Obama To Nearly Double the Available Broadband Wireless Spectrum

suraj.sun tips news that the Obama administration announced today plans to free up roughly 500MHz of the wireless spectrum for commercial broadband. From the Washington Post: "The commitment backs a proposal by the Federal Communications Commission to auction off broadcasters' and government spectrum to commercial carriers that envision their networks running home appliances, automobile applications, tablet computers and other wireless devices. White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers said in a speech outlining the president's plan that freeing up more spectrum will spur economic growth through auctions of the airwaves and investment in wireless networks and technology. ... The FCC has proposed that 280 megahertz of spectrum come from broadcasters and other sources, 120 of which would come from broadcasters. The other 220 megahertz would come from the federal government's holdings managed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration."

Comments

Re:where's the birth certificate

[iivel]

Really? That crap again....

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/06/obama-birth.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_conspiracy_theories

I could find plenty more confirmations for you.

Oh that's nice

[shoehornjob]

And how much are they going to charge us for that? I'm paying too much already for my internet, cable and phone. Thanks but no thanks. I assume this is for the people in rural area's that don't have any internet to speak of. I'm sure the company they sell it to will continue the status quo and provide bare minimum to rural area's. No news here move along.

Re:Oh that's nice

[pavon]

I'm sure the company they sell it to will continue the status quo and provide bare minimum to rural area's.

No, "wireless broadband" is code for mobile data plans. Considering how each increases in speed/bandwidth for cellphone technology have always come with decreases in range, rural areas are going to be the last to see this technology if they ever do.

Re:Oh that's nice

[fm6]

This has absolutely nothing to do with how much you pay for communications services. (And I agree, it's way too much, though why any sane person even has Cable TV any more is a mystery.) It's just a reallocation of wireless resources. It might actually help your bill a little, by creating some competition.

If you want to do something besides whine, start agitating for the breakup of the big media monopolies.

Re:Oh that's nice

[mcgrew]

And how much are they going to charge u's for that? I'm paying too much already for my internet, cable and phone. Thank's but no thank's. I assume this is for the people in rural area's that don't have any internet to speak of. I'm sure the company's they sell it to will continue the statu's quo and provide bare minimum to rural area's. No new's here move along.

FTFY.

Re:Oh that's nice

[icebike]

These used to be TV channels. This is why we all switched to digital TV, to free up this spectrum. That process had always anticipated the spectrum would be used for wireless, cellular or broadband uses.

The process was started a good ten years ago, and signed into law in prior administrations, (yet in this all things to Chairman Mao world, Obama gets credit).

These frequencies are generally in the 700mhz band, below the 800 band used by some cell phones. These freqs have better building penetration and range than do the higher bands in the 2100mhz block often uses by cell carriers. Fewer towers cover larger areas, with better penetration. Its all good.

Especially in rural areas, the greater range makes sense.

But yes, you will pay for this spectrum AGAIN, after TV stations vacated it (did they get any money back?) the carriers will purchase the licenses, and eventually (don't hold your breath) put broadband and or cellular devices in this space, and charge you for the privileged of using it.

TINSTAAFL

Re:Oh that's nice

[vlm]

I assume this is for the people in rural area's that don't have any internet to speak of.

Plenty of areas with no cablemodems. Rural countryside is great for wireless ISP service.

But wireless ISP service, to the best of my knowledge, is not running out of RF bandwidth.

So, at least for them, more bandwidth is a solution in search of a problem?

Re:Oh that's nice

[Chris Mattern]

But yes, you will pay for this spectrum AGAIN, after TV stations vacated it (did they get any money back?)

Since they didn't pay any money for it in the first place, it's difficult to see why they would ever get some back.

Re:Oh that's nice

[rev_sanchez]

TV stations leased the band, they didn't buy it. It's owned by the public as in public airwaves. The public took it back and they can lease it out again.

Obama got credit for this in the headline but he isn't behaving as if this were his project so the only jackass here is you with your childish, ignorant Chairman Mao comment. You made the world a little dumber today.

Re:Oh that's nice

[Dunbal]

The public took it back and they can lease it out again.

      Unfortunately "the public" means "the government". So "the government" will auction the spectrum off to the highest bidder among its corporate bedfellows, and the real public "ie you and me" will have 1) absolutely no say in it and b) have to fork up another tax or fee to use "the public" airwaves.

Re:Oh that's nice

[commodore64_love]

Good point.

If the government really wants rural residents upgraded from Narrowband dialup to Broadband, the quickest and cheapest answer is use the existing phone lines for DSL. (Or existing cable tv lines for internet.) There's no diffing required because the lines are already there. You might need to add a DSLAM or DOCSIS router to each city block (or equivalent), but that doesn't cost that much. The expense can be taken out of the Universal Service Fee charged each month.

Plus wireless makes little sense. You get ONE spectrum and that's it - why base our future net on a limited resource? With wired internet you can get as many spectrums as you need (one per cable)
.

Re:Oh that's nice

[commodore64_love]

Correction:

There's no [digging] required because the lines are already there. If Congress mandated it, phone and cable TV customers could have nearly all rural residents on DSL or Cable broadband by the end of the year. - It might take a little longer for Farmer Bob living in Nowhere Idaho but it would still be faster than waiting for Farmer Bob to get a cell tower installed near his cattle ranch. AND it would get done quickly and cheaply
.

 

Re:Oh that's nice

[commodore64_love]

>>>why any sane person even has Cable TV

If my brother was here he'd probably say he doesn't know how to get TV over the net, and it's "just easier" to flip channnels on the set like he's done the last ~50 years. OTHER people claim watching TV on a computer is not relaxing and they want to be able to watch with their wife & kids on the big screen. Basically they are paying for simplicity and convenience

Re:Oh that's nice

[thatskinnyguy]

A slice of that spectrum was already given to Fire Departments. Effective 7/1

Re:Oh that's nice

[commodore64_love]

>>>after TV stations vacated it (did they get any money back?)

(1) My reading of the article is that this is a NEW taking of spectrum - channels 32 to 51 will be removed and leased to cellphone companies. (2) The TV stations that lost channels 52 to 69 were given new spots, so they didn't lose anything. Some of the poorer "neighborhood" stations received financial handouts to convert from analog to digital but that's it
.

Re:Oh that's nice

[commodore64_love]

>>>Since they didn't pay any money for it in the first place

-1 Wrong. TV stations pay the FCC over 1 billion *each year* for their frequencies. They are also required to be free-of-charge (i.e. they can't chage you $50 a mont like a cell company, or $1 a month like TNT, USA, et cetera). Providing free service is costly - just ask UPN or WB or CW or NBC. The first two went bankrupt and CW/NBC are on the verge themselves.

Re:Oh that's nice

[commodore64_love]

DSL or Cable is about $20 a month for ~250 gigabytes. Wireless is much, much, much more expensive for equivalent 250 GB service. So how is wireless "great" for rural reidents??? Hell even satellite internet would be a cheaper option.

I have a friend whose dad is stuck on dialup. I looked at wireless but it's beyond his budget (retired). I also looked at satellite - not available. Meanwhile he has perfectly good phone and cable lines running to his house which could be used for internet. The Congress needs to get off its marble ass and MANDATE that he & other rural residents can get their lines upgraded to DSL and Cable internet service. This could happen in just a few months
.

Re:Oh that's nice

[Eric Green]

So "the government" is an alien and foreign dictatorship imposed on America, rather than a bunch of folks that We The People voted into office to represent the interests of We The People? Gosh, you learn something new every day!

Re:Oh that's nice

[fm6]

Wrong context. I should have realized that most people would see the context as "Why pay for stuff you can get free online?" My context was "cable TV has gotten so outrageously expensive, sane people make do without it." Really, what you get for those hefty cable fees is the ability to watch stuff when it first comes out, without having to wait for the DVDs. I've been known to use pirated channels to get access to content that's still being sequestered. But even if bittorrent and sidereel went away tomorrow, I'd refuse to pay nearly $1K a year of early access charges.

Re:Oh that's nice

[commodore64_love]

The government is not "us" or "we". The government is a separate entity - a necessary evil to maintain peace, not something to love and worship. I certainly don't consider myself part of the government. For example I would never have fined myself $950 a year as punishment for not having hospital insurance. Only a separate entity would hatch such a stupid plan that is anti-choice.

"As government grows, individual liberty shrinks." - Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Party

Re:Oh that's nice

[Eric Green]

I am so gratified to learn that "the government" was appointed by evil dictators, rather than selected by We The People to handle our interests! Why, the notion that every single one of the folks in Congress were appointed by evil dictators rather than selected by the majority of voters in his or her state or district explains everything, everything I say, about why America is in the grips of tyranny!

Or it could be that America gets the government it wants -- and deserves. Whatevah.

Re:Oh that's nice

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean, UPN or WB or CW.. CW is the merger of WB and UPN...

Re:Oh that's nice

[soupforare]

None of those are TV stations.

Re:Oh that's nice

[mjwx]

The process was started a good ten years ago, and signed into law in prior administrations, (yet in this all things to Chairman Mao world, Obama gets credit).

To be fair, all the bad policies started in the Bush era, Obama now gets the blame for. Render unto Caesar what is Caesars.

Re:Oh that's nice

[icebike]

Except the move to digital TV started in the Clinton Admin.
Yes, its THAT old.

Re:Oh that's nice

[mjwx]

Yes, its THAT old.

The current Aussie Govt. is still waiting for plans from the Menzies era to come to fruition.

Politics is not fast at the best of times. My point was that the current pollies get credit/blame for plans when they come to fruition, regardless of who made them.

Re:Oh that's nice

[commodore64_love]

>>>None of those are TV stations.

(whoosh). I was negating the previous claim by another poster. He claimed that TV companies (NBC, FOX, et cetera) and local stations get channels 2 through 51 for free. That's false. Not only is there an annual lease (putting over 1 billion dollars in the People's treasury), but there's also societal obligations that must be provided Free of charge to the citizens, like X hours of educational programming, emergency alerts, and so on.

Also WB and UPN didn't technically go bankrupt because they merged and reorganized their debt. However if they had not merged they would have died within a year. The combined debt load was approximately 2 billion and bankruptcy (inability to repay loans) was not far away. ----- Now the new company CW is also heading towards bankruptcy as it sinks deeper and deeper into debt. NBC is losing tons of money as is FOX Broadcast.

And finally there's the viewpoint of the local station. I was just reading an official FCC report from an Anchorage Alaska station that their antenna is barely adequate to provide coverage for the city, and they'd like to upgrade it, but they can't afford to buy a second antenna. People talk as if these networks and station rake-in tons of money, but they are actually sinking.

Re:Oh that's nice

[pandaman9000]

You didn't learn the government was appointed by evil dictators from C-64. You are taking his statements to a completely unrelated illogical conclusion. You should learn more about that which you speak of, before making inflammatory statements.

Re:Oh that's nice

[commodore64_love]

I wonder if you'd still be praising the government if you were won of the Americans that was forced into a concentration camp (during WW2). Or one of the blacks that was experimented upon with radiation during the 1950s and 60s. Or one of the early Suffragettes (Alice Paul) who got imprisoned just because you carried a sign that read "Women Have the Right to Vote" (1917).

You say we chose the government but we have no more choice than a serf can choose his manor lord. It's illusion and you've been duped. Even when we kick-out a former incumbent, all we've done is replace the Old tyrant with a New tyrant who continues the same policies. (Or different policies but just as anti-freedom.)

You are like the old house slave who loved his master, even as he was treated like a dog. And then you go-out and tell the field slaves they should be happy.

Well we're not happy.

Re:Oh that's nice

[Dunbal]

rather than a bunch of folks that We The People voted into office to represent the interests of We The People?

      Oh gosh, darn, I am sorry! I see you still believe in "democracy".

      You think politicians actually listen to the people? $1.2 billion dollars for the G-20 summit. That's $600,000,000 per day. $25 million dollars per hour. They cite "security" as the cause of the huge costs, because 10,000 police were used. I guess those policemen were earning $60,000 per day each, huh? Oh wait no there were helicopters and other assets used so I will be generous and give you $200 million to buy and run those - so $50k each per day, right?

      Politicians are told very vocally not to bail out the big banks, and do so anyway. Politicians are told very vocally not to bail out GM, and do so anyway. Politicians are elected on an anti-war agenda, and yet the wars continue. Why the hell do you still believe in democracy? Politicians promise you the world in order to get elected, and fuck you the minute they get into office. In fact I expect BP to receive a lot of government help in the form of contracts and/or tax breaks in the future because (as Cameron said at the G20 summit) we must ensure that BP remains a strong company. Forget the fact that they have one of the worst safety records leading in the deaths of their employees, forget the fact that they are directly responsible for the worst oil spill ever, and forget the fact that they continue to lie about the volume of the spill and continue to use dispersants which they were told not to use - they do whatever they want, and the politicians will forgive all - because apparently this is what the people want - bankrupt Gulf states, oily beaches and a dead sea.

Re:Oh that's nice

[vlm]

Its possible that you don't have a wireless ISP in your area, in which case you're screwed. I'm not talking about cellphone contract 3G ripoffs, but wireless ISP service.

Maybe a better way to phrase it is rural is ideal for wireless. Much less multipath from skyscrapers. Less than 1000 microwave ovens per sq km. Almost no one cares about antennas, but everyone knows that all OTHER suburban residents supposedly hate antennas (the "beige" problem), so its hard to put a wireless antenna up high in the suburbs, at least compared to rural. It would be a hard task to find a better place to deploy a wireless ISP than a rural area.

Re:Oh that's nice

[commodore64_love]

>>>Maybe a better way to phrase it is rural is ideal for wireless.

Spoken like someone who has never driven across the country. In order to provide wireless across this whole rural continent (including farmers in the middle of noplace) you would have to erect a billion towers. Maybe more. That's simply impossible.

It makes a LOT more sense (as I said before) to use the existing phone or cable tv wires that run into most rural residents homes, and upgrade them to DSL or Cable internet.

Re:Oh that's nice

[Just Some Guy]

In order to provide wireless across this whole rural continent (including farmers in the middle of noplace) you would have to erect a billion towers. Maybe more. That's simply impossible.

One of my friends let an ISP erect an antenna on his barn in exchange for free Internet service. I think this is a lot more common than you seem to think.

Re:Oh that's nice

[Eric Green]

So you're saying that our politicians were appointed by an evil tyrant, rather than elected by the majority of people in their state or district? Hmm... gosh, I could have *sworn* that I actually *voted* for somebody for President a couple of years ago, and (gasp) the person with the majority of votes WON OFFICE. The fact that Americans consistently vote for the most corrupt politicians, the ones most effective at collecting bribes err campaign contributions... well, what can I say? In a democracy, people get the kind of government they want -- and deserve. Alas.

Re:Oh that's nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Or your friend's dad can get off his marble ass and move to somewhere with cable Internet if he wants it, rather than forcing me to subsidize his lifestyle.

Re:Oh that's nice

[Dunbal]

So you're saying that our politicians were appointed by an evil tyrant, rather than elected by the majority of people in their state or district?

      No, I'm saying that Plato was right: anyone who WANTS power as a politician is by definition the worst candidate for the job. That is democracy's greatest flaw. They are ALL corrupt, it doesn't matter who you vote for - it's the job itself that corrupts you because there are no consequences to being crooked - only varying degrees of crookedness.

      I'm not advocating a N. Korea-like dictatorship/monarchy. I am in favor of less powerful government and losing the standing armies.

Wow... what a worthless article

[ka9dgx]

It doesn't give any specifications about what frequency ranges. 500 Mhz is a lot, if it starts at 0Hz, it's pretty much priceless... if it starts at 60Ghz... not worth very much at all.

As far as freeing it up.... if it's for commercial use, instead of for networking peer to peer, what good is it for any of us? The monopolies will buy it up, and fight over it, and bill us with a profit margin along the way, while we get crap.

Free up what used to be the UHF TV spectrum for peer to peer use, and we can do a lot to fix the last mile problem.

That's my 2 copper cents worth.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[sribe]

It doesn't give any specifications about what frequency ranges. 500 Mhz is a lot, if it starts at 0Hz, it's pretty much priceless... if it starts at 60Ghz... not worth very much at all.

??? A 500mHz band has the same data capacity regardless of whether it starts at 0Hz or 60gHz. Or did your comment have to do with range and penetration into buildings? Or practicality of building transmitters & receivers?

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[toastar]

...

Free up what used to be the UHF TV spectrum for peer to peer use, and we can do a lot to fix the last mile problem.

That's my 2 ZINC cents worth.

ftfy

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[Carnth]

Free up what used to be the UHF TV spectrum for peer to peer use, and we can do a lot to fix the last mile problem.

I though the UHF frequencies are now being used by ATSC "over the air HDTV."

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[bertoelcon]

GP could have old pennies.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't give any specifications about what frequency ranges. 500 Mhz is a lot, if it starts at 0Hz, it's pretty much priceless... if it starts at 60Ghz... not worth very much at all.

??? A 500mHz band has the same data capacity regardless of whether it starts at 0Hz or 60gHz. Or did your comment have to do with range and penetration into buildings? Or practicality of building transmitters & receivers?

I've got some primo YHz frequencies for sale. It's like 15 better than GHz.

Also selling some oceanfront property in Kokomo, Indiana (You hear that Beach Boys song, right? Way down in Kokomo?) and a large San Francisco bridge.

Reply if you are interested.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[vlm]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_broadcast_television_frequencies

Massive channel shuffling happened as part of the NTSC to ATSC conversion. The "Channel marketing name" has little relationship to the RF carrier frequency now.

Basically UHF 70-83 disappeared in the 80s, UHF 52 to 69 just disappeared.

The article is probably either a journalist just noticing 52 to 69 disappeared 13 months ago, or maybe a new plan to get rid of VHF-Lo channels 2-6 and VHF-Hi 8-12.

Wouldn't be much of a loss. You have to realize that outside of NYC or LA, there is plenty of open spectrum.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[evilviper]

??? A 500mHz band has the same data capacity regardless of whether it starts at 0Hz or 60gHz.

At ~2.5Ghz you hit the resonant frequency of water mollecules, and any signals you send through the lower atmosphere are guaranteed to be attenuated in a rather short distance. At 60GHz, you actually hit the resonant frequency of OXYGEN, which means the signal is going nowhere fast.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfft. I live in Kokomo, IN. Everyone is selling property here. Get in line.
http://www.ibrc.indiana.edu/ibr/2009/outlook/kokomo.html

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[evilviper]

As far as freeing it up.... if it's for commercial use, instead of for networking peer to peer, what good is it for any of us?

I don't know about you, but I LIKE having unlimited cell phone + data service for under $50/month. I certainly wouldn't depend on the availability of wifi hotspots for my phone service (at least without a fallback to cell towers).

I also like that the government is getting money for the spectrum and using them to provide services to all of us, rather than raising income taxes.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[tkohler]

That's my 2 copper cents worth.

Cents (at least US$) are made of Zinc.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[toastar]

GP could have old pennies.

Yes, but what good is a 50 year old idea.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not an entirely true statement.

Technically, yeah, 0-500GHZ and 60-60.5GHZ can carry the same amount of data.

And yes, 0-500mhz is more valuable than 60,000mhz-60,500mhz, because of its ability to ignore matter.

You however, neglect the fact that these two points are NOT mutually exclusive.

Since the lower range has a better chance of reaching its target, you can pack more data in with less of a worry of losing data.
Since you have to worry less that data will be lost, then you don't require as much overhead for handshaking in the transmission protocols, further freeing up more space.

things are not as simple as they may appear

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[MindSlap]

"using them to provide services to all of us, rather than raising income taxes."
========

You must be new...to the US.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[Man On Pink Corner]

Nah, water doesn't really start to ruin your day until 24 GHz. Water doesn't do anything special at 2.5 GHz, regardless of the chorus of canard-wielding canaries who will claim that's why microwave ovens work there.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[Dan Ost]

A 500mHz band has the same data capacity regardless of whether it starts at 0Hz or 60gHz.

Umm, you know that's not even remotely true, right?

The higher the frequency, the higher the potential data rate. However, the higher the frequency, the further apart the "channels" need to be to prevent them from interfering with each other. Also, different frequencies have different propagation/absorption characteristics.

So a 500MHz band could be extremely valuable or worthless depending on where in the band plan it is.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[commodore64_love]

>>>Free up what used to be the UHF TV spectrum for peer to peer use

Uh, the UHF spectrum is still being used mr ka9dqx (HAM operator?). Channels 14 to 51 are used for the TV I'm watching right now, and channels 52 to 83 were leased to police, fire, cellphone, wireless, and other services. So that's not available either.

If you are suggesting I should lose my UHF-TV then I strongly object. It would drop me from ~40 programs downto just 2 programs. If you thought the Tea Parties were radical, wait til 50 million TV protesters rise up. ;-)

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[siriuskase]

We should put a notch filter around these people who didn't pass electromag. We need a special place in /. for engineers. The capcha to get in would be to solve Maxwell's equations. I'm relieved that apparently he didn't steal any of the ham bands. The way this country is going, we need our radios. If the internet wants to be free, it needs to get off the wired network controlled by government granted monopoly.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[commodore64_love]

>>>You have to realize that outside of NYC or LA, there is plenty of open spectrum

Not correct. The downsizing from 69 to 51 has made the spectrm so full that now TV stations are tripping-over one another. For example channel 11 in Baltimore is "colliding" with channel 11 in Scranton PA. It's creating reception problems for viewers in both markets. ----- Meanwhile over in Philadelphia channel 6 is having problems being seen (due to the low frequency) so they asked permission to move up to a higher number. The FCC denied the request because there is NO place for them to move. Washington DC is also experiencing problems with Richmond interference (and vice-versa).

The spectrum might be "open" in Cowtown Wyoming, but all along the east coast the spectrum is packed. There's no more channels to be given up, unless you permanently yank stations off the air.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[commodore64_love]

>>>I don't know about you, but I LIKE having unlimited cell phone + data service for under $50/month

And then there's me who doesn't use his cellphone at all. It's nice to have when my car breaks-down but given the choice between losing my cell and losing my free TV, I'd give up the cellphone. The TV gives me hours of free shows, movies, and weather/news updates. The cellphone gives me a 20 cent per minute bill.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[timeOday]

A 500mHz band has the same data capacity regardless of whether it starts at 0Hz or 60gHz.

That's like saying 5 word per minute typist is just as good as a 60 wpm typist.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[sribe]

The higher the frequency, the higher the potential data rate.

Uhm, no, that's what's not even remotely true.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[commodore64_love]

>>>The higher the frequency, the higher the potential data rate. However, the higher the frequency, the further apart the "channels" need to be to prevent them from interfering with each other.
>>>

I'm curious where you got this info. 500 megahertz is 500 megahertz and carries the same amount of data regardless where you put it. That's why a TV channel, whether it's located at 50 Mhz or 1 Gigahertz, still carries the same amount of data (~19 Mbit/s). The shifting up or down makes no difference. ----- Similarly the spacing is the same whether that TV station is in Very Lo VHF or Very High UHF. There's no need to increase the separation.
.

>>>different frequencies have different propagation/absorption characteristics.

Well that's true. Shortwaves get disrupted faster than longwaves. It's why submarines switched from the high-frequency "pings" of World War 2 to the low-frequency "pong" of the modern era. It's also why VHF TV can travel 100+ miles across flat areas like North Dakota, but UHF barely makes it 60.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[sribe]

That's like saying 5 word per minute typist is just as good as a 60 wpm typist.

No, not at all. I won't bother responding in terms of your ridiculously bad analogy. I will just restate somewhat more clearly: if you have a 500mHz band in which to modulate, it does not matter what the base frequency is, the band can carry the same number of raw bits whether it is 0x10^9 - 0.5x10^9 or 6x10^9 - 6.5x10^9. (As another poster pointed out, issues of interference and penetration will affect the protocol overhead required in order to get correct bits through, thus there's some variance in the net data that can be delivered. So as always real life engineering is more complicated than abstract physics.)

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[commodore64_love]

Should I dust-off my old Usenet BBS and go back to radio based packet-switching forums? I hear alt.2600 is still active for hackers and other anti-government types. ;-)

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[thethibs]

Yes! I still have copies of Waffle and ZModem hanging around. I'm told there are still remnants of the old uucp network functioning--gotta wonder who's on it.

If it ever gets up again, you'll find me at !tanda.uucp.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[AK Marc]

More like saying a 5 WPM typist is as good when you make them start from the first page as the middle.

Because of penetration, range, and practical considerations, there's a big difference between 0 and 60 GHz, but the actual data capacity is the same (assuming identical coding).

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[mahadiga]

Free up what used to be the UHF TV spectrum for peer to peer use, and we can do a lot to fix the last mile problem.

Excellent suggestion. FCC must allot spectrum for peer2peer applications to enable innovation.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the lower range has a better chance of reaching its target, you can pack more data in with less of a worry of losing data. Since you have to worry less that data will be lost, then you don't require as much overhead for handshaking in the transmission protocols, further freeing up more space.

things are not as simple as they may appear

But since it has a better chance of hitting clients it does not want to then you have less usable spectrum. 24Ghz covering ~200 feet with 2Gbps is much better than 900Mhz covering 20 Miles with speeds of 20Mbps (both using 20 Mhz of spectrum)

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[anethema]

Yeah this is a total myth as the other poster said. Water has several peaks of absorption by frequency. The first peak is over 20GHz.

Water does absorb 2.4-2.5GHz but not especially more than any frequency around it.

Here are some charts to stare at for fun, water absorption vs frequency.

http://www.rfcafe.com/references/electrical/images/atm_absorption.gif

or

http://www.e-band.com/get.php?i.72:w.977:h.567

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[ap7]

The article mentions that some of the spectrum will be taken from broadcasters. So that would realistically mean spectrum somewhere between 400 and 800 Mhz (UHF). Even 200 Mhz is very useful spectrum in that band.

Freeing up of spectrum should be the easier part. What the US needs to worry about is under what terms that spectrum will be licensed. If operators can buy spectrum and sit on it, thats bad. I hope that the US takes a consumer centric approach here, and not one that restricts competition.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[AP31R0N]

Yes, millihertz is damn tiny/slow. Never heard of gigihertz though.

Multiples are shown as capital letters, while fractions are lower case. The stupid exception to that is kilo which the dumb seem to think will be confused with Kelvin. It should be capitalized.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[Dan Ost]

Really? Care to explain what's wrong with that statement?

Imagine a simple over-the-air protocol where you pass bits by modulating the amplitude of a full cycle. A 1Hz signal could pass 1 bit each second. a 1GHz signal could pass 1 billion bits.

In real life, the frequency of the signal is often lower than the frequency of the carrier wave. Is that what you're thinking of?

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[Dan Ost]

I'm curious where you got this info. 500 megahertz is 500 megahertz and carries the same amount of data regardless where you put it. That's why a TV channel, whether it's located at 50 Mhz or 1 Gigahertz, still carries the same amount of data (~19 Mbit/s). The shifting up or down makes no difference. ----- Similarly the spacing is the same whether that TV station is in Very Lo VHF or Very High UHF. There's no need to increase the separation.

You're confused. We're talking about a frequency band that is 500MHz wide (or, more likely, a set of narrower bands that sum to 500MHz in width). We are not talking about a 500MHz signal.

Your example of TV signals sending 19Mbit/s is an excellent example of why analog TV was so inefficient: the 19Mbit/s signal sent the same amount of data even though the carrier wave was capable of carrying far more data. It was a huge waste. At the higher frequencies, you could have multiplexed the carrier wave and carried multiple 19Mbit/s signals on the same carrier wave (but dumb TVs wouldn't have known what to do with it).

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[sribe]

Imagine a simple over-the-air protocol where you pass bits by modulating the amplitude of a full cycle. A 1Hz signal could pass 1 bit each second. a 1GHz signal could pass 1 billion bits.

What is the shape of the signal you are modulating? What band of frequencies are you actually using?

• When you "modulate the amplitude of a full cycle", what you are actually transmitting is the sum of some number of component sine waves at certain frequencies, and the range of those frequencies is the width of the band you're using, in other words, the bandwidth. A pure 1Hz signal carries no information, and any modulation of the signal is equivalent to combining it with other frequencies. (You may have heard the term "Fourier Analysis" somewhere; that's the process of finding the component sine waves that make up a given waveform.)
• "Modulating the amplitude of a full cycle" is an extremely inefficient use of a band; it uses a lot of component frequencies across a wide band to deliver relatively very little data. (In fact, a perfect square wave requires infinite bandwidth...) Of course, this kind of modulation is easy to implement in a naive way. You won't find very many real-world examples of this (AM radio, black-and-white TV come to mind), and I think no current examples for transmitting digital data (not even POTS modems above 300bps).
• Real-world uses of radio frequency transmission encode multiple bits per cycle by using combinations of amplitude and phase--designed in such a way that they balance minimization of the width of the band of component frequencies necessary to create those waveforms for encoding bits, with minimization of the probability that one point in the amplitude/phase code space will be shifted by noise to a different point in the code space.
• The width of the band of frequencies required to construct your waveform from pure sine waves, the bandwidth, determines the maximum data that can be transmitted using that range of frequencies. Period. As established by Claude Shannon, AKA the father of information theory, in the late 1940's.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[sribe]

You're confused...

No, he was correct. It is you that is confused, or more accurately, it is you that is clueless.

Your example of TV signals sending 19Mbit/s is an excellent example of why analog TV was so inefficient: the 19Mbit/s signal sent the same amount of data even though the carrier wave was capable of carrying far more data.

Analog TV was indeed terribly inefficient, though not exactly for the reason you believe, and his example of 19Mbit/s refers to digital TV, not analog, and so actually represents a modern and efficient use of the band. (Analog TV transmissions weren't even in terms of bits since they were, you know, analog...)

It was a huge waste. At the higher frequencies, you could have multiplexed the carrier wave and carried multiple 19Mbit/s signals on the same carrier wave (but dumb TVs wouldn't have known what to do with it).

The higher frequencies had nothing to do with it. The width of the band allocated to analog TV was capable of transmitting far more information by using more sophisticated coding techniques. But each band was the same width, and capable of the same theoretical maximum data transmission. Now digital TV puts 19Mbit/s on each band, and no, you could not multiplex multiple 19Mbit/s signals on one band.

Really, if you have never passed an undergraduate-level Signals & Systems course, you should not be arguing this topic.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[bill_mcgonigle]

Yeah this is a total myth as the other poster said.

Falling rain and especially wet leaves do create ungodly amounts of multipath reflections, which completely hose up many digital modulations. Perhaps that's where the correlation comes from.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[Dan Ost]

Very well, I concede the point. I clearly didn't understand commodore64_love's reply and would have been better off not responding.

It is you that is confused, or more accurately, it is you that is clueless.

Really, if you have never passed an undergraduate-level Signals & Systems course, you should not be arguing this topic.

Yeah, you had a great post except when you got condescending.

I don't mind being told when I'm wrong, but I do not appreciate your questioning my ability to participate in this discussion. It would have been more charitable to assume I was confused and or misinformed. No need for personal attacks (and yes, I passed signals and systems, but it was a long time ago and it's entirely my own fault that I haven't kept the material fresh).

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[Dan Ost]

What is the shape of the signal you are modulating? What band of frequencies are you actually using?

Let's assume that I'm simply interrupting the signal to my antenna, effectively turning my transmitter on and off. No side band information required at all.

While the rest of your post is informative and interesting, it doesn't apply since I'm not summing my carrier wave with side bands. I'm simply interrupting the carrier wave.

Re:Wow... what a worthless article

[sribe]

Let's assume that I'm simply interrupting the signal to my antenna, effectively turning my transmitter on and off. No side band information required at all.

While the rest of your post is informative and interesting, it doesn't apply since I'm not summing my carrier wave with side bands. I'm simply interrupting the carrier wave.

Doesn't matter. What you're actually transmitting is still the sum of a set of sine waves, not just the carrier. The method you use to modulate it is irrelevant, you're still modulating it.

Re:where's the birth certificate

[Anonymous Coward]

Why has Barack Hussein Obama still not released his birth certificate?

Because people like you would know the truth then and have to be murdered. He's saving your life.

Charge YOU?

[twoallbeefpatties]

How much are YOU getting charged to auction the spectrum off to the carriers? I don't get it. Especially since there actually is a lot of competition in the wireless market lately - it's worth noting that we're starting to see unlimited data plans on various 4G networks that rival the speeds and monthly costs of landline broadband.

Re:Charge YOU?

[BuckaBooBob]

Thats a big part of the problem... They are going to Auction it off.. The 700mzh spectrum they auctioned off 2 years ago is still not yet deployed... for the most part Carriers are Buying up spectrum to prevent competition.. What is needed in the US market is more lightly Licensed Spectrum like the 3.65-3.7 that the smaller companies can afford to use so that there is some competition... right now all the unlicensed band is consumed where there is any population density and the 3.65-3.7 is just too small to make much of a difference.. not to mention the license for it is broken.. As it only takes 1 person in a area to make the whole spectrum unusable and there is no recourse for anyone to take to get them to properly use the spectrum.

Re:Charge YOU?

[electron sponge]

for the most part Carriers are Buying up spectrum to prevent competition

I wonder if there's any way of telling them "use it or lose it"? IANAL

Re:Charge YOU?

[catmistake]

Also, kind of annoyed me Slashdot reported so well right up to the auction, then gave the results... then not one word about the billions of dollars in revenue the US collected from the auction, which was the whole reason I was following the story in the first place. Where the hell did the money go? Why isn't anyone following it??

Re:Charge YOU?

[DigiShaman]

The money went into a general slush fund I'm sure. Good luck tracking that down.

Re:Charge YOU?

[catmistake]

$19.6 Billion is just too much money to just ignore and let go missing. Each and every citizen has been hoodwinked out of $65 by Uncle Sam. Thanks for all the help, Google.

Re:Charge YOU?

[gsgriffin]

Wouldn't it be wonderful if people in America started to connect the dots...Any time a bank or oil company or wireless carrier or ANYTHING is taxed, charged, fined, or purchasing anything from Gov., the users and buyers are the ones that pay for it. Why in hell would anyone want to tax banks? So you can pay higher fees for your account. Why would you want to tax oil exploration? So you can pay more at the pump. Why would any get excited about billions going to the government in fees, when in the end the people of America will be paying for it. There is little income to the government that the poor, middle and rich folks in America don't end up paying for one way or another.

WAKE UP!!!!

Re:Charge YOU?

[cowscows]

Wait a minute... so you're saying that when things need to be paid for, people end up paying for it? Wow, that's some amazing insight there.

Re:Charge YOU?

[gsgriffin]

I know, it seems too simple, but try watching the news. So many people in the country love the idea of "sticking it to the MAN" in higher taxes and fees. Name one company that has seen their profits go down as the result of taxes or fees. They simply raise their prices and pass along the tax to everyone else. Only people living off the grid can not see that cap-n-trade will not cost the energy companies a dime but the average person a whole lot.

It's why some people in this country want to see all the taxes go down and others with less dot-connecting abilities want to see all the rich and every big company pay more in taxes. This is where the concept of shooting yourself in the foot is happening today.

Re:Charge YOU?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, taxes are bad.

Some things have externalities. The government has a responsibility to tax them to correct their costs (oil in the US is possibly undertaxed from that view).

Additionally, accountants cost money. Paying taxes simply costs a large corporation less money than it costs each individual person. Of course, the current US tax system has complexity for both individuals and large corporations, so there is not actually any help there.

Re:Charge YOU?

[TheRaven64]

$19.6 Billion is just too much money to just ignore and let go missing

No it isn't. The US Federal budget for last year was $3,518 Billion. The money from the sale accounted for just over 0.5% of it. The money didn't go missing, it just showed up as a line item in the federal income column, along with tax revenue. The total Federal income for 2009 was $2,105 Billion, so this accounted for just under 1% of the government's total income, which is too small to show up in anything but the most detailed breakdowns.

Re:Charge YOU?

[catmistake]

Nice point. But the story was big enough, regardless of the amount of money, that there should have been a follow up on it... those dollars... a "Where are they now?" piece would have made a nice epilogue.

Re:Charge YOU?

[Anpheus]

What do you mean "where are they now?" In all likelihood, it got booked as revenue. If 30% of revenues went to the DoD, then 30% of the $19.6 billion went to the DoD.

Next question?

Re:Charge YOU?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Why in hell would anyone want to tax banks? So you can pay higher fees for your account.

I think you oversimplify. If you tax the people directly then ALL the money comes from the people, but if you tax the corporations then only about half the money comes from the people (customer fees). The other half comes out of CEOs and other wealthy managers' pockets (i.e. they get paid lower salaries). So yes taxing the corporation is a better result for the average citizen.

Of course you need to be careful not to tax too high, else the corporation will pack-up and move to India.

Re:Charge YOU?

[commodore64_love]

Yep.

As I keep telling people - there is only ONE wireless spectrum, but wired spectrum is limitless (just keep running more cables). Wireless is a limited resource and should not be squandered. Wired should be the preferred method of expansion of the internet. I can understand average people and politicians not understanding this, but engineers and technicians should be able to grasp it easily.

120 megahertz taken from broadcasters equals the loss of TV channels 31 to 51. Many stations would be forced off the air.

Re:Charge YOU?

[catmistake]

So... is it just not possible to remove the "in all likelihood" part, and actually know, at least initially, were it went? I'd like to know... I don't understand the position of "it went somewhere... that's good enough for me."

Re:Charge YOU?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is not. The transfer of money at this scale ISNT ACTUAL DOLLARS. Its all electronic. Thus all of it lacks any form of serial number which could be tracked. Its a big electronic pool that we divy up.
Go exercise your OCD elsewhere you fuckwit.

Re:Charge YOU?

[gsgriffin]

Thank you for proving my original point! See there are people that are not able to see the direct link and have been convinced that taxing companies doesn't affect them.

If you really think that CEO take a pay cut to make ends meet, you've never worked in a major company. As soon as their costs go up, they charge more. If that doesn't make sense, do a little research on gas prices and taxes. Almost half is taxes...and yet the oil companies make around $15B each per year. Add another tax, I promise you that next year they will still earn just as much, but your gas will cost more.

Re:Charge YOU?

[mjwx]

How much are YOU getting charged to auction the spectrum off to the carriers? I don't get it.

Where do you think the carriers get the money to participate in these auctions?

Personally I think the US couldn't be going faster in the wrong direction. Rather then allowing another spectrum to be bough up the US Govt should be selecting a single 4G spectrum and forcing all Telco's to use that one spectrum. Now before the Randroids come in with their "OMG Socialism" rants let me explain. This will create more competition in the market and make things easier for you, the consumer. Right now if you buy a Verizon phone, you are stuck on the Verizon network no, even if you pay the ETF you still cant use that phone anywhere else. If you want to switch to AT&T's 3G services you need a phone that works on the AT&T freq. Picking one freq allows you to buy a handset from any carrier or even a retail store and use it with any carrier. This will also allow for the creation of better MVNO's and smaller local carriers.

This isn't the "gubbermit" controlling 4G, this is the government saying that 4G == x MHz and everyone can license this freq. This is pretty much what the use govt. does now except it says AT&T == x MHz and T-Mobile == y MHz. Carriers still set up their towers, create the plans, same level of customer disservice, the only change will be the fact that you wont be beholden to a single carrier unless you buy a new phone because they all operate a common freq.

In Australia, if I buy a handset from Optus or a retail store, that handset will work on the 3G networks of Telstra, Vodafone and Three as all four networks support a 2100 MHz 3G network. Not to mention I can take that same handset to Europe and Asia and have my choice of carriers in most nations.

Re:Charge YOU?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, it seems too simple, but try watching the news. So many people in the country love the idea of "sticking it to the MAN" in higher taxes and fees. Name one company that has seen their profits go down as the result of taxes or fees. They simply raise their prices and pass along the tax to everyone else. Only people living off the grid can not see that cap-n-trade will not cost the energy companies a dime but the average person a whole lot.

It's why some people in this country want to see all the taxes go down and others with less dot-connecting abilities want to see all the rich and every big company pay more in taxes. This is where the concept of shooting yourself in the foot is happening today.

So by lowering taxes, corporations will voluntarily lower their prices below what their customers are already paying?

Re:Charge YOU?

[Zen Hash]

How much are YOU getting charged to auction the spectrum off to the carriers? I don't get it.

Where do you think the carriers get the money to participate in these auctions? Personally I think the US couldn't be going faster in the wrong direction. Rather then allowing another spectrum to be bough up the US Govt should be selecting a single 4G spectrum and forcing all Telco's to use that one spectrum. Now before the Randroids come in with their "OMG Socialism" rants let me explain. This will create more competition in the market and make things easier for you, the consumer. Right now if you buy a Verizon phone, you are stuck on the Verizon network no, even if you pay the ETF you still cant use that phone anywhere else. If you want to switch to AT&T's 3G services you need a phone that works on the AT&T freq. Picking one freq allows you to buy a handset from any carrier or even a retail store and use it with any carrier. This will also allow for the creation of better MVNO's and smaller local carriers.

Technically, a Verizon handset will work on Sprint, US Cellular, Cricket, etc. The reason you can't actually do this, with the exception of Cricket and some MVNOs, is that the major carriers refuse to allow devices with serial #s that aren't already in their system to be activated with their service. However, the reason you can't use a Verizon, Sprint, or USCC handset on AT&T or T-Mobile's networks isn't just because they operate on different frequencies, but because they use different, incompatible, communication standards.

I don't agree that the government should force everyone to use a single standard for cellular radio communications. However, I would like to at least be able to use devices I already own on services they are already compatible with. I don't expect the carrier to provide any support for my devices, but they shouldn't be blocking their use for arbitrary reasons either..

Re:Charge YOU?

[jonadab]

> (yet in this all things to Chairman Mao world, Obama gets credit).

Nothing new about that. The President always gets credit or blame for things that happen during his administration, even if they aren't directly his doing. George Bush (the first one) got the blame for a recession that wasn't in any way his doing. Clinton got credit for the increased revenues that finally soaked up (most of) the Cold War deficit.

FDR gets credit for ending the Great Depression, though as far as I can tell there is no reason to believe his policies had any real impact on it at all.

Reagan gets credit for ending the cold war, and while his military spending policies probably *accelerated* the bankrupting of the USSR, it was inevitable (and, indeed, nearing its conclusion) before Reagan was even elected. Other US Presidents contributed to the effort as well, but as far as public opinion goes, it's as simple as this: Reagan was in office when Gorbachev started talking about Glasnost. Reagan said "tear down this wall", and a couple of years later it came down. So he gets credit for it. That's politics.

Heck, Lincoln gets credit for ending slavery, even though he explicitly stated, and explained at some length, that that was never one of his goals. He was against slavery in principle and wanted to regulate it and prevent the spread of it to additional states, in the hopes that it would die out eventually or be done away with later, but he did not set out to end it once and for all, and he certainly didn't fight the war for that purpose. All he really wanted to do was hold the country together. In fact, if he hadn't been killed, reconstruction would have been handled rather differently and slavery in the south MIGHT have been allowed to continue for several more decades (though that's by no means certain).

Re:Charge YOU?

[Wireless Joe]

The 700mzh spectrum they auctioned off 2 years ago is still not yet deployed... for the most part Carriers are Buying up spectrum to prevent competition.

You can't just buy spectrum and throw radios into 10,000 towers overnight and light it up. AT&T is using the 700mhz spectrum exclusively for their LTE deployment, so you should see it lighting up within the next year.

Re:Charge YOU?

[skids]

Thanks for missing the point entirely.

Many of the taxes are levied against things that are supposed to be discouraged. Like running a too-big-to-fail bank without a plan to deleverage neatly if your bluffs get called. Or pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere and sea than you need to. Or being a chintz with safety measures when, oh, I don't know, drilling for oil miles under water.

Sometimes companies have a choice. They can pay the tax, do the frowned-on activity, and pass the costs onto the consumer, as you say. They can also not do that. The ones that do it have to pass on the cost, so their prices are higher. Their competitors that did not, they have lower prices now, and the in the good old free market that's called a competitive advantage. That's how punitive taxation works.

In the case of banks, yes, the cost gets passed on to the consumer. But the consumer gets insurance out of the deal, because if the too-big-to-fail bank fails, then whether or not it gets a bailout, it's going to cost lots of other companies refinancing costs, which will be bigger than the tax, and you guessed it, passed onto consumers. So consumers pay a little now so they don't get spanked royally later.

And if you think BP's gulf disaster -- the result of a lack of proper taxes and fines to discourage risk and build cleanup resources -- isn't going to cost consumers a buttload, maybe you'd be stupid enough to go take a swim down there and remove yourself from the gene pool.

Re:Charge YOU?

[Random BedHead Ed]

What do you mean "where are they now?" In all likelihood, it got booked as revenue. If 30% of revenues went to the DoD, then 30% of the $19.6 billion went to the DoD.

This isn't good enough for some of these commenters, Anpheus. They want to trace each dollar. Here's an analogy: you know how when you deposit a dollar in a bank account, then a year later you withdraw that exact dollar, not any of the others you previously or subsequently deposited? It's just like that.

Re:Charge YOU?

[Tacvek]

Econ 101 covers this.

When they tax the corporations the corporations raise prices, but the higher prices also means a reduced demand, so they make less total profit. Look-up the term "deadweight loss". On a corporation's supply and demand chart the deadweight loss due to a tax represents the profit the corporation has lost as a result.

Re:Charge YOU?

[cowscows]

You're oversimplifying the argument in both directions.

That being said, I'd rather see the true costs of our civilization reflected in higher prices than in direct taxation or willfully ignored environmental damages.

Like the OP said, we're going to end up paying for it one way or another at the end of the day. I'd rather see the costs upfront so that I can make more informed purchasing decisions.

Re:Charge YOU?

[Anpheus]

Oh of course, because I do that all the time. Just the other day I asked my bank for the $100 I deposited three years ago. They told me they don't have that $100, but I insisted and the teller went to the back and after some hushed discussion, they came back with five twenties that looked just like what I deposited.

I think you just need to be stern and stick up for yourself in these situations.

Thanks for explaining!

Useless, just like 1700 MHz AWS

[LittlePud]

Unless they somehow allow the 900/1800/2100 MHz bands to be used with the existing international standards, new frequencies will just lead to more market/tech fragmentation.

Re:Useless, just like 1700 MHz AWS

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

My UMTS/HSDPA AWS mobile phone disagrees.

So when do we get reasonable pricing?

[afidel]

$12.50/GB would have been steep in the early 90's, today it's almost criminal (if the criminals weren't running the law it might be).

Over the Air TV

[Trip Ericson]

As much as I like the Internet, I don't like this. As a big time proponent of over the air broadcasting, I don't like the rumbles from the FCC about cutting their spectrum even further than it already has been. It serves an important purpose to the poorer people in this country who cannot afford subscription fees, plus allows for some live TV to continue to be available for people who choose to do without cable/satellite. Free over-the-air TV is an excellent compliment to Internet video, particularly for live events like sports which are being broadcast live to many people at once.

With VHF having significant problems and the FCC wanting to chop another 20 UHF channels out, they want to make you pay.

Re:Over the Air TV

[vlm]

One other feature of OTA that is little appreciated is the market fragmentation it causes. Which is good for endusers.

Media and broadcasting is inherently a business that tends toward monopolies, and we need whatever little diversity we can get by having OTA channels owned by some company other than the regional cableco or the national satellite company.

So everyone benefits from OTA, not just poor/cheap people.

Re:Over the Air TV

[eclectro]

With VHF having significant problems and the FCC wanting to chop another 20 UHF channels out, they want to make you pay.

Maybe they aren't talking about UHF channels, maybe they want to whack out FM Broadcasters, or maybe even ham bands. I agree this could be a terrible news. Maybe somebody could clarify with more information.

Re:Over the Air TV

[BuckaBooBob]

You Obviously have not heard of Free over the Internet TV :)

Re:Over the Air TV

[Trip Ericson]

TV over the internet cannot be multicast, meaning a one-to-one stream has to be set up for each viewer. It's HUGELY inefficient. Over-the-air is a one-to-many system. Transmit it just once and that same bandwidth is used for every person watching.

Re:Over the Air TV

[SatanicPuppy]

So it's more efficient to put up giant transmitters and blast out a signal that can be accessed clearly from the fricking moon, across a mindbogglingly wide swath of the spectrum, than it is to only send the data to the people who are requesting it?

Maybe efficient isn't the word you were looking for?

Re:Over the Air TV

[Anonymous Coward]

Id have no problem seeing the FM band gone, its nothing but a clearchannel cesspool now a days. Problem is, its such a small band, its probably not of much use for anything else, not to mention so close the ATC frequencies that there would probably be a decade long and drawn out study to make sure whatever new goes there doesn't interfere with ATC radio

Re:Over the Air TV

[Lunix Nutcase]

TV over the internet cannot be multicast

Bullshit. For example, The BBC does multicast streaming of both television and radio.

Re:Over the Air TV

[jeffmeden]

You're suggesting that the 6 hours per household per day of TV watching, across over 100 million households, is practical to do via TCP/IP, a dozen routers, and thousands of miles of cable, but not practical to do via one giant tower that lets them pluck it from the air?

Consider this: in the US the average household watches 6.8 hours of TV per day, and there are some 110 million households. That's 748 million hours of programming per day. We will say by some grace that it's concentrated on half of the day (its probably a lot closer to the same 6 hours +/-3) but let's say 12. That's 60 million 'channels' of programming to distribute to each user. Even if they want to watch different things the content is probably coming from a handful of sources (since it's mostly either live or 'new to the ecosystem' and can't be cached.) So let's say there are 60 distribution centers each that need to manage a million TV sessions. If we figure maybe 1/4 is in high def (probably an understatement) that leaves us with about (quick hand waving math, 250kbyte/s for SDTV and 2000kbyte/s for HDTV) 600 GBytes/sec of content that needs to be streamed from each hub.

Sounds efficient.

Re:Over the Air TV

[Anonymous Coward]

in a cost sense it is inefficient.

Its cheaper, in the long run, to run a single transmitter that reaches thousands or millions of users, without having to concern yourself with the amount of users.

In a digital internet model, the amount of users is incredibly important

10 users streaming a 1080p video would be expensive in termins of how much bandwidht is required to support that.

100 users would increase that cost significantly

1000 users.... it begins to become unwieldy

You're missing the point that with over the air, your single transmission can be accessed by an infinite number of receivers. Where as with the internet/computers, you need to make a transmission per user, which is more expensive.

we can look at it in terms of Frequencies, if only 1 user can access 1 frequency then for 0-500HZ you can have 500 users. Thats not many at all.
In reality though, you can have 5 million users access 1 frequency.

Re:Over the Air TV

[Trip Ericson]

Yes, and it clearly states on one of their pages you must be on a "multicast-capable ISP." How many ISPs are "multicast capable" do you suppose?

Re:Over the Air TV

[Lunix Nutcase]

They have more than a dozen ISPs participating.

Re:Over the Air TV

[ChatHuant]

So it's more efficient to put up giant transmitters and blast out a signal that can be accessed clearly from the fricking moon, across a mindbogglingly wide swath of the spectrum, than it is to only send the data to the people who are requesting it?

Of course it's more efficient, for most reasonable definitions of efficient. That's why broadcast stations were developed first, long before cable systems. You don't need giant transmitters, nor do you need to broadcast to the moon (though you CAN, if you want - try doing it with cable!). Broadcast is vastly more efficient for certain ranges of applications: the infrastructure cost is fixed (the price of the broadcast stations) and doesn't change with the number of subscribers, the system scales perfectly (if your users count changes from 1000 to 1000000 overnight it JUST WORKS - you don't need to get new servers/routers/contracts with your bandwidth provider). It has theoretically infinite upper user limit. It can serve rural users even if they have no connection with the rest of the world, and it allows mobility easily.

The important thing is to understand the strengths and limitations of broadcast and point-to point systems and use each where it makes sense: broadcast is best when the same data needs to be sent to a relatively large number of users, at the same time. When you want customized data sent to many small sets of users, at different times, point to point connections are better.

To clarify, here's an example: traffic data for a city is tailor made for broadcast: it's of interest to many users, it needs to be consumed as soon as it's available (when you drive you want the most recent traffic data, not yesterday's traffic), and there is little space for customization (and whatever of it there is, it can be done client-side). On the other hand, e-mail is really bad for broadcast, since you'd use the whole tower bandwidth to send data to a single user.

Re:Over the Air TV

[rtaylor]

[b]TV over the internet cannot be multicast[/b]

Can't or simply isn't? I find it difficult to believe a protocol could not be created to accomplish this.

Re:Over the Air TV

[Rakishi]

Making a horribly implausible scenario does not prove your point, only your ignorance of how the internet actually works.

In reality, any such stream would be cached since you can amazingly enough cache things in real time. It'd be in fact, cached by each ISP as is done with any large content nowadays. Look up akamai. You'd end up with a tree of data propagation so the core servers might only need to send out data to a couple thousand destinations. Those send data to a couple thousand more destinations and those send it on to users.

Re:Over the Air TV

[Trip Ericson]

Point made, poor phrasing on my part. Multicast does exist, don't get me wrong, but good luck getting any major ISPs in the US to support it. Remember they're all offering their own subscription video services--do you really think they'll let just anyone multicast video over "their" network without getting a cut?

It's an effective "cannot" rather than a physical "cannot."

Re:Over the Air TV

[commodore64_love]

So the FCC tells us to upgrade to HD Radios and then switches off the HD-FM band? Unlikely. Unless they are total assholes. Besides FM only represents 20 megahertz of the supposed 220 Mhz that broadcasters are supposed to give up.

Re:Over the Air TV

[commodore64_love]

>>>mindbogglingly wide swath of the spectrum

One of my local stations sends-out 5 channels in its assigned space. That's 1 program per 1.2 megahertz and it looks a heck of a lot better than hulu.com streaming via my DSL. Broadcast TV is very efficient, not wasteful. It sends approximately 10 channels per region at ~20 Mbit/s each. That's ~200 Mbit/s total audiovideo programming sent to millions of people. Free.

The same service by internet would require a major rewiring project, lots of manhours for digging, and cost the viewers about $100 a month.

Re:Over the Air TV

[commodore64_love]

So why doesn't the BBC eliminate their broadcast towers and just send everything via the net?

Because they know they don't have the capacity to do it.

Re:Over the Air TV

[AK Marc]

IP TV exists. Get gigabit to the home and the ISP can multicast TV. Those that do IP TV usually have a traditional cable TV head end (dishes to get whatever they want) and then take it in to servers to decode/stream it out. Every house receives every channel simultaneously, but the CPE, owned by the IP TV provider, only displays what's allowed by billing at that location. It's been done for years. "Triple Play" was the goal of FTTH so that the telcos could run the cable companies out of business. It works, too, other than people don't care how they get TV and dish, cable or fiber don't matter to them. They uptake wasn't as high as guessed, so places stopped pushing for it. A good cable head-end can cost over a million dollars, so the little players never got involved. But TV over IP is something that's been sold in the US for at least 10 years, just not widely.

Re:Over the Air TV

[TheSync]

TV over the internet cannot be multicast...Can't or simply isn't? I find it difficult to believe a protocol could not be created to accomplish this.

Multicast is rarely used over Internet connections because of the danger of multicast routing loops causing exponential packet multiplication. It is used within individual terrestrial networks under strict control (and, if anything, I'd say people are less likely to use it now than in the late 1990's).

Multicast has another problem - the scaling of routing. Right now every router knows where to send every unicast packet that comes in based on its destination, which can be typically aggregated to your provider and your providers local node pretty well. But multicast means having a route PER FLOW. So if people all over the world are watching a million shows, your router would need a million different routes, one for each show.

At the inter-AS level (BGP), there are currently 300,000 unicast routes, and people feel that already is a lot of routes!

Is general widespread multicast over the Internet possible? It may be possible, but it would take a lot of effort. It is like the IPv6 transition, don't hold your breath.

Re:Over the Air TV

[jeffmeden]

In reality, very few ISPs have Akamai hubs colocated in them. In reality, only 60% of American households have braodband to begin with. In reality, it sure seems practical to orchestrate tens of thousands of caching hubs vs tens of thousands of simple RF transmitters. Sounds "efficient". Making a witty retort by dropping Akamai's name amd then rambling incoherently is pretty ignorant. Get a clue please, kthxbai.

Re:Over the Air TV

[bill_mcgonigle]

So why doesn't the BBC eliminate their broadcast towers and just send everything via the net?

Because they know they don't have the capacity to do it.

Their ISP's may not have the capacity. BBC should be able to handle head-node ops just fine, though.

It seems more likely that:

• they don't want to spend $50 * the number of TV's in the country for STB's.
• the ISP's would see this as cost-shifting and lobby against it
• rural folks don't have high-speed Internet
• poor folks don't have Internet

These will change over time. Head-node bandwidth can't be the problem, though, and any function of that reduces over time as well.

Is the NSA ready?

[seanonymous]

How will they keep up with all that extra monitoring?

So what are we talking about here, anyways?

[Gazoogleheimer]

One thing that I have found concerning about this and other articles on this topic is that they make no mention of what actual spectrum is on the chopping block to be reassigned. I understand that to most people it means nothing, but I'm relatively both curious (and a little wary) of what exactly they're giving up for this. I guess it's the radio amateur in me that's terrified to lose spectrum (of course, it's not like they're going to be wanting any HF...but 10GHz? 1.2GHz? I think that spectrum might seem a lot more, er, succulent.)

amateur license vs unlicensed power output

[digitalsushi]

I actually heard once that people with amateur radio licenses, if they can broadcast their callsign, such as in the SSID, are allowed to use the higher power outputs allowed to them than to those using simply the unlicensed spectrum. Has anyone else ever heard of this?

Re:amateur license vs unlicensed power output

[Gazoogleheimer]

Yes, and you are correct. We could technically use wifi amplifiers to boost our 2.4GHz signal to a (frightening, costly, and horribly impractical) 1500 watts. However, no encryption is allowed in that case, even HTTPS.

Re:amateur license vs unlicensed power output

[vlm]

I actually heard once that people with amateur radio licenses, if they can broadcast their callsign, such as in the SSID, are allowed to use the higher power outputs allowed to them than to those using simply the unlicensed spectrum. Has anyone else ever heard of this?

The term you need to google for is HSMM.

There are many other limitations to FCC part 97 operations, way beyond the scope of a slashdot post. Its not as simple as "change your SSID and its all good".

Re:amateur license vs unlicensed power output

[nmos]

I think you're mixing up a bunch of different things. It's true that amateur radio licenses can operate on different frequencies than the rest of us and can transmit at high power levels on those frequencies. Their call sign is assigned when they get their licence and they are required to broadcast it at regular intervals while transmitting (among other rules). This call sign has nothing whatsoever to do with WiFi ssids.

Re:amateur license vs unlicensed power output

[Gazoogleheimer]

No, digitalsushi was correct. There are additional privileges with 802.11.

Re:amateur license vs unlicensed power output

[Anonymous Coward]

Since nobody's spelled it out yet -- the reason hams get to crank up WiFi gear above consumer levels, in particular, is because there's an amateur band overlapping the bottom end of the wifi band. Any gear operating in this section of the band may be operated by anyone (including a licensed ham) under the Part 15 rules (your normal WiFi stuff) or by a licensed ham under Part 97 rules (amateur radio). I hope it's obvious, but mix-and-matching between the two winds up breaking both sets of rules; it's one or the other. Less obviously, the Part 97 rules prohibit attempting communications with other services, so I'm not allowed to set up a Part 97 AP with the intent of having random folks connect their laptops operating under Part 15.

Most amateur allocations don't overlap other services, so picking an arbitrary radio (say, those FRS "walkie-talkies") and boosting the power would be illegal, unless you also shift the frequency into an amateur band. Of course, some of us do exactly that (the frequency change) on police or commercial radios, though since these are designed for licensed services, there's rarely any point to boosting the power on a HT. (The unlicensed services generally have somewhat restrictive to very restrictive power limits.)

Re:amateur license vs unlicensed power output

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most amateur allocations don't overlap other services,..."
This isn't quire true. Above 144MHz (almost)all amateur radio allocations in the US are secondary allocation. This means that Amateur radio gets to use the frequency when the primary isn't. This isn't usually a problem because most of the frequencies are unused government frequencies.

Auction $$$: All they care about

[ScottFree2600]

I guess that TV broadcasters didn't give the government enough money. I have a better idea! How about if a good sized chunk of that spectrum was made license free, like 2.4 and 5.8 ghz? Why should we give up "public airwaves" to the Verizons of the world to sell back to us by the kilobyte at high prices with data caps, etc. Look what's been done with the crumbs that the FCC has allowed us already!

Re:where's the birth certificate

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that crap again. It will continue for as long as Obama is president (and probably some time after.)

The Birthers don't believe your links because they don't want to.

Obama's birth certificate is presented, they say "it's forged! We need witnesses!"

Witnesses come forward and say it's geniune. Birthers then say "I don't trust those witnesses! I want corroboration from someone I trust."

Trusted people come forward and say it's true, and the birthers then claim "I still don't believe it! I need actual proof!"

If the heavens parted and Jesus Christ himself sailed down from his throne and declared that Obama was born in the US, the birthers would likely just reply "Wow - Obama is trying too hard - he must be hiding where he was born!"

280 megahertz?

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly does 120 MHz + 220 MHz = 280 MHz?

Re:280 megahertz?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Reading comprehension ftw!

The FCC has proposed that 280 megahertz of spectrum come from broadcasters and other sources, 120 of which would come from broadcasters. The other 220 megahertz would come from the federal government’s holdings managed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration."

They are saying that to make up the 500mhz of specturm that 280mhz of it will come from broadcasters and other sources and 220mhz will come from the government. Now of the previous 280mhz block, 120mhz of that will come from broadcasters.

Re:280 megahertz?

[Message]

The summary sucks... confused me at first... it is 500MHZ = 280 (120 from broadcasters) + 220 from the feds

Re:280 megahertz?

[Anonymous Coward]

Recap:
220MHz from NTIA;
120MHz from Broadcasters;
160MHz from Other Sources

Squeeze out the Hams

[s122604]

Push em out of that juicy 420-450mhz slice o' spectrum.

Ok, I'm just trollin.. leave the ham's alone...

Re:Squeeze out the Hams

[Anonymous Coward]

no dont leave them along, they eat up a lot of valuable space just for a tiny minority of people can chat

The last thing I want is...

[dwiget001]

... my air conditioning unit A) connected to any communications network and B) to be charged for such connection.

Give me a fricken break!

Re:The last thing I want is...

[gregrah]

Even if it could save you money and reduce your C02 footprint?

Granted - implementation would play a huge part in determining whether or not I would actually want to use such a thing. But declaring a priori that networked air conditioners are a bad thing??

Give me a fricken break!

pull your own weight, fatty!

[Anonymous Coward]

but platinum-spoon genuine American tax-evaders are class-warfare terrorists

Lawrence Summers, eh?

[darth dickinson]

I suppose he's cool with it so long as no women try to use it.

You're not a ham are you?

[the_rajah]

So you probably don't know about public service and emergency communications that hams do. The chat is part of making sure our gear works when nothing else does like the 24 hour "Field Day" exercise that tens of thousands of hams took part in last weekend to simulate communication in emergency conditions when grid power is not available and communications lines are down. Oh, and don't give me the, "It's not needed because we have cell phones" story. We had a tornado in my neighborhood and cell phones didn't work.. The tower went down along with the power and cable wires. No power for a week, no cable/Internet for 10 days.

Re:You're not a ham are you?

[Nethead]

We hams are secondary users in 70cm. Ask anyone that lives above line A.

Sequential callsign issuance sorta broken

[BenEnglishAtHome]

...call sign is assigned when they get their licence ...

Yes, but.

It bugs me that call signs are re-used. Olaf Pearson (I will not vouch for the spelling) was a friend of my fathers. He was actually employed, as a kid, in Marconi's workshop. His house in Mobile, Alabama had a room that might as well have been a radio museum when I met him some 35 or 40 years ago. He was absolutely ancient even then but it was a delight to watch him light up as he demonstrated a radio he'd built using a 5-gallon Leyden jar; the discharge of that oversized capacitor (just a burst of static, really) was used to send morse. (After a short demo, he let loose an ominous chuckle and said "We probably just knocked out TV and radio reception for a 5-mile radius!")

His call sign was W4NU; I still have one of his cards. Olaf is long since dead and someone else now has that call sign.

It always felt wrong to me that those early call signs weren't retired as the pioneers passed on.

Re:Sequential callsign issuance sorta broken

[Anonymous Coward]

...call sign is assigned when they get their licence ...

Yes, but.

It bugs me that call signs are re-used. Olaf Pearson (I will not vouch for the spelling) was a friend of my fathers. He was actually employed, as a kid, in Marconi's workshop. His house in Mobile, Alabama had a room that might as well have been a radio museum when I met him some 35 or 40 years ago. He was absolutely ancient even then but it was a delight to watch him light up as he demonstrated a radio he'd built using a 5-gallon Leyden jar; the discharge of that oversized capacitor (just a burst of static, really) was used to send morse. (After a short demo, he let loose an ominous chuckle and said "We probably just knocked out TV and radio reception for a 5-mile radius!")

His call sign was W4NU; I still have one of his cards. Olaf is long since dead and someone else now has that call sign.

It always felt wrong to me that those early call signs weren't retired as the pioneers passed on.

Except then you'd run out of 1x2 calls -- as it is, the competition for them is rather fierce.

Re:Sequential callsign issuance sorta broken

[bill_mcgonigle]

His call sign was W4NU; I still have one of his cards. Olaf is long since dead and someone else now has that call sign.

Do you get so misty-eyed for his car's license plate?

I never got why HAM geeks, a bristly lot, get so attached to their government-issued ID's. TK421, why aren't you at your post?

Re:Sequential callsign issuance sorta broken

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Do you get so misty-eyed for his car's license plate?

No, I don't. License plates are ubiquitous. They're so common, they've lost their "specialness."

Early call signs, though, were issued to pioneers who had a huge impact on society. Yet, hams have never become so common that we've lost all notion of them as a pioneering lot to the masses who came after them.

It's not just govt-issued, IDs, either. If you've got a low-number Peter Lugar charge card, you expect a bit more respect. Until they started becoming fungible, 4-digit Slashdot IDs were considered something special. If your IHMSA member number is 39 (Hi, Clyde!) and you're still competing, you can expect that your fellow competitors will show you a bit of deference. (My IHMSA number is just under 5000. When I sign in at a match, it's not unusual to be greated with a low "Oh, wow!" from the person taking my registration. You can imagine the sort of deference we show Clyde.)

This is a common phenomenon. I wouldn't call it "misty-eyed" so much as "sensitive to history" and "perfectly understandable".

Drak. There goes my TV

[commodore64_love]

They are taking 120 megahertz from broadcasters, which is equivalent to subtracting 20 slots on the DTV spectrum (where each slot can hold 3-5 channels each). What a crock. I don't want to subscribe to Comcast. They charge $60 a month, plus $5 for each extra TV, plus 6% tax on top of that. AND their prices keep going up and up. (Basically 2.5 times more than what I paid in 2000.)

And the government used taxpayer money - spending almost 1 billion to hand-out subsidzed converter boxes and eduation programs for the June 2009 DTV transition. So what? That money just goes to waste now???

Look at all these channels I get. FREE. I don't understand why they want to take it away. What's next? We lose our Shortwave, AM, and FM Radio too?
ABC
CBS
FOX
NBC
CW
PBS
PBSarts
PBSworld
PBSkids
MyNetTV
Univision
Telefutura
TBN
ION
Wellness Channel
thisTV movie channel
Retro Network
Global (foreign language shows/movies)
Link (foreign news)
MiND (mostly educational)
JCTV
Smile-of-a-Child Network
Qubo
IONlife

plus 9 independents showing syndicated (Rome, Star Trek, Deadliest Catch, etc) and movies

So who gets to give up TV?

[russotto]

On parts of the East Coast, the broadcast spectrum is almost full; there's no more room in VHF-Hi or UHF for any stations (there's a bit of VHF-lo left, but VHF-Lo sucks for digital). Taking 20 channels out means a lot of people are going to lose TV. Who is it going to be? I suppose the Comcast-NBC merger will free up a few stations (if Comcast pulls NBC off the air), but even that's not enough.

Ever hear the expression...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fiddling while Rome burns?"

Re:Drak. There goes my TV

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, when the government GAVE away, for free, those frequencies to networks, the networks started renting subchannels to others, making a profit on frequencies we used to own, that those networks obviously didn't use.

But I do think NO auctions should take place...have companies RENT those valuable frequencies instead. Why sell radio spectrum the public owns to companies who will then own them in perpetuity? And, as time goes on, frequencies will become much more valuable, as there aren't any new frequencies being "grown" by the Universe.

Re:Drak. There goes my TV

[commodore64_love]

Anonymous Coward wrote:
Well, when the government GAVE away, for free, those frequencies to networks

Say what? -1 Wrong. Every local station PAYS for their frequency. The FCC collects over a billion dollars each year from TV broadcasters, plus requiring broadcasters to SERVE the public by providing news, weather, emergency and government announcements for Free (rather than charge $50 a month like cellphone providers).

Re:OBAMA MY *SS

[Surt]

It's a nice notion, but think about the spinup time for the industry Obama would have to build to tackle this problem. The fact is that only the oil companies have the technology in place to do this, he must rely on at least one of them to fix this in any sort of reasonable time frame (and time is of the essence ... we can't wait a year or two for a federal effort, and we'd be lucky if the feds could do anything that quickly). He could pick a different oil company, though, and have BP pay one of its competitors to clean up the mess, which would be fitting, if only there was a deserving competitor.

The Math in the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

The FCC has proposed that 280 megahertz of spectrum come from broadcasters and other sources, 120 of which would come from broadcasters. The other 220 megahertz would come from the federal government's holdings managed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration."

120 plus 220 adds up to 340, not 280...

Re:The Math in the article...

[sribe]

120 plus 220 adds up to 340, not 280...

So? The summary clearly says it's 500mHz. Sheesh, some people ;-)

..starting to see unlimited data plans..

[nurb432]

What world do you live in? In my world they are dropping unlimited data plans ( both wired and wireless ) like hot potatoes.

Why is this Obama and not Congress?

[bongk]

I am not an Obama hater, but why is Obama doing this or at least getting credit for this? When I first read this story I thought "Isn't the legislative branch responsible for guiding what happens with the wireless spectrum?".

The FCC Website states "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent US government agency, directly responsible to Congress, and regulates interstate ..."

Does Obama even have the authority to double the available broadband wireless spectrum?

Open data for frequency usage?

[Twinbee]

I know what would be good.

A publicly available graph showing time against against frequency usage with coloured company bars over it. We'd see exactly what was going on, and it'd be scientifically educational and informative too.

Always check primary sources.

[dtmos]

There are three new papers on this subject on the Whitehouse.gov site today -- one is a fact sheet, one is the Presidential memorandum on the subject, and one is Larry Summers' prepared remarks to the New America Foundation.

If one reads them one discovers that, as Larry Summers' remarks put it,

The President’s plan has four parts:

First, identify and plan for the release of 500 MHz of spectrum.

In order to achieve this, we need a two-pronged strategy that focuses on the opportunities to use both Federal and commercial spectrum more efficiently and to free up spectrum for new uses such as wireless broadband.
First, the government will examine how we are currently using spectrum and identify areas for improvement, consolidation, or sharing. To that end, we are pursuing a separate fast-track process to identify a down payment of specific bands of spectrum that could be freed up.
Second, we will encourage commercial spectrum holders to avail themselves of opportunities to transition their uses if there are more efficient possible uses of their spectrum.
While we go forward with this planning process, the Department of Commerce and the FCC are also conducting an inventory of spectrum use that will help inform potential end-users of the spectrum and improve transactions in secondary markets.

The second part of the President’s plan is to provide new tools and new incentives to free up spectrum.

[...]

Third, redeploy the spectrum to high-value uses.

[...]

Fourth and finally, use the auction proceeds to promote public safety and job-creating infrastructure investment.

It's clear from this that the frequencies have not yet been found -- this initiative is essentially a command to the FCC to go out and find 500 MHz. Somehow. Somewhere.

Campaign finance reform

[fadethepolice]

We might want to try stipulating that the corporations that lease the spectrum be required to provide campaign advertisements for elected officials free, that way we stop selling out our government for the privilege of elected officials advertising on public property. Just saying, might be an idea to try putting in the contract.

Who says Obama and not Congress? Not TFA!

[DragonWriter]

I am not an Obama hater, but why is Obama doing this or at least getting credit for this?

Because its an administration plan.

When I first read this story I thought "Isn't the legislative branch responsible for guiding what happens with the wireless spectrum?".

The legislative branch is responsible for virtually everything that the Federal government has the power to do; often, it exercises its authority by setting broad policy goals and letting executive branch agencies (including so-called "independent" agencies) handle the details. Even where it doesn't, the Executive Branch often proposes plans to Congress.

Does Obama even have the authority to double the available broadband wireless spectrum?

Obama certainly has the power to announce a plan, that builds on a plan previously announced by the FCC.

If you RTFA, you will note that it discusses the Administration's plans to work with Congress to implement the plan it has announced.

Re:where's the birth certificate

[Tracy Reed]

There are now a great many copies of his birth certificate in circulation. So many so that Hawaii has stopped honoring public recoreds requests for it:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/04/barack-obama-birth-certificate-linda-lingle.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+topoftheticket+(Top+of+the+Ticket)

Give it a rest.

Re:And Obama revives SWIFT...

[icebraining]

[citation needed] on the supposed effectiveness of SWIFT in catching terrorists. I'm sure it'll be as effective at stopping terrorists as the ban on anonymous prepaid SIMs are effective at stopping terrorists from remote detonating bombs.

Although this version of the agreement seems much more reasonable than the previous - thanks to the European Parliament.

What about the BEES!?

[Anonymous Coward]

what about the bees? need more study

they are in 36% decline this year because of wireless frequencies

Stop Auctioning Off the spectrum

[strangeattraction]

Sell leases and adopt a standardized modulation/data protocol. If all our carriers were using gsm around the country we would have more competition more bandwidth available, better coverage and service and lower prices. We as a country are getting peanuts for our valuable spectrum that is getting wasted by faux competitive bidding that solves a shorter balance short fall.

Setting them up, so they can knock 'em down.

[Anonymous Coward]

In "Wired for War," P.W. Singer warns that the Chinese's Army of cyber warriors can't wait for stuff like network driven appliances and cars to come online!

Re:OBAMA MY *SS

[hesaigo999ca]

When I saw someone had posted a comment to mine, I thought, ok here comes the undignified comments because i blacken Obama's good name, but thank you, you mention a great point, use a different oil company that will spare no expense and will want to prove themselves, so will actually be doing something quicker then what we got now.

Too bad we don't have Obama on speed dial

Re:where's the birth certificate

[rapierian]

While I think that the birthers are silly, I feel bound by honesty to point out that your article (which I followed for amusement) explains that Hawaii isn't honoring requests because they get too many -- but also that only the State Health Director of Hawaii has made claims to actually having seen it.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure Al Gore invented the internet but it wasn't until Obama made it faster when it became useful.

Re:where's the birth certificate

[Tracy Reed]

They include a picture of it. So you have seen it too. :)