The last great spectrum auction..

.. for a while that is.
{former} UHF TV channels 60 to 69 are going up for sale.

Est minimum $4.6 billion and Google is expected to buy it at perhaps $10 Billion.

But they dont really want that 700 Mhz band because it's better for voice than data.. and Google wants space in the 2.5 Ghz area. So it's expected that they will trade Sprint/Nextel for it.
I advise Sprint to accept that offer if it's made.

Voice will work better at 700Mhz because of better propagation and fewer cells needed, and fact that a voice connection needs only about 32khz or less, while a data connection at that speed is only a 'worst case memory' for many of you.

Link

Note: At least the customer's transmit connection must be channelized. While the tower Xmit could be one big fat datastream, the ability to send upstream would have to be synchronized, otherwise.

That would result in a LOT of re-transmits. Acceptable on a wire but cumbersome in open air with interference uncontrolled.

 

So - to be clear, Google and others are interested in this for wireless telecomm, not for any sort of TV-related usage, right?

 

Re: RE: The last great spectrum auction..

Yep!

They've already caused Verizon to turn its business model around.. think 'GPhone'

There may be some confusion for those of you who have noticed you NOW have a helluva lot more discrete TV channels in your area than you did before the DTV switch started. Every former channel now seems to have at least two.. some as many as 6.

That's because those towers/channels {7 through 59} can be placed in closer physical proximity without interference, exactly because of the digital nature of the transmission.

Channels 2 - 6 {which are below the FM band} frequencies will also be reassigned for other purposes, after Feb 2009.