Eric S. Raymond:
[Over the last ten years] "...the carriers have been losing money to the tune of about 1% of ROIC, but with the losses largely masked by inflation."
[Huge snip]
"From the financial-minimax point of view, the cell buildout is done. We won’t see dramatic coverage improvements before a technological break that dramatically lowers cost per square mile covered."
RTWT. And consider the additional pressures from "Net Neutrality" and the FCC push for more wireless bandwidth. Something's gotta give.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
7 comments:
To quote Johnny Carson: "I did not know that." Thanks - that was an illuminating article.
Some carriers will let you buy a femto-cell.
They will even let you plug the femto-cell into your very own home bandwidth so you can get decent cellphone coverage at home and help your carrier build out weak spots.
And they'll only charge you a small monthly fee and only deduct the standard number of minutes for the privilege.
...What?!? Is Sprint seriously insane?!? I understand the desire for a femtocell in one's home. I won't even complain about the $100 cost for the unit. But for Sprint to charge people $5 to use it even though you're burning up your OWN minutes?!? That's insane!!!...
Rop Gonggrijp, minor person of interest in the wikileaks thingy, tweeting on his suddenly improved cell coverage in the Netherlands:
Foreign intel attention is nice: I finally have decent T-Mobile coverage in my office in the basement. Thanks guys...
You know exactly what they're gonna do, they're gonna use this situation as a reason to privatize more of the HAM bandwidth.
never waste a crisis.
Roberta:
My first cat, a big 18 pound, no fat, all-black persian, knew he could inflict pretty serious (hospital level) damage, but he never did. If you deserved a scratch, you got a scratch. That's what made GLOVE-fighting so special for him. Here's how it worked. If you weren't wearing gloves, he didn't bite or scratch. He'd tussel and wrestle you completely without claws. But when you pulled out that long heavy leather gauntlet glove, put it on, spread the fingers out, and reached for his face, he'd attack it with a fury that was magnificent to behold. ALL the teeth and ALL the claws, both front an back, came into action. if you were strong enough, you could raise an arm full of cat, furiously biting and clawing away for all he was worth. If you teach Huck this game, make sure that gauntlet is long though. When you put it on, YOU are responsible for any injuries received, even if they are above the gauntlet.
BoxStockRacer
Anon, possibly you meant this fpr the earlier post? Huck's a quilt-wrestler: put you hand under a quilt and he'll fight it for as long as you keep at it.
Og: they're already after OTA TV channels; FCC is talking about cramming them into the same RF stream three or four at a time, standard-definition only. Ooops.
What the carriers learned about eight years ago is that it's too expensive to for them to build cell towers. They had too much capital invested and that was causing their expense/revenue ratio to become very unbalanced.
They now lease tower capacity from smaller local cell companies. They provide the towers, carriers provide the connectivity.
Bottom line: Cell coverage growth will continue as long as the carriers and the local cell coverage providers continue to make money. When that money spigot turns off, so will further coverage.
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