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Congress Wants Federal Government To Sell 1755-1780 MHz Spectrum Band
GovTechGuy writes "With next year's reverse auction of TV spectrum not expected to sate the wireless industry's growing demand for mobile broadband, lawmakers are turning up the heat on the Obama administration to auction the 1755-1780 MHz band, which is considered especially desirable for mobile phone use. However, the Pentagon and other federal agencies are already using those airwaves for everything from flying drones and surveillance to satellites and air combat training. They say it would take ten years and $18 billion just to vacate the band so it can be sold."
All the more reason to hand it over to civilian mobile phone use.
There should be free for all bands for signals with low total radiated power (say 10mW) to be emitted with relatively high EIRP (a few Watts), i.e. highly directional signals. This should allow for much better use of the scarce bandwidth and spur innovation in beam forming.
Capitalists vs Warmongers!
Wasn't that supposed to make the idea of a band obsolete?
lawmakers are turning up the heat on the Obama administration
lobbyists are turning up the heat on Congress.
Fixed that for you.
Hint: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000076 [AT&T profile at opensecrets]
Will the next show about a murderer that only kills 'bad people' be ready by then?!
Make it public airwaves and give it to the ham radio operators. It's time they gave back some spectrum to us that has been stolen over the years.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
and go a lobby yourself.
That is what it is going to take - every ham operator.
It's completely unfair - big corps can hire lobbyists to pester Congress and give them gifts and individuals are just drowned out.
You ham guys will get nothing and rest assured, more of your spectrum will be taken.
Years later, after you fire up that shiny new iPhone, the Air Force suddenly realizes they forgot to re-tune a batch of HARM missiles. Fortunately, nothing of value was lost.
Have gnu, will travel.
Come on, this is a jobs program.
1) Force the DoD to vacate the band. To do this the DoD needs $$Billions for new equipment to do this. This creates jobs, especially in the congressman's district pushing the legislation through. This gets the congressman re-elected by a happy electorate so we can perpetuate more gridlock.
2) Sell the bandwidth to Wireless Carriers who are immensely profitable (At least 2 out of the four are) to generate billions of dollars in revenue. That means the Feds can then hire more bureaucrats at the IRS to keep an eye on Tea Party folk.
3) The consumers get screwed with the bill, always.
Frankly, I don't think bandwidth should ever be auctioned off, it should be leased.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I hate this policy, of selling our public bandwidth to private corporations. I just hate it.
Airwaves are public. The Government should not be selling property that belongs to all of us. Leasing or licensing bandwidth for some specific period of time is one thing, but transferring ownership is another. We should not "privatize" this.
I am dismayed to see so many politicians and technical types just accepting actions like this, without any policy discussions taking place -- beyond closed-door meetings at the FCC, which are not shared with the public.
tt77
It should read:
Congressional 'contributors' want federal government to sell 1755-1780 MHz Spectrum band
lawmakers are turning up the heat on the Obama administration to auction the 1755-1780 MHz band
I figured it was only a matter of time before Congress pushed to sell off 1776 to the highest bidder. They've been pushing to sell off the Post Office's business for the last 6 years by forcing a financially sound organization into insolvency (see paragraph 3 here). Why not sell off American Independence itself and Common Sense while they're at it? It's like we gave the keys to our house to service employees and they're auctioning off the contents to lobbyists through the front door to the highest bidder, keeping the profits for themselves.
This is how Software Defined Radio wins.
Sex, drugs and fartgas. All the electromagnetic spectrum should be given to CUBA for radio broadcasts to enlighten the poor suffering people living under the despotic murderous rule of Wall Street.
Obviously, someone is paying these CONgressMEN to push for the sale, my questions are who and for what purpose?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
It's startling when you look at a chart of frequency allocation and see how much is allocated to DOD, maritime, and obselete tech. Meanwhile you have everyone and their neighbor competing over 11 channels for Wifi.
they took away reliable OTA TV to sell off the spectrum and some squatters just started using it, tough shit
having you been living under a rock for the last ten years? It's part of the ethos "Smaller government" which means private industry replaces the duties of a "government by the people" with a fascist one of "government controlled by corporate citizens" so these corporations need these assets to build their private army or their private space programs.
Give the 2.4GHz ISM band to the Telecoms for broadband data.
This fits in very well with Obama's agenda. After all he just nominated a Telecom lobbyist to head the FCC, and that nomination is expected to sail through the Senate largely unopposed due to the insane amount of money Telecom has put into the last few elections.
Don't forget that Obama promised there would be no lobbyists in his administration.
It's all about getting the Interwebs to all those free Obama phones.
I think you're confusing 1700 mhz with 700 mhz .
what a reverse auction looks like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hmns6PMWs0
That's how long everything takes and how much everything costs when making home renovations in a Money Pit. I guess 10 years, 18 billion dollars is as good an answer as anything else when governments are concerned.
"mhz" is simply wrong. The abbreviation for Hertz is Hz, not hz (and not Avis, either).
mHz would be milliHertz. 1700mHz would be 1.7Hz.
This discussion involves 1700 MHz = megaHertz.
If you are going to correct someone, at least get it right!
Allow the federal agencies using it to optionally rent it out for a fee.
Table-ized A.I.
Mobile operators dont need more bandwidth. They can build more towers and the problem is solved cell phones automatically reduce power output and prevent themselves from interfering with each other.
Which is more important? The military protecting our county, or teenage girls texting their friends? We need to get some realism into what we are doing with our spectrum allocations, stop the intrusion of mobile services into numerous other services, such as TV.
Which is more important: Military using 1755-1780 MHz to protect the country, or allowing a teenager to text 50 times a day to her friends? I vote for the military, or at least until the bad guys all go away.
Some people don't capitalize anything, just as they use silly acronyms or shortcuts instead of full words. Wait a few years, you won't recognize English, nor be able to communicate with your kids.
Remember the flap last year over Lightsquared wanting to use a space comms band, for terrestrial service. The band is next to the GPS frequencies, would have made GPS essentially useless. And we all know how much we use GPS for everything from finding your way to Grandma's house to landing airplanes. Fortunately, the application was denied (just barely), but the threats to frequencies will continue, if we do not stay vigilant.