These are formerly the MMDS and ITFS bands. The story goes back more than 20 years ago. I'll draft a detailed post tomorrow for both lists.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE DROID On Mar 18, 2015 9:09 PM, Ken Hohhof <[email protected]> wrote: Most of the 2.5 spectrum is going to be EBS with some BRS. The EBS licenses were handed out one time back maybe 10 years ago to schools who asked for them, supposedly for educational TV broadcasting. The licenses if I remember correctly were for 30 years, so they have about 20 years left to run. The licenses are for 35 mile radius protected service areas (PSAs) typically centered on a site that someone at one point thought would be an educational TV broadcast tower, so not necessarily centered on the school's location. Some PSAs bump up against each other in which case the circles have a flat spot where they would overlap. You should check the EBS/BRS bandplan on the FCC website, it's kind of screwy. There was a substantial service deadline and some licenses were terminated. I think it's 5% of the bandwidth has to be devoted to educational purposes, so as long as you deployed a couple mobile clients you could meet the substantial service requirement (or you could lie and say you did). Anyway, a few schools have not leased their licenses, most have, and Clear got the lion's share. Mostly they were interested in getting at least 2 licenses for the same area (see band plan), and some licenses had better sub bands than others due to the way the band plan is laid out. There's lots of EBS geographic "white space" with no licenses, and it does not seem to be a priority for the FCC to give more away or to hold an auction or even as has been suggested to allow current license holders to expand into adjacent white space to a logical boundary like a county line. License holders may expect to get lease payments consistent with current $ per MHz-pop numbers, set by big cell carriers who just like to own spectrum, so even if there is a license available for lease in your area, the price may or may not be reasonable. Especially if you are not in a position to fully utilize the 35 mile PSA. At least that's what I remember from researching it around 2 years ago. Fair warning, I have trouble remembering what I had for breakfast. -----Original Message----- From: Josh Reynolds Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2015 7:18 PM To: [email protected] ; [email protected] Subject: [AFMUG] Clear / Sprint / 2.5 Access I have been hearing rumors over the past several weeks, one in particular this morning made it's way into my inbox. I wanted to confirm a few things I've heard, and go over what I thought I know/knew. So, Clear owns 2.5. "The schools" were assigned this at one point, something something blah blah. Anywho, Clear gets bought by Sprint. Sprint cuts a bunch of the clear workforce/network. Now Telrad (and maybe 1 more?) are selling 2.5GHz solutions. So, questions: If the schools in your area didn't "claim" 2.5GHz when they had the chance to, is it possible to gain access to the band? Who would I talk to about gaining access? Does anybody have an email/phone number? Also, what kind of pricing are we looking at? Thanks. I'm a bit fuzzy on all this, and trying to confirm some rumors. -- -- Josh Reynolds CIO, SPITwSPOTS www.spitwspots.com<http://www.spitwspots.com> ************************************************************************************ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. ************************************************************************************ ************************************************************************************ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. ************************************************************************************
