wireless.
Verizon, and Fairpoint if it takes over, already has to compete against Comcast for phone and internet service, and against satellite t-v providers.
The wireless companies will simply be another competitor.
Bob Williams at Consumers Union, which publishes Consumers Reports, says he thinks Fairpoint’s hard wired broadband service would still have an advantage over any new wireless service.
Wireless internet is really, really slower than even dsl and it’s certainly slower than cable high speed internet. So, I mean it is not…comparable yet as far as speed and capacity goes.
Wireless signals can also be downloaded easily, so they are not as secure as hard wired connections.
Of course, the FCC auction could let wireless providers make their phones more powerful and maybe even more secure.
And wireless phone internet connections may someday get as good or better than typical DSL service.
Attorney Phil Weiser at the University of Colorado Law School has written a book on the telecommunications industry in the digital age.
He says even with the FCC auction coming, he wouldn’t count out traditional phone companies like Verizon, or Fairpoint.
The betting money is that wired connections are still going to be a good bet because with a wired connection you have more control of the quality of service and you may well have more ability to pump up the bandwith. And the fear is that in wireless contexts the service quality won’t be as constant and the bandwith levels won’t be as high.
The FCC auction of spectrum could end up taking several weeks.
And any new phones using that spectrum are probably at least two years away.
