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Google Urges National Inventory of Radio Spectrum
Hugh Pickens writes "Google, the wireless industry, and consumer advocates have come together to support a bill that would require the federal government to take a complete inventory of the national airwaves to determine what spectrum is being used, how it is being used and who is using it. The government needs to clean up its sloppy record keeping, they say, or the US risks running out of wireless capacity with the increasing use of the mobile Internet. 'Radio spectrum is a natural resource, something that here in the US is owned by all of us American citizens,' wrote Richard Whitt, Google's counsel for telecom and media. 'Most of us don't give it much thought — and yet use of these airwaves is precisely what makes many of our modern communication systems possible.' The new law, if passed, would require the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications & Information Administration to report on the use of all spectrum bands between 300 megahertz and 3.5 gigahertz, including information on the licenses or government user operating in each band and whether the spectrum is actually in use. The unusual alliance between Google, public interest groups, and big telecommunications companies may be temporary. The telecom companies want to have the opportunity to buy any extra spectrum at an auction while Google advocates the use of new technologies that would allow the spectrum to be shared by whoever needs it."
Exactly. Radios were cool in their time. But what does it give you in the internet age that a chat room or forum doesn't?
An ad hoc emergency communication network when your precious internet, cell phone, etc, fails (see 9/11, Katrina, etc). It may seem old hat, but these "uncool" radios and the people who operate them can help save lives when all hell breaks loose.
>>> I'm actually a bit surprised that this doesn't exist already in the form of licensing records. It probably does, but isn't accessible or searchable in a useful manner.
What may really surprise you, then, is the way the amateur radio bands above 300MHz, are allocated and used.
First, "licensing records" for the amateur radio service won't help you glean that information because individual amateurs are NOT assigned to a particular channel/frequency the way most other users of the spectrum are. Every ham who is, by dint of their license, allowed access to the various ham bands, does so on a *shared* basis with NO claim to the rights to a particular frequency.
Second, nearly all of the spectrum allocated to the amateur radio service above 300MHz is on a secondary basis to other services, usually to the government radiolocation service or other broadband noise generator. The few slivers that are primary to amateur radio are up in the microwave region at frequencies that are highly susceptible to attenuation due to resonance with various molecules, such as water and oxygen, and are considered undesireable by normal services.
Third, the reason the foregoing reasons work is that the amateur radio service uses a "listen before transmit" protocol, unlike many other spectrum users who assume that they have exclusive rights to a given frequency. This has been cited in many of the recent decisions by the FCC, both at the staff and Commission level as a stellar example of how things should REALLY work.
Fourth, much of the spectrum now being used by so-called "wireless devices", such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other unlicenses low-power emitters is spectrum that is already allocated to the amateur radio service on a secondary basis to the government radiolocation service - i.e., the 2.3, 3.4, and 5.7 GHz. bands.
Some folks seem to think that amateur radio is not using its current allocations, and that is simply not true. The 70cm band (420-450MHz) is heavily used for voice and data repeaters, as well as inter-repeater and control links, amateur television, and narrow-band communications. In fact, this heavy usage has caused heartburn for at least one of the government agencies using that band for its purposes, resulting in some re-engineering of the amateur facilities.The 23cm band (1240-1300MHz) is rapidly evolving as the band of choice for wideband data links (e.g. the 128kbit/sec D-Star systems), as well as mobile operations using FM analog voice repeaters, but again, in some geographic areas, careful (and quiet) discussions over technical parameters of such activites with the primary users was/is necessary.
So, before Google or anyone else decides they want to steamroll over other spectrum users, they need to consider the ramifications of what they want. It's taken a hell of a lot of work by many, many differing interests to make the 700MHz band available to land-mobile, particularly public service agencies, and the technology to permit the use of wi-fi devices on unused television channels has been developed. Many government and non-government users in the 2GHz region have been shifted around in the spectrum to make room for 3G cell phones so teeny-boppers can download music videos and text each other while driving. It would be nice to see the spectrum used in a more sensible manner, rather than squandered.