Confusingly the technology those companies are getting the right to use, is known as "fixed wireless".
Mobile and wireless are inextricably linked, with wireless being the enabler for mobile, and mobile having its own unique characteristics versus fixed wireless users or objects.
Next up, an ambitious effort to inaugurate a low-cost fixed wireless phone service in Mexico early next year (the technology is wireless, but the range of use will be about 2 kilometers).
Next up, an ambitious effort to inaugurate a low-cost fixed wireless phone service in Mexico early next year (the technology is wireless, but the range of use will be about 1 mile).
The battle for invisible, but highly valuable real estate, also finds the supposedly unified U.S. delegation taking divergent positions on whether a key portion of the spectrum currently used by fixed wireless operators in the U.S. - the 2, 500-MHz to 2, 690MHz band - should be opened up to mobile users.
And it would have helped the former monopoly to cope with Singapore's complete liberalisation, on April 1st, of fixed, wireless and Internet services.
But the momentum of WiMax means 802.20 could be a dead duck, says Zvi Slonimsky of Alvarion, the leading maker of fixed-wireless gear and a strong backer of WiMax.
Since then WinStar has become one of the largest fixed-point wireless telecom services companies in the country.
Fixed cellular and wireless-loop technologies are enabling cellular companies to effectively encroach upon the territory that was once the exclusive domain of fixed-line operators.
Telephone services, both fixed line and wireless, have also been damaged.
The turning point arrived in 1999 when the new telecom policy changed the licensing fees from a fixed amount that wireless companies had been struggling to pay to a revenue-sharing model.
Satellite telephones should also be useful in shipping and aviation, as well as in less-developed countries that lack either modern fixed-wire or wireless telephone infrastructures.
Inmarsat is therefore looking for customers that will continue to have substantial operations outside the reach of wireless and fixed-line phones or where services are expensive and unreliable.
Take, for example, Andrew Corporation (nasdaq: ANDW - news - people ), a maker of cables, antennas, power amplifiers and other equipment for wireless and fixed-line communications.
The regulator will also possess the power to set maximum prices for interconnections, currently seen as being a severe obstacle to the emergence of rival firms in the fixed-line and wireless market.
Internet users have been complaining about data caps and the costly penalties for going over said caps for years, while both wireless and fixed broadband providers claimed these caps were an absolute necessity to curb runaway use.
FORBES: Yes, Of Course The Broadband Companies Are Gouging You With Data Caps
And it has a respectable business plan: to provide telecom services to those parts of the world where wireless or fixed-line service doesn't really exist--Equatorial Africa and the upper reaches of the Amazon--or where it's inadequate, as in many areas of Africa, India and Latin America.
Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) devices today operate in 555 megahertz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band, and are used for short range, high speed wireless connections including Wi-Fi enabled local area networks and fixed outdoor broadband transceivers used by wireless Internet service providers to connect smart phones, tablets and laptops to the broadband network.
ENGADGET: FCC proposal hopes to grow WiFi spectrum by 35 percent, reduce hotspot congestion
Our initial goal is to complement both the fixed-line infrastructure and wireless configurations like Vodafone AirTouch.
Many fixed line operators are integrating wireless with their traditional phone services, selling the service to consumers with the convenience of having one device and one bill for both mobile and fixed line calls.
According to Motorola, the world has about 800m fixed-line subscribers, 200m wireless users and about 200m Internet users.
"Ericsson believes that by 2005 more data will be transmitted through wireless technologies than through fixed lines, " Niebert said.
By 2005, the American firm expects there to be 1 billion fixed-line, 1 billion wireless and 1 billion Internet users.
They require communications over both fast, fixed networks and slow, or unreliable wireless links.
Set to splurge on developing its fixed-line and third-generation wireless services, the firm aims to staunch the loss of market share to China Mobile.
BMI-T, a market-research firm, predicts that there will be around 400, 000 broadband connections both fixed-line and various forms of wireless in South Africa by the end of the year.
They all successfully bid to become super-connected cities with ultrafast fixed broadband access and large areas of public wireless connectivity.
And several service providers, using a number of different technologies, have sprung up offering wireless alternatives to Telkom's costly fixed-line broadband service, which is expensive by European standards, let alone African ones.
More than two decades later, Telcel still controls 70% of the country's wireless market and Telmex 80% of the fixed-line market.
应用推荐