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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.

3 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. 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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  3. 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.