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."

Comments

For starters

[Politicus]

For decades after Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio in 1897

Um, Tesla invented radio technology, Marconi was the first to put it to use. He actually licensed Tesla's patents.

Re:For starters

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, history proves that when it comes to technology, SCOTUS can be as brain-dead as anyone else. What's worse, as Gary Oldman's character puts it so eloquently in The Contender, is that the Court's decisions are the legally binding equivalent of a very big microphone.

As but one example (having to do with landmark litigation in the history of radio, as it turns out), Justice Benjamin Cardozo -- one of the most respected legal minds of the early 20th century -- blundered badly in writing the majority opinion in the suit between Armstrong and De Forest in 1934. Read Tom Lewis' excellent Empire of the Air, or see Ken Burns' documentary, to see the overwhelming disdain with which the engineering community at large viewed the Court's decision (most believed it to be factually wrong, and wrote the Court and the papers saying so).

So, yeah, when it comes to technology, SCOTUS can be a bunch of irrational fanboys.

-HJ

Sychronocity!

[AccordionGuy]

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.

Re:Sychronocity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately I don't have much time to write up proper rebuttals to the Economist piece and Clay Shirky's essay (thesis due in a few weeks), but both articles have substantial elements of ill-informed pseudoscience masquerading as fact.

In particular, the thrust of Shirky's argument is that we should change how we do things (i.e., the regulatory environment) because we can make use of the spectrum as a public commons without interfering with one another. The gaping hole in this argument is that, absent FCC regulation (or something equivalent), there is nothing to guarantee that everyone will operate this way. And it only takes one bad actor to ruin everyone's fun.

As a specific example, imagine that a large telecommunications company decides to market their new "bulletproof" phone service in the (currently unrestricted) 2.4GHz band by spending a huge chunk of cash to set up megawatt-level transmitters all over the place. Sure, their service will work great... but given enough power, it will drown out many/most other devices in the band, whether they are spread-spectrum or not. Shirky also mentions people in adjacent homes using wireless routers without interfering with one another, but there is nothing fundamental about that, either -- I could build a jammer for less than $100 that would disrupt every wireless 802.11g router within a city block.

Nor is this phenomenon limited to the WiFi band -- my lab has done quite a bit of research into the potentially disruptive effects of the proposed ultrawideband (UWB) allocation on GPS, which is in wide use worldwide, including some safety-critical applications.

As for the Economist piece, many other posters in this thread have noted a multitude of problems originating from the journalist-writing-as-engineer nature of the article; here's another big one: The article suggests (in the first two paragraphs of the section entitled "The sweet and low down") that simply repurposing the lower (i.e. currently licensed) swaths of spectrum is something of a panacea. What the author doesn't seem to understand is that there is an attendant difficulty in designing efficient antennas at these lower frequencies. There's a reason, for example, that commercial radio broadcasts aren't done in the 100KHz band -- the antennas on both ends would have to be hundreds of meters long (on the order of a quarter-wavelength) to be even marginally efficient. And if the antennas have to be a manageable size (and therefore inefficient), the transmitter power has to go way up to make the link work -- and we're right back where we started.

There is certainly promise in spread-spectrum radios, mesh networks, and other cool new technology. But it's not nearly as much of a no-brainer as these two pieces make it sound. I hate to be on the side of the "old school," but there is considerable merit to that line of thinking here.

-HJ

A must read for everyone interested in spectrum rg

[PaulBu]

Thoughts of Dave Reed (the guy who gave us TCP/IP)
on the subject

Paul B.

Re:One article you don't want to miss?

[Bishop]

give 'em all a year or two to retune

This is not a simple process. In some cases it is basically impossible. Many of the transmitters are hand tuned devices hardwired to a specific frequency. When it comes to TV many stations are using 20 and 30 year old (and older) transmitters. Legacy problems like this exist all over the spectrum. The frequency bands do need to be reallocated, but who is going to foot the huge bill?

Soros

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Why would anyone assume

[Euler]

Like all things, the answer is someplace in the middle. This article was way too Utopian. OTOH, saying that privatization is all bad is wrong also.

A agree with what you said, if we could do what the article states with re-using spectrum, then there wouldn't be any argument at all. The reality is that there are a few tricks to multiplex the spectrum, but it's still finite. You can do things like directional antennas, and digital spread spectrum can co-exist with modulated transmission. But, the work of Shannon and Nyquist put very hard limits on the maximum throughput of a channel with real-world noise. The analogy that the human ear can pick one conversation out of n-others simply isn't true. The author hasn't, apparently, been to a party where you keep having to say: 'huh?', 'what?'. Add more background conversations/noise (Shannon) and the throughput falls off. I can sort of see how you could discriminate 'conversations' with the right protocols, but the idea that it is infinite is very bad science. I believe the human ear works very similar to spread spectrum technology, but also draws from syllable information stored in the mind's knowledge base to discriminate conversations. The point is that it isn't a miracle, and still has physical limits.

There is definitely much wasted spectrum because the government has put it out of reach of any economic pressures. But there needs to be some central control because the invisible hand of the economy isn't intelligent enough to correctly plan certain aspects of spectrum allocation. Also, interactivity of devices requires some authoritarian control even if it isn't 100% efficient. Set aside spectrum for military and public services. Let the rest be traded and sold commercially. The FCC should still be involved in the facilitation of these transactions for 2 reasons. 1. its the equivalent of keeping public deeds on property - there needs to be an authoritative unbiased record stored someplace. 2. There will be times that proposals need to be rejected because of technical incompatibilities. The 2 parties in a transaction may not care about an issue that would effect a third party.

I don't think spectrum fragmentation will be a problem at all. There will be strong economic pressure to keep chunks of spectrum together. There will be capitalists who act as consolidators if there is value in having unfragmented spectrum.

Re:A must read for everyone interested in spectrum

[offpath3]

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.

Re:If it's been so "overcautious"...

[offpath3]

then why do I hear two different radio stations on the same frequency so often?

Because current transmitters and radios are using the spectrum inefficiently. With smarter transmitters and smarter receivers we could much more effectively filter out different signals and use much less of the spectrum per broadcast. Or so the article argues.

Umm... no.

[cr@ckwhore]

The author has demonstrated his lack of understanding of RF basics.

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 ... at this frequency (VHF, much higher than VLF), data is typically sent at 1200baud. Much higher than that and it becomes more difficult.

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" ... (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.

Re:Umm... no.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, data rates are still relatively useless for broadband applications at any realistic point below anything ending with "gigahertz".

It sure sounds like you don't fully understand Nyquist's theorem. Maybe you do, but aren't explaining it well.

The carrier frequency has very little to do with the maximum possible data rate. It's all about bandwidth. For example, according to Nyquist, if you have a signal to noise ratio of 38dB and 3kHz of bandwidth, you can transmit at about 33.6kbps (think modem):

bps = Hz * log_2 (1 + 10^(SNdB/10))
bps = 3000 * log_2 (1 + 10^3.8)
bps = 37,870

You could have a carrier frequency of 1.5kHz or 5THz, but you'd still get only 33.6kbps. Similarly, you could hit 1.2Gbps if you had 38dB S/N and could use everything between zero and 100MHz.

The reason the 435MHz UHF satellites send data at 9600bps probably has more to do with an abysmal signal to noise ratio than anything else.

Detailed EMR poster

[unihedron]

See the whole EMR spectrum on this poster: http://www.unihedron.com/projects/spectrum/

Re:War isn't about making friends.

[WarMonkey]

Source?

Governmental authorites officially stopped counting in Iraq after the first several thousand.

Looking at fatalities alone, Iraqbodycount.net maintains a set of low and high estimates with a database and documented methodology to back it up -- the low end being currently 11,510 and the high end being 13,483. That figure alone leaves out the civilian casualties from an entire other war (Afghanistan).

The 9/11 fatality figures from september11victims.com follow:

CONFIRMED DEAD: 2948 REPORTED DEAD: 24 REPORTED MISSING: 24 TOTAL: 2996

Putting the statistics aside, though, the point is that the person who chose to take things off on this tangent set forth the odd notion that these two wars have made the US more popular. When it was pointed out that was not the case, the response was an iteration of the truism that war is not about making friends (which really kind of accentuated my point).

Re:Why would anyone assume

[Elwood P Dowd]

astroturfing

?!

I was responding to the great grandparent poster, not the article. His point was that deregulation in this sort of situation is bad, based on the example of recent attempts at energy deregulation.

My point is that California is a poor example of deregulation: Cato seems 100% in favor of deregulating just about everything, and they were opposed to California's deregulation plan.

Which is why I made the analogy to the USSR: California & energy deregulation are related in the same way that the USSR & socialism are: just like you say, not at all.

The RF spectrum is for more than just cellphones

[theycallmeB]

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.