Slashdot Mirror
Revising Spectrum Rules
Orne writes "Whereas NPR is speculating on the television spectrum, the AP brings us news that the Bush administration is set to re-evaluate government and industry use of the radio spectrum. An executive order kicks off a year of public meetings held by the Commerce Dept; the official press release is here."
> The radio spectrum is a ''vital and limited
> national resource'' needed for economic growth,
> scientific research and homeland security, Bush
> said.
What about the rest of the world? Doesn't it count?
Hmm...
No pr0n. That's what the internet is for. And you'll find more than you have time for there.
I think a better use for it would be a Govt. subsidized, public wireless network that can be used by all. Internet for everyone sounds better than 312 Spice channels. Dontcha think?
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I ran this through the anti-spin machine and it spit out "I want to find out who we can bump off their frequency allocations so we can re-assign those frequencies via auction to raise revenues. And for those that can't be moved, I want to figure out how we can tax them."
The government has not done a good job of encouraging free enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit when it comes to RF spectrum. Each and every time they have a spectrum auction, the telcos seem to walk away the winners each and every time regardless of whether or not they actually plan to deploy services on those frequencies.
If Bush is serious about this and it's just not another revenue grab for the government or a gift for big corporations, he's going to have to gut the FCC and give them serious instruction on who really should be the benefactor of any frequency allocations.
If the airwaves really do belong to the public, the government has done an incredibly bad job of stewardship.
Look. I don't want to seem like a troll here, but I think that some of you are going a bit over when saying that like, the only reason that he is re-evaluating the spectrum is because he wants more money.
I recently did an FCC lookup in my town, and the Board of Ed. owns about 8 frequencies. I did some asking around, and someone said that they used to have radios on those frequencies to talk around the campuses (yes, i probably didnt' spell right), but they have replaced those with some FRS radios that are about 10 times better.
Think of all the frequencies that are being used up with things like UHF TV stations (move them all down to the VHF spectrum), and other things. Now, think of how crowded the unlicensed spectrum is (in my house, the wi-fi goes down when someone pick up the cordless phone).
Yes, Bush may get a bit of money, but wouldn't you want to have all of that nice, juicy bandwidth covering your area?
I love when Bush uses the military for photo ops and then screws them on benefits and crap like this.
Last night I wrote in the thread about over-the-air broadcasting how the gubmint should start re-farming part of the military aircraft band to other spectrum requirements. In retrospect, that post would have been more apropriately made here.
In a nutshell, that band is massive -- 175 MHz, or the width of 29 TV channels. Back "in the day" when encrytion was relatively primitive the need for so many frequencies was greater so users could "hide through obscurity" This is no longer needed, and a significantly smaller mil-air band would more than suffice given current DES-encrypted digital-spread-spectrum transmissions that are ultra-efficient in bandwidth requirements.
So it's much safer to re-farm let's say 2/3 of that chunk to other needs (give most to land mobile -- it's in a frequency range that's ultra-usable for them) and move cell and data around up above 800-900, etc. Everybody wins. Heck, I'd dearly love to see another amateur band in this region or an expansion of the 420-450 band.
To reply directly to your post, however, it's NOT screwing the military, despite their protests. They have the technology to use existing spectrum efficiently and securely. Spectrum efficiency is very much what's needed. Land Mobile is currently under orders to decrease bandwidth significantly in coming years and I don't see why other spectrum users can't be made to follow the same path. With effecient use, more users can have access to the same pie.
As to who gets what, well, that's a differnt story and one for another day and another thread!
The military and other government users are (naturally) concerned about security of communications. Current levels of data and voice encryption in fact allow for strategic security as well as tactical. The days of needing to hide through obscurity are gone.
I suspect this is more a case of a few spectrum-hungry technocrats not wanting to give up or share their exclusive-use and rather massive RF playground.
Cheers, Peter, W2IRT