FCC Opens Wireless 3.6GHZ Band

mdeb writes "Broadband Reports has a story on the FCC opening up a portion of the 3.6 GHz spectrum. "This initiative would reserve 50 megahertz in the 3.6 GHz band for unlicensed wireless Internet operations. Setting aside this spectrum would make it easier for vendors to build devices that would work across all Wi-Fi frequencies and create new wireless Internet opportunities in rural America. The new proposal would allow transmissions at power levels higher than currently permitted for Part 15 unlicensed devices.""

Comments

Excellent

[2names]

Now I can Internet-up my cow herd. Sweet.

Rural Broadband via Wireless

[Johnny Doughnuts]

Does this mean if I lived out in the 'country', and my neighbours had nodes, or a corporate sponsership program was setup, internet would be readily available?

(honest question, seriously)

Re:Rural Broadband via Wireless

[hab136]

Does this mean if I lived out in the 'country', and my neighbours had nodes, or a corporate sponsership program was setup, internet would be readily available?

Check out http://www.locustworld.com/ for information about mesh networks.. essentially you hop along your neighbors until you get to a neighbor that has internet, thereby giving everyone internet.

Hopefully the cordless phones will stay out

[DrewBeavis]

I'd hate to see a repeat of the 2.4GHz problems I see with other unlicensed operations interfering with data services.

Neighbors with nodes

[AtariAmarok]

Does this mean if I lived out in the 'country', and my neighbours had nodes

They can always go to the city and go to a hospital and get those things removed.

Covering all spectrums?

[drewzhrodague]

With so many different rf ranges available for potential IP traffic, how do we cover all bands? I'm psyched that there are so many options available to us, b, g, a. It's nice to see so many unintended uses. Welcome to the future!

Obligatory Fake Quote from article

[mrn121]

"...and it is also noted that no longer will food have to be put IN microwaves to heat it." -obligatory fake quote from article

Re:Does distance scale with frequency?

[pholower]

But since this is only been reserved for internet usage you will not have all of the other crap on this range as you do on the 2.4GHz band. Cell phones, portable handhelds, WiFi, 2-ways... etc. This list goes on, and companies keep building more items for them.

Higher freq. & higher power = signal penetrati

[StateOfTheUnion]

The higher the frequency, the worse the performance for going through walls and other barriers for a given transmission power . . . Allowing transmission at higher power might help compensate for the higher frequency . . . Hopefully this won't be like 4.X Ghz which doesn't seem to go through walls very well

So soon I will be able to have a 2.4 Ghz wireless network, and a 3.6 Ghz wireless phone and they shouldn't interfere with each other right?

Re:Does distance scale with frequency?

[microwave_EE]

Not necessarily. Distance scales by the inverse of the atmospheric absorption. Of course there are many, many other factors involved: EM noise from the environment, RF noise from pre-existing transmitters using this frequency range, power of the transmitter, effective area of the transmitter (or receiver), modulation scheme (how data is modulated onto the RF carrier--for example, AM, FM, PM, digitization then FM, etc), and a whole host of other issues.

Re:Higher freq. & higher power = signal penetr

[Wesley Felter]

I think this new band is intended for outdoor last-mile Internet access, so penetration of buildings is not a concern. If you use 3.6GHz 802.16, 5GHz 802.11a, and a 2.4GHz cordless phone, they won't overlap (although your brain may explode from the alphabet soup).

Re:Does distance scale with frequency?

[AdamG]

50% more distance is 125% more area, though.

Go to the source

[Wesley Felter]

Instead of "Broadband Reports reports that RCR Wireless News reports that the FCC said..." let's just see what the FCC said: news release, Powell statement.