Could this be how Dish Network finally uses all the spectrum it has been buying?
For the past few years, I’ve been watching Dish Network buy up a ton of coveted wireless spectrum, only to sit on it and do nothing. Speculation has long run rampant that eventually Dish might launch its own wireless carrier, or make a bid on a smaller carrier like T-Mobile – but nothing has really come of this.
Until now.
Apparently, Dish has just licensed some of its spectrum to Artemis Networks to be used in a completely new type of wireless network, with testing scheduled to being soon in San Francisco. While AT&T and Verizon complain of a spectrum crunch, Artemis’s new technology will supposedly thrive in otherwise congested, busy airwaves.This is made possible through tiny cell towers called pCells, which can beam custom wireless signals that will not interfere with each other to multiple devices using a new technology called Distributed-Input-Distributed-Output (DIDO). In other words, each device that connects to a pCell will have its own little bubble of cell service that can run at full speed, regardless of how many other users are around.
To make this even better, these pCells are compatible with LTE, which means that most existing devices will work with this new technology.
This seems very promising, but it’s still in the early stages, so we’ll have to wait and see what comes of this. In any case, it’s starting to look like this could be Dish’s key to entering the wireless marketpalce – finally.
[Gizmodo]
