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FCC Plans to Allow Wireless Networking on Unused TV Channels
RKBA writes "Federal regulators have endorsed a plan to use vacant TV bandwidth for wireless Internet connections. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell says it would 'dramatically increase' the availability and quality of wireless Internet connections -- especially for people in rural areas. Powell says it would be like 'doubling the number of lanes on a congested highway.' But TV broadcasters oppose the proposal. They argue that it would interfere with over-the-air television signals for millions of people. The FCC commissioners voted unanimously to begin the lengthy rulemaking process for the plan."
There are what, 69 television broadcast channels available? Even with a high-gain yagi on the roof, I only get a handful in my local area (San Diego) plus another handful from LA and the surrounding areas.
The other 55 or so channels are just static... begging to be used.
I for one welcome our new broadband-in-place-of TV overlords.
You are wrong. Channel one is somewhere around 50-54MHz which is the Amateur Radio 6 meter band. You can work the world on 6 meters during certain parts of the sun spot cycle with very little power. Not good for broadcasting.
Uhm, the biggest loosening of the rules on media conglomerates in recent memory happened in 1996 under Bill Clinton's watch...
Mike hasn't really had much to do with that.
Powell's the wrong one to blame. For that, you have to go to Democratic commission member Michael J. Copps.
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Copps was one of the two members of the panel who voted to levy fines in the Bono case, while Powell was one of the three who voted against. Copps is also the dissenter who said there shouldn't just be a fine in the Stern case, but instead license revocation hearings for stations that carried Stern.
Despite "liberal" prudes like Tipper Gore, Joe Lieberman, Catherine MacKinnon, and Andrea Dworkin, there's this continuing unthinking automatic identification of censorship with the Right. So the pro-censorship actions of Democrat Michael J. Copps get blamed on Republican Michael K. Powell. After all, he's a Republican, so he must be the censorious crusader . .
I'm not sure where you get the idea that this is 'sheer stupidity.' If it's based on the reasons given in your post, you may want to try reading about the actual proposed system.
The FCC will not have to license this at all. If you'd actually read about what they're doing, you you would have seen that this is intended for unlicensed devices.
I'm not quite sure how the HAMs got into this, but I don't think they'll be terribly concerned.
The size of TV broadcast towers is more a factor of the distances they're trying to reach than the frequencies being used. If you only need to go 5 miles instead of 120 miles, a short antenna is quite sufficient.
And don't forget that, in general, the atmosphere absorbs more radiation at higher frequencies than it does at lower frequencies. Thus, 5 Megawatts at 150 MHz is going to go a hell of a lot further than 5 Megawatts at 2.4 Ghz - That's why WISPs have been begging for spectrum below 1 GHz for quite a while now. The power bill is actually cheaper for a given coverage area!
I could go on for a while, but I'm tired. In short, I will say: Feel free to be skeptical, but at least have good, correct reasons to do so...
The frequency of radio waves has absolutely nothing to do with data transmission speed. Nothing.
That's absolutely incorrect.
It is just how many times the electromagnetic wave oscillates every second
Do you know anything about modulation and keying? Sure we manage to come up with new encodings to pack a few more bits onto each cycle now and then, but data speed is still related to frequency in any practical system.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I think this is much more than doubling the lanes. With ATSC, each _channel_ represents about 20Mbps, which is better than the 5 or 11 Mbps that we get out of wireless "b" that possibly hundreds of neighborhoods have set up up.
Multiply that by the 40+ unused TV channels at any given location, dividing by the fact that 2.4GHz wireless ethernet now has three effective channels (1,6,11 under 802.11 in US) and you have an expansion factor of maybe over 30 times the aggregate bandwidth of current industy standards.
Of course, I'm not counting the various fairly proprietery networks and bands, such as Canopy and Tropos, but client stations for those fetch over $500 each, and base stations going for over $2000 I think.
You can carry more information at 2.4Ghz though. Think of it this way if you use each peak to carry one bit of information then the frequency of peaks affects the data rate.
900 MHz = 900 M bps 2.4 GHz = 2400 M bps
To see how different encoding system work AM, FM PCM look here