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Senators Aim to Wirelessly Jumpstart Broadband

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the slashdot-needs-a-wireless-topic dept.

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).

5 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why use tax dollars for this? by pknoll · · Score: 5, Interesting
    All they're doing is lobbying the FCC to carve out frequencies so that wireless broadband applications are tenable.

    I'm not seeing evidence of tax dollars being used to build the infrastructure; just making it possible for someone (private corp., maybe) to do so.

  2. FCC and possibilities by insanecarbonbasedlif · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This article reminded me of a previous slashdot artice that pointed to this Business Week article
    "Sure, Wi-Fi has huge potential. But the spectrum could quickly become overcrowded and unreliable if it grows too quickly. Success will take two things: technological improvements and a helping hand from Washington. The Federal Communications Commission will either have to allocate more spectrum for wireless use or overhaul the way spectrum is divvied up -- an unlikely scenario given that the commission is overwhelmed by scandals in the telecom biz."
    They seem to think that an expended frequency range would have huge economic impacts too.

    --
    Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
  3. Too bad... by Bartab · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'll be forced to vote against Barbara Boxer for more real reasons than "broadband." You know, her votes on things that jail people, say like DMCA etc...

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
  4. This is a Great idea! by ka9dgx · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Things are starting to pick up with 802.11b, people building community networks, going around the local loop. If we can get 225Mhz of spectrum to play with, the possiblities are almost endless. The idea of being able to ship bits across space at 100Mbps without restrictions is so freaking cool.

    Unlicensed (a commons) but technically regulated (so we don't have bozos with 100 Watt access points) open spectrum is just what we need to help get around the layers of control that are slowly enveloping the internet. It wouldn't hurt to try to do an end run around the IP4 address limit at the same time, and try to get IP6 compatible devices.

    --Mike--

  5. Re:right... by JoeBuck · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wow. tps12 thinks that Finland and Europe have lower taxes?

    The fact is that government has played a huge role in technology creation, and you're using a lot of that technology right now: the Internet, of course. As you say, it takes time, energy, and a bunch of smart people, and money, but in many cases it's been government programs that provide all that. Government-designed TCP/IP beat all the proprietary network approaches (SNA, DecNet, Novell, etc) because it was technically better, and it got better because of a lot of visionary bureaucrats at DARPA.

    But, of course, the zealots who believe that government is inherently bad, stupid, and inefficient will ignore evidence to the contrary.