Open Spectrum: Toward Ubiquitous Connectivity

obiwan2u writes "ACM's Queue magazine has a moderately dense article describing how new intelligent radios may free up under-utilized spectrum bandwidth, possibly providing solutions to the last mile bottleneck."

Comments

It will never happen, but.

[HiKarma]

I believe that today under 20% of homes get TV via over the air broadcasts. And the number is dropping. The rest get satellite or cable.

It's clear that if we opened up all that broadcast spectrum to unlicenced use, it could easily generate enough revenue to provide free satellite or cable for those few homes still with an antenna.

And just think of the huge value from getting all that spectrum for new technology, largely unlicenced uses.

Of course, the National Association of Broadcasters is one of the most powerful forces in the country. They think of that spectrum as "their property" even though they are blocking much more productive use. Same with the military.

So it won't happen, but we can dream.

Re:Last mile, what's it worth?

[Phishpin]

I live in a similar situation. I live in rural southern Indiana and it would cost thousands of dollars to get a cable to my house. Everything except the phone and electric lines is wireless.

I do have wireless broadband. Its from a local company (Ohio Valley Wireless cable). The service is called Speedex and it uses a Hybrid 3.5GHz microwave link. Its $50 a month for service that usually averages to about 95KB/s downstream and 16KB/s upstream. Its got a 30-35 mile radius from the tower, so the coverage is pretty darn good. To my knowledge, its been down only once in the year I've had it, and that was for 45 minutes. AT&T botched up their T lines.

Re:Last mile, what's it worth?

[etcshadow]

I always thought that was weird. Modems are so slow because they have to use the crappy phone lines, but ADSL is fast because it uses the same crappy phone lines? Ok

ADSL doesn't use just any phone lines. I think that less than half of the houses in the US are wired with high enough quality lines to support DSL. Also, the drop-off of bandwidth as a function of distance from the phone company's substation is pretty rapid. If you live in even a fairly spread-out suburb, chances are you can get crap DSL at best, let alone semi-rural or full-blown rural areas. Oh, and when I say "phone lines" I don't just mean the twisted pair running into your wall (although the physical wire quality is part of it), I'm talking about the various switching hardware upstream, too. Do you think that Podunkville doesn't have DSL available yet just because the phone companies are jerks? No, it's because it's an expensive investment for them to upgrade their "lines" to provide DSL.

So, no, ADSL doesn't use "the same crappy phone lines"... it uses different, not-as-crappy phone lines.

Also I put "broadband" in quotes because it's not entirely a very well defined term. (Yes, I know that there have been a few things attempting to define the term in various places... even a lawsuit over the use of the term, but it's not settled yet.) You can call pretty much anything from 128k up "broadband", but its really not in the same ballpark as 512k or 1M (or possible higher, with various new technologies like 802.16 MAN).

Besides, all that said, I consider your ADSL (via phone lines) slow because I have a cable modem. :-D