The Feds Vacate Airwaves

dada21 writes to tell us UPI is reporting that the government is getting ready to spend $936 million to move its radio communication to an obscure segment of the spectrum to make room for next-generation mobile tech. From the article: "'With 90 megahertz of additional spectrum, today's cellular carriers will be tomorrow's next-generation broadband providers,' Michael D. Gallagher, assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information, said in a statement."

Comments

Why Sell It?

[Bellum Aeternus]

Why does our government feel the need to auction off the spectrum? Why can't they just increase the amount of availble spectrum ear marked for general purpose use? The now famous WiFi uses public spectrum and is easily the most famous radio - except perhaps radio itself.

Selling the spectrum will only accomplish two things: 1) Make some rich companies richer. 2) reduce innovation because only said companies can use the newly availble spectrum.

Re:Why Sell It?

[CRC'99]

WiFi does not use "public spectrum." It falls under part 15 rules and therefore uses spectrum that is allocated to licensed users, at extremely low power, with the understanding that it must not cause interference and must accept any interference. In other words, your WiFi router has no more right to transmit on that channel than your neighbor's microwave oven has.

Actually, it's under a class license, which means the devices themselves need to pass certification to be operated in that band. It is known widely as public spectrum because it is the device that is certified for mass production that anyone can go and buy.

As a licensed user of several of the WiFi channels I can transmit at 1500 watts over an entire city, if necessary to establish communication, and can interfere with any unlicensed WiFi routers on my channel with impunity. Not only that, if any of those routers are interfering with my signal, they are legally required to shut down or at least change channel.

Wrong. I think you'll find that in that part of the band, the limit is MUCH less than 1500 watts. I can't recall the exact figures, but from memory, if it's over 200W transmitter power, then you need special permission. I do believe that the 2.4Ghz section of spectrum is much lower due to the potential risks at that particular band. Your request to run this kind of power (1500W) in that area would be denied. They are also not legally required to shut down their service. You can just ask nicely. You have just as much responsibility to not cause interference as they do.

Think that's unfair? The designers of WiFi were aware of those requirements when they first selected the frequencies. Luckily for all you unlicensed users of WiFi, most of us hams are nice guys who like WiFi for our own networks, and are excited about the availability of cheap hardware for using that part of the spectrum.

Wow. Nice to know you like to blow you're own trumpet and I love the sound of breaking a power trip. WiFi users are not required to be licensed - the equipment is as mentioned earlier. Don't make it sound like you're doing people a favour here - all I see is a snobby HAM operator blowing his horn.

Industry Lobbied for it?

[IAAP]

The trade group, the Telecommunications Industry Association, had lobbied for the law and the follow-up report and issued a positive statement regarding the nearly $1 billion cost estimate released by the government this week.

So, considering the track record of lobbyist and Congress, how many of you re highly skeptical that the people of th US will be getting their money's worth when the spectrums are auctioned? I know I am.

Re:It's a good start.

[dada21]

This is true -- and why I've moved entirely to a personal gold standard for currency.

In the past 15 years, they had numerous ways to spend -- direct taxes, indirect taxes, fake social security lockboxes and the worst -- currency inflation. Now that China, Russia and the Middle East are losing faith in the US dollar, they won't be able to inflate as much, right? Wrong. In March 2006, our government has decided to stop reporting the M3 Money Supply figures -- the figures that tell the world how much counterfeit money the central bank prints.

And they think this will make the dollar more stable?

9/11 radio problems not solved?

[asadodetira]

This move might be another step in the wrong direction. If i'm not mistaken in a NPR radio show an expert said that some current commercial frequencies would be extremely useful for emergency responders since they can reach deeper inside buildings. They attributed the misuse of airwaves to lobby of big media groups. Apparently a lot of the rescue radio communication problems detected after 9/11 have not been solved, changes can be quickly made when there's a commercial reason.

Re:9/11 radio problems not solved?

[LWATCDR]

I read that Sprint/NexTel is selling the IDEN network that Nextel uses to the government. The PPT "walkie talkie" system plus the nation wide network should work pretty well for "first" responders. How well does it work in buildings? I have no idea. I do know that Sprint got a nice chunk of spectrum in WiMax range in exchange for the IDEN network.

Re:9/11 radio problems not solved?

[wfberg]

This move might be another step in the wrong direction. If i'm not mistaken in a NPR radio show an expert said that some current commercial frequencies would be extremely useful for emergency responders since they can reach deeper inside buildings.

The article mentions this is about the 1710- to 1755-MHz band. This is a slightly lower frequency than current GSM-1900 or CDMA-2000 handsets use. As such, I can tell you it doesn't reach too far into buildings. Expect bad or no coverage in the basement, or in elevators.

For emergency services, there are a lot more attractive pieces of spectrum than this one.

In fact, emergency services in The Netherlands are finding this out just now, as they're trying to implement c2000, better known as TETRA. TETRA operates in the 380-383 MHz or 390-393 MHz range, yet these are still high enough frequencies to neccesitate a dense network of repeaters, and still it doesn't penetrate too far into buildings, which is of great concern to e.g. firefighters. Of course, since it's already cost billions to partially implement (so far), they can hardly call the whole thing off.

Where are they going to?

[elgatozorbas]

TFA does not say what exactly is this 'obscure part of the spectrum' they are going to. Anyone?

Re:M0 is the money printed...

[dada21]

So you're saying that 600 billion dollars in print in circulation is all we need to query, and it is only those figures that affect consumer price inflation?

I'm not sure I agree.

First, the M3 is by far the easiest way for the Fed to inflate the currency base "secretly" without there being a huge effect in the U.S. retail economy initially. Most of the money will be offshore dollars, eurodollars and institutional money funds -- these initially have zero effect on price inflation but as the money is converted for other means, they can and will have an effect.

The M1/M0 supply is not enough to see what government is doing to our money. If you need a better explanation, Rothbard's book is now available freely online. Go check out http://www.mises.org/money.aspx for more info on how government is destroying our wealth "secretly" and how removing the M3 figures is an even bigger crime against freedom.

In the long run, other central banks in the world that hold our currency are the ones who keep our currency in check. If they disagree with US dollar stability, we'll find ourselves in a hyperinflating economy -- the kind that us gold bugs would love to see.

Re:90 mhz ain't much

[Amouth]

the peoblem with that is that it is video that you are talking about.. tv is horrid when brodcast.. it needs soo much bandwith..

when you look at a 2.4ghz netowrk (say chan 6 becsue it is most common)

top = 2,448,000,000 hz
bottom = 2,426,000,000 hz
diffrence = 22,000,000 hz = 22mhz span that can be used for a 54mbit connection with a local wifi.. and done very nasty
(90/22)*54 = 220.9 mbits avaliable)
considering most cable modems are 3mbit and dsl is 1.5mb
220.9 /3 = 73.6 cable or 147.2 for dsl connection speeds per cell tower..

that is alot of free room and that is agian using a very nasty protocal..
if they clean it up and use an effecent protocal they are going to get alot of bandwith.. and if they do something like ipv6 / leap users woln't notice they are switching towers.. TV is horid when you think about the fact that it is always brodcasting to everyone and just eating up the space.. when you use it as an as needed network it is more than enough room.. because no one is going to be using max bandwith all the time everyone will take slices and use it for only a portion of the time..

Re:M0 is the money printed...

[AuMatar]

Except that gold has no value either. Oh, its kind of pretty, but it has no real use. If the dollar was to go hyperinflation, there's no particular reason we'd move back to gold. More likely, we'd start using Euros or other currency, just like the dollar is now defacto cash in many third world markets. If it goes so far that not even foreign bank notes are trusted, its even less likely that gold would be seen as valuable- at that point we're so FUBARed were back to barter, most likely with ammo and medicine being the most valuable items, as by that point the government has utterly collapsed.

Re:M0 is the money printed...

[dada21]

Gold has no value except as a store of wealth for those who use it, as a much-needy industrial metal, and as a store of wealth for every central bank in the world.

If the dollar hyperinflates, we WOULD switch to other fiat currencies, surely. I'll still use gold as my wealth store (it is not an investment for me, merely a version of your bank). I buy everything with gold and silver (I keep my wealth stored as a hard metal, and when I need something I have avenues for converting it to the fiat currency of choice merely for a business transaction). My money has been very stable over the years, even disregarding the value of gold going up against the dollar. I'm starting to track gold ratios against consumer fuel, utility costs and other "real life" costs and I'm surprised at how solid the metal has been over the past 3 years versus those prices.

Would we ever switch to a gold standard? I hope not -- gold is still artificially cheap and I'm happy to keep buying it. Hell, I love the fact that everyone eats the US dollars up -- it helps me save for the future at a discount.

Re:What about the mass spectrum space above 30 GHz

[jgrafton]

Everything at such a high frequency will have to be line-of-site, however, as there's no hope of bouncing off the ionosphere or anything.

It could be done, yes, but it'd involve quite a high investment.