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

[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.

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: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: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: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.