View: Search & Rescue

Where, oh where, will wireless carriers find spectrum? Perhaps the best place to start is where they won’t get it.

First, they won’t get it from the Department of Defense. For the moment and the foreseeable future, the DoD doesn’t want to be bothered with a change as huge as this when they are out chasing elusive terrorists.

Wireless carriers aren’t going to get it from instructional TV or MMDS folks. Yesterday, the FCC said it would not relocate occupants of the 2500MHz-2690MHz band.

The 700MHz band is probably the best hope. Although there’s respite there, it’s a distant, flickering hope, hugely dependent on how motivated broadcasters are to clear out. Further, their deadline isn’t until 2006.

Then there’s spectrum from the NextWave deal. The FCC and lawyers for NextWave currently are negotiating a settlement that looks more real by the moment. If they do lock down on a figure this week, it could provide more immediate relief for some of the carriers such as Verizon that bid in the re-auction. However, the relief for the industry will be about as temporary as calamine lotion is for the itch of poison ivy.

Lifting the spectrum cap that now hamstrings carriers is an option. In a Verizon economic report from earlier this year, it suggested that the 45MHz cap is anti-competitive and hinders economic development. AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Nextel, Sprint PCS and Verizon provide the majority of nationwide service, with smaller regional carriers filling in. The report suggests that the cap stifles larger carriers from going beyond a certain point with subscriber additions and advanced services.

In top-5 carrier war rooms around the United States, you know they are eyeballing which smaller carriers offer market-specific spectrum relief. Should the cap tip, it will set off a flurry of carrier merger and acquisitions in a mad dash for spectrum manna. That’s what the smaller carriers fear most. They feel they offer a competitive edge in their smaller, focused operations and don’t want to be squeezed out of the marketplace by carriers looking to top off their spectrum reserves.

In the spectrum game, there are no certainties; only wishful thinking and hopeful anticipation. There’s one caveat, however. The difference now is that the current administration in Washington, DC, is more aware of wireless as a vital communications enabler.

Given that this war the United States is waging has more to do with intelligence and intrigue than missiles and tanks, wireless technology will play an essential role. I can’t imagine a special agent trying to call his commander as he’s closing in on his target only to be stymied by poor or no service. Further, our defense systems will get up close and personal with the current travails of disparate wireless technologies around the world. With such huge interests leaning on wireless and experiencing it as a vital tool, they will undoubtedly start complaining to the wireless industry to step up developments. When they do, the wireless industry suddenly will have bargaining power they didn’t have before.