Paper: Anatomy of contemporary GSM cellphones
During the last days, I was working on an introductory paper on how a
GSM cellphone actually works. It is titled Anatomy
of contemporary GSM cellphone hardware and should provide a good
technical text for anyone who generally is into technology and
understands a bit about both software, computer architecture as well as
radio, but who still feels like he has no clue what is actually
happening inside the phone, particularly the hardware side.
The text does not cover the GSM protocols itself, as there is much more
information available on this already.
Feel free to let me know what you think, I'm always happy to extend or
clarify it based on your feedback. I hope some people find the text
useful.
German regulatory authority spectrum auction fails achieving its goals
Right now as I am writing this, the German federal regulatory authority
for networks (Bundesnetzagentur) is running
an auction for many frequencies in the 800MHz, 1.8GHz, 2GHz and
2.6GHz spectrums.
Officially they claim that the purpose for those frequencies is to
improve broadband coverage and close the white spots on Germany's
map where no broadband Internet access coverage exists today.
And how do they think to achieve this? By giving nation-wide licenses
on that spectrum to the existing cellphone operators.
That's nothing but a contradiction in terms. If they were really serious
about closing the so-called white spots on the broadband coverage map,
they should give licenses not on federal, not even on state but on
municipality level.
The large operators have no interest in bringing coverage into areas
that are only sparsely populated. They want to get the largest number
of subscriber with the least investment in their (overpriced)
infrastructure.
Only small, local or regional companies have an actual interest in
improving the broadband coverage in their own region. They understand
their local market, they are in contact with the population and regional
businesses. They can use much cheaper equipment since they are not
part of a large inflexible traditional operator.
However, without providing smaller-areas licenses in any part of the
useful spectrum, the German regulatory authority fails to even give a
chance to such small/regional companies.
It all smells like the regulatory officials have been bought by the
existing carriers/operators. There seems no reasonable other
explanation to me.
