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Wireless Networking United States Hardware

America Needs Unchained Spectrum? 133

Posted by michael from the privatize-the-gains-socialize-the-costs dept.
pillageplunder writes "Businessweek has an interesting viewpoint on the state of the wireless spectrum and how it's not being utilized to its max. While it's an opinion piece, the author raises several valid points. Establishing an exchange-entity to facilitate trading wireless spectrum, ridding the restrictions on spectrum available for sale, and weeding out the politics behind many of the recent and not so recent FCC policies. A thought-provoking read."
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America Needs Unchained Spectrum? More

America Needs Unchained Spectrum?

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  • Curious (Score:2, Insightful)

    by cheinz ( 714431 )
    I have often wondered about why the frequency ranges are so terribly restricted. It seems to me that we should have better diversity in our frequency ranges. Why does everything in the world have to operate at 2.4 Ghz? The FCC is saturating that frequency band at an unsustanable rate. Just my .02

    • Re:Curious (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Take a look at the FCC spectrum allocation .. All the way up to 300Ghz is utilized by all kinds of shit.

      Be thankful they squeezed in the 2.4 Ghz for u.

      http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf

    • There are international treaties and agreements that allocate the RF spectrum to a wide variety of uses. If every country "did their own thing", we would have a real mess.

      • Re:Curious (Score:2, Informative)

        by PTBarnum ( 233319 )
        Actually, international treaties mostly regulate frequencies below 30 MHz (HF and below). These frequencies can have worldwide propagation, so it is important that everybody coordinate them. VHF, UHF, and higher frequencies tend to be fairly localized so each country can make their own rules about it.

        Unless you live within a few miles of an international border, it is unlikely that spectrum users in another country will interfere with your Wi-Fi.
        • The problem is once you get into space, you have to deal with all of that localized VHF/UHF and microwave activity. This affects spacecraft communication links and active/passive remote sensing.

    • Re:Curious (Score:3, Informative)

      by dougmc ( 70836 )

      Why does everything in the world have to operate at 2.4 Ghz?

      Because it's one of the small number of blocks of bandwidth that the FCC has allocated for unlicensed use.

      Granted, more unlicensed spectrum would be a good thing, but even that's not the answer, because it would get sucked up too, by people doing thigs like `110 Mbps WiFi' where they use the entire 2.4 gHz block of unlicenced spectrum for maximum speed.

      The FCC is saturating that frequency band at an unsustanable rate

      It's not the FCC.

      • Just to add: In this context, "unlicensed" means that the END USER is not required to have a license from the FCC to use equipment which operates in said frequency band.

        FRS is unlicensed. GMRS, which shares 7 of the FRS "channels" and allows higher powered radios is licensed. A GMRS license requires nothing more than some money.

        An Amateur Radio (Ham) license, on the other hand, requires a test of rules, electronics, etc. in order to be issued. Same with "Radiotelephone" licenses, used by sailing ships, o
    • Back when radio was new, many companies all trying to capitalize on frequencies created all sorts of different headaches because there was no regulatory body governing behavior. Every broadcaster tried to make their own standard so to listen to their signal you had to buy their radio and create their own custom broadcast array. Every broadcaster was under no obligation to honor another's usage of another frequency. The only time it mattered to them was when it dropped their quality. Then of course none
  • [sarcasm]In a suprise move the United States Government decided to deregulated emerging WiFi technologies. "WiFi is for the people" a recent press release from the White House is quoted as saying. From the same release, "Companies end up making a mess of technology. The people will decide how it is to be used. Enjoy!"

    In related news, the President was seen flippng the bird at Haliburton.[/sarcasm]
  • If we move to a more unregulated system, what about all the little guys with iPods and small FM transmitters? Won't we have trouble finding a free channel?
    • Speaking of which... I wish the FCC would clear off a set of standard channels for this sole purpose. Most FM transmitters have about a 15-20 foot range. Having a set of, oh, 2-3 consistently clear channels would be amazingly nice. I hate crossing the city and having to set the transmitter to a different channel halfway through the trip. You think cell phone users are dangerous while driving? You should see someone trying to change the channel on an iTrip while driving.

  • High prices and old technology, the American Way! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Thursday January 13, 2005 @10:49AM (#11348500)
    Over-the-air TV now serves less than 20% of the market. Each analog channel could be replaced by six digital channels. And one TV tower blankets an entire city transmitting a single program, instead of hundreds of small street-corner antennas each sending out hundreds of different shows and reusing the same bandwidth over and over again.

    And what would happen if this was the case? A single entity would buy up all the individual local markets and begin transmitting their own crap back over it. They might even keep the individual programs but still carry them under their own waving flag.

    We all know what I'm talking about so I won't even bother to give them the free advertising space... So when the local market is bought up by the conglomerate company what happens? Any number of things but most likely a dampening of freedom due to needing to show the world what a great company your station represents.

    An end to freedom.

    And third, spectrum is so politicized that nimble decision-making is impossible. For more than a decade the FCC, in a vain attempt to save the U.S. consumer-electronics industry, has pushed high-definition TV onto broadcasters.

    Like I give a fuck about the broadcasters. The FCC pushed HD on to the people. The same people that own that fucking spectrum and should be the ones choosing what happens with it. Sadly the FCC has taken on more and more power to do what IT thinks best not what IS best.

    HDTV is a joke. It's a waste of money and time. There were thousands of better things that we could have used that money on. Not to mention that it was mandated to be in every TV and every broadcast by a certain date. We had to pay for it once to be mandated and now we have to pay for it again to be used. THANKS! Just what I wanted... To be able to see the noise hairs and sweat on an NBA player.

    Personally, I think they should have spent the time and money protecting us from consolidation in the media markets but that's me. I didn't have a say in it and neither did any of the rest of us.

    Talk about win-win-win! Everyone would gain, especially the U.S. economy. As the successful pioneers of the first broad, free-market-driven spectrum exchange, we would set world standards for usage and equipment. The U.S. economy, the home of innovation and the lone entrepreneur, would prevail once more.

    You are suggesting something that the government and the business world cannot fathom. You are suggesting that there be a true free market. Not one regulated by a single entity handing out slices like it was the last piece of pie on earth... Not one that gives instant money in large chunks rather than small bits here and there over time...

    Businesses want control so that they can continue to win. If everyone had access then they couldn't dish it out and hold on. Why would they want to have other people innovating and using the networks like they could be? They can run everything on antiquated crap and offer shit services for high prices.

    Isn't that what communications is all about?
    • You are suggesting something that the government and the business world cannot fathom. You are suggesting that there be a true free market. Not one regulated by a single entity handing out slices like it was the last piece of pie on earth?

      Yeah! Like the Internet! That's a free-for-all, and look where that got us!

      Oh, yeah, that's right. A whole new era.
      • Yeah! Like the Internet! That's a free-for-all, and look where that got us!

        Oh, yeah, that's right. A whole new era.

        If you weren't being sarcastic I suggest you read the rest of his article. He mentions that most businesses thought it was a passing fad and that deregulation did cause the Internet to boom.

        The problem that I see is that both businesses and governments understand now that they have little to no control over the Internet and they will not allow that to happen again.
      • Actually the internet is fundamentally different in the regulatory problems. The reason the government was able to deregulate the internet is because it is potentially limited in size only by the network that it is composed of. The FCC needs to regulate the airwaves so that the limited spectrum of radio frequencies don't get cluttered and useless.

        Unless of course you're sudgesting you have found a new subspace trasmission model in which a near infinite number of channels can be created.

    • HDTV is a joke. It's a waste of money and time. There were thousands of better things that we could have used that money on. Not to mention that it was mandated to be in every TV and every broadcast by a certain date. We had to pay for it once to be mandated and now we have to pay for it again to be used. THANKS! Just what I wanted... To be able to see the noise hairs and sweat on an NBA player.

      This sounds like one of those conspiracy folk who feel that widescreen DVDs are a conspiracy by Asians and short

      • This sounds like one of those conspiracy folk who feel that widescreen DVDs are a conspiracy by Asians and short people cause they see horizontally better.

        Excuse me but DVD technology wasn't paid for by my tax dollars. It was created by the market and succeeded because it was a better alternative not because the government decided to waste our money on making it succeed.

    • I don't understand. Do you want the spectrum to be regulated by a free market (which in your view leads inevitably to undesirable consolidation), or a governmental body (which in your view is doing an awful job)? What, besides these two alternatives, do you propose? Benevolent dictator model?

      • Do you want the spectrum to be regulated by a free market (which in your view leads inevitably to undesirable consolidation)

        And what is happening now? The slices of spectrum are not priced within the range of anyone except a handful of companies which is already leading to consolidation. Then on top of that we are allowing even more consolidation within the market (AT&T/Cingular, etc).
    • Like I give a fuck about the broadcasters. The FCC pushed HD on to the people. The same people that own that fucking spectrum and should be the ones choosing what happens with it. Sadly the FCC has taken on more and more power to do what IT thinks best not what IS best.

      The FCC was essentially asked at the behest of the broadcasters to do this through several politcings that caused the broadcasters to shoot themselves in the foot. In the 1980's land mobile (cellphones, pocket radios) wanted more spectrum
    • Actually your response isn't entirely accurate. While the FCC is mandating "HDTV" broadcasting, their definition of HDTV isn't what you would normally think of HDTV to be. All broadcasters are required to broadcast in Digital 480p. 1080i Broadcasting would be prohibitively expensive for many markets, and the hardware end would be prohibitively expensive for consumers. Infact while the standard requires broadcasters to broadcast at 480p, TVs will still be able to display at 480i. The only significant
  • Newsflash! FCC to make complete U-Turn and allow any Tom, Dick or Harry to broadcast whatever they want, whenever they want!

    Interest: 70%
    Anticipated... ness: 99%
    Grounding in reality: -30%
    • It exists in short-range form. You can broadcast within a few houses TV or Radio- it would be a new level of pirate radio if we could bring that further...

  • Yes, exactly... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Se7enLC ( 714730 )
    What a USELESS article...

    Yes, that's *exactly* what we need is more confusion as to what goes where in the airwaves. No, we don't want standards like "Channel 6 is always ~87Mhz" oh no....We want each company to just pick their own frequencies and purposes and then CHANGE them on a whim. What a GREAT idea!

    You know, the FCC has a purpose other than censorship...they are there to organize what goes in the air, different frequency bands for different purposes. So what if we waste some small partition of freq
  • You will know when bandwidth has been maximized when you can place a raw hotdog in a bun, walk two blocks down the street in a wifi-laden neighborhood, and eat the cooked hotdog at the end of your walk.
  • A related article was discussed here in /. earlier: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/18/182425 1

  • Everything old is new again (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eno2001 ( 527078 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @11:01AM (#11348647) Homepage Journal
    Kiddies. Way back in the years before the FCC or even the FRC, radio spectrum was free. You would think that people would have approached this with wisdom and respected each others rights in using the spectrum. But this didn't happen. In the early days of radio, there was a lot of fierce disagreement about the best modulation schemes (AM vs. FM), frequency bands and other related issues. There was also a lot of corporate crap going on where one company would make a radio that would only recieve stations that used their transmitters (again a modulation scheme roadblock). So if you wanted to listen to certain programs, you had to buy more than one brand of radio. On top of that, without any regulation, people just picked the frequency they wanted and used it while paying no mind to their competitors. The reult was a completely unworkable radio scheme. This is WHY the FRC (which eventually became the FCC) was created. They wanted to prevent the kinds of interference that all of this bad behavior caused.

    The frequencies were divided up by region in order to ensure that there wouldn't be two stations operating on the same or even close frequencies within a certain distance. This is why you will see that if a large city has a n FM station at 107.9 MHz, you won't see another station at that frequency for a very good distance. In the past it used to be better because the FCC didn't used to bend over and spread them for the broadcasters like they do today. Now the geographic regions are smaller so the distance isn't quite so great and you hear more interference where you have bigger cities close together.

    If you like wild west style shoot-em-ups then you'll love unregulated radio spectrum. But if you just want to properly use the technology, then you need to have regulations. The flipside to this is that you also need to make sure those regulations benefit the end user and not the broadcaster. The FCC has certainly been corrupted, but don't throw away the concept of controlled spectrum usage because of that. Otherwise we'll have the same unusable mess that old fashioned radio was before the FRC (remember most people are just laughable boxes of jizzrags) affecting our newly re-invented radios.
    • Like everything else there needs to be a happy medium. Frankly I liked it better when the FCC worked on the printable that the air waves belonged to the people. Broadcasters had to provided x amount of public servile and had to prove that they where working in the public interest to get there little bit of spectrum. I also think we should go back to the printable that anybody in the US can receive any type of radio transition. Security is up to the broadcasters. For instance radar detectors should be legal

      • Frankly I liked it better when the FCC worked on the printable that the air waves belonged to the people.

        Printable? What is this, IRC?

      • Principle, service, their, principle, transmission, transmission, and I won't go into your grammar.

        Spectrum is not bought, it is leased. Which eliminates the whole "They bought it, its theirs" argument. Much like national parks, spectrum is a resource that belongs to the people as a whole, and cannot be sold - it can be leased for use for the benefit of the public, but never sold outright.
      • For instance radar detectors should be legal everywhere.

        Umm... People were using them to pureposely speed way above the limit and only slow down when they detected a cop. That is why states outlawed their usage in a car. You can own one, you just can't use one in a car.
        • And people use bittorrent to download pirated movies and music, cars are used to rob banks, web browsers are used to view kiddie porn, and steel is used to kill people.
          Why should I not know if I am on radar? When I am using my radar detector I am usually not speeding but when it goes off I check my speed just in case.
          A study proved that the best way to reduce speeding was not speed traps but too have marked cars patrolling. It cut revenue but saved lives. Think about new years day. They tend to announce tha
          • People were using them to go 90 and 100 mph or faster and only slowing down when they got a reading off the detector. I have been in a car once that was going 100 mph when the idiot that was driving decided to see how fast he could go.

            As for not having to constantly check speed? I can get a feel for how fast I am going by just comparing my speed to the cars around me and the "Feel" of the car. I can tell how much I am going over. I'm never going anywhere near 90 or 100 when I think I am going 60. And
            • I know many people that use them to know if they are being hit by radar. Just to check their speed.
              I would also just like to know when I am being observed. I still say that if you do not want me to detect those photons keep them off me and my property.
              I still say that you should have the right to receive ANY radio transmission.
        • "Umm... People were using them to pureposely speed way above the limit and only slow down when they detected a cop. That is why states outlawed their usage in a car. You can own one, you just can't use one in a car."

          Thank God only a few states have banned them.

          Rather than keep my eye on the speedometer to make sure I'm riding at the artificially slow speeds....I keep my eyes on the road where they should be. When it goes off...I only then have to take my eyes off the road to see if my speed needs adjustm

    • Back in about 1992 I read a fascinating article about Spread Spectrum on a mailing list called the Fringe Report. (Sorry, I can find no links to archives.) In a nutshell, the article proposed that instead of divvying up the spectrum into channels, it is left wide open for everyone's use. Broadcasting and receiving, instead of happening in one narrow band of frequency, would be spread throughout the entire bandwidth, using a packet-like system. The broadcaster would send out packets wherever there was an op

      • Re:Everything old is new again (Score:4, Informative)

        by Kiryat Malachi ( 177258 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @01:38PM (#11350684) Journal
        No....

        Wrong. Spread spectrum provides no more, and no less, bandwidth than channelized transmissions; what it does is provide a more graceful degradation of bandwidth instead. Channelized transmission has a hard limit - you can have X transmitters, each getting Y bandwidth. Spread spectrum, on the other hand, gives everyone XY bandwidth. *However*, as more people transmit, the signal to noise ratio goes down, which reduces the capacity of that bandwidth.

        Look into Shannon's capacity theorem - it explains exactly what you can get out of a given amount of spectrum. While spread spectrum is good at avoiding hard limits on number of users, nothing can eliminate the hard limit on total information.

        The better analogy would be: channelization is like DSL. Everyone gets their own pipe, which runs at the stated speed. Spread spectrum is like cable - if no one else is on, you can get lots of bandwidth, but as more people start using the same cable, the available bandwidth goes down.
    • you have to buy a radio which can only receive the manufacturers signals and requires a monthly fee. oh joy.
    • Read the fucking summary. Do you think Business Week is going to advocate against spectrum regulation? He's just talking about making it easier for companies to own (lease, whatever) and trade spectrum. He certainly isn't talking about ending governement regulation of spectrum. Hell, we have regulation of 2.4 gHz, and that's why it works so well.

  • Just like the internet, only with radio waves. (Score:3, Funny)

    by DingerX ( 847589 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @11:01AM (#11348655) Journal
    Excellent idea. I can't wait to check out what's on my brand new fancy multi-wave-length self-programming TV:

    PENIS ENLARGEMENT PILLS!!! VIOXXXX!!! GET YOURS!!!!
    *click*
    Get your presc@ription filled in seconds! 5
    *click*
    Make money at home! not a scam!
    *click*
    Singles Wanted!
    *click*
    attachments
    *click*
    *click*

    In all fairness, it'd probably be better than the series premier of The Will.
  • Stuff that should matter, like accurate weather radar [noaa.gov], is being drowned in spilled RF energy. If you leave things up to venture capitalists there will be no regulation at all, profits for a few investors and a lower quality of life for just about everybody once you find a reasonable way to value public saftey against the benefits to the entrepreneur and the customers for convenient wireless services. The only way [and it is far from ideal as implemented in the US] to come near the required balancing act
    • Frequencies used for radio astronomy are just another example. Once commercial stations start broadcasting on frequencies that are now being used by radio astronomers, then the natural signals will get drowned in the artificial signals. And, since you can't ask a star / interstellar cloud to broadcast at another frequency, you have to make sure that some frequencies are free from artificial signals.
      Btw: using above mentioned frequencies for commercial purposes would violate existing international treaties
      • Once commercial stations start broadcasting on frequencies that are now being used by radio astronomers, then the natural signals will get drowned in the artificial signals.


        So find a new hobby. Most us us are far mor interested in communicating with each other then the discovery of the new star H2873-3 in the R23853 galaxy.

    • If you leave things up to venture capitalists there will be no regulation at all, profits for a few investors and a lower quality of life for just about everybody...

      You know, I'm normally a very libertarian sort of guy, but this is one situation where I have to agree that regulation is the best course of action. These particular venture capitalists are the most money-hungry folks I've ever had the displeasure to deal with. These venture capitalists would like nothing more than to see gigawatt transmitters

    • Gotta agree.

      We also need to reserve bandwidth for future uses. If we fill the ether now, we'll hate ourselves in ten years time.

      Already 2.4G is a wild west with Bluetooth, Wifi etc stomping eachother. When every apartment gets a Wifi AP, and a few BT devices throughput will suck. Add a bunch of extra idiots adding to the mess

  • Comparison to internet flawed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by llambaster ( 849382 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @11:19AM (#11348907)
    There is one major difference between the spectrum and the internet- creating a webpage does not stop others from doing the same, while broadcasting over a frequency does. When BuisnessWeek says it wants to "open up the spectrum" what they mean is "license the parts of the spectrum that are available to the public".

  • author is an idiot (Score:2, Insightful)

    by deadweight ( 681827 )
    The author of that piece is SO lacking in ANY basic knowledge of RF engineering it resembles a game-show host proposing a totally new set of regulations for nuclear power plants. His sum-total knowledge of RF tech seems to be CB and Cellular and he sees the latter as a developement of the former. While CB radio is state of the art for the 1930s (low power AM on HF frequencies), it does illustrate what total deregulation can do. That spectrum is pretty much a waste now since anyone can say and do anything on
  • It seems a lot of people, including the article author, confuse HDTV and DTV. The FCC is not mandating HDTV (that would be the high resolution TV that requires a nice TV to view), they are mandating DTV (just plain digital TV, which requires a TV that supports it or a small convertor box). DTV does not increase the resolution of the TV signal, but it does allow a lot more efficient use of the TV spectrum. I don't know the exact numbers, but I think 6 or more digital channels fit in the same spectrum as one
    • Not only can more programs fit on a single channel, the modulation techniques used for digital television allow the FCC to pack the same number of television stations into a smaller television band, freeing up spectrum for other uses. ATSC, the technical standard for DTV/HDTV, is much more resistant than analog television to interference from other television stations.

    • I know more than one person who can get one tv station, and it is fuzzy. There is more snow than picture, but because everything is analog they can figure out what is going on.

      Digital doesn't degrade that nicely. Either you get a perfect picture, or nothing. If you only see a little noise, than Digital is better than analog, but if you see a lot of noise, then analog is much better.

  • Current bandwidth allocation is inefficient (Score:5, Insightful)

    by squarooticus ( 5092 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @11:24AM (#11348965) Homepage
    We're still using 100 year old technology to receive radio broadcasts, and it's the major reason why the bandwidth is so underutilized. Nowadays, we can fit very complex receivers on tiny chips, as illustrated by cellphones, so why do we continue to use frequency division as the basis for allocating spectrum?

    If we move to code division, the need for regulation of the spectrum almost disappears entirely. It's too bad no one thought of this before deciding on the OTA HDTV standard. :P
    • Spread spectrum (CDMA) is not a silver bullet for spectrum allocation.

      While it is more efficient than some other approaches, and has some definite advantages, it does not change the laws of physics. You still need a regulatory framework to prevent a tragedy of the commons.

    • You can't get something for nothing. Code division is nice and all but as the number of users increases so must the code. Eventually the overhead(the code) will be bigger than the data. Code division and other media access technology can better utilize available frequency but we still need frequency allocation. What we need is tighter allocation because our current technology need a lot less buffer room between bands and can send more using less bandwidth.
      • There is technically no buffer between bands. What there is is a requirement for how many DB your band must be below by the time it reaches the edge of your band. This has mainly to do with RF filter evolution than anything else. For DTV, the FCC made it possible to have adjacent channels. This wasn't possible with analogue and the old transmitters. With the new tech, they are putting adjacent channels in cities, but they still need spacing since you can't have the same channels used in two adjacent ci
    • We're still using 100 year old technology to receive radio broadcasts

      No We're Not! First off if we were using 100 year old technology we'd still be using gigantic coils of wires and the most rudimentary of vacuum tubes, and you would power it with wet cell batteries you'd have to mail back to have them re-charged, and everyone would be using morse code.

      The first voice broadcast in the world was in 1906 and that is still not even 100 years ago, if even barely not. FM (Frequency Modulation) Was not inven

  • Deregulation (Score:2, Informative)

    by COMON$ ( 806135 )
    In this case if deregulation is the best option why dont we consider a couple more options.

    Deregulate IPs: That way we can be more inventive with our technology rather than having someone give us permission to be on the net.

    Deregulate Domain Names: Think of the expansion of the internet if we all could use www.slashdot.com!

    How about the airways: why regulate who can fly where and when?

    Honestly I can see some leniency but the regulations occur because we have to think about collisions. Dont come crying

    • Exactly. The author makes the mistake of confusing internet content with internet infrastructure.
      The reason the internet works so well is that there is an agreed upon regulated infrastructure with unregulated content.
      • DNS != internet,

        without DNS the internet would still work. But the world wide web wouldn't be so easy to use any more (http://154.23.53.43/index.html)
        • DNS != internet,
          You're right, but the IP address is also regulated by governing bodies. http://154.23.53.43/index.html only works because there is one computer with that number. There are also agreed upon standards such as port assignments, and protocols that facilitate transactions between all manner of devices.
          without DNS the internet would still work. But the world wide web wouldn't be so easy to use any more (http://154.23.53.43/index.html)
          Imagine how messy the internet would be without standard
  • Many people and groups can't afford to buy a chunk of spectrum, especially if they have to compete against commercial interests.

    Amateur Radio
    Family Radio Service
    Non-Commercial Radio Broadcasting
    Non-Commercial Television Broadcasting
    Volunteer Fire Departments
    Local Governments
    Private Pilots
    Sailors
    Radio Astronomers
    Remote Sensing and Scientific Research
    Small Businesses

    • You gripe about hams, but you have a ham's quotation as your signature?

      • I think the list aren't the offenders, but the offended (those who are competing against commercial interests). In other words, he/she's not complaining about Hams.
  • Is it really such a good idea to cram the airways by opening access to more of the spectrum? It's already possible as a hobbyist to do pretty much what you need with the available bands and opening the spectrum will only encourage more low-end, poorly tested devices to enter the market.

    We haven't even seen the long-term effects of having cell phone towers throughout an entire town, let alone, having every wannabe electronic device manufacturer fighting over who can get the most distance out of a wave freq
  • Upon seeing the headline I was afraid this spectrum would be taken from non-commercial users, such as HAMs. But the article went something like "Ho, there's all this spectrum up for grabs. Let's get it". It is a bit unclear to me _what part_ exactly he is talking about. AFAIK most of the spectrum has already been assigned to someone. There is a mention of the TV broadcast bands, but I really cannot take this seriously, in view of backward compatibility.
  • The guy that wrote this has NO IDEA WHY THINGS ARE THE WAY THEY ARE! The spectrum is not a infinite resource. If it was, then their would be no regulation at all. The government is bound by ITU treaties to manage spectrum. The government cannot just hand it over to big business because if they did, anarchy would reign. His discription of hundreds of local organizations running their own station with low power transmitters would not cause a great econmic or informational boom. It would cause lots of in
    • Since bandwidth is NOT an infinite resource this would lead to just as much wasted spectrum since huge consortiums would bid up and scarf all the available frequencies and just squat on them. Look what's happened to .com domain names, of which there is a simiarly large but eventually limited supply. It would be the end of community radio, ham radio, unlicensed devices, etc.
    • The spectrum is not a infinite resource
      Uhhh, yes it is... so long as they're willing to broadcast at gamma wavelengths or, indeed, any wavelengths as they theoretically go up to infinity, and down to infinitesimally small.
      IANAQP.Y
      (I Am Not A Qualified Physicist... Yet)
      • Lots of things are theoretically true, until you try and implement them in real life.

        That's why physicists need engineers. You know, people who actually solve the problems, instead of just thinking about them.

  • how about this- (Score:3, Insightful)

    by utexaspunk ( 527541 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @11:55AM (#11349313)
    how about we get rid of radio, tv, and hdtv and use the entire spectrum as one massive digital transmission network? surely if we had the entire network free we could have tons of bandwidth per person, sufficient enough for broadcasters to transmit their shows over the internet, for voice, videophone, and whatever else we can think of?

    how about we build a nationwide 100% coverage network of towers for this and socialize its maintenance as a birthright for all americans? surely as the first high-speed, fully wireless, fully-connected nation there would be all sorts of developments that would stimulate a massive wave of growth not unlike what happened when the internet took off.
    • And what about radio astronomy, emergency channels, secure military channels and weather forecasting?

      It strikes me now that those clammering for deregulation are either greedy b*stards out to sell inefficient, RF-puking hardware or people who actually have no idea how radio works at all, and have only the dimmest awareness of its uses.
    • You are aware that different frequencies are usefull for different types of communications.. right? This is why Amateur radio has little pockets of bandwidth all over the spectrum. Some frequencies are usefull becase they will propagate around the curvature of the earth, allowing you to hear signals over the horizon pretty reliably (AM broadcast for instance does this OK) Other frequencies bounce off the ionosphere, enabling you to communicate over vast distances on low power, or observe qualities of the
    • It's called the internet. Or, at least the internet is getting there.


  • Perhaps the author needs to see what research is currently going on in the area of optimizing spectrum usage. The google search [google.com] is probably a good start. With such techniques the question of freeing up the spectrum is moot.


    D.

  • Commercial use of microwave frequencies is swamping essential weather forecasting, as in this article at the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4104355. stm [bbc.co.uk] which notes how the critical frequencies are being gobbled.

    To quote: 'Dr Steve Foreman of the Met Office told the BBC: "We're in a David and Goliath situation, arguing to the ITU for the safety and humanitarian uses of frequencies against some applications with very strong financial backing."'

    Does anyone really think Goliath should win in
    • > Does anyone really think Goliath should win in this? Isn't the need for weather-prediction pretty
      > obvious now?

      Well, as was demonstrated by Ham operators during the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the necessity for health and safety of managing and regulating the spectrum is essential.

      Physics puts some constraints on activities, and its sad to see regulatory agencies permitting commercial interests to harm services essential to our well-being. Imagine if corporate interests had managed to seize amat
    • according to: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf [doc.gov]

      6.8 GHZ: Fixed Satelite
      10.7 GHZ: Fixed Satelite(above 10.7), Radio Astronomy, Space Research, Weather Satelites (below 10.7)
      23.6-24 GHZ: Radio Astronomy, Space Research, Weather Satelites

      In the USA at least, those spectrums are already set asaide that they talk about.
  • The article goes on about the endless uses for corporations with all this proposed radio spectrum,
    yet people with even partial brain function might notice
    those packs and microphones their favorite public safety officer uses. And then of course there are the ham operators who fill in the gaps when the communication system that was bought for $10 million fails in a crisis. I would be supportive on giving commercial interests a wide swath of spectrum and they could all fight to the death over it, and just le

  • Rent, don't sell (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @12:51PM (#11350022) Homepage
    Broacast spectrum could be rented. TV stations should have to go back and re-rent it every year. That would shake up the broadcast industry.
    • They do, sort of. They don't pay a yearly fee, but they do have to reapply every few years.

      Spectrum isn't sold, it is licensed. While it is *rare*, it is possible to revoke a spectrum license.

  • The article ignores physics (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Comatose51 ( 687974 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @12:56PM (#11350095) Homepage
    The author is obviously arguing from a non technical standpoint and doesn't understand the physical limitations. Yes, in principle, a totally free air wave might cause a boom similar to the Internet. However, the problem is that there still needs to be regulations and oversight. Even thought 802.11, Bluetooth, and cordless phones share the same frequency and do so relatively successfully, there are still limits placed on their output if I'm not mistaken. No matter what kind of media access technology you're using, if someone totally overpowers the airwaves with his transmitter, you won't get your signal. For fairness sake, there has to be a limit to each user's "sphere of influence". The airwave is a shared medium and regulations ensure that everyone gets his fair share of it. Government regulations on such resources are there to ensure that the limited resource benefits the most people. While our current regulations are outdated and inefficient, it doesn't mean we should throw away the idea of regulations entirely. We should instead improve them. The FCC can assign narrower bands because current digital technology is more precise and require less bandwidth for the same amount of info. Perhaps they should allow the free trading of bands. But at some level, there has be some authority to ensure that it's not chaos out there. We've seen unregulated air waves before. Before the FCC, radio stations would hop frequencies whenever they wanted to. Listener couldn't be sure the station they had yesterday will be there again tomorrow. Let's not return to that.

  • Why not have an international on-line system for auctioning spectrum at various power levels at various locations for given times (with some zero threshhold for existing 2.4 GHz equipment)?

    It seems to me that if a community wanted to establish a WiFi network and they're out in some rural area away from others, then they ought to be entitled to bidding next to nothing for unused spectrum in their neighborhood.

    If you want downtown Manhattan during M-F, 9-5, then you need to pay, as you would if you wanted

  • Time to dump the word "spectrum"? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dr. Mu ( 603661 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @01:07PM (#11350252)
    Perhaps it's time to dump the word "spectrum" as it applies to the public airwaves. The word itself implies a management philosophy that hearkens back to LC tank circuits and passive RF filters. The fact is that technology has evolved way beyond partitioning the airwaves in the frequency domain only. What with frequency-hopping, code division multiple access (CDMA), and ultra-wideband (UWB), viewing this public resource as acreage to be platted and parceled out on spectral boundaries is a tad old-fashioned.
    • Ultra Wide-Band could offer much higher bandwidth than traditional RF devices could ever offer, at greater ranges with less power. Giving traditional RF devices precedence over it permanently is a mistake.

      Fortunately the nature of Ultra Wide-Band means it can co-exist with traditional RF devices, allowing for a graceful transition.

      While the FCC has limited UWB devices' power output to a thousandth of what manufacturers were hoping for, Pulse-Link is doing some interesting things. Many of you have probably
  • While it's an opinion piece

    Isn't most "journalism" these days? At least most political journalism. Which raises as even better question. Was there ever a time when it wasn't?

  • Writer makes comparison to internet, while superficially it is like that, we all know that spectrum is limited while number of websites and brodacast stations one can have is virtually unlimited. Not true with radio spectrum.
    There are other bits with radio stuff, like behaviour of radio waves at lower bands, that they tend to go farther, and are less like a "light" of 1Ghz+ bands. I would guess cellurization of bandwith would be good idea, say once someone buys bandwidth for say 1km radius they have to use
  • ...several WISP-related organizations are pursuing w/ the FCC regarding the devotion of certain spectrum slices specifically for broadband usage. Sure, there are LMDS and MMDS pieces of spectrum available but at, easily, several hundreds of thousands of dollars, these licenses aren't usually readily available to the typical wireless ISP.

    Check out WISPA [wispa.org] for one group's involvement.

    I guess we'll see. :-)

    Regards,
    Kory
  • ..but this part sucks:

    "Slowly return all licensed spectrum to a Chicago Board of Trade-like commodities exchange, trading spectrum on a second-by-second basis to entrepreneurs and businesses alike. For each trade, the government could charge a 1% fee. Let supply match demand and variable cost. "

    Besides there being constant scandals and corruption with that particular entity, it makes things more expensive not cheaper.

    No thanks. We saw what happens with this in the energy market. Hordes of middlemen who p
  • It used to be that the electromagnetic spectrum was all Public Domain (as it should be). Now it is illegal to listen in on certain frequencies and radios in the US can not be allowed to tune in on anything but the frequencies the government says it is allowed to.(hardware fixes to release that restriction are common).

    Who told the govenment that they owned the air anyway. I cant wait for the time when we have that breath-o-meter charging us for each breath. Well more likely someone in govenment will sell th
  • Go read the FCC enforcement division website. Those guys are positively raking in the dough serving up fines to people for illegal broadcasting. One or two guys in a van can easily generate $20K worth of fines per week -- and they do, all over the country. That adds up to millions in fines each year.

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