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America Needs Unchained Spectrum?
pillageplunder writes "Businessweek has an interesting viewpoint on the state of the wireless spectrum and how it's not being utilized to its max. While it's an opinion piece, the author raises several valid points. Establishing an exchange-entity to facilitate trading wireless spectrum, ridding the restrictions on spectrum available for sale, and weeding out the politics behind many of the recent and not so recent FCC policies. A thought-provoking read."
How about this: Even under the bizarre idea that a corporation has rights like a citizen, they are surely no more deserving of special treatment than anyone else. Every person gets assigned a small slice of our shared bandwidth and corporations can just make do with whatever tiny amount they get.
bummer ...
fp?
I have often wondered about why the frequency ranges are so terribly restricted. It seems to me that we should have better diversity in our frequency ranges. Why does everything in the world have to operate at 2.4 Ghz? The FCC is saturating that frequency band at an unsustanable rate. Just my .02
Suprise! It's michael!
I'm sure he feels that these big companies that paid billions for their spectrums should just suck it up.
And who the hell is samzenpus?
[sarcasm]In a suprise move the United States Government decided to deregulated emerging WiFi technologies. "WiFi is for the people" a recent press release from the White House is quoted as saying. From the same release, "Companies end up making a mess of technology. The people will decide how it is to be used. Enjoy!"
In related news, the President was seen flippng the bird at Haliburton.[/sarcasm]
-Teiresias
If we move to a more unregulated system, what about all the little guys with iPods and small FM transmitters? Won't we have trouble finding a free channel?
Over-the-air TV now serves less than 20% of the market. Each analog channel could be replaced by six digital channels. And one TV tower blankets an entire city transmitting a single program, instead of hundreds of small street-corner antennas each sending out hundreds of different shows and reusing the same bandwidth over and over again.
And what would happen if this was the case? A single entity would buy up all the individual local markets and begin transmitting their own crap back over it. They might even keep the individual programs but still carry them under their own waving flag.
We all know what I'm talking about so I won't even bother to give them the free advertising space... So when the local market is bought up by the conglomerate company what happens? Any number of things but most likely a dampening of freedom due to needing to show the world what a great company your station represents.
An end to freedom.
And third, spectrum is so politicized that nimble decision-making is impossible. For more than a decade the FCC, in a vain attempt to save the U.S. consumer-electronics industry, has pushed high-definition TV onto broadcasters.
Like I give a fuck about the broadcasters. The FCC pushed HD on to the people. The same people that own that fucking spectrum and should be the ones choosing what happens with it. Sadly the FCC has taken on more and more power to do what IT thinks best not what IS best.
HDTV is a joke. It's a waste of money and time. There were thousands of better things that we could have used that money on. Not to mention that it was mandated to be in every TV and every broadcast by a certain date. We had to pay for it once to be mandated and now we have to pay for it again to be used. THANKS! Just what I wanted... To be able to see the noise hairs and sweat on an NBA player.
Personally, I think they should have spent the time and money protecting us from consolidation in the media markets but that's me. I didn't have a say in it and neither did any of the rest of us.
Talk about win-win-win! Everyone would gain, especially the U.S. economy. As the successful pioneers of the first broad, free-market-driven spectrum exchange, we would set world standards for usage and equipment. The U.S. economy, the home of innovation and the lone entrepreneur, would prevail once more.
You are suggesting something that the government and the business world cannot fathom. You are suggesting that there be a true free market. Not one regulated by a single entity handing out slices like it was the last piece of pie on earth... Not one that gives instant money in large chunks rather than small bits here and there over time...
Businesses want control so that they can continue to win. If everyone had access then they couldn't dish it out and hold on. Why would they want to have other people innovating and using the networks like they could be? They can run everything on antiquated crap and offer shit services for high prices.
Isn't that what communications is all about?
Newsflash! FCC to make complete U-Turn and allow any Tom, Dick or Harry to broadcast whatever they want, whenever they want!
Interest: 70%
Anticipated... ness: 99%
Grounding in reality: -30%
~~Every few years or so I'm accidentally fashionable!
What a USELESS article...
Yes, that's *exactly* what we need is more confusion as to what goes where in the airwaves. No, we don't want standards like "Channel 6 is always ~87Mhz" oh no....We want each company to just pick their own frequencies and purposes and then CHANGE them on a whim. What a GREAT idea!
You know, the FCC has a purpose other than censorship...they are there to organize what goes in the air, different frequency bands for different purposes. So what if we waste some small partition of frequencies? Change the classifications for what goes where if you want, but don't just throw it to the dogs.
You will know when bandwidth has been maximized when you can place a raw hotdog in a bun, walk two blocks down the street in a wifi-laden neighborhood, and eat the cooked hotdog at the end of your walk.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Weeding the politics out of a government agency?
If you want the politics out, you better get the government out. Can you give me an example of a government agency that doesn't become purely politics with an under-funded pension plan that your great grandkids will be saddled with? This is just another example where our good-natured progressive notions turn into totalitarian government.
You are suggesting something that the government and the business world cannot fathom. You are suggesting that there be a true free market. Not one regulated by a single entity handing out slices like it was the last piece of pie on earth?
Yeah! Like the Internet! That's a free-for-all, and look where that got us!
Oh, yeah, that's right. A whole new era.
~~Every few years or so I'm accidentally fashionable!
Yeah! Like the Internet! That's a free-for-all, and look where that got us!
Oh, yeah, that's right. A whole new era.
If you weren't being sarcastic I suggest you read the rest of his article. He mentions that most businesses thought it was a passing fad and that deregulation did cause the Internet to boom.
The problem that I see is that both businesses and governments understand now that they have little to no control over the Internet and they will not allow that to happen again.
A related article was discussed here in /. earlier:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/18/182425 1
The FCC needs to allow more bandwidth for FHSS and UWB .. and allow users to inmcrease the wattage of the transmission. They also need to enable an internet/VOIP to telephone gateway of some kind that is available free. incoming phone to internet/VOIP need not be made.
Even incoming phone to VOIP can be implemented if they just create a new area code or something (obviously this can only be cheap but not free).
This sounds like one of those conspiracy folk who feel that widescreen DVDs are a conspiracy by Asians and short people cause they see horizontally better.
Thought the government mandated digital broadcasts, not specifically HD content but a certain date (and the broadcasters keep pushing that date back). Thought they did that to force the industry into updating its broadcast technology for the first time in decades.
Oh yeah, if we have enough detail to see nose hairs on an NBA player, you'd better believe it won't be sweaty men in baggy shorts I'll be watching.
Kiddies. Way back in the years before the FCC or even the FRC, radio spectrum was free. You would think that people would have approached this with wisdom and respected each others rights in using the spectrum. But this didn't happen. In the early days of radio, there was a lot of fierce disagreement about the best modulation schemes (AM vs. FM), frequency bands and other related issues. There was also a lot of corporate crap going on where one company would make a radio that would only recieve stations that used their transmitters (again a modulation scheme roadblock). So if you wanted to listen to certain programs, you had to buy more than one brand of radio. On top of that, without any regulation, people just picked the frequency they wanted and used it while paying no mind to their competitors. The reult was a completely unworkable radio scheme. This is WHY the FRC (which eventually became the FCC) was created. They wanted to prevent the kinds of interference that all of this bad behavior caused.
The frequencies were divided up by region in order to ensure that there wouldn't be two stations operating on the same or even close frequencies within a certain distance. This is why you will see that if a large city has a n FM station at 107.9 MHz, you won't see another station at that frequency for a very good distance. In the past it used to be better because the FCC didn't used to bend over and spread them for the broadcasters like they do today. Now the geographic regions are smaller so the distance isn't quite so great and you hear more interference where you have bigger cities close together.
If you like wild west style shoot-em-ups then you'll love unregulated radio spectrum. But if you just want to properly use the technology, then you need to have regulations. The flipside to this is that you also need to make sure those regulations benefit the end user and not the broadcaster. The FCC has certainly been corrupted, but don't throw away the concept of controlled spectrum usage because of that. Otherwise we'll have the same unusable mess that old fashioned radio was before the FRC (remember most people are just laughable boxes of jizzrags) affecting our newly re-invented radios.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Excellent idea. I can't wait to check out what's on my brand new fancy multi-wave-length self-programming TV:
PENIS ENLARGEMENT PILLS!!! VIOXXXX!!! GET YOURS!!!!
*click*
Get your presc@ription filled in seconds! 5
*click*
Make money at home! not a scam!
*click*
Singles Wanted!
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attachments
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In all fairness, it'd probably be better than the series premier of The Will.
Corporations have a need for revenue, but there's no law guaranteeing that (unless you count the MPAA/RIAA, the perpetually extended "temporary" copyrights, the broken patent system....)
I don't understand. Do you want the spectrum to be regulated by a free market (which in your view leads inevitably to undesirable consolidation), or a governmental body (which in your view is doing an awful job)? What, besides these two alternatives, do you propose? Benevolent dictator model?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Stuff that should matter, like accurate weather radar, is being drowned in spilled RF energy. If you leave things up to venture capitalists there will be no regulation at all, profits for a few investors and a lower quality of life for just about everybody once you find a reasonable way to value public saftey against the benefits to the entrepreneur and the customers for convenient wireless services. The only way [and it is far from ideal as implemented in the US] to come near the required balancing act is through regulation.
The bia$es of the author of TFA should be transparent to most readers but...
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
This sounds like one of those conspiracy folk who feel that widescreen DVDs are a conspiracy by Asians and short people cause they see horizontally better.
Excuse me but DVD technology wasn't paid for by my tax dollars. It was created by the market and succeeded because it was a better alternative not because the government decided to waste our money on making it succeed.
Do you want the spectrum to be regulated by a free market (which in your view leads inevitably to undesirable consolidation)
And what is happening now? The slices of spectrum are not priced within the range of anyone except a handful of companies which is already leading to consolidation. Then on top of that we are allowing even more consolidation within the market (AT&T/Cingular, etc).
They should be able to get spectrum. How about paying rent to the owners: us.
There is one major difference between the spectrum and the internet- creating a webpage does not stop others from doing the same, while broadcasting over a frequency does. When BuisnessWeek says it wants to "open up the spectrum" what they mean is "license the parts of the spectrum that are available to the public".
The author of that piece is SO lacking in ANY basic knowledge of RF engineering it resembles a game-show host proposing a totally new set of regulations for nuclear power plants. His sum-total knowledge of RF tech seems to be CB and Cellular and he sees the latter as a developement of the former. While CB radio is state of the art for the 1930s (low power AM on HF frequencies), it does illustrate what total deregulation can do. That spectrum is pretty much a waste now since anyone can say and do anything on it - and they pretty much do - you can't really use CB for any kind of reliable communications or anything else except maybe getting business for truckstop whorehouses. And I *really* want 100s of TV stations on random frequencies - NOT!
It seems a lot of people, including the article author, confuse HDTV and DTV. The FCC is not mandating HDTV (that would be the high resolution TV that requires a nice TV to view), they are mandating DTV (just plain digital TV, which requires a TV that supports it or a small convertor box). DTV does not increase the resolution of the TV signal, but it does allow a lot more efficient use of the TV spectrum. I don't know the exact numbers, but I think 6 or more digital channels fit in the same spectrum as one analog channel. So, the switch to DTV is a _good_ thing if you want more spectrum for other purposes.
We're still using 100 year old technology to receive radio broadcasts, and it's the major reason why the bandwidth is so underutilized. Nowadays, we can fit very complex receivers on tiny chips, as illustrated by cellphones, so why do we continue to use frequency division as the basis for allocating spectrum?
:P
If we move to code division, the need for regulation of the spectrum almost disappears entirely. It's too bad no one thought of this before deciding on the OTA HDTV standard.
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Deregulate IPs: That way we can be more inventive with our technology rather than having someone give us permission to be on the net.
Deregulate Domain Names: Think of the expansion of the internet if we all could use www.slashdot.com!
How about the airways: why regulate who can fly where and when?
Honestly I can see some leniency but the regulations occur because we have to think about collisions. Dont come crying to me when you cant make a 911 call because a guy 2 blocks away is streaming his music to his IPod.
Just because we have 80% space free doesnt mean we need to pack it with other stuff. For you server admins out there, who among you don't follow the 80/20 rule? 80 percent of the resources 20% of the time.
This article is a good example of someone who needs a little more insite into how the world of technology works.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Amateur Radio
Family Radio Service
Non-Commercial Radio Broadcasting
Non-Commercial Television Broadcasting
Volunteer Fire Departments
Local Governments
Private Pilots
Sailors
Radio Astronomers
Remote Sensing and Scientific Research
Small Businesses
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Is it really such a good idea to cram the airways by opening access to more of the spectrum? It's already possible as a hobbyist to do pretty much what you need with the available bands and opening the spectrum will only encourage more low-end, poorly tested devices to enter the market.
/paranoid, maybe. suspicious, definitely.
We haven't even seen the long-term effects of having cell phone towers throughout an entire town, let alone, having every wannabe electronic device manufacturer fighting over who can get the most distance out of a wave frequency on their device.
The wireless technology safety test results have mostly been inconclusive, but compound every possible frequency being in use, running through and around your body, and we could very well end up living in a microwave well before a Greenhouse effect kicks in.
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
Upon seeing the headline I was afraid this spectrum would be taken from non-commercial users, such as HAMs. But the article went something like "Ho, there's all this spectrum up for grabs. Let's get it". It is a bit unclear to me _what part_ exactly he is talking about. AFAIK most of the spectrum has already been assigned to someone. There is a mention of the TV broadcast bands, but I really cannot take this seriously, in view of backward compatibility.
That Humans get the technology that they can produce at any given time? For example during the 16th century, people may have wanted to fly through the air to see battlefields and to travel over mountain ranges, but would it have made sense to blame their Kings and Natural Philosophers for this problem? Of course not, they simply did not possess the technology to make it happen at the time. For an example a bit closer to home, many desire to get rid of fossil fuels and move to cleaner energy sources, but do we have power sources that are as easy to use as fossil fuels right now? Of course not which is why we don't have them in place now. We can't have what we can't build, and that goes in any given era.
To use the example of Spectrum use, we don't have mini radio broadcasters on every street corner, because the primitive technology we have doesn't make it feasible, and people just don't wish to have mini radio broadcasters on every street corner. To take another example, people may have wanted free music in 1980, but could they get it easily except over the radio? Nope, but does the technology make it possible in 2004? Of course which is why we can get it for free now without needing government tax breaks or incentives to push people to use the internet to download music, because people already desire to do it without any urging. I think the problem with many who wish to change the world is they don't understand technological limitations in a given era and they don't understand what people want so they try futilely to get people to use something they don't want and will never want.
That Humans get the technology that they can produce at any given time? For example, during the 16th century, people may have wanted to fly through the air to see battlefields and to travel over mountain ranges, but would it have made sense to blame their Kings and Natural Philosophers for this problem? Of course not, they simply did not possess the technology to make it happen at the time. For an example a bit closer to home, many desire to get rid of fossil fuels and move to cleaner energy sources, but do we have power sources that are as easy to use as fossil fuels right now? Of course not which is why we don't have them in place now. We can't have what we can't build, and that goes in any given era.
To use the example of Spectrum use, we don't have mini radio broadcasters on every street corner, because the primitive technology we have doesn't make it feasible, and people just don't wish to have mini radio broadcasters on every street corner. To take another example, people may have wanted free music in 1980, but could they get it easily except over the radio? Nope, but does the technology make it possible in 2004? Of course which is why we can get it for free now without needing government tax breaks or incentives to push people to use the internet to download music, because people already desire to do it without any urging. I think the problem with many who wish to change the world is they don't understand technological limitations in a given era and they don't understand what people want so they try futilely to get people to use something they don't want and will never want.
While it is more efficient than some other approaches, and has some definite advantages, it does not change the laws of physics. You still need a regulatory framework to prevent a tragedy of the commons.
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The guy that wrote this has NO IDEA WHY THINGS ARE THE WAY THEY ARE! The spectrum is not a infinite resource. If it was, then their would be no regulation at all. The government is bound by ITU treaties to manage spectrum. The government cannot just hand it over to big business because if they did, anarchy would reign. His discription of hundreds of local organizations running their own station with low power transmitters would not cause a great econmic or informational boom. It would cause lots of interference problems between one station and another. I have a feeling that part of the spectrum he's talking about is the ham bands. We have so much because we need it. As conditions change, we need to move from one band to another. Those who know NOTHING of RF engineering would be the ones making commments like his. The FCC, IMHO, has done a decent job managing spectrum. My only fault is giving up all of the money for the HDTV spectrum. They should have never just handed it over to the regular broadcasters.
I already have a problem with my own wireless network when I have a neighbor go to best buy and setup a unsecured network near mine. My network will also go up/down when a new neighbor starts using a new 2.4 GHz cordless phone. If you ask me, I would like MORE specturm management. I would not mind one bit paying the FCC for a WiFi channel that in the 100-200 feet range of my house would belong only to me. If it would make my network more reliable and for me to not have to accept interference from my neighor's yakking teen, all the better.
Gorkman
how about we get rid of radio, tv, and hdtv and use the entire spectrum as one massive digital transmission network? surely if we had the entire network free we could have tons of bandwidth per person, sufficient enough for broadcasters to transmit their shows over the internet, for voice, videophone, and whatever else we can think of?
how about we build a nationwide 100% coverage network of towers for this and socialize its maintenance as a birthright for all americans? surely as the first high-speed, fully wireless, fully-connected nation there would be all sorts of developments that would stimulate a massive wave of growth not unlike what happened when the internet took off.
Republicans love deregulation, and reducing the power of the FCC certainly amounts to deregulation. This wouldn't be at all a surprise move, it would be very much in line with the usual way the Republican party sucks the cocks of money-donating entities.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Perhaps the author needs to see what research is currently going on in the area of optimizing spectrum usage. The google search is probably a good start. With such techniques the question of freeing up the spectrum is moot.
D.
I know more than one person who can get one tv station, and it is fuzzy. There is more snow than picture, but because everything is analog they can figure out what is going on.
Digital doesn't degrade that nicely. Either you get a perfect picture, or nothing. If you only see a little noise, than Digital is better than analog, but if you see a lot of noise, then analog is much better.
Commercial use of microwave frequencies is swamping essential weather forecasting, as in this article at the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4104355. stm which notes how the critical frequencies are being gobbled.
To quote: 'Dr Steve Foreman of the Met Office told the BBC: "We're in a David and Goliath situation, arguing to the ITU for the safety and humanitarian uses of frequencies against some applications with very strong financial backing."'
Does anyone really think Goliath should win in this? Isn't the need for weather-prediction pretty obvious now?
We have lots of land in this country. We should just have open fields where people can go where they want and build anywhere they feel like.
Back when radio was new, many companies all trying to capitalize on frequencies created all sorts of different headaches because there was no regulatory body governing behavior. Every broadcaster tried to make their own standard so to listen to their signal you had to buy their radio and create their own custom broadcast array. Every broadcaster was under no obligation to honor another's usage of another frequency. The only time it mattered to them was when it dropped their quality. Then of course none of this was cheap for the consumer either....
It was an unregulated, unmitigated disaster and hence the reason why the FRC (predicessor to the FCC) was created. They standardized radio broadcasting practices. They organized bandwidth usage so overlaping wouldn't be a problem. They made the system at least approachable.
Now we can argue if the FCC is to ridgid in their regulation but the idea of making a regulatory body for spectrum usage is a good idea.
you have to buy a radio which can only receive the manufacturers signals and requires a monthly fee. oh joy.
The problem is once you get into space, you have to deal with all of that localized VHF/UHF and microwave activity. This affects spacecraft communication links and active/passive remote sensing.
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The article goes on about the endless uses for corporations with all this proposed radio spectrum,
yet people with even partial brain function might notice
those packs and microphones their favorite public safety officer uses. And then of course there are the ham operators who fill in the gaps when the communication system that was bought for $10 million fails in a crisis. I would be supportive on giving commercial interests a wide swath of spectrum and they could all fight to the death over it, and just leave us hams and public service people alone.
Broacast spectrum could be rented. TV stations should have to go back and re-rent it every year. That would shake up the broadcast industry.
Since bandwidth is NOT an infinite resource this would lead to just as much wasted spectrum since huge consortiums would bid up and scarf all the available frequencies and just squat on them. Look what's happened to .com domain names, of which there is a simiarly large but eventually limited supply. It would be the end of community radio, ham radio, unlicensed devices, etc.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
The author is obviously arguing from a non technical standpoint and doesn't understand the physical limitations. Yes, in principle, a totally free air wave might cause a boom similar to the Internet. However, the problem is that there still needs to be regulations and oversight. Even thought 802.11, Bluetooth, and cordless phones share the same frequency and do so relatively successfully, there are still limits placed on their output if I'm not mistaken. No matter what kind of media access technology you're using, if someone totally overpowers the airwaves with his transmitter, you won't get your signal. For fairness sake, there has to be a limit to each user's "sphere of influence". The airwave is a shared medium and regulations ensure that everyone gets his fair share of it. Government regulations on such resources are there to ensure that the limited resource benefits the most people. While our current regulations are outdated and inefficient, it doesn't mean we should throw away the idea of regulations entirely. We should instead improve them. The FCC can assign narrower bands because current digital technology is more precise and require less bandwidth for the same amount of info. Perhaps they should allow the free trading of bands. But at some level, there has be some authority to ensure that it's not chaos out there. We've seen unregulated air waves before. Before the FCC, radio stations would hop frequencies whenever they wanted to. Listener couldn't be sure the station they had yesterday will be there again tomorrow. Let's not return to that.
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Why not have an international on-line system for auctioning spectrum at various power levels at various locations for given times (with some zero threshhold for existing 2.4 GHz equipment)?
It seems to me that if a community wanted to establish a WiFi network and they're out in some rural area away from others, then they ought to be entitled to bidding next to nothing for unused spectrum in their neighborhood.
If you want downtown Manhattan during M-F, 9-5, then you need to pay, as you would if you wanted to blast the entire continental U.S. or all of Europe with some band.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Perhaps it's time to dump the word "spectrum" as it applies to the public airwaves. The word itself implies a management philosophy that hearkens back to LC tank circuits and passive RF filters. The fact is that technology has evolved way beyond partitioning the airwaves in the frequency domain only. What with frequency-hopping, code division multiple access (CDMA), and ultra-wideband (UWB), viewing this public resource as acreage to be platted and parceled out on spectral boundaries is a tad old-fashioned.
Isn't most "journalism" these days? At least most political journalism. Which raises as even better question. Was there ever a time when it wasn't?
Read the fucking summary. Do you think Business Week is going to advocate against spectrum regulation? He's just talking about making it easier for companies to own (lease, whatever) and trade spectrum. He certainly isn't talking about ending governement regulation of spectrum. Hell, we have regulation of 2.4 gHz, and that's why it works so well.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
You are aware that different frequencies are usefull for different types of communications.. right? This is why Amateur radio has little pockets of bandwidth all over the spectrum. Some frequencies are usefull becase they will propagate around the curvature of the earth, allowing you to hear signals over the horizon pretty reliably (AM broadcast for instance does this OK) Other frequencies bounce off the ionosphere, enabling you to communicate over vast distances on low power, or observe qualities of the ionosphere. Other frequencies don't bounce off the ionosphere, making satellite communication possible. Some physical properties can only be observed at certain resonance frequencies. It would be nice to have radar that can detect water vapor for weather prediction.
not to mention the difficulity of designing a super mega ultra broadband oscillator and amplifier to tune across the entire spectrum.
The myriad of different uses (not all of which involve actual communication) and the extremely limited amount of available resource makes radio spectrum one of the few resources that actually warrents regulation.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Writer makes comparison to internet, while superficially it is like that, we all know that spectrum is limited while number of websites and brodacast stations one can have is virtually unlimited. Not true with radio spectrum. ... would be good way to get people to share.
There are other bits with radio stuff, like behaviour of radio waves at lower bands, that they tend to go farther, and are less like a "light" of 1Ghz+ bands. I would guess cellurization of bandwith would be good idea, say once someone buys bandwidth for say 1km radius they have to use bandwith within like6 months to a year
Policing this kind of stuff would be a nightmare though. There will have to be "spectrum" police, that would punish those who interfere with other's bandwiths allocations.
At present time they can triangulate you down from one station and come to your house if you forcing CNN out of the air waves. All in all it will take technical remake of everything to be redone. And it does not bode well with people who hold fists of cash in front of FCC clerks. Fact that FCC has to be remade...
So really it won't happen unless it will be imperative of the president, his office and congress. Even then they'd probably screw something up.
2c
Like I give a fuck about the broadcasters. The FCC pushed HD on to the people. The same people that own that fucking spectrum and should be the ones choosing what happens with it. Sadly the FCC has taken on more and more power to do what IT thinks best not what IS best.
The FCC was essentially asked at the behest of the broadcasters to do this through several politcings that caused the broadcasters to shoot themselves in the foot. In the 1980's land mobile (cellphones, pocket radios) wanted more spectrum and the TVs had some prime spectrum. The Broadcasters didn't want to give this up due to the interference issues they would have. So they clambored aboard a HDTV/DTV bandwagon so they could keep the spectrum (so that the consumers could have a better picture was the claim). They thought that any DTV was decades away at the time but this one guy working at DigiCypher came up with a compression algorithm that would work.
So now DTV exists, and they can find out they can put 4 SD DTV (Noter: 6 is wrong for decent quality, it should be 4) channels in the place of 1 SD Analogue channel. Now, they weren't too hot on HDTV at the time so they were keeping mum about it. The senators get wind of this and start to say then that why should they have all 6mhz of bandwidth and not a quarter that if that is what it takes to broadcast a DTV station? And the broadcasters come back and start talking about HDTV, since that would require the entire 6mhz channel. So they shot them selves in the foot with all this.
Long story short, they originally didn't want to go to DTV much less HDTV but are doing so in order to keep spectrum and interference from occuring. So they did decide to go to DTV to keep their spectrum.
As for pushing Digital TV on everyone? They did that in the 40s/50s whenever it was to standardize on the original B&W TV standard. Then later on the RCA Collor TV Standard as well so that their wouldn't be a format war. The FCC has always decided on how the TV and Radio is broadcast. This is nothing new.
As for that 20% that recieve over the air? Is that people that still recieve it over the air or that don't have cable/satelite? That is still a lot of people no matter how you look at it. And almost all of them I bet can not get cable/satelite due to location or expense.
Personally, I think they should have spent the time and money protecting us from consolidation in the media markets but that's me. I didn't have a say in it and neither did any of the rest of us.
I agree against the consolidation too, but it has nothing to do with HDTV. Of course, in a true free market that you talk about there would be no rules about station ownership.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
...several WISP-related organizations are pursuing w/ the FCC regarding the devotion of certain spectrum slices specifically for broadband usage. Sure, there are LMDS and MMDS pieces of spectrum available but at, easily, several hundreds of thousands of dollars, these licenses aren't usually readily available to the typical wireless ISP.
:-)
Check out WISPA for one group's involvement.
I guess we'll see.
Regards,
Kory
according to: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf
6.8 GHZ: Fixed Satelite
10.7 GHZ: Fixed Satelite(above 10.7), Radio Astronomy, Space Research, Weather Satelites (below 10.7)
23.6-24 GHZ: Radio Astronomy, Space Research, Weather Satelites
In the USA at least, those spectrums are already set asaide that they talk about.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Carefull, based on the way he wrote the reply I bet the grandparent works for AT&T/Cingular.
Those ideas almost sound Libertarian.
Actually your response isn't entirely accurate. While the FCC is mandating "HDTV" broadcasting, their definition of HDTV isn't what you would normally think of HDTV to be. All broadcasters are required to broadcast in Digital 480p. 1080i Broadcasting would be prohibitively expensive for many markets, and the hardware end would be prohibitively expensive for consumers. Infact while the standard requires broadcasters to broadcast at 480p, TVs will still be able to display at 480i. The only significant change of the HDTV legislation will be that broadcasters are required to broadcast in Digital. And as someone said earlier, you can fit 6 digital channels into one analog one. Therefore I personally believe this move is as much a move to "clear the airwaves" as it is to improve consumer experience.
Actually the internet is fundamentally different in the regulatory problems. The reason the government was able to deregulate the internet is because it is potentially limited in size only by the network that it is composed of. The FCC needs to regulate the airwaves so that the limited spectrum of radio frequencies don't get cluttered and useless.
Unless of course you're sudgesting you have found a new subspace trasmission model in which a near infinite number of channels can be created.
..but this part sucks:
"Slowly return all licensed spectrum to a Chicago Board of Trade-like commodities exchange, trading spectrum on a second-by-second basis to entrepreneurs and businesses alike. For each trade, the government could charge a 1% fee. Let supply match demand and variable cost. "
Besides there being constant scandals and corruption with that particular entity, it makes things more expensive not cheaper.
No thanks. We saw what happens with this in the energy market. Hordes of middlemen who produce not a single erg of any sort of energy drive up the cost of energy, artificially manipulate the market, etc. All that's happened since Enron is they have learned to be slyer about it so it's not as easy to catch them. They also wind up with tons of spare cash that they then use to bribe off legislatures and high level nameless bureaucrats to make it even more profitable for them. Lather rinse repeat.
His point on the internet is valid,(although not entirely, lots of aspects the net is regulated when you look at telcos and hardware, etc) but that's because primarily the cost of entry for both producer and end user is very very low, and the method of it working is again low, entry level speaking. With over the air, the FCC is still being dinks about low power community broadcasting, where there are numerous mostly empty freqs still available. they were going to do it a few years back and WHAM it turns out a lot of interest and the affordable tech was there, so the current broadcasters (jncluding beloved "NPR") lobbied to get the law changed back to 'fatcats only". Bogus. completely bogus. they just got scared their cartel would get usurped. and they are correct, it WOULD HAVE BEEN. people are so hungry for alternatives to the expensive drivel out there they went ahead and started doing it on the net and with blogs and with shoutcast, etc, but we can't "legally" do it over the air. What crap.
So far they are leasing this so called "public" airwave in most of the spectrum to the highest bidders, and those bidders are consolidating and buying each other up, and it will invariably lead to a handful of monopolies, or a cartel "owning" the spectrum. How is joe little guy supposed to "freemarket compete" against that? anser is "they can't, and it's designed that way so tough noogies". So joe little guy would supposedly have to go to a new frequency commodites market and buy airspace THERE? double huh? It would be x-times more expensive from 'speculators" siphonming off cash, that's all, and just another avenue for sleazeballs to rake in the profits without actually doing anything the least bit productive.
The problem is, the FCC refuses to PULL licenses. We've had the same big networks for generations now monopolizing extremely lucrative slices of bandwith. Umm...why? Why should they keep getting it year after year, for what reason? They long ago lost any semblance of being anything but maximum for-profit enterprises,and perpetuate this rich ruling class horsecrap meme on people (there I said it and it's true too), yet the rules were intended way back that they had to ALSO serve a broader community interest. Don't
t know about anyone else, but I can't find a major network (I will speak of OTA)-just a current for instance-that DOESN'T parrot pentagon media speak and call prisoners of war kidnap victims politically correct "detainees" or call people fighting on their own home turf against foreign invaders "insurgents". That's not balanced and it doesn't cover a lot of people opinions on this latest non declared war based on mostly lies. Yet, talking head after talking head just get "embedded" and regugitate this brave new world order newspeak with what they are more or less told to say. You can't tell me that this mass brainwashing doesn't serve to further the political aims of just "some" people and "some" corporations at the expense of others. And I can go way back and point out numerous other instances of similar. How about news shows that blatantly push bigp
It used to be that the electromagnetic spectrum was all Public Domain (as it should be). Now it is illegal to listen in on certain frequencies and radios in the US can not be allowed to tune in on anything but the frequencies the government says it is allowed to.(hardware fixes to release that restriction are common).
Who told the govenment that they owned the air anyway. I cant wait for the time when we have that breath-o-meter charging us for each breath. Well more likely someone in govenment will sell the rights to that to some private company to charge for that and pay a tax on it.
Maybe we should also dump the word "radio." After all, aren't radio's those old-timey things that people used to listen to before iPods? Oh wait, it's the name for the fucking area of science and not some bullshit marketing acronym.
What? The "free market" is really a bullshit excuse that doesn't work in real life and is only used by right wing zealots and corporate monopolists who want to commercialize every aspect of life? You don't say...
US law follows the precedent of the 1886 Santa Clara case, under which the 14th amendment was construed as giving corporations equal protection under the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It's an insane interpretation for normal people, but corporations use this precedent on a regular basis to assert the right to give money to politicians (1st: free speech), refuse surprise inspections (4th: unreasonable search), and refuse to give up incriminating evidence (5th: right to not incriminate oneself.)
Yes actually, we should. Not all of the land, but most public land you should be allowed to build semi-regulated shelter and low impact transportation systems. The builder/resident would never own the land they "colonize", just the structures that they build or buy.
After all, it's public land isn't it?
Go read the FCC enforcement division website. Those guys are positively raking in the dough serving up fines to people for illegal broadcasting. One or two guys in a van can easily generate $20K worth of fines per week -- and they do, all over the country. That adds up to millions in fines each year.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
I am surprised at the percentage of responses in the anti-deregulation vein - especially coming from Slashdot readers. With the FCC, we are not talking about an IEEE standards body here (which would be a good style of organization to establish useful early prototypical agents and GUIDELINES for UWB/Spread spectrum/software-cognitive (what have YOU? 802.11x microwave PCS SMS PMS?!) radio design.
...or Ass., as it were.
The FCC is a government agency that is beholden to political, military, and corporate interests. Their defense of public interests, namely Ham radio, emergency services, and the scientific community astronomy is merely PR. I am sure that the scientific community understands the potential of applying unlimited individual (ie. for the user : at the battery-driven device level, not for the broadcaster : at the dish/satelite bain-melt/eye-popping level of transmission) experimentation with Artificial Intelligence algorithms to self-determine the best way to talk to another friendly device with rapidly adaptable bandwidth, power, transmission through physical material and over variable distance parameters.
The Ham radio community and the emergency services would be as aided by this form of amorphous device network as any consumer or geek (your weather reporting app could be engineered to also relay current conditions and advisories to your neighbor).
If we allow the creation of a truly dynamic "mob intelligence" [headmap.org], that spans the globe - even if only one individual per tribe or greater community can afford to weild such a device initially in less developed areas - INSTEAD of relying on sensationalized and beholden media interests that are disconnected from space and place to accomplish our essential communications... then the interference given the SETI Radio telescopes is negligable; as the Aliens will notice our leap and finally decide to pay us a (conjugal?!) visit.
These pro-regulation statements assume that it isn't a complete mess currently... and as the (I'm proud of Businessweek for publishing this, albeit) skimpy article suggests: results in a disappointing lack of innovation and vision as we erect dinosaur cellular towers in what reeks of medieval land grab.
It is not a case of freedom of interference - one device blocking the transmission of another, it is the case for having the right to communicate with a much larger swath of the spectrum so that one's device can do much much more without relying on hierarchical and territory-based Network Moguls.
The only valid hesitation (the networks have vast resources to pay a new market of geeks to engineer around interference with the same techniques) with deregulation is the potential for health concerns... but our CURRENT (perhaps abuse?) of the spectrum has never had rigorous or comprehensive evaluations on the potential for damaging the health of humans or the rest of the planetary organism. But who is to say that a highly dynamic and scattered use of RF is more damaging than the current tendency for INTENSE saturation of narrow swaths of the spectrum by profit- and militarist-driven technologies?
I do know that an open and dynamic communications web could facilitate a much smaller human footprint on the planet; and reduce the need for much waste material which is simply human communication excreted into physicality (an extension of the age-old paperless office argument).
~
An appropriate analogy for the regulation of the Electromagnetic commons is to compare it to differences between communism and capitalism. The current implementation is a top-down dictatorial organization scheme where much of the power lies in the hands of the military. A more fluid model of spectrum use by OpenSource software-driven radio devices would empower personal communication and facilitate community organization potential.
These are very challenging notions for the establishment...
Which is why Michael Powell is the reigning head of the Com.
~
ben
@inexi.com