FCC anti-collusions rules put damper on CTIA

Late yesterday the FCC's anti-collusion rules were lifted and the 700 MHz spectrum winners were finally able to reveal their intentions with their new spectrum holdings.

Although most of these revelations weren't surprising--AT&T and Verizon will use their spectrum to deploy LTE and Qualcomm will use its spectrum to increase the footprint of MediaFLO--it's too bad that the winners weren't able to talk about their plans at this week's CTIA Wireless 2008 conference in Las Vegas. That certainly would have added some much-needed excitement to the keynote discussions, press conferences and general buzz at the show. Instead, my conversations with representatives from the winning bidders were stilted because they had to stop short of any substantive discussion about the new spectrum holdings.

Nevertheless, I did hear some interesting tidbits at the show. Here are a few for you to mull over:

• By year-end, 75 percent of At&T handsets sold will be 3G.
• Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin may be in favor of incorporating WiMAX into the LTE standard but very few others are in agreement with him.
• Qualcomm's MediaFLO broadcast TV system launches about five or six markets per quarter and is now building markets so that they will be ready to turn on in February 2009 when the DTV transition occurs. --Sue [1]

P.S. I will be talking about all the highs and lows from CTIA with Andy Seybold and Linda Barrabee of the Yankee Group on Thursday, April 10 at 2 p.m. EST. Be sure to tune into our lively discussion. Register here [2].