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"$80B" Indian auction could be world changing - or only $12B

Marty Cooper with Dynatac 400-600 million more Indians will connect to the broadband Internet in the next few years, almost all wirelessly. Currently, most Indians have terribly slow net connections. Ambani's new $25B LTE network is coming on stream and will improve things. The 2300 MHz of spectrum on offer is enough to change that. It's four or five times as much as used by all the U.S. carriers. With robust networks, most users soon will be able to watch 4 hours of HD video daily (or other things that need bandwidth.) Without improvements, many are cautious about the cost of a single YouTube video.

The Indian press and analysts are predicting only $12-20B will be raised at the auction. The telcos don't have the cash or borrowing power to bid anything like $80B, more than the total market cap of the companies. The Indians set a reserve price for the different frequencies. If no one one bids that price, the spectrum is held over for another auction in a few years. Not selling all the spectrum this time probably won't have much effect in the long run. They couldn't build out that fast.

The new Indian broadband users may be more than the U.S. and Western Europe combined. Currently, Indian telcos have one of the world's worst ratios of spectrum to users, drastically limiting what users can do.

Going Live: Free Gigabit Wi-Fi to Millions of New Yorkers

Jennie kiosk NY “They're on!” The irrepressible Jennie Bourne wrote me when she connected to one of the first of 7,500 free Gigabit Wi-Fi kiosks here in New York. They are thin, fast, and attractive. Capacity is now 10x what it was a few years ago. The once marginal offering is now robust.

Most of us have Wi-Fi at home and work; add a network like this and you'd rarely need to use expensive LTE bandwidth unless you are out driving. That's great for consumers, frightening for telcos and their stockholders. LinkNYC is crucial to NY's plan to connect everyone. To protect Wi-Fi, City Counsel Maya Wiley has become a player in 3GPP & IEEE standards. See 8,550,405 New Yorkers: Protect WiFi from LTE-U/LAA. LinkNYC is working far below -72 dBm and 3GPP threatens that. Today's WiFi can work at -72 dBm and even -90 dBm

How fast is it? Miles Green writes, "We returned from a week long vacation and found that it took about three hours for our trip photos to upload to iCloud via our home cable internet service. That same transfer made on a LinkNYC connection was able to complete in about two minutes." The network isn't loaded yet and Green is a company engineer, but I think you get the point.

I believe it is stupid not to build a Wi-Fi network like this in almost every city, whether public or private.

3 part series on LinkNYC

Not likely an $86B Auction: Quick thoughts on what the future Nobelist is doing

Vickrey at Columbia The word on the street is the telcos won't bid the $86B the broadcasters want and the auction may go on until next year. That would result in a much lower figure for far less than the 120 MHz on offer. Harold Feld wonders if the broadcasters have priced themselves out.

Mike Calabrese, one of the best in D.C., tweets "likely to end up selling 70 MHz for $30-40B by mid/late 2017." John Hodulik and Craig Moffett, two of the best on Wall Street, think the three key bidders - Verizon, AT&T & T-Mobile - don't want to spend more than $30B. Higher totals are unlikely unless others - Dish, Comcast, ? - decide to come in and none are certain.

Caution, please. The last auction came in three times as high as I - and most of the experts above - expected.

8,550,405 New Yorkers: Protect WiFi from LTE-U/LAA

NYC Wifi Mayor's Counsel Maya Wiley throws a monkey wrench at 3GPP, IEEE, and FCC. 7500 free gigabit Wi-Fi kiosks are sprouting around New York City. The city expects they will allow many unconnected New Yorkers to go online, despite the high prices of Verizon and the cable guys.

Why buy an expensive wireless plan if you can connect via WiFi in home, office, and most of the city? Playing defense, Verizon has mounted a multi-million dollar campaign to divert much of the WiFi spectrum to the four big wireless carriers. The carriers could easily absorb half the Wi-Fi bandwidth using the wide 40 MHz channels. Counsel Wiley writes:

"New York City is committed to ensuring digital inclusion of all our residents, no matter their zip code or income. … Therefore, the city has embarked on an aggressive effort to achieve universal broadband for all New Yorker. … WiFi is a central part of this effort and any technological interference with our ability to deliver free and affordable wireless access to our residents is of grave concern.

"Even a modest loss of coverage for a WiFi hotspot, when multiplied and magnified over the scale of New York City, could affect millions of users daily and decrease the value of hundreds of millions of dollars of public and private investment. WiFi is the most available and affordable wireless broadband technology. Clearly, any threat to Wi-Fi is a threat to the very fabric of the city."

Full letter below or at the IEEE. The most immediate change indicated is to protect weak signals from interference. Details.

Today's WiFi can work at -72 dBm and even -90 dBm, says New York City

Maya Wiley could torpedo LAA"Coverage is at signal strengths below -72 dBm and down to signals as low as -90 dBm," New York City Counsel Maya Wiley tells the FCC and standards groups. We (I'm a New Yorker) are demanding that Verizon's LTE in WiFi spectrum not interfere with New York's plan to connect everyone, starting with 7,500 free gigabit Kiosks. Verizon's LTE proposal - now a subject of controversy in 3GPP - specifies that LTE-U will choose an unused channel if available. This data raises the question of "What is an unused channel?" I infer that lowering the detection threshold will probably be necessary.

Technology is moving fast; rules are changing slowly unless the change has a powerful patron. New York's petition has implications worth exploring.Harold Feld has pointed to changes in wireless rules that improve performance without undue interference. His ideas seem sensible to me. I'm presenting here the NYC claims and will be asking experts for opinions in a follow-up article.

"LinkNYC will provide strong coverage at a minimum of 150 feet from a kiosk. The initial links are providing coverage up to 400 feet in some cases, including down side streets, which means many more people in many more parts of the city will be able to take advantage of the system's seamless handoff facility. That scale of consistent and abundant connectivity has the potential to drive enormous innovation for the city. Based on initial analysis, that additional coverage is at signal strengths below -72 dBm and as low as -90 dBm."

LinkNYC articles

Unbundling obsolete in the age of vectoring: an inconvenient truth

Sharon White can raise Internet speeds across Britain by 100 megabits with smart policy. British Telecom, Vodafone, Sky, and TalkTalk would all benefit if White gets this one right. More important, the Brits get a much better Internet. The only losers would be John Malone's cableco and the now outdated policy for sharing of the binder. (BT has promised 10M lines of G.fast at speeds of 200-800 megabits. My examples here are from Britain, but other countries will face similar issues.)

Competition doesn't have to die. It does have to move from the cable to the exchange. Unbundling was a great idea in 2000 and is the main reason European broadband is 30-70% cheaper than American and Canadian. The 25 or 50 twisted pairs that run together from the exchange could be split between several carriers and performance was unaffected.

Future competition will require BT's local loop monopoly to hand off to others at the local exchange at the right price. The "right price" would include a profit proportionate to the investment. BT would be welcome to recover costs plus a profit; regulated prices would prevent exploitation of the monopoly.

That was the near-ubiquitous model for unbundling until recently. Currently in the EU, monopolies are being allowed to charge far more, after Kroes and Richards were blinded by a lobbying campaign brilliantly orchestrated by Luigi Gambardella.

Chips: Negative 2016, only +3% last five years (Datapoint)

semi forecasts Outside of China, the entire industry may have been negative for years. I knew the chip business was struggling but this chart is startling. For the last five years, growth has been only ~3%. For the last ten, only ~4%. After inflation, everything stagnant.

For 2016, the new forecast is -2.4%, with the largest drop in the Americas. They forecast +2% in each of 2017 & 2018.

China has committed $60B plus to the domestic chip industry and is sure to take market share. Including Taiwan, that's the industry future. There are virtually no interesting chip startups in the U.S. The San Jose area continues booming with Google, Facebook and software/web companies but no hardware.

Silicon Valley is dying.

Cisco: Historic fall in Internet growth to (as low as) 15%

traffic chart Cisco NA fixed U.S. & Canada fixed 2016 +22%, 2020 +15%. The 2016 growth in U.S. & Canada mobile data looks to be 49%; the 2020 prediction is 38%. The VNI sees a major slowdown in both fixed and wireless growth around the world. Cisco estimates 2016 worldwide mobile growth to be 68%. They expect that to fall to 41% in 2020 when most people will have smartphones. Remember the world turns so no five-year forecast is certain.

Check the chart below and extremely rich data here and here. There's so much information I could spend a week in the analysis and still not catch all the inferences. Accuracy can't be perfect but they are clearly the best in the business.

The 100% mobile growth was an artifact, driven by people first getting smartphones. The average smartphone user is increasing data usage ~40%/year, per AT&T.

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