Spectrum Technology Supplemental Application: Fill & Download for Free

1)What is Spectrum - Its is basically a Radio frequency/Radio waves on which your device tunes to communicate with the Telcommunication operators network.If you read the specifications of your Mobile phone,you will see the different frequencies/technology it supports viz.,GSM , UMTS ,HSPA,HSDPA,LTE etc .Each technology works on different frequency range.2)Auction because the spectrum is scarce,for any scarce resource auction is the best way forward to earn good money for the government.3)If operators use their preferred spectrum,then the same spectrum might be used by the two different operators ,which will result frequency clashes and calls might drop.4)Why do telecom bid so much - Spectrum is auctioned for different circles,consider the operator doesnt win any spectrum in his preferred circle,then he wont be able to operate in that particular circle.Below is something I got from the Internet:Here is an attempt to demystify the sector, understand what is spectrum, why and how are they being auctioned and how would it impact the companies who are the winners and what does it mean to the losers.First let’s understand what is being sold -- Spectrum.We were first introduced to spectrum in school when we saw that seven colours were produced when a white light hits a glass prism. In simple terms, spectrum can be considered as a range of all lights of various wavelengths. But light is part of a larger spectrum called the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. EM spectrum has in it a range of similar EM radiations like visible light, infrared light, ultraviolet light, X-rays and the one that is useful to us here is radio waves. As these are all radiations, they travel and spread as they go.Waves are defined by attributes of wavelength (length of the wave), amplitude (height of the wave) and frequency (number of cycles per seconds). Radio waves are those that have frequency of 3 kHz (3000 cycle per second) to 300 GHz (3 billion cycles per second). Audible frequency for human is between 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz.Consider waves moving around us at different speeds (frequencies) between 3 kHz and 300 GHz. Different frequencies are utilised for different purposes. The Radio FM stations air their channels around the 100 MHz frequencies. Out of these, government of India has selected two -- 900 MHz and 1800 MHz to be auctioned to telecom companies. Higher frequencies can carry more data per second. As in case of radio, any company winning the licence of using a frequency has a natural monopoly over the band.By auctioning spectrum, government is actually attempting spectrum management. Like land, mineral, oil, gas and water are exclusive property of a state, so is radio frequencies. Government manage these frequencies, as it is scarce, for various uses like telecom, radio, television and defence. Increasing applications and new technologies such as 2G, 3G and 4G has further created a need for more spectrum. Within each frequency, government splits it up into circles (cities or states) and divides it to various users.The auction processThe present auction is being conducted online and is termed as a Simultaneous Multiple Rounds Ascending (SMRA) e-auction. Government hopes to raise Rs 48,000 crore through this auction by giving away 403.2 MHz in the 1,800 MHz band and 46 MHz in the 900 MHz band. The spectrum available for licencing will be valid for 20 years.Bidders have a choice of paying the full amount upfront or defer it by paying 33 per cent of bid amount in 1,800 MHz and 25 per cent of bid amount in case of 900 MHz within 10 days of auction close. There is a moratorium of 2 years of payment of balance amount which shall be recovered in 10 equal annual instalments which will attract an interest of 10 per cent. Each applicant has to apply along with Earnest Money -- in the form of a bank guarantee, which changes as per circles as prescribed by the government.There are two stages in the auction – Clock stage and Frequency Identification Stage. The clock stage will establish the bidders and number of blocks to be awarded in each service area while the second stage will identify specific frequency blocks for the winning bidders. Auctions on both the spectrum bands are being conducted simultaneously.In the clock stage, bidding proceeds in rounds where bids can be placed for some or all service areas. Bidders will be informed about the Clock Round Price per block for each of the service areas in both the bands where spectrum is put to auction. In each round, the bidder’s choice will be a ‘Yes/No’ if he agrees to bid at the Clock Round Price. If the answer is Yes, he then has to select the number of blocks in the area. In 1,800 MHz blocks of 200 kHz are on sale while in 900 MHz, each block size is of 1MHz.In the first Clock round, the price per block will be the reserve price. In subsequent rounds, the Clock Round price will be determined by the excess demand in the previous Clock Round. The Clock Rounds will continue until demand can be satisfied within each and every service area in each of the bands. Price increments will not be more than 10 per cent of the previous Clock Round.What does it mean for the winners and losers?While the winners get the exclusive right to use the spectrum, those who have lost the bid in that area will not be able to operate in it. They will not be able to get subscribers in the area where they do not have a licence. However, if a consumer has a connection of the particular telecom operator and travels to an area where the operator is not present, he will be charged interconnect user charges.Why are the bids so competitive?For the serious players it makes sense to have a pan India presence, which is why we see aggressive biddings in the present auction rounds as Vodafone and Bharti’s licenses are expiring in some of the metros.What makes this auction all the more interesting is that a new player Reliance Jio, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries is applying for the licence and would like to get the maximum possible licences across the country. The number of spectrum he wins will impact his pan India roll out plan.How do spectrum prices impact consumers?There are two ways a telecom company can recover their investment in getting the spectrum license. First is by increasing their consumer base and second is by increasing their tariffs.For an existing player, increasing customer base is difficult in the current scenario, thus the only option left is to increase tariffs. But that's easier said than done given the current competetive scenario. Companies are thus introducing new applications to supplement their revenue.

The question details mention "high-level trends" and "not just companies" within the technology industry. If by that you mean analysis that's outside of new companies and funding or feature announcements, look no further than:Wired (magazine), found at: http://www.wired.com/magazine/The New York Times Technology section, found at: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/technology/index.html?pagewanted=allThe content of these publications will be broader and more trends-focused. You're going to get more of that "big picture" experience, where tech meets culture and society. They're a great supplement to TechCrunch and VentureBeat, and they're best read once a week in the case of NYT-Tech and once a month for WIRED.You'll get that more offbeat or "techno-cultural" content as opposed to just startup/VC/tech news. Visit and browse, you'll see what I mean.You may also be intrigued by Horace Dediu's Asymco blog which covers the economics of smartphones/tablets/mobile in general. It's very trends-focused and can be found at: http://www.asymco.com/The question also specifically mentions "new sectors." If you want to be on the truly cutting edge, you need to go where the engineering's happening. For that I recommend:MIT Technology Review, found at: http://www.technologyreview.com/Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Spectrum, found at: http://spectrum.ieee.org/Nature Publishing Group, found at: http://www.nature.com/Twitter (product) engineering school feedsOther industry journals and trade publicationsYou need to know the jargon and have a keen ability to translate news into potential applications, but you'll have a pulse on "the new."Of course, regardless of anything, always keep your finger on the pulse of the holy quaternary:Hacker News, found at: http://news.ycombinator.com/Techmeme, found at: http://techmeme.com/TechCrunch, found at: http://techcrunch.com/VentureBeat, found at: http://venturebeat.com/

They've just been announced today!This Year’s Thiel Fellows Include A Fashion Designer, A Poet, And A Harvard DropoutAndrew Brackin (18, London, United Kingdom) co-founded a marketplace for designers that grew to 100,000 signups. Brackin runs Tomorrow’s Web, an event for young technologists with hundreds of attendees and major sponsors. He will be working on Bunchy, a funding platform that allows organizations to raise money from their audience on their social platforms and websites.Austin Russell (18, Newport Beach, CA) has a passion for developing innovative optoelectronic technologies for industry. His projects range from high-efficiency far-field wireless power transmission to low-cost early cancer detection systems. As a fellow, Russell will be focusing on 3D depth mapping and projection of interactive holograms through a compact laser-based module.Christopher Walker (20, Chevy Chase, MD) is a video game designer, programmer, and artist. After leaving college to start a software company, he created a game designed to improve spatial cognition. As a Thiel Fellow, Chase will focus on developing interactive software to teach technical skills like programming, music, and mathematics.Daniel Zulla (19, Regensburg, Germany) is a software engineer who is about to introduce a secure computing architecture used for servers and desktop computers alike.Darren Lim (19, Singapore) came to love scientific innovation while studying in China, and remains a consumer at heart who is obsessed with cutting-edge gadgets. He is currently working on a startup that focuses on how we interact with technology.Delian Asparaouhov (19, Salt Lake City, UT) wants to help improve health care. As a Thiel fellow, he will work on leveraging technology to help manage disease and improve patient outcomes.Diwank Singh Tomer (19, Palo Alto, CA) dropped out of his college in India to work on an online platform for learning to code. Aside from his love of poetry, he is an exceptional hacker and engineer who was awarded the Mozilla WebFWD fellowship for his efforts to improve learning online. He has since moved to the Bay Area to further his efforts and is currently working on a collaborative learning platform.Gary Le (19, East Brunswick, NH) envisions a safer, cleaner, and more trustable Internet. He is working on a real-time online identity verification system for various applications in e-commerce, online communities, and collaborative consumption businesses.James Schuler (19, Armonk, NY) started his first company when he was 12 and hasn’t stopped since. In high school he founded a health care company called Eligible and attended Y-Combinator as one of its youngest entrepreneurs. Recently, Schuler left Eligible in order to focus on a bigger market: politics. As a Thiel Fellow, James will be focusing on implementing crowd funding in order to revolutionize the campaign finance market.Kevin Wang (18, Vernon Hills, IL) began developing games and applications when he was 9. Since then, he has moved into entrepreneurship, applying his highly technical background to solve bigger problems. As a Thiel Fellow, he aims to simplify the world of law and open source software to end the wasteful litigation epidemic.Laura Ball (19, Wauwatosa, WI) is researching value in neural systems. She would like to determine how information becomes important, and how important information maintains dominance over other information in order to define our conscious mind-states and behavioral responses.Maddy Maxey (18, San Diego, CA) began interning in the fashion industry when she was 16 for companies like Tommy Hilfiger, Donna Ricco, Peter Som, and Nylon Magazine. After founding a popular fashion blog while in France and then winning a scholarship from the CFDA & Teen Vogue for her work, she started a clothing company of her own. As a Thiel Fellow, Maxey will focus on optimizing the clothing patterns and the enterprise software that make our current garment industry inefficient. Her goal is to make domestic production profitable through better integrating software, not just hardware technologies, into our manufacturing system.Mark Daniel (19, Nashville, TN) co-founded social goal achievement site GoalHawk in 2011. Since then, he has been building StatusHawk, a workplace accountability tool that changes the way that companies handle status reports. As a Thiel Fellow, Daniel will focus on taking the early stage company and building it into a profitable and sustainable business.Nelson Zhang (19, Toronto, ON, Canada) has always loved making things. He has been tinkering with electronics since he was 10, and designed, manufactured, and sold several hardware products during high school and college. He is currently working on a desktop fabricator for electronics, aimed at lowering iteration time and costs for hardware companies. He hopes to make the design and production of physical things accessible to everyone.Nick Liow (18, Vancouver, BC, Canada) believes everything is a remix and information wants to be free. Now, he’s challenging copyright by building ways for creators to get paid for giving their work to the public domain.Riley Drake (18, Baltimore, MD) has been conducting scientific research since she was 15 years old. She has studied immunology at Johns Hopkins University and infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital. During her fellowship she intends to focus on applying physical principles to virology: utilizing biophysics to create broad-spectrum viral therapies.Riley Ennis (19, McLean, VA) founded Immudicon, an early-stage biotechnology company that has developed a novel cancer vaccine platform and telemedicine sweat-monitoring device in order to improve how we treat and diagnose diseases. The company was spun out of his research in high school at Georgetown University and the Sheikh Zayed Institute at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. His ultimate goal is to exercise empathy within health care to revolutionize and personalize the future of treating patients.Ritesh Agarwal (19, New Delhi, India) is one of the youngest entrepreneurs from India to raise angel investments. He runs OYO Inns, a chain of affordable, tech-enabled inns, and Oravel, a rising popular alternative to hotels in India. As a Thiel Fellow, Agarwal will leverage technology to bring affordable and standardized accommodations to emerging economies across the world, starting in India.Thomas Sohmers (17, Hudson, MA) is a technology geek and hardware hacker who has been working at a MIT research lab since he was 13, developing everything from augmented reality eyewear to laser communication systems. Currently, Sohmers is working on developing a new computing platform that utilizes very low powered processors in a cluster to revolutionize the server, cloud, and research computing industries.William LeGate (18, Marietta, GA) is an entrepreneur and computer scientist. He taught himself programming at age 14 from online Stanford lectures and has since created more than a dozen mobile apps which have been downloaded more than 5 million times and are now used by 1 in 16 U.S. teens. During his fellowship he plans to change the way that we discover apps for things around us.Xinyi Chen (19, Beijing, China) is passionate about entrepreneurship and technology. She participated in the Tigerlabs accelerator last summer and developed prototypes for her project Helios, which attempts to make telepresence devices accessible to average families.Zach Hamed (20, Holbrook, NY) originally from New York City, was a junior at Harvard studying computer science before joining the Thiel Fellowship. The son of a teacher and a computer programmer, Hamed is a first-generation American who hopes to apply his interest in user interface and experience design to K-12 education. As a Thiel Fellow, Hamed will focus on developing a suite of beautifully-designed tools for K-12 teachers, saving them time, providing them supplemental income, and helping them do what they do best—teach.