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Carmakers Oppose Opening Up 5GHZ Spectrum Space For Unlicensed Wi-Fi
s122604 writes "Automakers aren't too happy about a recent U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposal, which uses part of the wireless spectrum assigned to vehicle-to-vehicle technology for Wi-Fi instead. The FCC announced that it plans to free up 195 MHz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band for unlicensed use in an effort to address the U.S.' spectrum crisis. This could potentially lead to Wi-Fi speeds faster than 1 gigabit per second."
As a car owner and an owner of the entire spectrum (e.g. member of the public), I say "What?" to your post.
I'd rather have 1000 GBPS wireless for free than 10 GBPS wireless and stupid talking cars that anyone can hack if they have a decent rootkit, anyway.
Kitt; Micheal, you're going too fast.
Michael: Kitt, see this switch on your dashboard, it turns off your control of the accelerator.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
please try to setup a wifi network for a large event "10k+ people" that's were we really need the extra channels!
is gonna get anywhere anytime soon... it's nearly worthless until every car on the road has it.. which will take a LONG time.. even getting to something like 90%+ v2v-enabled will take decades.
My router at home does N speeds of 300 megs and is attached to 16 meg cable, Do I really NEED to connect to my router at over 1 gig speeds if the cable modem it's connected to is still linked to the same half arsed, capped cable?
I see a techy subject and read it instantly as Carmackers...
Bullshit. Those assholes won't have anything with any utility rolled out for another 10 years. We can use the wireless spectrum NOW.
And bullshit too,
No wifi hardware is even designed to use the unauthorized bandwidth.
You don't own that spectrum. Corporations own that spectrum. Right now, lobbyists from the electronics industry are paying / bribing / offering more to the regulators than the car manufacturers are prepared to meet. Just like the commercial broadcast spectrum segments -- AM and FM radio, television -- of which you get to use precisely zero, this isn't about you -- it's about the manufacturers of devices that will use that spectrum.
The FCC's spectrum allocation arm allocates so little of the available spectrum to the public, and in particular, easily usable spectrum, that it is fairly painful to contemplate. The only people with a public voice are those with extremely deep pockets, and that's no accident.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I don't see how gb+ wireless is needed. Sure I welcome any spectrum opening up from private/corporate control but the "oh just use wireless" mentality really bugs me. Wirelessly connecting devices that are inherently portable are ok but things that don't move should be wired and should stop polluting the airwaves. Things that should be wired, but usually aren't, include Xbox, ps3, boxes, roku, etc.
Then you may need more speed. Your N gets you more like 100mbps effective data rate (test it some time) since the WiFi speeds are displayed raw and there's a lot of overhead. Now that is 100mbps shared among all devices. So, if you connect to your router and it to a wired computer, no problem full bandwidth. However if you connect to another computer on WiFi, oh look, you guys are sharing. Have a bunch of computers on all accessing, that bandwidth starts to get spread thin.
If all you do is one computer to the Internet, then you are fine, for now at least. Otherwise? Yes, more bandwidth is good.
I'm one of those pinko liberal democrats. But where electromagnetic spectrum is concerned, I'm as mercenary as they come.
If car makers want spectrum, they can buy it just like everybody else. The FCC should put the entire radio spectrum up for sale to the highest bidder on a rotating 10-year cycle, nothing exempt except for a few bands set aside for emergency services, military, and scientific use.
FM radio, TV, taxicabs, ham radio, I don't care: if you want exclusive use of a slice of spectrum, you form a coalition of like-minded people willing to pay for it. If somebody else wants to pay more, go find a better business model.
I'm surprised that they aren't pulling out the "Interference" card.
Weird cos most mikrotik (and ubiquiti) gear should be able to use it with nothing but a firmware patch (actually no need to use a firmware patch just tick the box to disable regulatory restrictions but you run the risk of using other channels that aren't freed up yet)
Well, funny thing about the free market, it does not care how much money you have invested in something. If there is a higher demand for what you are dependent on then your product, well too bad for you. I understand that the automakers are not used to this idea after being handed so much tax money, but they better pony up if they want a monopoly on public spectrum.
But..but..Job Creators!
They oppose the public having any access to the spectrum for the same reason all the major corporate entities don't want you to have access to any nice things without they get get a nickel in they pocket for it.
They let the internet get away from them and they vowed to never let it happen again. In their minds, the internet should have been cable television on steroids, not some big open bazaar where people can post blogs calling them assholes. They got caught with their pants down on that one, and they'll be damned if they're going to let it happen again.
Oh, and eternal copyright. Because they can.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Uh, no. It's the public's spectrum. The FCC runs it for us, and leases it out to corporations, WHO PAY US for the right to use it.
A landlord might lease out a room, and under the terms of that lease may not be allowed to enter the room unannounced any more, but that doesn't mean the landlord is no longer the owner.
I think the future of radio transmission is moving away from "allocated frequencies" and towards direction sensing antennas, frequency hopping, error correction and traffic tagging. The reasons for this are multifold, but for starters having an agency say "nobody can use this frequency but Bob" doesn't stop Alice from using the frequency and crapflooding all over it. The law has provisions to stop Alice, but Bob is completely screwed while the law tracks down Alice and asks her to quit it.
Frequency hopping eases that for the source because it's much harder to jam. Interference still can happen but that's what the error correction is for, assuming non-intentional interference. Additionally, making the receive antenna directional makes an interfering source much harder to use because they've got to be on a similar angle to the receiver to screw things up.
In other words, the FCC is forcing people to keep up. First by telling TV stations to move, then by selling white space, now with this stuff. The slashdot post the other day about the UK looking to move radar out of 5Ghz and use passive radar is another example of changing the way radio is used. They aren't saying car makers can't use this, they're saying improve your systems to the point where everyone can use this without issue.
Of course it could still be about the money, since they originally sold the frequencies to automakers and now they're reselling it to wifi providers. I doubt auto makers are getting a refund.
I guess you didn't bother to RTFA, and I don't use Facefuck, Shitter, or any other 'social networking'
yeah, I read the fucking article, but actually know a little about the industry, instead of just trolling for page views.
wtf are 'page views' here, dimwit? OP doesnt look like he was trolling either, and you're probably a 16 year old kid in mom's basement. enlighten us oh wise one since you know so much about the fucking industry. ass.
Aahh... these crispy, eloquent comments is why I come to Slashdot.
The vast majority of spectrum is "reserved" (meaning reserved for government use or later sale). There shouldn't be "open" bands. There should be "closed" bands (say, some of the scientific bands, and a few for the mobile phones sold to guarantee quality), but the rest should be open. Anyone any reason, so long as it plays nicely with others.
Learn to love Alaska
I don't suppose you can give a single example of an auto or planned product that's actually using this spectrum? The auto makers are opposing it simply because they want to hang onto the spectrum.
> so long as it plays nicely with others
Ah, that's the rub, though. You'd still need some regulation and certified, per-manufactured units that were sealed against tampering. If you're suggesting that we just throw a giant chunk of spectrum out for people to do with as they please, it will be unusable within a year or two from all the interference. Even worse, it will be interfering with other services, including some of MY licensed ones. :)
Naturally, I object to that.
You want some math? Bozo The Redneck has a 5GHz unit that he has "improved." To get away from all of his neighbors' emissions, he found a little screw inside that would lower his frequency to 4.5GHz. Hey, there wasn't anyone else there! He then discovered that it would "put out more better" if he removed that silver can on the output (i.e., the filter). Harmonics are simply multiples of the fundamental frequency, so now he's radiating junk at 9GHz, 13.5GHz, and 18GHz. This doesn't even include the *spurious* products that he's generating at heaven-only-knows what frequencies, because he also goosed the power, so now the amplifier is clipping like mad. :)
That's when I perk up and take notice, because I have a licensed Dragonwave link at 18GHz that we absolutely depend on. It ferries (via audio-over-IP, as well as one T1-over-IP that was a BEAST to set up, but that's a separate story!) several signals for our radio stations, as well as telemetry and video monitoring (to watch for the @#$@#$ copper thieves). We kind of depend on that thing, y'know?
And if you think that's an unlikely scenario, think back to the CB craze of the late 70's. Most truck stops sold linear amplifiers. Highly illegal, but that didn't stop people from buying them. Better yet, the bozos had no idea how to tune them, so they radiated trash and harmonics that absolutely destroyed TV reception in rural areas, where people had to depend on over-the-air antennas -- i.e., the very areas that were most likely to have rednecks running "LEE-nyers." It was a very real problem, and the FCC (the CB's called him "uncle Charlie") was constantly running around, busting people for running these pieces of junk.
Just turning frequencies over to the public sounds like a good idea, but most people don't know what they're doing. As someone who loves Open Source and Open Standards and all that, it grieves me to say it, but in this particular case, you'd better have some oversight and control.
If you don't, the end result is going to be that everyone interferes with everyone else and NO ONE will be able to communicate. Read up on the history of the FCC sometime: it was actually created (at least in part) at the request of *broadcasters,* who were sick and tired of constant interference, scrambling for "open" frequencies and no real limits on operation.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
This. A thousand times this. Repeat for what passes for our whole society, by the way. Corporations bribe, take, and lie their way to finite resources while the people who own those resources get nothing. Spectrum, minerals, "intellectual property", it makes no difference.
The one thing they really fear, of course, is people communicating. Look at the attempts to turn the Internet into cable TV. Look at the kind of crime it was to own a fax machine in the Soviet Union, or a printing press in countless societies. The thing is, those things certainly aren't infinite but they're not particularly scarce either. Useful spectrum is limited, and it's not easy to get back once given away (it should never be sold, only leased if at all). Lack of useful spectrum makes it harder for people to communicate and, in particular, to communicate without "permission". Free association and free exchange of thoughts and ideas is not good for statist control freaks or their corporate masters.
If you're suggesting that we just throw a giant chunk of spectrum out for people to do with as they please, it will be unusable within a year or two from all the interference. Even worse, it will be interfering with other services, including some of MY licensed ones. :)
We've done that with 2.4 and 5 GHz, and it didn't work out the way you describe. Since reality has proven you wrong, I shouldn't have to take the time to do so. Also, 2.4 GHz had very poor rules on playing nice. Improved play-nice rules, and we'd get much more utility on an already useful range.
Learn to love Alaska
While you don't need a permit to transmit on 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, there are very strict requirements on the radio transmitters and receivers operating there. It's not turned over to the public completely, which is probably what parent meant.
Yeah, so? It worked for ISM, but if we expand that idea to other ranges, it'll immediately collapse? You lost me there. The fact that it works is proof that it wouldn't.
Learn to love Alaska
Funny, I haven't gotten any checks from the FCC recently...or, you know, ever.
And bullshit too,
No wifi hardware is even designed to use the unauthorized bandwidth.
It takes those wifi vendors soooooo looooooong to fab chips and push new technologies to market. Just look at how long it took them to get 802.11ac equipment on the market. /sarcasm
You're a bloody id0t.
Sorry but networking and internet connectivity for the public trump automaker greed.
The problem with this article is people have no idea why the car manufacturers are upset, all they see is some big corporation opposing the release of more unlicensed public spectrum (and some sensationalist WIFI BS by bloggers). Or course this draws out the communists among us that want all corporations to go away.
This all fails to miss the entire point of why the Auto companies are opposing this. This spectrum is directly adjacent to spectrum allocated for intercar communication. What is intercar communication? It's spectrum that was allocated a number of years ago to allow direct communication between vehicles. What is the point of that? Well one of the key aspects of this spectrum is that without it you don't have reliable inter-car communication which will greatly hamper self driving cars.
See, if you are going to have self driving cars those cars need to be able to communicate with each other, they need to tell the cars around them that they need to change lanes, or that they are breaking. The holy grail of self driving cars is a situation where cars are driving 70MPH with about 2 feet between them. This will greatly increase the density of cars and allow the freeways to operate about 200% more efficiently than now. But for that all to work that cars have to tell each other what they are doing so the other vehicles can react. Even with no perception-reaction time for computers you will greatly decrease the possible efficiency if the cars can't communicate real time. The only way to make this safe is dedicated spectrum with low interference.
If we have thousands of WIFI signals in adjacent spectrum there will be so much interference that the systems won't be reliable, the result will either be safety problems or drastically reduced efficiency. Self driving cars are a holy grail of ITS (intelligent transportation systems) that has been being pursued since the early 90's. It will result in freeways that are so much more efficient than today that you could fit 3-4 times the number of cars in the same freeway without any slow downs or rush hour traffic jams. Not only that but you could read a book while driving to work.
We don't want to impede or endanger self driving cars. The car manufacturers concerns about interference need to be taken seriously.
You don't own that spectrum. Corporations own that spectrum. Right now, lobbyists from the electronics industry are paying / bribing / offering more to the regulators than the car manufacturers are prepared to meet. Just like the commercial broadcast spectrum segments -- AM and FM radio, television -- of which you get to use precisely zero, this isn't about you -- it's about the manufacturers of devices that will use that spectrum.
The FCC's spectrum allocation arm allocates so little of the available spectrum to the public, and in particular, easily usable spectrum, that it is fairly painful to contemplate. The only people with a public voice are those with extremely deep pockets, and that's no accident.
Gee, that's nice.
Care to tell me how pretty much all of that shit doesn't apply to all things driven by lobbyists?
And they wonder why democracy is dead...
They want to implement their harebrained scheme, where cars communicate with each other to facilitate self driving cars in the future. Computers on the net, controlling cars is one of the most crazy ideas that anybody has come up with lately. Instead of hackers and criminals crashing computers only, they will crash car computers which will crash cars injuring and possibly killing people. If Microsoft has anything to say about this, they will insist that such vehicles run Windows.
Has there ever been a “secure” computer system? If a computer is on the net, it can be accessed and compromised, if there is an incentive to do so. I can just imagine some enterprising kid turning off the engines of vehicles traveling down the highway going past his house. Suddenly jamming on the brakes or running them off the road should be kinda fun also. If computer controlled cars should become the norm, I will have to drive my now 7-year-old car until the wheels fall off. I certainly won't buy such a hackable contraption.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
This sounds exactly like every redneck I've known.
Talk your ear off for hours about the advantages of different kinds of notch filters.
You get them indirectly, from the IRS. Don't like it? Lobby for higher taxes.
Besides I highly do not like the idea at all of designing systems that would involve car to car systems in the first place.
Mostly due to privacy, because I just know the morons will put identifiers into each car, and just the simple fact a bored teenager with simple computer and electronics skills would have a hayday messing with people for fun. Anything else like transmitting say diagnostics info for service, etc would not need it's own private spectrum anyway.
> It's not turned over to the public completely, which is probably what parent meant.
That is EXACTLY what I meant. And just for the record, there probably won't be "a screw" that Bozo can adjust. (Everything is synthesized now.) But he'll find a way. (Most likely, someone will come out with a downloadable software "mod.")
Back during the CB era, most of the better radios could easily be modified to operate on those illegal frequencies, above and below 27MHz. You could even order kits and install them. Came with easy-to-follow instructions "for educational purposes only!" (Heh.)
The point is: this is just classic idealism: "Give it to the people and trust them!" Sounds good. Makes a great slogan on a T-shirt.
Problem is, it didn't work before (see my comment on HOW the FCC came into existence) and it won't work now.
I hate government regulation AND I hate big business (I'm an equal-opportunity curmudgeon), but there are times when some control and oversight is needed. We can argue about alternative methods for assigning frequencies, maybe even putting some of this allocation stuff up for a public vote, but it has to be controlled.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
> We've done that with 2.4 and 5 GHz, and it didn't work out the way you describe
Heh. You have obviously never used wireless in an apartment complex, or in a large building with several businesses, or even in a hotel "cluster" on the Interstate where dozens of different access points are fighting with one another for attention.
Our first data link, installed several years ago, was an unlicensed Motorola Canopy. Highly directional, 2.4GHz, worked like a charm ... until the folks who lived in the apartment complex right between our studios and transmitter site all bought Linksys and DLink access points. Not only were they arguing with each other about channels, they rendered that Motorola useless.
Fine; it was unlicensed. We couldn't complain. We knew the risk when we bought it.
But that's why we upgraded to the Dragonwave with a license. If anyone interferes with that, we can take positive action with the FCC to get them shut down or fixed.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
I don't get it. What is so hard about designing these systems as Ad-hoc Wifi instead of whatever method they're currently using?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I have no problem declaring (out of blissfull ignorance) any reason one invents whereby they think 5ghz vechicle to vechicle communication is a good idea is actually not such a great idea upon closer inspection.
Hopefully with more spectrum in 5ghz ISM FCC also plans to allow higher transmitting power so it can be practically utilized.
Problem is, it didn't work before
So you are saying that 2.4 GHz is unusable. Reality proves you wrong. I still don't get what you are saying. You objected to my " open [them to] Anyone [for] any reason, so long as it plays nicely with others." which is exactly what existing ISM is, and ISM works pretty well, far better than you assert it "would" if it existed.
From how I read it, either you are the most disagreeable person to agree with me ever, or you are arguing that reality is wrong because you find it contradictory to your personal opinion. Please help me understand, without unrelated references to the CB era that pre-dates 90% of the people here.
Learn to love Alaska
Yeah, there's about one hundred vehicles in Ann Arbor right now running a multi-manufacturer pilot test of the car-to-car communications. Many of the cars have warning systems that use the info passed between cars to alert driver of a danger. This is useful whether or not we end up with self-driving cars. So, yes, both manufacturers the DOTs around the world want to hang onto the spectrum. It could help save lives, improve traffic flow and road utilization, and give manufacturers a set of new features they can sell to improve their profits. How horrible!
We can debate if this is the best use of spectrum. I think it is a pretty good use, and it will need to be protected and used in a coordinated way to make these vehicle applications feasible and effective. Maybe you'd rather have faster Facebook updates or see better video on demand on your smartphone or something? Would you think that's a lot more important than avoiding a massive pile up in a white-out snowstorm or fog? Manufacturers won't announce dates or specific models yet, but it could be fairly close. But it won't happen if poor spectrum management makes it technically infeasible.
Yeah, there's about one hundred vehicles in Ann Arbor right now running a multi-manufacturer pilot test of the car-to-car communications. Many of the cars have warning systems that use the info passed between cars to alert driver of a danger. This is useful whether or not we end up with self-driving cars. So, yes, both manufacturers the DOTs around the world want to hang onto the spectrum. It could help save lives, improve traffic flow and road utilization, and give manufacturers a set of new features they can sell to improve their profits. How horrible!
We can debate if this is the best use of spectrum. I think it is a pretty good use, and it will need to be protected and used in a coordinated way to make these vehicle applications feasible and effective. Maybe you'd rather have faster Facebook updates or see better video on demand on your smartphone or something? Would you think that's a lot more important than avoiding a massive pile up in a white-out snowstorm or fog? Manufacturers won't announce dates or specific models yet, but it could be fairly close. But it won't happen if poor spectrum management makes it technically infeasible.
Interesting. The big question isn't really whether it's an appropriate use of the spectrum, but perhaps whether they really needs such a large chunk of the spectrum. There is already 555 MHz allocated for this general use band, so this represents 1/3 of the current bandwidth. Note that this is larger than the band allocated for 5GHZ 802.11 right now. This change is to shrink this very underused band and allow it to be used more productively. So products may be affected, but they won't get shutdown entirely. "Private Land Mobile" has multiple chunks allocated in the FCC spectrum, that do not have corresponding allocations in the intentional table so it would be stupid for auto makers to use those frequencies anyway.
"If you're suggesting that we just throw a giant chunk of spectrum out for people to do with as they please, it will be unusable within a year or two from all the interference."
This is a lie. It makes no economic or pragmatic sense whatsoever and it lacks a basic understanding of economics. If it's unusable then no one would use it and there would be no interference which would allow people to use it. Your argument defeats itself. What would naturally happen is that people would naturally use it either until they need no more or until it is saturated from use. But being saturated from use means its being used. Having a lot of interference means that its being used because there must be devices using it for there to be interference. and we have cordless phones and wifi and walkie talkies and CB radio before cell phones (and even now) and, sure, there is plenty of interference, but these spectra are still very useful. Interference in one area doesn't mean interference everywhere and so people can still use all the frequencies elsewhere. There is no basis in the argument that, without monopolized regulation, these spectra won't be used. The very basis of having government established monopolies is the fact that, without these monopolies, people would use these spectra. I would rather people be free to use these spectra than handing over these spectra to a bunch of commercial entities that use them to simply bombard us with commercials.
There is a big catch with ISM bands. Interference is YOUR problem. So when a teleco wanted to not use anything but ISM (in canada IIRC) it was ruled that they could not because they cannot give assurances about the QoS.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
In the US, they didn't ban telcos from using it, but none did for the reason you mention. But locking down over 99% of usable spectrum to defend the business cases for private companies doesn't seem to be the best use to me.
Learn to love Alaska
They are using 802.11p. A modified version of 802.11a, due to latency requirements for safety applications and services (time to collision is critical, and you also have to add the mean response time of human beings). There is also a lot of R&D in access protocols (diificult when lots of vehicles are accessing the medium omnidirectionally and constantly moving).
We've got a limited resource (the electromagnetic spectrum). The market-based thing to do is to auction off chunks of it for as much as the market can bear. Given that unlimited use becomes essentially impossible when people are too close together, and hence interfering with each other, I don't have a better idea.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes