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FCC: Only We Can Regulate Unlicensed Spectrum
rfc1394 writes "In an article in ComputerWeekly, it was announced that the FCC has ruled that it has final jurisdiction over unlicensed wireless space, meaning that an airport authority can't force airlines to (pay to) use its wireless network and they may set up and use their own. This bodes well for the development of wireless networks in various areas as it means that you have the right to set up your own network even if your landlord would want you to use theirs."
For those of you outside of Massachusetts reading here...
"Massport"... sounds like it's a business or something, but it's just a trendy name for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which is just a branch of the state government trying to sound a little more important than they really are.
Does this mean colleges can't prevent their students from setting up their own wireless networks?
Yes.
Just as the FCC, some years ago, also banned cities and counties from using zoning laws to ban satellite dishes and other legal radio antennas.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
They sure can.
This decision says that they can't stop you from running your own network on Wi-Fi, not that they have to let you attach that network to their network.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
how much does it cost to monitor and enforce the right?
if FCC has not limited the number of access points that one man can have, the landlord can muscle out its tenant's right easily. Just install as many APs as possible.
we need more geeky lawyers... new jobs!!! :-P
^(oo)^pig~
"prohibit airport authorities from limiting or restricting tenants from implementing and operating a wireless system".
Emphasis mine.
You'll find another clause in your lease that goes something like this:
"If any clause of this contract is found to be void by law it does invalidate other legal clauses."
You see, they recognize that terms of your lease might well be legally unenforcable, void, and if they don't have that clause such could be held to void the entire lease.
You are not bound by void clauses, even if you sign them. Your landlord relies on your ingnorance of this fact to get you to follow the terms he wishes.
This statement by the FCC is that any such clause is void because your landlord has no legal authority to so restrict you, even by contract. It is prohibited.
No, I am not a lawyer, but I am a landlord.
KFG
Actually this decision says colleges CAN'T say no private wifi signals.
There are very few exceptions to this rule. Legitimate safey regulations (which is very narrowly defined), regulations related to the preservation of properties listed on the National Register of Historic places, you can't damage someone elses property with your antenna (drilling holes in a railing or roof you don't own), reasonable size restrictions, and finally it has to be in your own private space, not a common area.
If you take a look at a lot of apartment complexes these days you'll notice a lot of satellite antennas mounted to buckets sitting on decks. This ruling is why. The apartment complexes hate it, they think they're ugly, but there is nothing they can do about it.
Incidentally this same ruling was ammended to apply to fixed wireless, and yes they do mention Internet access. I don't think it's too difficult to say that this existing ruling already preempts any potential contract clause that you're worried about. At a minimum I think it shows how the FCC would end up ruling on the issue.
I can't seem to find this new ruling online yet. But I wouldn't be surprised if it also already dealt with this issue. I would imagine that the airlines lease included some sort of clause like this.
I remember that Slashdot story. And just today, in fact, I was looking around on the FCC's website when I found that they do in fact auction off some of the spectrum. Although it's nowhere near enough to fend off monopoly-driven corporations from eating up the entire spectrum, as the author of the original article speculates. Moreso, as the author of the parent comment mentioned, the FCC sticks up for the little guys and the services that wouldn't necessarily be able to fund themselves, such as amateur radio, citizens band, family radio service, instructional television, and other wireless services.
Ironically, I've been dealing with this exact situation in airports, but the fight is between the dominating terminal tennant and the authority that controls the terminal/airport.
In short, the Authority controlling the terminal (varies by city/state) wants to control Wireless access to enable 3rd parties to come in (concourse is one of the larger) to sell wireless access with the authority getting profit from the deal.
The Dominating tennant, usually an airline, has quite a bit of say (They're actually responsible for maintaining the facility set forth by the authority), but has been fighting an uphill battle with frequency allocation. In Short, the authority is looking to make money. The dominating tennant is looking for stability. My company operates a 802.11b network throughout a terminal and we were 'assigned' a channel by the dominating tennant. Obviously, I could run on any frequency I choose, but if I did, they'd shutdown my equipment (my antennas are on their roof, in their IDFs, powered by their power, etc.) and prohibit me from operating. They can, kick me out of the terminal if I won't impact them too much (There's a termination for convienence clause in these leases) or, simply over power my network by broadcasting the same SSID and dropping traffic to an VLAN that goes no where.
Yes, the FCC says I have certain rights, but when you choose to co-exist with someone who's ultimately a) paying you and/or b) allowing you to make money, politics plays a huge deal so it's best to work it out peacefully.
Cell phone use on airplanes is banned by the FCC, so you have no luck there.
The cell phones are banned on airplanes because the cell phone providers ASKED for them to be. You see, when you're on the ground, you're visible to usually just a couple of cell towers...when you're a few miles up, you're visible to MANY cell towers, and your phone's power is turned to maximum because you're so far from the towers. It creates all sorts of intereference with users on the ground - if you use your phone in the air, you'd be leaving a trail of dropped calls by other people underneath you.
You know that AirPhone system? That's basically a cell network but with the sites spread far apart so there's no interference. One proposal I've seen is to put a micro-cell on the airplane. It tells everyone's phones to go to a low power mode, which prevents the contact with multiple ground sites, and routes the calls through the AirPhone system those. I'm thinking they would stll charge an arm and a leg for those calls, but that would certainly help minimize the use.
Because beyond the RF issues, the sanity of the other passengers is at stake. People tend to talk loudly to their phones, especially in environments with high background noise - like an airplane. Having a few loud chatty people in an enclosed space with a lot of people trying to read or sleep would be disastrous.
It should. However, that necessarily mean you can set up a wireless network where a group of friends all shares a single connection to save money: most schools have a clause saying that only one person or computer may use a given connection. A group of twenty people tried that at my school: when the administration found out, they were all required to back pay for personal connections.
"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself." -Richard Feynman
The GPS and navcom antennas on the exterior of the aircraft are very carefully engineered, installed and tested to work acceptably well in an RF-hostile external environment. The fuselage of an aluminum aircraft is a faraday cage, however, and all the avionics are mounted inside with wiring to their respective antennas also *inside* the fuselage. Any unpredicatable and unpredictably-located RF sources *inside* the fuselage do indeed create all kinds of wild reflected RF harmonics bouncing around all inside the aircraft which have been demonstrated many times to affect the operation of GPS, RNAV/DME and Glideslope receivers, because these receivers are *very* sensitive in order to do their main jobs. That also means they are very sensitive to harmonic RF intererence, phase shift error, etc.
The expensive payphones installed into airliners have been engineered and *EXHAUSTIVELY* tested to weed out any interference with the airliner's avionics. That's about half why they're so expensive to use. Of course, greed is the other reason. If the captain of an aircraft doesn't want you to operate electronic toys on board his aircraft, you must respect his wishes, he *is* the boss after all.
I'm a private pilot and own a small single engine airplane. I have both a small GPS system and an older Loran system to augment my navigation. I also carry my cellphone with me everywhere I fly, but I DO turn it off because I've found out that just being on in standby mode, it will noticeably lessen the Loran's ability to lock onto the ground transmitters. The cellphone operates at near microwave frequencies, the Loran operates at about 100KHz, a rather long wavelength. They are at complete opposite ends of the RF spectrum, yet the interference is plainly observable, most likely caused by RF harmonics messing with the sensitive timing in the Loran.
The ruling applies only to governmental and quasi governmental entities. The private sector can do whatever they please, unless some specific law limits their powers.
So landlords could restrict tenants rights, regardless of what the FCC does.
well technically a microscopic portion of every transmission will cross a state line unless directed straight up, if they can grab drugs and fam products because "it could be shipped over state lines" then they could definitely use a technically present but non-detectable amount of EM transmission to keep control of all transmissions
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.