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FCC Considers Expanding Unlicensed Spectrum
Syntari writes "Reuters is reporting that the US Federal Communications Commission has begun to seek comment (the first step in promulgating regulations) "on whether unlicensed devices, like wireless home networks for Internet service, could operate on television broadcast airwaves in areas where they are not being used or at times when the spectrum lay fallow". The news release by the FCC itself, in MS-Word format, is online.
This is pretty big, as these things go - especially since television spectrum, being of a wavelength that easily penetrates walls and is not overly affected by rain or snow, is ideal for wireless services. Should any slashdotter actually want to submit a comment (gasp! could it be?), read this first (FCC's rules on electronic comment submission), and then go here."
hmm... seems the best way to mandate HDTV is to start giving away the current TV spectrum.
But I guess this can also open up true "public" TV stations, broadcasting for anyone who has an "old-fashioned" TV set...
Congress isn't going to lose money from this, and new R&D in wireless devices might actually help the economy.. I doubt it but it's possible, especially if it was something major.
in areas where they are not being used
Here's what I don't understand: If they open up these frequencies now, doesn't this mean that these areas are never going to get tv signals over the air ? And, if these frequencies aren't being used now, doesn't this imply that the utility of e.g. wireless is somewhat diminished in these areas, if only because it seems likely that there aren't that many people there ??
This seems somewhat shortsighted. To paraphrase the old children's saw, once they give it away,they're never going to be able to take it back again.
I thought the reason for the FCC's existence was to manage and regulate something that already belongs to the public. When determining how best to use this spectrum, the public's interest should be the biggest thing (some would say the only thing) taken into consideration. Using the spectrum as a cash cow should not.
Spectrum was licensed for broadcast in the past because it was the most efficient use of the public resource. With the development of more wireless products that rely on the unlicensed band, as well as less dependance on analog TV channels, unlicensing spectrum may now be the most efficient use of it, from the public's perspective.
Everyone can be a broadcaster now, in their own home, with minimum effort; thirty years ago, that was not the case. (There are always hobbyists, but that still takes up effort and time...). There is little value in locking up spectrum that can be more efficiently used by small-time "broadcasters".
Gee, I groused elsewhere that the FCC was in the industry pocket in mandating HDTV (I not sure consumers or broadcasters wanted it all that bad, but the manufacturers sure did -- seems many of us were inconsiderately holding on to old sets for too many years). And now they issue statement in proprietary MS Word format? Sure, there are lots of translators, but should we have to use translators to listen to our own government?
SO many people think Word is the lingua franca of the computer world. There's an example of a Microsoft success -- name it something generic like Word and make it the de facto standard. Not that I don't love MS, but I have avoided MS Word for about ten years. Even the IRS at least uses PDF.
I consider the government using proprietary formats offensive, and have routinely complained about "Best viewed with Internet Explorer" tags on Virginia gov't homepages (I do live in VA). Their response (beside groaning at another crank email) was that Frontpage told them to put it there....
Anyway -- now we return to our scheduled programming....
As I understand it, the US military is taking up the majority of the usable spectrum. You would think that in an age of encryption and such, those bands could all be opened up, and the military woudln't have any problems keeping their data secure. If that much band width were opened up who knows what we could do with it. I've also heard that in Europe that cellular phones are much clearer and have more functionality, due to the fact that the military blocks a significantly smaller portion of their spectrum.
Has anybody else heard anything along these lines?
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
The question is, what is worth more to the american people: a piece of radio spectrum which is freely usable for everybody, or a one-time $10/person tax cut ?
I'm pretty sure that the radio spectrum is worth a lot more, since it opens up a large amount of opportunities for new consumer devices and house&garden communication.
In fact, if consumer devices show up I'm pretty sure the government would get more in sales tax on those devices than it would get if it sold off the spectrum.
Excellent comment.
That said, the spectrum is viewed as a cash cow now. And while I think Congress and the government in general is seriously overvaluing the airwaves, I'd be surprised if the FCC went with this plan. The FCC has been pretty deep in corporate pockets for the past 20 years, and the current board is even further from "public interest" than most. The only way I might see them going for it is if they happen to have stock in companies that would benefit from unlicensed wireless.
Yeah, I'm a bit of a pessimist regarding the current board. Just too many shitty decisions (must carry not applying to HDTV on cable and telcos required to cut their own throats with DSL while not requiring the same of cable being the two biggest I can think of offhand).
And while unlicensing spectrum sounds all fine and dandy, there still have to be a modicum of rules around it. I'd still want to see specified bands for particular purposes, otherwise you could have applications stepping all over one another (no... we haven't seen that at all in the 2.4 GHz spectrum. Uh uh. No problems with cordless phones and wireless networks).
As you say, there may be little value in locking up spectrum now, but I don't want Joe down the street using that unlicensed spectrum to broadcast his own public access TV channel while I'm trying to use it to surf the net.
Most countries have taken this approach. In America, the FCC has taken on a role not merely of allocating frequencies but of controlling, insofar as they constitutionally can, what travels over them. The absurd limits on the 2.4GHz band, created in part not to help foster private telecommunications but to make microwave ovens legal, mean that communications over these bands have to be ultra-local in scale and have lead to conflicts between household and office equipment that should not exist. When my microwave oven is on, despite the heavy shielding, my Seimens Gigaset phone's reception is audibly impaired. I gather a common complaint is that 2.4GHz phones tend to interfere with 802.11* wireless networks too. And all because of artificial scarcity.
In the UK, until the mid-eighties, it was virtually impossible to use any kind of wireless device without a licence. An opening up made portable telephones and similar devices possible, but innovation was hampered for the longest time because of this.
A genuine opening up - with some restrictions for some bands to reduce the chances of a destructive tragedy of the commons, but otherwise an unrestricted unrestrained environement - of large amounts of the spectrum, possibly insofar as practically possible going for the long term goal of opening up 90% of the airwaves, would create opportunities both for localised and long distance communications to a degree currently unthought of. Private, community owned, relay networks could create sane and affordable telephone provision, last mile provision for Internet type networks would become easier and could work on a broadcast rather than point-to-point model. Devices designed to operate within homes could work without a maze of unintelligable cabling - your TV and receiver could receive digital signals directly from a DVD player anywhere in the house, as long as the signals followed agreed upon standards. It'd be ironic to see "plug and play" type functionality built into every household media device to free itself from the use of plugs and sockets.
At the moment, the government and FCC has no incentive whatsoever to do any of this. Governments have recently (last 20 years or so) seen rationing the electromagnetic spectum as an opportunity to raise stealth taxes. In an era where everyone looks at their income tax bills and blames the government, but looks at their cellphone bills and blames the cellphone companies, it makes sense for them to lighten the load on income taxes by moving to indirect taxation such as that generated by auctioning spectrum. This is a disasterous policy as not merely does it undermine the innovation that could be fostered in an environment of free spectrum, but it constitutes a form of regressive taxation as certain types of communication becomes more and more important and necessary because of network effects. I've known employers that refuse to employ people for certain types of job who will not supply a working cellphone number.
The spectrum will not open itself. The government needs to act, and act in the public interest, not what it can get away with to raise funds on-the-sly. Unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to the FCC, your congressman or senator. Tell them that innovation and freedom is important to you, and that it's important that the airwaves be opened up to foster a genuinely innovative and progressive culture where communications are unhampered by artificial scarcities, monopolies, and restraints. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done into creating a large ISM band, but if these efforts fail, you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed wireless technologies, to get around the bottlenecks the current ISM bands impose. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how opening up the airwaves can help all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on opening up the airwaves.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
This is pretty big, as these things go - especially since television spectrum, being of a wavelength that easily penetrates walls and is not overly affected by rain or snow, is ideal for wireless services.
and carry LESS information than 2.4Ghz the amount of information you are able to carry in a frequency channel is DIRECTLY coupled with the frequency and width of the channel you use. in the 50MHZ range where channels 2 and 3 reside you CANNOT transmit very much without using alot of the spectrum with a wide channel. I.E. you are using tons of frequencies to transmit the same information that is able to be transmitted on a few in the higher frequencies. and to do this you need Gobs more power.
It's not magical. we use 2.4ghz because at low powers and small channel widths we can spew lots of information... as your frequency goes down the wider you need to be and the more powerful you need to be.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is probablly the best time to unlicense spectrum. All the telcos are hurting, and unless they really feel this is a threat lobbying against it would be a waste of money they need right now.
Pretty much what it sounds like the spectrum would actually get used for is say, products like video baby monitors, or the drive-thru at the local fast food. and not really on products that directly compete with the telcos at all. even though the spectrum could be used to deploy a local 2-way ISP, like you pointed out, the problem with that is in providing the towers to operate the network.
unless you can convince your early adopter crowd to site the WAN repeaters on thier property it's going to cost too much money to compete.
so basically, anywhere that hasn't already been served by wireless broadband providers probablly won't be just by unlicensing this spectrum. due to a lack of demand, or due to the high cost of competing with the entrenched broadband offerings.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Unlicensing the spectrum, in these times of budget deficits and an impending war, doesn't seem like a good idea fiscally.
I disagree. While unlicensing a chunk of the airwaves won't bring in a big bonanza chunk of money, it will hell promote new industry and long term growth in the economy.
The airwaves are one of the bases for ecnomic infrastructure in the "Information Age." The net economic effect of allowing thousands of individuals and businesses to make the most of this chunk of spectrum far outweighs any one-time payment from existing business groups, who in all truth probably wouldn't make much of it anyway.
So the question is should the govenrment seek to bolster it's coffers once by selling spectrum to proprietary interests, or promote the economy as a whole over the next decade by letting us all use it. I think the choice is clear.
Howard Dean for president