WASHINGTON-Just as in 1993 when the current wireline industry probably didn’t expect its customers to be cutting the cord in favor of mobile phones, the licensed-wireless industry should watch out for unlicensed technologies replacing them-not only for data but also for voice, according to panelists at a roundtable on Tuesday.
“In the last 10 years you went from cellular penetration at 12 percent with phones that weighed a pound to the extraordinary system we now have,” said Theodore Schell, chairman of Cometa Networks and general partner of Apax Partners.
A big reason for uptake of an unlicensed voice technology will be because college students, who are used to cheap, fast broadband and mobility will want all of that combined and they will be tomorrow’s policy-makers, said Thomas Lee, managing director of wireless services for J.P. Morgan.
“In 10 years we will have a new generation of policy-makers and they are the early adopters,” said Lee. “They are used to cheap-free-broadband, and I bet the notion of getting mobile voice calls over that broadband will be very attractive to them so you will see integration between 802.11 and some type of Voice over IP.”
Schnell and Lee participated on a panel at the Roundtable on Unlicensed Wireless Technologies sponsored by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Department of State and the Federal Communications Commission.
While Schnell agreed with Lee to the extent that technology adapts to consumer wants and needs, he does not see unlicensed voice services replacing licensed mobile-voice services because there isn’t a business case for the widespread deployment of unlicensed wireless voice technologies to compete with licensed wireless voice technologies.
This view was shared by Robert Kubik, manager of spectrum and regulatory policy at Motorola Inc., and Mark Whitton, chief technology officer of wireless networks for Nortel Networks.
“Will 802.11 replace cells? No,” said Kubik. “You are going to spend so much time going from cell to cell in the handover, you will not have quality.”
“I can see it as a backup,” said Whitton. “But as a primary service, I think that is a tougher sell.”
One reason that unlicensed will not replace licensed for voice is that it would be overkill, said Veronica Haggart, vice president of strategic relations for Xtreme Spectrum, an ultra-wideband chip developer.
Policy-makers are fond of unlicensed technologies because they-FCC Chairman Michael Powell chief among them-see it as a way for government to get out of the way.
To further prod the unlicensed movement, Powell’s FCC is expected on Thursday to allocate 255 megahertz at 5.8 GHz to unlicensed, but that will only exacerbate the problem said panelists later on Tuesday.
“The FCC’s Spectrum Policy Task Force Report is a step backward,” said Thomas Hazlett, senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute of Policy Research. “It takes the blocks system to a new generation.”
Hazlett is a former FCC chief economist. He participated on a panel devoted to spectrum policy and regulatory issues. Fellow panelists Kevin Werbach, founder of the Supernova Group, and Vanu Bose, founder and chief executive officer of Vanu Inc., said that technology can solve the allocation problems.
