Editor’s Note: To provide readers with an insight into the world of wireless in regional locales, RCR Wireless News sends its editorial staff not only to trade shows but to metropolitan regions as well, giving insight into how mobile broadband is changing the way we all work, live and play in different areas of the United States and the world.
In a conversation with Daryl Schoolar, principal analyst for mobile access infrastructure for Current Analysis, we discuss the Phoenix region and what makes it unique in wireless.
PHOENIX – Phoenix is a test market due to simple geography. There’s not much rain and when I visited last week, it was reported that the region had only 2% humidity one of the days. If a wireless provider is trying to test a network with fewer variables than most places, Phoenix is a fine, dry bet.
Secondly, Phoenix is in a valley with several different small and accessible mountain ranges around the valley, even in the middle of the metropolitan region. Granted, these mountains are merely foothills in comparison to the Rockies, and their positioning actually gives network builders a shot down into the valley to give coverage to many residential and business areas and easy access for maintenance requests. However, the stucco on rooftops is very popular and the mesh chicken wire mixed in with the styrofoam and dried mud easily deflects radio waves.
Again on the positive side, there are few tall buildings, thick pine or oak trees that block radio-frequency waves and many of the residents still have radio knowledge gleaned from working at Motorola Inc., before the company was carved up in its split years ago. It also appears that few residents of Phoenix are natives, so many people are attracted to the lifestyle and opportunities inherit of the West with lots of transplants giving an interesting mix of backgrounds, including those with radio experience after the breakup of Motorola in Phoenix.
The metropolitan area houses around 4 million people and the city is relatively young. Everything is on a grid and almost all is meticulously planned, likely due to a population that didn’t really start booming until the advent and spread of air conditioning in the 1960s.
Clearwire Corp. (CLWR) came out to test years ago partly due to a relationship with Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) , which owns 50% of Clearwire. The area was originally one of Sprint’s MMDS markets so Clearwire gained access to the spectrum when the companies banded together. While Clearwire refused an interview with RCR Wireless News, we’re still going to note the company’s presence.
Clearwire is trialing LTE technology using a 2 x 20 megahertz scheme, which is basically using double the currently used 10-megahertz spectrum channels. The testing has provided download speeds up to 90 Megabits per second, which is about double what the 10 megahertz LTE channels can provide, if not more. This is somewhat significant because only Clearwire really has the spectrum depth to run this version of LTE. Verizon Wireless (VZ) and AT&T Mobility (T) only have enough 700 MHz spectrum to run a 10-megahertz channel. Clearwire is also testing to see if there are any challenges in running an LTE network side-by-side with a WiMAX network. The company said in press announcements that it’s all still trials, but it hints to them at some point rolling out LTE across its WiMAX footprint. Lately, financial woes are hinting that Clearwire has slowed its buildout somewhat due to investor angst.
“What’s held Clearwire back is more financial issues,” Schoolar said. “I do know they’ve been testing the TD and the FDD versions of LTE using Huawei infrastructure and from what I’ve heard from them and what I’ve read in the press, they’ve been pretty impressed with the results.”
However, the numbers that Clearwire typically reports are more of an average and not typically what is in place in each market.
“Because this isn’t a live WiMAX market, (Clearwire) could run the LTE and the WiMAX markets in parallel as a test for interference between the two without worrying about disturbing paying customers,” said Schoolar. “If they went somewhere Clearwire had a live market and ran the same tests, the impact on customers could be bad.”
LightSquared is also testing out in Phoenix but refused an interview, likely due to heat the company is receiving about the possibility of its network interfering with GPS signals, which may derail many of LightSquared’s plans to roll out a terrestrial network in conjunction with a satellite network.
Another interesting phenomenon here is that hidden towers are everywhere in the Phoenix metropolitan area, whether covered inside church steeples, palm trees, cacti or sequoia trees – the faux foliage is all over the place. The builds for wireless here are more about spanning out than building up, and outside of the downtown offices, most building spaces are horizontal. One thing network vendors must deal with is the different municipalities and jurisdictional issues concerning deploying network towers, leaving many different governmental bodies with which to negotiate.
Schoolar said that the future of infrastructure here and everywhere will include both DAS and large towers coexisting but with a demand for better spectrum efficiency and a move toward more data-intensive networks where the deployment of the radio or base station is closer to the end user, opening up more and more scalable solutions and small cells.
“You’re going to see a mix with the macro out there for the nice initial coverage but then you’ll see things like DAS and picocells or metro femtocells – you’re going to see other types of solutions like Alcatel Lucent’s (ALU) Light Radio or Ericsson’s (ERIC) Air or NSN’s (NOK) Liquid Radio,” said Schoolar. “All these are designed for ease of installation, a smaller footprint and getting the radio closer.”
As there are different topographies, separate networks sold in different ways to end users and financial concerns from company to company, it’s likely that Schooler is right about no ultimate winner in infrastructure circles and it’s one reason why RCR stopped here to investigate.
In this series of nine articles, we’ll examine the Phoenix metropolitan area, DAS implementation in guarded municipalities and hospitals, the politics of wireless in an FCC buildout, Wi-Fi networks at the Arizona Diamondbacks, wireless solutions in native tribes, wireless innovations, non-profits finding income in towers, and the organization of public safety networks in Phoenix.
