"Free spectrum" could shape future of wireless

Advanced Wireless Service-3 (AWS-3), which operates in the 2155-2180MHz band, sat around in the FCC closet collecting dust for more than a decade. No one seemed to want it until John Muleta and Milo Medin, co-founders of M2Z Net-works and, respectively, CEO and chairman of the board said something like, "if you're not using it, anyway, we'll take it off your hands." Perhaps these two gentlemen saw something others didn't. Major wireless broadband providers are fighting hard to keep AWS-3 off the market. Having paid a lot of money for AWS-1 bandwidth at auction, current wireless providers T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T don't seem too keen on the idea of someone else giving away similar bandwidth for free. Their first tactic was to say that AWS-3 interferes with AWS-1, which operates in the 2,110-2,155MHz range. Last week, the FCC announced test results that found no interference between the bands. There are still many hurdles to overcome before AWS-3 sees the light of day. Everything from producing chips in volume to laying out the network infrastructure. What's worth noting is that half of the cell towers available in the United States aren't actually owned by today's carriers. Instead they owned by third parties that lease room on the towers, "like hotels."