back to article Intelsat and Intel reckon satellite spectrum could help with 5G's coming capacity crunch

Intelsat and Intel reckon there's a chunk of spectrum currently devoted to satellite operations that could be useful for capacity-starved mobile comms. The two (unrelated) outfits have submitted a joint proposal to the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), asking that it consider clearing some C-band …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Clearing downlinks in specific areas??

    How is that supposed to work? Surely most of the C band downlinks cover the whole US, and thus can't be "cleared" in specific areas.

    I guess what they mean is that in certain areas where they want to use those frequencies, they pay anyone with a C band dish to use other means to receive their data, so they can have cell towers use those frequencies which will make C band reception with a dish impossible.

    Good luck with that, the reason C band gets such use is because it is much more immune to rain outages than higher frequencies. I guess they can hope everyone using C band in a metro area can get the same thing via fiber, because they aren't going to consider a different satellite frequency at all equivalent.

    I'll bet the FCC denies it anyway, there will be a lot of public comment against this scheme - even if you clear off current users once you allocate that frequency to cellular in a given area you also lock out all future possibility of receiving C band in that area. This sounds like a terrible idea, and should be shot down!

  2. defiler

    I keep telling people

    There's only so much spectrum to pass around.

    Surely the sane urban solution is more towers at a lower power, handling fewer users? And for people to accept that eventually these things get full. Also for people with static applications to use a wire...

    Aren't the smart electricity/gas meters supposed to report via GPRS? Because once they're rolled out they'll be in the field for a long time, tying up that spectrum and forcing the mobile phone operators to support GPRS for decades. That can't help - it'd be like having an 802.11b device permanently on your wireless...

    1. Knoydart

      Re: I keep telling people

      You can now run a GPRS carrier (2G low speed data) among a 4G carrier with almost no impact on the 4G services. Therefore legacy smart meters and other GPRS connections can keep their low speed, rarely polled devices (eg once or twice a day for an ID, usage breakdown and checksum) going for many years to come.

    2. Fatman

      Re: I keep telling people

      <quote>There's only so much spectrum to pass around.</quote>

      Quite right!!!

      Now, if those greedy telco/cableco monopolies really wanted spectrum, they would provide ALL residents in their service area OTA TV for free in exchange for the TV frequencies in the UHF band in their service area.

      But they won't do it.

      And you are right, it will probably take more masts and smaller cells to cover an area, and then NIMBY sets in. "Can't have those GAWD-awful masts next door, it will ruin my property values."

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like