Senators Aim to Wirelessly Jumpstart Broadband

JimW writes "Article at Practically Networked...A couple of senators actually have a clue about how broadband might be effectively promoted. Not that I have anything against my tax dollars propping up failing telco's by pushing DSL on areas where it isn't financially viable. Methinks the dark fiber will stay dark." Their plan calls for 255 MHz of spectrum to be allocated for wireless broadband - to compare, the band occupied by 802.11b is 83Mhz wide, with each channel being 22MHz (they overlap).

Comments

Well SOMETHING has to be done!!!

[eyegor]

It's hard to imagine babs boxer and George Allen getting together on anything, but this seems to be a good first step.

Last mile is the hardest nut to crack. Around these parts, Verizon hasn't delivered broadband to very many people (I suspect they're waiting for their competitors to die off first) and our cable provider (adelphia) is in chapter 11.

My only concern is that we need to ensure that nothing will interfere with the wireless data. 802.11 shares spectrum with too many things.

Re:Well SOMETHING has to be done!!!

[Sc00ter]

"My only concern is that we need to ensure that nothing will interfere with the wireless data. 802.11 shares spectrum with too many things."

Well to bad all 802.11 devices are part 15 devices. They can not interfere with other device but they must all acecpt it from other devices.. Meaning that if somebody's cell phone tower is causing problems, or the ham down the street is messing around with his 100 watt 2.4ghz setup and you're in his path you're out of luck.

Excellent!

[xchino]

I work for a local ISP, and the competiton between other local ISP's for spectrum caused so many problems that everyone finally just registered a frequency. Except us, since everyone else switched we took over 2.4, but the interference problems persist, especially in residential areas with high concentrations of 2.4ghz phones. I hope this makes it to fruition, it'll make it much easier to find a good interference free frequency for more reliable wireless connections.

This is real! 2100MHz +/- or MMDS may be the range

[puzzled]

I run a WISP that covers five counties and I can assure you that this stuff is real. I am on a 'technical steering committee' that drives Cisco's lobbying efforts along with a handful of other industry insiders and the most of the talk around this issue went down about three months ago.

I think the easiest method to find 255MHz in the sub 6000MHz range would be to boot the owner/non-operators out of MMDS space, but there was also some talk about 2100MHz +/-

On the other hand, there is some mil stuff in the 3500MHz range that is pretty darned close to retirement - just take a look at http://www.alvarion.com and see the 3.5 GHz OFDM product :-) :-) :-)

Link to the proposed legislation

[burrows]

Here is a link to the proposed legislation, via the Freeside blog:

Proposed bill

Freeside is promising an analysis of the bill as well, but it's not up yet.

No surprise...Boxer and Allen were paid off by....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

AOL and Verizon.

Considering that Barbara Boxer has taken $40,500 in payoffs from AOL already this year is one indication of why she is pushing this.

George Allen is no better. $26,150 from Verizon and $22,000 buys his support.

Senators take more payoffs than they actually "get it"

Re:Why use tax dollars for this?

[shepd]

>If the telcos aren't doing anything about it, then there isn't enough consumer demand to justify the cost.

No, it's just that the telcos are useless at spending money (to them, it flows like water). Case in point: Running about 100 lines 15 km alongside the already existing fibre to my subdivision a decade ago to an old, out of date, and rather overloaded exchange, rather than building some sort of mini-CO there and using that shiny fibre line.

This is the case with many other companies. Another case in point, I've tried to set up a deal with a few local companies to redistribute their wireless internet to various households here, ensuring they make a profit as well as myself. No interest at all.

And, last example is the cable co. They also run cable under our town. They decided against wiring the houses here, as they'd have to pull it about 1 km or so. So now 95% of the houses have DSS, and they have zero business.

What makes this all the funnier, though, is that the telcos, etc. think that areas like mine are full of hick-homes with people that can't afford high-speed, when the reality is that the average home in this subdivision costs $300k (and for this area, that's probably about $100k above average) and there's no apartments, and being that it is a little ways from the city, communications equipment are WELL used.

Ho hum. More stupid decisions. I'm used to it, and plan to profit on it the moment I get the cash together to put in some wireless 'net.