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Spectrum as Property
the economist troll writes "An article in this week's Economist argues that overcautious control of electromagnetic spectrum, on the part of regulatory agencies, has resulted in the sheer waste of up to 95% of available spectrum. The article suggests remedies for this sorry state of affairs, including (but not limited to) various methods of privatization. Peppered with history and interesting facts--for instance, did you know only 2% of America's spectrum allocation is determined by auction?--this is one article you won't want to miss."
The 1980's?
Old news is no news...
Why would any more bandwidth be made private? So only a few corporations can control our communications networks? Yeah, let's go with that. Four more years for Bush (and Michael Powell)!!
Peppered with history and interesting facts--for instance, did you know only 2% of America's spectrum allocation is determined by auction?--this is one article you won't want to miss.
Yeah, if the rest of the article contains statistics half as fascinating as that one, I'd probably be riddled with regret if I didn't read it. I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to find out precisely which frequencies are actually determined by those actions. Thanks for the heads up!
Can I have the infrared range?
That way I can copyright and patent it and charge everyone including the military for the use of my band of the spectrum.
How is it done in Europe, Africa, Asia, S. America, and in Austrailia? How is it working out for them? I hate to jump to privatization without a prescident.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Its braindead. The RF spectrum is a limited resource, and as such is subject to speculation and fraud -- have we forgotten electricity auctions so quickly?
Politicus
As a ham many areas of spectrum are underutilized because the technology does not exist to successfully exploit them. For example the repeater which takes a radio signal coming on one frequency and retransmits it on another is the basis for the entire cell phone industry.
At the time the commercial interests wanted that spectrum for expansion of paging.
What financially driven interests forget frequently is that basic non-directed research is a good thing which yields benefits down the road and often entire new industries.
Like the RFID crowd wants to put high power RFID tags on the 70cm band. This interferes with both Hams, Wind profiling radar and satellite communications. The difference is someone can make a quick buck.
Also these RFID tags can be read at a distance of several miles with the right equipment. So much for RFID being a 'short range' technology
If i am lucky First Post
When do these color posts stop being informative and start getting redundant? They keep getting modded up. Okay, so I can understand the first few days worth.. but can some sane individual explain this to me? Or is this the new form of karma whoring? "Fix the colors" rather than posting article text?
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
Thankfully, this article also covers not only the idea of 'spectrum privatization' or letting the free market allocate spectrum instead of the FCC's (rather arbitrary allocations) but also the idea of 'open spectrum'; letting anyone use spectrum in various ways (subject to non-interference regulations, of course- if your device uses spectrum it needs to play nice).
I believe the article supports this thought, that basically it works out that *either* spectrum privatization or open spectrum would be a much better way to allocate spectrum, but the FCC is an organization in search of a purpose and of funding, hence tries to regulate what need not be regulated. Not regulate for any real purpose either, merely regulate.
If we want progress in technology, a good first step would be to get rid of, or radically change, the FCC.
RD
between 1900 and 2000 the number of trees in the US doubled
Interesting. Do you have a link? Did a quick Google but found myself trapped between tree-huggers and tree-choppers.
Unfortunately, this is the marketing guy's version of some hard engineering facts. The article sounds very much like a j-school graduate's version of what an economist said...and that neither one ever took anything beyond bonehead physics for liberal arts majors (you know, the one without the math).
Yes, there are things that can be done to maximize the efficiency with which we use the available specturm. And yes, there are inefficient users of the spectrum (government agencies being among the most egregious). But this article clearly overstates the case by about the same amount that SCO overstates the value of their IP.
...I've been 'regulating' 3 SSIDS from inside my apartment for months now.
Oddly, my neighbor just got a large envelope from the RIAA...
If you think
Four more years for Bush (and Michael Powell)
Don't be so fscking blind. Comments like that are so high school. Look at all the give-aways BOTH parties toss out to their paid clients. If you believe for one second Bush/Republicans are any worse than the Democrats, you're a bigger fool than they ever hoped for. Bush's FCC commissioner, Junior Powell, obviously is a lacky for large corporate interests. But so were his predecessors under Clinton. Hell, go read the USDA rural broadband money rules (from the bill Democrat Senator Harkin sponsored). Would you be surprised it's just a slush fund to give money back to the incumbant phone companies? Yup. If you ain't one, or ain't established old money, you ain't getting money. Funny how it always works that way.
While we're on the propaganda debunking, here's one for you:
1. Go read MoveOn.org's propeganda, especially all the blathering hatred at Bush for sending US jobs offshore to places like India, China, etc.
2. Then read who MoveOn.org is funded by (George Soros).
3. Then read Soros Investments list of holdings. Wow... it's like a list of all the major guilty offshoring companies! How can this be? Maybe Soros doesn't know?
4. Then read the white papers and recommendations by Soros Holdings on offshoring. HINT: If you are a company he invests in and are NOT making him money, he will move to find better management or dump his investment in you.
This country would rock if it wasn't for all you stupid sheep.
a link is still more convenient than editing the url yourself.
Well, you know. At least they did something about Janet Jackson's nipple.
i am writing this on
my ipaq from my 1st
floor coat closet in
my house in FORT
MEADE, FLORIDA! i
am being ravished by
hurricane charlie.
the power went out
almost 6 hours ago,
but somehow i can
still reach a wi-fi
access point (must
be on a UPS). if
anyone can read
this -- please send
beer and porn and
wish me luck!!
cheers,
roger
Why would any more bandwidth be made private? So only a few corporations can control our communications networks? Yeah, let's go with that.
Guess What?
Government ownership of spectrum is precisely what big corporations love. Their voice will be heard in government. Yours won't.
The whole point of property rights in any sphere is so that the property of the ordinary person may be protected by law. Making stuff "public property" just gives it over to the corporations, bureaucrats and political pressure groups.
That's exactly what has been the norm for spectrum for almost a century, with the result being a cartelization of mass communications that has strangled political diversity and imposed a homogenized, easily manipulated mindset on the American public.
Privateize that sh*t as much as possible, as fast as possible.
-- I could tell right away that she was impressed with my HUGE Slashdot Karma.
What an idiot, hell none of the "new" ideas he listed are "new", I think he needs to go read some EE books and come back to the sandbox.
All your base are belong to Google.
Clay Shirky has just posted his essay, The Possibility of Spectrum as a Public Good . It starts with mentioning that the FCC is considering opening up additional spectrum for unlicensed uses -- "the same kind of regulatory change that gave rise to Wifi" -- and points out that "The 2.4Ghz spectrum is not treated as property, with the FCC in the ungainly role of a 'No Trespassing" enforcer; instead, it is being treated as a public good, with regulations in place to require devices to be good neighbors, but with no caps or other restrictions on deployment or use."
Good reading all 'round.
The Economist recommends privatisation as a solution. Now what a surprise. Don't get me wrong, it's a great paper and I actually subscribe to it, but there are times when it gets into the realms of market fundamentalism, so you should always read between the lines. Some of their articles also read as if they belong in the Leader section, so thick do they lay it on with the opinions.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I want to purchase all electromagnetic frequencies between 380 nm and 780 nm. Therefore, everything that people could see would belong to me. Or does somebody else already own that part already?
Of course, I'll licence them under the GNU's GPL.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Politicus
I read the article. The last time I checked, the laws of physics and information theory haven't been repealed. There is nothing new about any of the technologies that were mentioned in the article.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Thoughts of Dave Reed (the guy who gave us TCP/IP)
on the subject
Paul B.
Israel? Are you mad? The place is a horrendous fascist limited-war zone in a near-dead desertified valley. If israel is first-world, so was iraq.
I guess that's an indication that the modern "internationalist" left really is a descendant of those old, worn-out radical ideologies, i.e. a kind of neo-communism. OK, so Amerikkka's evil because its citizens have rights and money and all that, and those Jews in Israel (let alone the Brooklyn-born Israeli) are fascists who eat babies for breakfast. Yadda yadda yadda. Israel's remarkably successful and humanitarian for a tiny country that as you say exists in a "near-dead desertified valley" -- hell, they've made it more progressive, advanced, wealthy, free, etc., than all the billions of neighboring Arabs and "made the desert bloom," without oil and while fighting four wars against 2 billion people. So, yeah, Israel whups most places' butt.
"First world" is places like Sweden and Canada. The USA is like a scaled-up third world hellhole.
That's a laugh! I'm on a two-year contract in Canada now, and I can tell you it looks like a decent country with all the luckiest benefits (U.S. influence, U.S. investment, U.S. trade, British heritage, vast land with natural resources, etc.) after being dragged through thirty-something years of socialism. Everybody here's miserable compared to all but the poorest, most desparate Americans. I can only imagine the same goes for Sweden and the likes, I haven't been to Scandinavia in over a decade.
From the article...
I didn't know that about crack and I don't think it's common knowledge either. Sounds like he is a bit too familiar with it. I guess this is a little insight into why lobbyists are such whores for money, and what they spend it on.
What happens is during the re-seeding of a clear cut area, hundreds of smaller trees can take root in the area where one large tree used to stand.
That's a fascinating article. What does it have to do with radio spectrum?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The RF spectrum is a limited resource
You base this assumption on...
Be sure to check your facts, it may have limits but we haven't even tickled them yet. (see "The myth of interference")
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
For example in Canada, the province of Ontario thought it would be a BRILLIANT idea to allow the construction of a private highway, rather than funding it with tax money. Lo and behold, the owners of said highway waited a couple of years for city growth to force people to become dependent on the 407 and are now jacking up rates to a level that is many times more expensive than any other toll highway in the world.
So now the Ontario government is trying to force the company to stick to more reasonable (and still quite profitable) rates, but the foreign owners of the highway are using threats of trade barriers to force Canadians to pay more and more and more to drive on their own highway!
It would be insane to give up public control of something so fundamental to modern society as EM bands. Increasingly, they are the "highways" that our society relies on to get things done. You think you hate it now that Microsoft basically dictates what software can and cannot be created, imagine if they literally "0wned" the airwaves.
Privatization is not a panacea, it is good when used in appropriate places, but can be a real drawback when a company can get too much power over the people who rely on its service.
then why do I hear two different radio stations on the same frequency so often?
Why does one over-the-air broadcast station have ghosting caused by another??
What, the free market is supposed to fix those problems magically, without government oversight, when they're still pretty bad with the FCC throwing down tons of rules *and* charging licensing fees?
I smell typical Economist free-market hype. Just let the highest bidders control your spectrum, and everything will be fine, kiddies...
I'm not saying there isn't a need for change in the way RF is used. But I am calling into question a highest-bidder-takes-all approach, and the motives of those who back such an approach.
Most people don't understand how television channels are allocated in the USA. Due to interference concerns, stations on the same and adjacent channels must be geographically separated by large distances. For VHF, I've been told that the FCC's rules can be approximated at 160 miles separation between stations on the same channel and 70 miles separation between stations on adjacent channels. The rules for the UHF band are stricter due to the increased susceptibility to interference of television receivers in the UHF band. The end result is that you can't just arbitrarily pack analog stations into a smaller UHF band. Digital stations (ATSC) are more resistant to interference and this allows the rules to be relaxed without resulting in unacceptable levels of interference.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
no link but I know that is more or less true, and it's easy to see why. The 1900s began the age of serious transfer from horse/mule/oxen power to mechanised power. Much less pastures needed, they got abandoned and turned to forest. It also was the era that had people switching from firewood to fuel oil for heat and cooking, again, more trees left growing.
You can walk around in new england in the woods and just about as far back and deep as you want to go, you'll still find massive stone walls left over from when it was all mostly pasture and they cleared rocks every year out of the fields.
Do you really expect George Soros to dump money into companies which are unprofitable?
Not at all. But for Soros to dump millions into an organization and even pledge that he would spend his entire wealth (which isn't true, but it got him free PR. Dig deep enough and you'll find people like Soros almost never use their own money for these causes. Coerce others to give on your behalf, hook a Governor up with a gay lover and get him to pass legislation per your liking) under complete dishonesty, deception and fraud is unfortunate. Of course, again, it's Soros's right to spend his money spreading complete falsehood. The real shame is how many fools blindly swallow it.
Look at the Euronationalists. A good German friend of mine tells me Europeans are qualified to understand the tyranny in Iraq of Saddam Hussain because of their own ezperience of Hitler and the presumed lessons learned (seeing their continued relativism, nation-wide socialism, and growing anti-semitism makes me believe they haven't shrugged their desire to kill others). Another French friend constantly reminds me how imperialistic we Americans are. Funny, did you know France *still* has colonies (and no, they certainly do not treat them as equals. Dark skinned people could never be an equal to a true Frenchman).
It is the blindness of the sheep and the hypocracy of the con artists like Soros and most members of both US parties that gets tiring. Seems like we need a Slashdot mod category: -1: Horribly Obvious
lollollollollollollollollollollollol
Parent post violated the "omg! wtf! rediclious n00b asl uber l337" compression filter.
IMHO spread spectrum should be used whenever possible. It allows for sharing the bandwidth and virtually eliminates interference problems.
Lawrence Lessig spends a not insignificant amount of time on the concept of spectrum in 2001's The Future of Ideas.
Quoting him from page 233 (emphasis in original)...
"Here again, an idea about property is doing all the work - but this time the idea is at its most attenuated. We don't yet have a full property regime for allocating and controlling spectrum. Yet we are still being driven to embrace this single view. We are racing to deny the opportunity for balance, pushed (as we always are) by those who have the least to gain from a world of balance. The possibility of a commons at the physical layer is ignored; even the chance to experiment with the commons is denied. Instead, policy makers on the Right and the Left race to embrace a system of perfect control.
So strong is this idea of property, so unbalanced is our understanding of its tradition, that we embrace it fully, without limitation, even when it doesn't yet exist, and even when the asset being assigned a property right is not - like the wires of AT&T's cable or the creative genius behind Disney's Mickey Mouse - something anyone has created. We are racing to assign property rights in the air, because we can't imagine that balance could do better."
Buy it new, buy it used, or get it from the library. But if you have interest in spectrum you should definitely read this book.
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
"the 1% of frequencies below 3GHz are worth more than the other 99% of spectrum between 3GHz and 300GHz"
Well, I suspect, since "95% of the government's spectrum is not being used" it'll mostly all be above the 3 GHz spot.
Using linear scaling may be fare for bandwidth measurements but it's not a fare way of describing "the usable airwaves" because of the differing technologies and the unique ways that certain bands interact with other objects and the environment.
I think the key point not being well expressed in the article is that the spectrum above about 3 GHz is not as precious and should be opened to more comercial use.
Every time I read one of these propaganda pieces on the virtues of applying market principles to the RF spectrum, I have to ask, what about all of the users who don't have the money to buy a slice of the spectrum? Are they going to be shut out because corporate users can afford to pay far more than they could ever dream of spending? Currently, there is spectrum reserved for many people and organizations that do not have much money. Economically "efficient" is not the same thing as socially "efficient".
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
FUNK yeah i'm ready for it!
imagine how it could be applied...
ham radio meets irc meets gnutella. (god save us by advancing the technologies to filter social signal-to-noise like slashdot ratings, for such a technology would be spammageddon.) there could be a wireless equivalent of shouting "we need a couple people for backyard baseball" to a virtual stadium of people who are looking for things to do. (This differs from today's internet in that it is still directly tied to physical location.)
ISPs could be come obsolete with a 100$ pci card / software investment in dense enough locations (...eventually... gnutella was a great first venture into familiarity with highly unpredictable node-clouds, i think we have lots more to learn though) I doubt legislation would ever rise to meet this potential though, there's too much legislation on providing services, exactly what will kill local wifi voip providers as soon as they become a threat to big business.
a cheap, wireless, distributed system of microphones and speakers around a club that raise or lower the music dynamically in different spaces based on conversation noise. crap, throw in speech-recognition and word-triggering and it's big brother in '06.
any other ideas?
-g
Exactly. George Soros is interested in open societies, and thinks that sites like MoveOn are helpful.
and scientology is not interested in your money, but is just helping you reach enlightenment. hahaha! thanks. i think i understand you MoveOn people better now.
I thought this was about efficient allocation of the spectrum, not a left vs right ding-dong.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Currently, you get a chunk of spectrum and you do whatever with it. If someone interferes, you track that one person down and get them to stop. The size of your spectrum effectively limits the bitrate you can throw across it, assuming consistent power/noise ratios, because after all, if no one is interfering, noise stays consistent.
A UWB transmitter raises the noise floor across all bands ever so slightly, basically proportionately to the bitrate and range the transmitter seeks. Not really a problem for a few transmitters. Also, since people transmit so infrequently, lumping everything together means you're less likely to be affected by the interference.
But if UWB becomes commonplace, and people become greedy for higher bitrates, then keeping the noise floor low for the people still using fixed spectrum allocations will become a forgotten priority. And even if UWB becomes truly universal, if the noise floor gets too high, where do you start to fix it? How do you decide which UWB transmitters are talking too loudly and for too long? If you start to license how much power and time they can use, how do you determine that a given licensee (or an anonymous unlicensed user) is the problem?
Some analogies:
If allocated spectrum is like having slow individual PC's, UWB is like being on a fast mainframe while the admin is on vacation.
If allocated spectrum is like a stain on a shirt, UWB is what the stain looks like after it bleeds to all the other clothes you washed with it.
If allocated spectrum is like a monthly marital spat, UWB is like the loud party the neighbors are always having.
Maybe tomorrow he'll cut a check for Freerepublic.com.
It's about killing your enemies. We've been very successful.
I belive the point the grandparent is trying to make is that it would be a much better system if we build more intelligence into the endpoints of the system (better transmitters, receivers), since in this case we obviously can't change the medium.
The truth is that most places hate America
Actually, if you want the truth...
The Truth(TM) is that people will hate anyone they can blame, if they're the kind of people that are conditioned to blame others rather than take care of themselves. America gets much of the greatest hatred because, for a lazy-assed loser, it is the great personification of all the attributes they know they lack.
Call it Ned Flanders Syndrome. He's so damn easy to despise, because he works hard and deep down is probably a better person than you are. It's disgustingly true. You cheer when misfortune falls upon him or his kind. Why else do so many slackers in the US fear and hate bible thumpers or any clean cut, hard working square?
So instead of working your ass of, you blame everyone else. Look at the previous poster's claim about Florida votes not counting. Dude, set the joint down and read a newspaper. Even a liberal one like the New York Times. Does your liberal newspaper not even count? Did you not read that all these newspapers came down and discovered every way they counted (including all the different ways Al Gore demanded, including making military votes not count which I would presume would upset you if you were consistent), Al Gore lost? Every single way, he lost. He lost. He lost. He lost. The great loser lost. Got it yet?
Change the electoral college system constitutionally next time if you don't like the rules. Really, saying this Florida "selected not elected" nonsense is like loudly farting in an elevator. It marks you as a complete loser to any person of reason (even those of us that do not like Bush - an idiot is of no value to thinking people).
But back to hating, the Africans hate the Europeans. Visit Mozembique - if you are Portugeuse, there are places you just do not visit. Visit French Guiana, where France threw its undesirable prisoners for years. If you're French, you do not leave the resort if you're wise (or at least take an escort with plenty of protection). Do you think the Czech like Germans? Go visit the village of Lidice which the Germans wiped off the map in order to show who was boss. Ask any Pole or Balkan nation native how much they love Russians. You want to know hate? Just ask.
And many of these people have legitimate hate. Most of the world has a right to hate Brits, Germans, French and Spainiards for the continued nightmare that lingers from their colonialism. They envy the US, but HATE Europeans.
Alas it is this reason the Europeans wish to remind us all how much Americans are disliked internationally. It allows them to feel superior for a fleeting moment and pretend their colonial tyranny never existed. But then they go and hate Jews or oppress Muslims and the hatred returns.
Nowadays, most complaints about Florida are about the improper disenfranchisement of thousands of black voters, most of whom probably would have voted for Gore. But perhaps it doesn't serve your interests to address that issue.
It's a good book and very directly related to the topic at hand.
Historical statistics on US forests
But forest land data is not the same as the number of planted trees. As another poster mentioned, cutting down an old tree allows several young ones to use its space. The US Forest Service report also does not count trees planted on private property, which is like 67% of the US land - the malls you go to, public parks you visit and neighbors that have trees in their yards.
The author has demonstrated his lack of understanding of RF basics.
... at this frequency (VHF, much higher than VLF), data is typically sent at 1200baud. Much higher than that and it becomes more difficult.
... (thank you oh great queen of buzzwords) ... I encourage you to study some basic radio theory, get your ham license, and experiment with the APRS network which runs on 144.390mHz ... it's a world-wide "mesh network" which is very active, and very effective, and very well suited for it's purpose.
Even a sliver of new unlicensed spectrum in the very low frequencies could therefore make an enormous difference. It could, for example, make possible a cheap alternative to cable and digital-subscriber line modems (for which roads have to be dug up and trees uprooted) in delivering high-speed internet access across "the last mile" to the consumer.
Nope, sorry captain. "Very low frequencies", A.K.A. "VLF" cover about 10-30kHz. Read up on Nyquist's theorem... there's some math involved, but it basically dictates maximum data rates at any given frequency. Even then, in real world applications, maximum data rates are typically lower than nyquist rates.
For example, I'm a licensed amateur radio operator, and I actively transmit and receive data at 144.390 mHz
Basically, theoretical data rates increase as the frequency of a signal increases.
In another ham band, around 435mHz (UHF), satellites typically send data at 9600baud.
So, data rates are still relatively useless for broadband applications at any realistic point below anything ending with "gigahertz". There's no way in hell (do the math, thank you nyquist) that VLF could be a "last mile" solution.
On to another point regarding "mesh networks"
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
The amount of information that can be transmitted over an RF link with a given frequency band and noise floor is finite. The Shannon limit describes the absolute bottom signal to noise limit, below which no useful information can be sent. With wideband spead spectrum technology and robust error detection/correction algorithms, we can finally approach it. That is the bad news. The good news, this is 100x better than most of the (mostly uncompressed analog) open air transmission methods currently being used.
Consider a regular, low noise telephone line limited to 3 KHz bandwidth, no DSL, ISDN, or other high bandwidth enhancements. The first generation telephone modems ran at 110 or 300 baud. Eventually, QAM modulated modems came out that worked at 1200 baud. Later, 2400 baud modem appeared. This proved to be the limit of pure analog op-amp filter technology. 9600 baud modems requred a DSP, to process and recover data from the incoming signal. Later, 19.2k, 28.8k, 33k, and eventually (almost) 56k modems appeared, as the DSPs got faster, and more sophisticated filtering, error detection and recovery algorithms were used. But this was the limit. Pushing more data through a bandwidth limited, voice quality phone line requires a lower noise floor, or more bandwidth. Sending symbols faster requires greater bandwidth. Using a more complex symbol constellation requires a lower noise floor, or eventually the bits smear into each other to an extent that the error recovery mechanism cannot cope.
Open RF is much the same - you have a finite slice of bandwidth to use. You can reduce the signal to noise ratio by increasing the transmitter power, but then you become a greater noise source for everybody else who is transmitting over the same spectrum. CDMA phones are constantly adjusting their transmit power up and down, depending on how well the base station is receiving them. If the BER (Bit Error Rate) is too high, the phone is told to raise its transmit power. If the BER is low, the phone is told to reduce power, in order to reduce the noise. In a CDMA system, you can always add "just one more" transmitter, but eventually the noise floor is raised to the point where calls are dropped.
Also in open RF there are other problems to contend with, that dictate the optimal method of transmission - fading, (transmitter moves behind or out from behind a building) multipath, (Signal takes multiple paths to receiver, resulting in overlap because signals arrive at different times - think of trying to talk across an echoing canyon) and dopplar shifts. (Transmitter is moving, resulting in shifted carrier frequency) In practice, open RF is a pretty crappy transmission medium as compared to any sort of physical link.
In order to preserve optimal use of the spectrum for others, you don't want to transmit omnidirectional. If the receiver is in front of you, the signal you transmit to the sides and back are just wasted transmitter power, and an unwanted noise source for everybody else. Ideally, you only want the signal to go in a laser like path between transmitter and receiver. Very tricky if you don't know where the receiver is, or if it is moving.
My rights don't need management.
Broadcasters only like this idea when it comes with "incumbent protection", i.e. they get the spectrum they're using now for free. They're terrified of the possibility that "their" channels might be put up for bid. The Bush Administration is into "incumbent protection", because they don't want to offend the existing stations.
Yes, privitization! Why put up with evil Government Waste(TM) when we could just auction off the spectrum to ClearChannel! That'd be a huge improvement! Hooray capitalism!
The Free desktop that Just Works
See the whole EMR spectrum on this poster: http://www.unihedron.com/projects/spectrum/
All those that are gung ho about privatization and selling the spectrum should take a look at how the IPV4 space is being used. A small educational institution that has less than 5000 students and a small IT program has a /16 (do a whois on 160.102.*.*.). We use about a tenth of it and that's with everyone having a static IP, staff and students.
First, divide the spectrum into a million different slices. Specify some of them as high power, and some as low power, some as very long distance, some as fairly long distance, some as short distance, and a few as few very short distance, aka, bluetooth. (You need less as the distance gets shorter, because, duh, everyone can use the same ones.) OSI Layer 1.
Next, come up with some protocol. It needs a sender address, an optional destination address, and data, and that's it. Include a 'logical link control' to let people move around at will. Automatically negotiate a 'backchannel'. OSI Layer 2.
Then let anyone broadcast on any power/freqency, anything. But, and this is the key, require them to always negotiate downward to the 'worst' power/freqency that works, unless they have a good reason not to. (Aka, they're a TV station, and they don't want TVs to constantly have to call them back and say 'Hey, up the power a bit more.' Possibly you'd have to license this, but that's not important because most people would use devices that are bidirectional and thus don't need to worry about it, just the broadcast people.)
But, remember, each frequency has a set power, so if they want to broadcast stronger or lower, they'd need to change power/freqency. And, yes, attennas are designed for certain frequences, so we'd need to have evenly distributed strong and weak ones. (Aka, for every antenna size, we need to make sure we have a 'right next to the tower' power/frequency we can broadcast, and a 'A strong as possible' power/frequency too, that we can both hit with that antenna.)
Then build an assload of repeater stations. For any power/freqency, with the brains to let us link through them instead of directly. (In fact, if you have these, you can ignore the TV broadcast problem. Just have the TV station aim for these guys. If you can get it direct, good for you, if you can't, get it from them.)
The problem is that we're trying to solve a technological problem with regulations. There's plenty of bandwidth for everyone. It's just that we build devices that can't move around to get more. If we stop that, if we build some sort of 'airnet' that lets me use a specifically designated low power/freqency when I'm right under a cell phone tower, but flip to what is currently UHF at near-TV station power when I need drive behind a mountain (Thus sucking all my batteries, but that's not important.), we'd never have to worry again.
And, depending on how smart we design the network on top of this infrastructure, we can magically have cell phones and TV that can tune in radio stations, and direct-connect cell phones. Because there won't be any difference, except hopefully a layer of encryption on the cell phones.
Actually, every device will need some encryption, or at least authentication. So every idiot can't wander around pretending to be CBS. But, hey, we now have a world-wide wired infrastructure to grab public keys off of. And, really, no reason we couldn't hand out keys over the airwaves...we'd just have to what happens with web browsers now. You can get a signed cert, or you can make your own. In fact, make this part of layer 2, also, just because.
Of course, no way in hell this will ever happen...it requires throwing out all TVs and radios and cell phones and everything.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Hrm... the concept of "mesh networking" sounds very familiar...
did you know only 2% of America's spectrum allocation is determined by auction?
That's a bad thing? The last I had heard, I thought that slashdotters weren't in favor of the large, faceless companies.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
yes, it might be a good way to make money after all, but those using the frequencies as a consumer will pay for it one way or the other.
Is there anyone out there who thinks that he'll benefit from more efficient bandwith usage on a personal level?
It would be great if the 2.4 GHz spectrum would be licensed - I'm looking forward to pay fees for any WLAN NIC I buy.
95% of the spectrum are not meant to be for profit, but it's not like 95% of it are being wasted/unused.
I don't read replies by ACs.
We were routinely told that 5000 children 5 years old (forget about the adults) a month died because of the sanctions. Using that figure there are 50,000 kids alive that wouldn't have been without the war.
I guess they are are of little concern to the Bush haters.
While the frequency allocation chart linked from the article was very nice in my high school physics book, this chart (beware: PDF) from the NTIA is much more informative.
As for the various notions of privatizing or opening up large swaths of the spectrum, it must be done very carefully, if at all, as there are too many users that absolutely must have clear channels to operate safely (aircraft navigation and communication come to mind), but at the same time do not have the financial resources to compete for even a small slice of their current frequency ranges.
It does poorly...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
>Privateize that sh*t as much as possible, as fast as possible.
Sorry, but I just had to respond to your neo-con Reaganesque BS(TM).
Your philosophy would argue that the National Forests,the water we drink, the air we breath should all be "managed" by Private Industry.
MmmHmmm. Righht.
Ever visited the Oregon Coast? It has retained its beauty precisely because NOBODY can own, or "privatize that sh*t" as you put it.
I think, therefore I thought.
If the value of that strip of land is so high (people are obviously willing to pay a lot to use it), then maybe you could enable some competition, by putting together incentives for a parallel highway operated by someone else. Why hasn't any competition formed if the profit is so high? High profit is a natural incentive for investment, so something else must be going on here.
Lives in many places could one day be richer thanks to vibrations in the air.
Kweh? I wasn't aware that radio waves propagate via vibrations in the air -- quick, somebody tell SETI that their work is in vain, since radio waves must not be able to travel through vacuum!
See section II.2 in SPECTRUM PRIVATIZATION: Removing the Barriers to Telecommunications Competition, a Reason Public Policy Institute paper.
Here's what we should do:
Every 10 years, the ownership of available spectrum is divided up in shares across all citizens. 1 citizen, 1 share.
Then they go to town with it- there's a gigantic market for spectrum.
At the end of 10 years, do it all over again.
End result: Everyone gets access to spectrum. People can choose to give spectrum to causes they believe in, or they can sell it to the higher bidder, or hell- just use it themselves or their own causes.
This creates a price signaled market, and also puts cash into everybody's hands, which is good for the economy.
Hmm - with about 300 million in North American, $771 billion would out to about $2,100 per person for each man woman and child.
Are people _really_ willing to pay this much for what nature provided for free? Well - I suppose the regulators need to justify their salaries somehow!!!
See meaning 1c from m-w.com:
Main Entry: ravish
Pronunciation: 'ra-vish
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: Middle English ravisshen, from Middle French raviss-, stem of ravir, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin rapire, alteration of Latin rapere to seize, rob -- more at RAPID
1 a : to seize and take away by violence b : to overcome with emotion (as joy or delight) c : RAPE
2 : PLUNDER, ROB
for crying out loud, the idea of spectrum allocation is so old. Why require certain modes on certain frequencies. It is all wrong, and yesterday.
Imagine you have a device, looks something like a cell phone, you want to talk to someone down the hall, it uses some local low power mode. You want to talk to someone across town, it find an open but of cell spectrum, and picks the right method (CDMA, TDMA, analog).
A web service, available through WiFi, or CDMA, or GPRS, depending on where you are, or what you need. A quick e=mail CDMA, browse the web in a coffee shop with WiFI access, no problem.
Imagine this, it is possible with software defined radios. Allocate the spectrum the old fashioned way, and we are all out of luck.
Once the spectrum is auctioned off, someone will own it. Sure today the guv'ment gets lots of cash today, not anything in the future. What good is that, someday Clearchannel will own all the radio stations in the US, and play nothing but of commercials (pretty close now). Strong arm, and odd weird starving of the competition will make this happen.
Lets think about the future....
I don't see why the two choices have to be government administration and private ownership. Why not sell limited term (say, 5-50 year) leases with competitive bids? That way, businesses can develop spectrum, but the public still retains control in the long term.
Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There's a perfectly good road connecting two points, and you want someone else to make another road to foster competition?
Jesus, this is why I dropped Libertarianism. Ayn Rand writes great books and all but come on, some things just don't work well when they're private, and roads are a perfect example. Competition? Come on! Do you think the people of Canada really want 20 roads owned by different individuals/corps connecting the same two points just to prove that the invisible hand can adequately govern any system? Because that's sort of the basis of free market capitalism (as opposed to corporatism), you know, the "lots of small businesses lots of competition for efficient distribution of resources" approach. Which would mean lots of roads.
But having lots of roads is just silly. It makes a lot more sense to have the roads be properly designed for the traffic that needs them. It's better for the environment (less roads built), better for private land owners (who wants to live next to a freeway?) etc, etc.
We don't have any examples of countries with a completely privatized road system, but lets look at trains for a moment. The best trains in the world are in countries like France and China, not in countries like the US or Britain. Hard to believe, isn't it?
Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There's a perfectly good road connecting two points, and you want someone else to make another road to foster competition?
So you would prefer a monopoly? That would leave people vulnerable to precisely the sort of problems that are typically cited as concerns. Seems a bit disingenuous to argue that a market system wouldn't work when the reason it wouldn't work would be the constraints you'd seek to impose on it yourself.
But having lots of roads is just silly.
By definition, if you have fewer roads than people are willing to voluntarily pay for, there is a *scarcity* of roads. Arguing in favor of mandatory scarcity maintained by force (of government) doesn't seem very nice.
It makes a lot more sense to have the roads be properly designed for the traffic that needs them. It's better for the environment (less roads built), better for private land owners (who wants to live next to a freeway?) etc, etc.
Any material good can be over or under produced. Without a market system, it's guaranteed that one or the other will happen pretty consistently -- because no one has any way of effectively determining demand for a good without market feedback.
-- I could tell right away that she was impressed with my HUGE Slashdot Karma.
That's a fascinating article. What does it have to do with radio spectrum?
;-) ) and now your comment... Strange, I guess the link was pretty much about Open Spectrum, was it the wrong one??? ... ...
;-( (He did a trick or two, after all, what whould you expect of the guy! ;-) )
Huh? I've got one 'Funny' moderation (which I tried to ignore
Well, yeas, it was!
The correct one is here
Paul B.
FM Radio markets could be vastly expanded if the FCC allowed stations to operate on first-adjacents of each other.
Currently, primary stations are only allowed on second-adjacents (400kHz) which is double the 200kHz required maximum margin for FM transmissions.
This buffer zone was to allow for older, less precise equipment to not receive interference. However, in this age of digital radios, it should be technically possible to pack stations much closer together...such as stations on first-adjacets even. If I understand RF modulation correctly, as long as the buffer zone excedes the maximum possible modulation (carrier +/- frequency response of audio signal) it'll be fine. This is about 20kHz, 1/10 of a freqency division. No problem at all.
Having private property rights and spectrum auctions are required to maximize efficiency, that is, whoever has the most value for any spectrum will own it. Government can determine the value of reserved spectrum to itself and choose which and how much spectrum not to sell. Public spectrum is not necessary, any entity could purchase spectrum, open it, and charge per device for using that spectrum, rather than charging for service like cellular. I don't think it would cost that much per 2.4GHz device to make up the cost of purchasing that spectrum at market price. We could also sell personal licenses to use spectrum, like for Ham radio. And if we did auction the entire spectrum so that is was used efficiently than the spectrum price would decrease by not having all the demand squished into a limited range. Spectrum fragmentation problems can be solved by combinatorial auctions.
If the Economist is right and technology can overcome interference problems effectively than spectrum prices will decrease dramatically. If spectrum is truly 'not scarce' than the price of spectrum will be near zero, and the license price for transmitters or service will be near zero. If prices are effectively zero than licensed spectrum will be indistinguishable from a commons. If the Economist is wrong and spectrum is now or ever will be 'scarce' than the tragedy of the commons will return. A spectrum commons is wrong, the market is always right.
Just to re-iterate, the article states the lower bands below 3 GHz are scarce - this is where all the action has been in the past. It also states that that is a whole 1% of "the usable airwaves". This is a linear scale of measuring and on pure bandwidth basis is an accurate percentage (Assuming 300 GHz is cheaply doable) but when taking into account the most desirable bands for an application it's a whole other story.
Back on the pure bandwidth wagon, every time transistors can be frabricated to operate at twice the previous best frequency you have suddenly increased the available spectrum by 100% and therefore the previous total now occupies only a mere 50%.
The article is clearly biased toward making the radio band look under utilised.
Unlimited resources are normally free. Only limited resources are valuable enough that people bother trading them. Pretty much anything that is traded is a limited resource.
So why would you think thatspectrum being limited is an argument against trading it? As far as I can tell it is really a precondition for trade in it.
Even the author concedes that some breakthroughs must occur before this electromagnetic utopia he describes can be realized. I suppose the same sort of case can be made for intergalactic travel.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
You do not seem to know what you are talking about. Have you been to any of the places you're mentioning? Could you point to Moçambique on a map without looking it up first?
I'm German. I have been to a number of places in Eastern Europe that have seen the worse side of German occupation, and I have never been met with hate. I've been learning Russian, I've been learning some Hebrew so that I could read Yiddish (basically a dialect of German) and speak to some of the few remaining Jews over there, I did some reading, and then I just went there. People were a bit reserved at first, but after two minutes of talk, we got along very well. When I said I wanted to visit my German occupant grand-uncle's grave on the German military cemetery in Smolensk, we drove there together without them even asking.
My girlfriend is Ukrainian. They are probably the country that got the worst of us in World War 2. Do you think she hates me? We are talking Russian at home because my Ukrainian is too bad, and she gives me 9th-of-May victory postcards as a joke. That's Ukrainian hate for you.
I've spent the better part of the last year in Uzbekistan in the French Research Institute in Tashkent where the librarian is Crimean Tatar, born in the 1930s. We got along very well. She told me about how she got to hate Germans between '42 and '44 during German occupation of the Crimea, how Germans threatened to shoot her father before her eyes. After the war, she said, she refused even to look at Germans because of this. After the collapse of 1991, however, she said the five or ten Germans who came to Tashkent for research were young, interested in the local peopulation and their history, they spoke Russian and/or Uzbek and behaved very civilized and friendly in general. She said that these Germans were difficult to hate, and that she was compelled to relinquish her hate for Germans in general and turn it into bitter memories of the German occupants sixty years ago - an entirely different story.
So "all Africans hate the Europeans"? My brother came back a few weeks ago from eight months of work in Ghana where he lived in Accra with a host family, no running water, but the people were fine. Hated because he is European? Definitely not. I know Brits who worked in Nigeria (colony until 1960), Russians who worked in Central Asia (colony until 1917, Soviet Union afterwards) and a Portuguese who worked in Angola (colony until 1975). The memories they brought back were not ones of hate. If you visit Moçambique, there are places that you don't visit when you look like money, not when you're Portuguese. "Legitimate hate"? If that old Jew in Velizh near Smolensk had hated me, I wouldn't have blamed him, but he didn't.
Make an effort to learn people's languages, to show interest in them, their culture and their history. Respect them, look and behave in a respectable way. Stay in places for more than a couple of days, behave like a civilized person and smile when people show you their family pictures. An American who does just that is not going to be hated anywhere in the world, even in the Philippines (US colony until 1946) or Vietnam for that matter. They may not like your country (as an abstract entity) for what it does, what it did or fails to do, but they will not hate you.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
The 'dinky radio station' shouldn't worry about buying it anyway. They should homestead it. Find an appropriate frequency that's not being used (i.e. that is not owned already) in their area and use it, thus establishing initial property rights in it.
There are some interesting and valid arguments in the article. However, just because certain frequncies appear to be underutilised doesn't mean that they are suitable.
I'm always wary of simplified arguments that fail to present practical realities. The RF spectrum extends from DC to light. AM broadcasts on the long and medium wave bands require large antennas and relatively high power outputs, (say 10KW for a metropolitan area and 100KW for a regional area such as a state or a small country). Much higher frequencies in the millimetric part of the spectrum are, (as the article says), subject to precipitation and physical obstructions. The higher in frequency you go, the more expensive the technology but the bandwidth is much better. This is why 3G has to use higher frequecies than normal cellular services.
Frequencies from dc to a few hundred MHz are subject to various propagation effects. CB and Ham
radio enthusiasts will be familiar with skip, fading, aurora, etc.,
Unfortunately there seems to have been a migration in licensing authorities from technical knowledge to plain old bean counting. This has led to a number of unfortunate blunders - licensing car central locking remotes on frequencies already in use for example (a few people couldn't get into their cars).
On the other hand technology like DAB is really good, making efficient use of a tiny chunk of the RF spectrum. So I would hope that technological solutions are employed which enable the best compromise between useability and useage rather than simply spreading over the range of frequencies which are presumed to be available.
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Wow, now there's an interesting example.
So the public sprectrum is like public land, the national parks for example.
Hey, now there's an idea that you astroturfing retards would love. Let's sell off the national parks to the highest bidders. After all, they are a scarce resource. The highest bidder would certainly do much better than just letting them go to waste the way it is now.
Sweden, Norway, Denmark are dying countries? There's a gradient here...
the US military will lose THOUSANDS of troops in Iraq within the next twelve months
You do realise that combat deaths have been going down, not up.
Haven't you been watching the news this weekend? We've almost wiped out Sadr's army with about 5 US casualties.
Maybe you missed the point. You haven't been to Iraq and interviewed all 25 million people. So any such claims are hearsay and anecdotal.
Members of the Iraqi delegation pose with members of the United States' delegation during the Opening Ceremony of the 2004 Olympic Games
All I have to say is: YEARGGGHHHH! Some researchers, namely radio astronomers, don't have any choice about the spectrum they use. There are certain bands that, if opened to commercial interests, would utterly destroy astronomical research. For instance, neutral hydrogen emits at the 1.4 GHz band. We wouldn't have found out that we live in a spiral galaxy if that band had been anything other than unused. You can't have the FCC or industry or anyone change the laws of physics. There are portions of the spectrum that could be deregulated, but other parts of it MUST BE KEPT FREE for basic astronomical research.
PLEASE Mod the parent UP, oh great and glorious mods!
This sig space intentionally left blank.
Don't feel so threatened that you have to call names. It's OK. Nobody's going to keep you from hating Bush.
Price of computing power with the same performance as a ten year old PC: almost free... In comparison with the modern PC with the "supercomputer power".
Shows that the simpler solution still is the cheaper one...
The author is obviously not an RF engineer, so (surprise!) he doesn't use RF engineering terminology. It is clear from the context that "very low frequency" means below 3GHz. And the author is right: even 100 MHz (3%) of that spectrum is enough to provide a lot of last-mile access.