2nd 3G licence award in Malaysia March 2006

In the second 3G licence award by MCMC, the winners are

• TTdotCom Sdn Bhd and
  
• MiTV Corp Sdn Bhd

The loser was

• DiGi.Com Bhd

Digi is the third largest mobile operator in the country, which many people had expected to be the frontrunner for the spectrum. However, the decision of MCMC has caused a big surprise to the public. One of the possible reasons that Digi was not successfull is probably it does not offer much difference in terms of evolution of services and network as compared with existing 3G license holders (Maxis and TM).

As for MiTV, it has abondon of content which is lacking in Maxis and TM. This may be an appealing factor for this company.

Meanwhile, TTdotCom – a unit of Time dotCom Bhd in which Khazanah Nasional Bhd has a stake – gets a new lease of life and it plans to use the 3G spectrum to roll out broadband services.

Point to point directional antenna alignment

During a recent consultancy work, I faced a problem in getting good antenna alignment.
I was reported that the packet error is very low or zero, latency is high (a few hundred ms), but very low throughput. The SNR is about 10dB.
The most possible reason: distance too far (1km in this experiment with IEEE 802.11a). However, if this is the case, the packet error should be high. But, may be due to no or minimum connection.
In addition, given the fact that antenna beamwidth = 30 degree. The alignment should not be too critical. If I move closer I can get higher SNR or throughput, then that may be the problem is due to distant too long.

Here is a practical procedure that I am going to try.