The ongoing debate over the looming spectrum shortage shows what a precious commodity this represents to the wireless industry. This was made clear by the recent announcement that AT&T will acquire spectrum from three different companies. The AT&T deal involves spectrum purchased from three corporate entities, including NextWave Wireless, Comcast, and a small Miami firm called Horizon Wi-Com. The deal's value totals $600 million, paid by AT&T in cash.
The pending AT&T acquisition has drawn the attention of many companies within the wireless industry, including xG Technology. As reported in Yahoo Finance, xG has released a statement on the news.
"AT&T's past attempt to purchase T-Mobile for its spectrum holdings and this more recent attempt to acquire NextWave for its spectrum holdings (the latter at a very large premium to the stock price), shows how valuable wireless spectrum is becoming in the U.S. and globally," says xG Technology Vice President Rick Rotondo. "However, purchasing new spectrum is only a short-term and limited solution, since the supply of new spectrum not already in service is finite and diminishing rapidly."
Rotondo continues by offering a longer-lasting alternative. "The real solution to the spectrum crisis is not just more spectrum, but using the spectrum we have more efficiently. This can be accomplished through cognitive (i.e. smart) radio technologies like xG's xMax mobile broadband solution."
The xG Technology statement continues with an assessment of the xMax technology. "xMax uses real-time spectrum sensing to find underused and available frequencies on a moment-by- moment basis, moving out of the way if another radio starts transmitting on those channels. It also incorporates patent-pending interference mitigation software that enables it to tolerate more inference, while offering more reliable connectivity than is possible with other wireless systems."
Concludes the xG statement, "These innovations enable xMax to extract more bandwidth from existing frequencies and can be used to offload 3G and 4G systems. Clearly, xMax can go a long way to truly solving the looming spectrum crisis."
Daniel Carpini
Marketing Director
xG Technology Inc.
Tags: cognitive radio, spectrum, wireless spectrum