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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 press release doesn't say that Bush is planning on opening up more spectrum for unlicensed use, at all. In fact, with all the statments saying they want to "foster economic growth", I dare say it sounds like they just might be transfering more spectrum to private corporations, possibly rasing the price significantly in order to "create incentives for more efficient and beneficial use of spectrum".
You have to ask... What's the point of a press release when it's so vague, spewing out the same old "I want to do everything that is good, and nothing that is bad" that they now say pratcially nothing at all?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Hopefully Bush will give more of the radio spectrum to public use, as it IS the public's country, not ClearChannel's. Yes, some should definately be sold to industry for money, but a good amount should remain deregulated (within reason) for public use.
> 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.
But wouldn't everyone be happier with 312 Spice channels?
The Political Programmer
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.
"Sec. 5. Reports. The Secretary of Commerce, or the Secretary's designee, shall present to me, through the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director of the National Economic Council and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs..."
This section would indicate to me that President Bush is out to see what kind of money can be squeezed from the Spectrum. Interesting to me that the first two people to report to him are involved in Economic affairs. Though this may appear to be a squeeze on big business it really would not be. They pass along any rate increases directly to us, at some multiple of their increase in costs.
"The Initiative shall undertake a comprehensive review of spectrum management policies (including any relevant recommendations and findings of the study conducted pursuant to section 214 of the E-Government Act of 2002) with the objective of identifying recommendations for revising policies and procedures to promote more efficient and beneficial use of spectrum without harmful interference to critical incumbent users."
Though the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bandwidth are currently free for public use, the new "recommendations" that this committee is to make could do away with that. What would happen if Microsoft or another large corporation purchsed those chunks of the spectrum at auction? Could we all be forced to pay for licenses just to operate our little Wi-Fi networks?
I don't really know how likely these outcomes are, but when we are talking about big business we should at least consider the possibility that it could occur. It seems to me like we should all be writing to our respective representatives about this issue. Spend a stamp, save a network node.
If Darwin was right, you'd be dead by now.
For some interesting reading regarding just how unscarce and unprecious this National Resource is check here:
http://werbach.com/docs/new_wireless_paradigm.htm
Unfortunately, I don't think this is what Bush has in mind. From is memo I gather that his intention is to make sure the corporations that already have it keep it:
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
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?
They already have that. It's called Fox News.