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Unlimited Airwaves

Posted by Hemos on from the what-to-do-with-the-airwaves dept.

Dan Gillmor has an article concerning the notion of scarcity of the airwaves, which has long been a testament of faith at the FCC. Recent advances in technology may render that testament false.

8 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Implications for Radio Astronomy. . . by PhxBlue · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While radio waves may not interfere with one-another directly the way sound waves do, what would happen to radio astronomy if we opened up every possible frequency to exploitation? Is it even remotely possible that's what the FCC bureaucrats are considering, and not simply their own necks?

    As an aside: the Internet should have made the TelCos obsolete years ago; but it hasn't happened yet. I wouldn't hold my breath on newer radio technology making old radio obsolete anytime in the next ten years, at least.

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    1. Re:Implications for Radio Astronomy. . . by Bonker · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As an aside: the Internet should have made the TelCos obsolete years ago; but it hasn't happened yet. I wouldn't hold my breath on newer radio technology making old radio obsolete anytime in the next ten years, at least.

      Ah, but it has. Something you don't see in the U.S., but something you do see going on in the rest of the world is internet telephony and VoIP services springing up left and right. The Telcos have been and are currently fighting tooth and nail to keep internet telephony and similar services out of reach in the U.S. just so they don't come unglued.

      You think the current hype about the record industry fighting MP3's is big? Wait until it's the baby Bells fighting against the first 'big' internet telephony service available in the U.S.. The amount of legislation bought and sold in that time will make laws like the DMCA look reasonable.

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  2. It's a matter of finding things again... by Quixadhal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, like so many other computer/data related things, it will amount to how well new equipment would be able to sort through the overlapping radio transmissions to find the one you actually want to capture and decode.

    Essentially, current radio tuners are serial, in that they lock onto a single frequency and attenuate all others down. Reed's suggestion is basically to receive many frequencies in parallel and toss them out as you decode them and they prove to not be the one you want?

    Sounds good. It would make security through adaptive modulation interesting.

    1. Re:It's a matter of finding things again... by thogard · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The optical transmitters are teh easy part. That
      bit has been solved to the rate of about 3.6petabites/second. The problem is the recivers can't do that (not to mention that 10baseT device you want to plug in).

      Now that people are looking at optical as RF and not as visable light, some of the sensors technology that is in R&D labs right now is good for 25km in rain and fog in the gigabit range. Its still point to point but the research is going places and I expect the line of site radio links are going to be gone in 15 to 20 years.

  3. They should be regulated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ok, there may be lots of bandwidth and frequencies, but to unregulate all of it is to say the same as "The USA has a lot a land that people could drive on, so why have traffic laws?". Not quite on point, but food for thought....

  4. Where will we get the "flying attack porcupines"? by Christopher+Thomas · · Score: 4, Interesting

    After looking over the lecture slides a few links in, the authour seems to just be saying that congestion (and hence spectrum scarcity) will be a non-issue if we just switch to point-to-point transciever schemes instead of broadcast schemes (either by using cells and a backbone or by clever coding).

    This is great, and would indeed increase bandwidth to silly levels... except for the fact that implementing a pervasive point-to-point network with high local bandwidth and low leakage is a PITA of vast proportions.

    Summary: Good idea, and it'll certainly see greater use in the future, but it's not "unlimited airwaves" by a long shot.

  5. Ten percent of the spectrum needs to be open by gone.fishing · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ten percent of the spectrum needs to be "open" for exparamentation, testing, and demonstration of new methods and technologies. This space needs to be broadly applied so that different technologies can be tried across a wide variety of bands.

    This way when something better comes along, it can be proven and space made available for it where it best belongs.

    I like the concept of spread-spectrum communications where enough redundancy is built in so that thousands of signals can share the same space without interference. From what I understand, the space of a single TV channel could handle an entire city's "personal communications" (two way radio, cellular, paging, SMS and etc.) needs with lots of room left over.

    When you think about the un-used potential in the airwaves, you just gotta drool.

  6. Re:actually by kableh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You hit the nail on the head right there. Check out my employer's website, since that is the crux of what we are doing today. Actually, Fox News just did a story on us, which should go national soon. I'm the one running the computer in the video, and yes I'm busy surfing Slashdot ;)

    Basically, instead of transmitting at high power to a base station, the transciever finds the path that takes the least amount of power. By transmitting at lower power, you get better spectrum reuse in a given area. One conventional cell becomes thousands of picocells. It really doesnt make sense to try to run a packet switched protocol like IP over circut switched networks like CDMA, et al.

    This guy does have the right idea, but I think some people are reading the article the wrong way. He isn't calling for deregulation, just more bands for people to experiment in, like the ISM band.