Slashdot Mirror
Shirky on Spectrum Ownership
scubacuda writes "When engineering assumptions change, shouldn't the laws that govern technology reflect those changing assumptions? Perhaps Clay Shirky puts it best: 'Things like shoes, cars, and houses are all property. Property is excludable -- it is easy to prevent others from using it -- and rival -- meaning that one person's use of it will interfere with another person's use of it. Spectrum has neither characteristic. Spectrum is purely descriptive -- a frequency is just a particular number of waves a second -- so no one can own a particular frequency of spectrum in the same way no one can own a particular color of light. Instead, when an organization 'owns' spectrum, what they really have is a contract guaranteeing Federal prosecution if someone else broadcasts on their frequency in their area. The regulatory costs of forcing spectrum to emulate property are enormous, but worthwhile so long as it leads to better use of spectrum than other methods can. That used to be true. No longer.'"
So basically this guy wants WIFI on lower frequencies so that he can look at porn 20 miles from his house. Here's the thing though, at low frequencies, there's less bandwidth. Between 1 and 2 MHz there's 2 Mhz of bandwidth. Between 1 and 2 Ghz there's 1000 Mhz of bandwidth. The higher frequencies may be less useful, but there's a lot more of them, so that's where I'd like large bandwidth crap like WIFI to go.
Toss in a very low speed data port too, 2400bps ought to go well I think. Even use one of those standard serial ports for homemade projects, not any of that USB crap.
What I'd like to see is something like the FRS radios, but on lower frequencies with more channels. Take one of those 6 Mhz television channels and you can get 300 20Khz FM channels in there. Lower frequencies to allow people to talk further, and more channels to prevent interference.
Then they need to fix that whole squelch code nonsense. The radio manufacturers treat the squelch codes like their seperate channels, but they're not. Here's how they should work:
You and your friend agree on a squelch code, of which there should be hundreds to choose from. You both set your code in your radio and then push a button to activate the squelching. Then when one of you want to talk, you push a button to deactivate the squelch so that you can make sure no one else is using the channel, then you call your friend. When his radio recieves your signal, it deactivates it's squelch so that he can here you, and other people on the channel, so that he doesn't talk over anyone either. Ideally everyone would use one of like the first 10 channels as calling channels, then if they need to talk long tell the other person to go to one of the other 290 channels.