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: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.