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It's not clear whether carriers will look to next year's auctions of 747-762MHz and 777-792MHz spectrum to implement 3G services. It's not only unclear to seasoned industry watchers, it's also unclear to some of the carriers themselves.
Depending on their success in the 1.9GHz auctions in November, some carriers might look to the 700MHz auctions to add spectrum in their existing 1.9GHz and 800MHz markets, or enter new markets, with the intent of offering 3G service.
"The upside [to 700MHz] includes huge regional coverage areas, six in all" one carrier said. "The downside is we'll need another multiband [700MHz/800MHz/1.9GHz] multimode phone, which makes them bigger and more expensive until economies of scale kick in:'
Even without these issues, uncertainty over using 700MHz for 3G looms because the FCC hasn't yet developed rules for enticing the spectrum's current users to voluntarily relinquish the spectrum.
Those incumbent users consist of more than 100 UHF TV stations on channels 60-69, and under current HDTV-transition policy, these stations don't have to give up their spectrum until the end of 2006, at the...