In high-speed 5G wireless bid, AT&T buys Straight Path for $1.6B

AppleInsider

With an eye toward next-generation 5G wireless cellular connectivity, networking giant AT&T on Monday announced it will purchase Straight Path Communications for $1.6 billion.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has approved 28 and 39 gigahertz frequencies for 5G wireless use, and Straight Path is one of the largest holders of that spectrum.

The purchase could give AT&T, which was the original exclusive partner for Apple's iPhone, a leg up on its wireless competitors --chiefly Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint.

Straight Path was motivated to sell after a settlement with the FCC earlier this year. According to Bloomberg, the company misrepresented the progress of utilizing the spectrum it owned, and as a result agreed to transfer its spectrum licenses by early next year.

AT&T and its competitors are gearing up to launch fifth-generation networks in the U.S. in the coming years. 5G aims to be the successor to the current 4G LTE standard, and it's likely that future iPhones will include 5G connectivity once the networks are established and appropriate wireless chips are available.

AT&T expects its 5G network to provide speeds between 10 and 100 times faster than an average LTE connection, measuring bandwidth in gigabits rather than megabits. Latency could be as low as 1 to 5 milliseconds.

anantksundaram

This sounds like a good opportunistic purchase for ATT.

goofy1958

So we rural users will finally get access to real high speed internet.  Of course, it will still cost 10 times as much as a regular wired connection at the same speed, so will still suck for those of us out here.  None of the wireless companies give a crap about giving rural users a fair shake on their home internet.

pvanallen

Smart. 5G is much more than for phones. It's the glue that will hold together a whole range of technologies including autonomous vehicles, the Internet of Things, wireless ISPs to compete with cable, etc. It is fast, low latency, and supports low power devices. This permits device to device communication in addition to device to cloud. We're moving towards an Edge-Fog-Cloud computing ecosystem, where 5G makes it all possible.

eightzero

goofy1958 said:

So we rural users will finally get access to real high speed internet.  Of course, it will still cost 10 times as much as a regular wired connection at the same speed, so will still suck for those of us out here.  None of the wireless companies give a crap about giving rural users a fair shake on their home internet.

I found this interesting:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/how-a-group-of-neighbors-created-their-own-internet-service/

wonkothesane

So in essence you will enter the same round as a couple of times before: by the time of go-live networks are not ready to carry the load on a broad level (they can't even now and throttle in highly populated areas as towers are not sufficient), next up higher bandwidth leads to higher consumption leading to "unlimited" again ring very limited indeed, from plowed by plan price surges, until t-mobile, or whoever, again is the first to offer more data, start specific offers, etc. and by the time the infrastructure and prices have settled for 5G 6G will be around the corner

tallest skil

wonkothesane said:

…by the time the infrastructure and prices have settled for 5G 6G will be around the corner

But what good is 6 or even 5G when the data caps mean you can’t really even take advantage of them?

Metriacanthosaurus

Can someone explain to me how the latency is expected to be between 1 and 5 ms? Having worked in IT and networking for many years, this is perplexing to me. Even for theoretical latency.

wonkothesane

Yep. 

On on the other hand we're moving increasingly towards a streaming/cloud dependence, and faster, more capable networks of course foster this. It makes me wonder just how vulnerable we are based on this. 

The day before yesterday you you had no internet and all you were missing was the famous coffee machine webcam. Yesterday the internet doesn't work and you happily listen to your locally stored music, watch your locally stored movies, work on your locally stored files. 
And tomorrow you will find you're completely depending on it. 
On a further side note: when my granddad died he left a lot of vinyl albums to the family, the day my father will die he will leave many dvds and some songs bought in iTMS. Soon when this happens is nothing left to pass on - all streaming vapor evaporating into nothingness so to say. 

tallest skil

wonkothesane said:

On a further side note: when my granddad died he left a lot of vinyl albums to the family, the day my father will die he will leave many dvds and some songs bought in iTMS. Soon when this happens is nothing left to pass on - all streaming vapor evaporating into nothingness so to say. 

All the more reason that your Yesterday is how I have always operated and always will.

retrogusto

wonkothesane said:

Yep. 

On on the other hand we're moving increasingly towards a streaming/cloud dependence, and faster, more capable networks of course foster this. It makes me wonder just how vulnerable we are based on this. 

The day before yesterday you you had no internet and all you were missing was the famous coffee machine webcam. Yesterday the internet doesn't work and you happily listen to your locally stored music, watch your locally stored movies, work on your locally stored files. 
And tomorrow you will find you're completely depending on it. 
On a further side note: when my granddad died he left a lot of vinyl albums to the family, the day my father will die he will leave many dvds and some songs bought in iTMS. Soon when this happens is nothing left to pass on - all streaming vapor evaporating into nothingness so to say. 

It's a good point. I saw an interesting presentation a couple of years ago about how Stalin banned a lot of music, so people ended up figuring out a way to cut bootlegs by copying records onto recycled x-rays.

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/09/462289635/bones-and-grooves-weird-secret-history-of-soviet-x-ray-music

I think streaming services up to this point have given many people access to more music than ever before, but once almost all access to music is controlled by a small number of companies, as seems to be the trend (and more industry consolidation would not surprise me), it would also be a lot easier to make something almost completely disappear if companies or governments wanted to.

But I'm mostly hopeful. A few years ago I stumbled across a bootleg recording of a concert I attended in 1989, and I could even hear my voice yelling out a request which the singer made a joke about and then proceeded to play.

mdriftmeyer

Who gives a crap? None of these `improvements' translate to a fraction of their claims, but one thing is for sure, you must spend $200/family/month just to get your service to drop to 4G or even 3G in many zones across the country.

mdriftmeyer

Metriacanthosaurus said:

Can someone explain to me how the latency is expected to be between 1 and 5 ms? Having worked in IT and networking for many years, this is perplexing to me. Even for theoretical latency.

the most important 5G infrastructure performance requirements are a latency below 5 ms, support for device densities of up to 100 devices/m2 and reliable coverage area, and that a successful 5G deployment will integrate telecommunication technologies including mobile, fixed, optical and satellite (both GEO and MEO).[20]

The only way they will make this possible is if 5G siphons a spread spectrum range with a much higher deployment density mesh to keep the signal from degrading.There isn't a shot in hell of this working as advertised because municipalities are sick and tired of the garbage looking Tower designs going up in neighborhoods.

volcan

mdriftmeyer said:

...because municipalities are sick and tired of the garbage looking Tower designs going up in neighborhoods.

Here in California they have come up with some very nice tower designs that look like super realistic trees. Problem is they still have difficulty getting permits even though they look pretty good - nobody wants them on their property. You can get upwards of $10K per month if you wanted host one on your land. Originally the cellular design was to have three towers in range for any given location. That never worked out.

MacPro

mdriftmeyer said:

Metriacanthosaurus said:

Can someone explain to me how the latency is expected to be between 1 and 5 ms? Having worked in IT and networking for many years, this is perplexing to me. Even for theoretical latency.

the most important 5G infrastructure performance requirements are a latency below 5 ms, support for device densities of up to 100 devices/m2 and reliable coverage area, and that a successful 5G deployment will integrate telecommunication technologies including mobile, fixed, optical and satellite (both GEO and MEO).[20]

The only way they will make this possible is if 5G siphons a spread spectrum range with a much higher deployment density mesh to keep the signal from degrading.There isn't a shot in hell of this working as advertised because municipalities are sick and tired of the garbage looking Tower designs going up in neighborhoods.

We need someone with lateral thinking beyond the norm, such as Elon Musk, on the job to come up with some yet unthought of alternative to ugly towers. Of course Google would deploy balloons.  

waltg

eightzero said:

goofy1958 said:

So we rural users will finally get access to real high speed internet.  Of course, it will still cost 10 times as much as a regular wired connection at the same speed, so will still suck for those of us out here.  None of the wireless companies give a crap about giving rural users a fair shake on their home internet.

I found this interesting:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/how-a-group-of-neighbors-created-their-own-internet-service/

Great article! Thx for posting!!!!

mobird

volcan said:

mdriftmeyer said:

...because municipalities are sick and tired of the garbage looking Tower designs going up in neighborhoods.

Here in California they have come up with some very nice tower designs that look like super realistic trees. Problem is they still have difficulty getting permits even though they look pretty good - nobody wants them on their property. You can get upwards of $10K per month if you wanted host one on your land. Originally the cellular design was to have three towers in range for any given location. That never worked out.

Colorado has been doing this for years. Drive between Denver and Colorado Springs and you won't see one tower. These "tree" towers are also deployed in many other parts of the state including many resort towns.

k2kw

goofy1958 said:

So we rural users will finally get access to real high speed internet.  Of course, it will still cost 10 times as much as a regular wired connection at the same speed, so will still suck for those of us out here.  None of the wireless companies give a crap about giving rural users a fair shake on their home internet.

As it is the Obama administration spent too much money trying to promote rural broadband(welfare).    It's also time to charge more for mail delivery based on ibmcreased costs.