FCC Allocates More Bandwidth to Transportation

Ydeologi writes "MSNBC is running this story on the FCC finally getting around to allocating a more significant chunk of the airwaves for "intelligent transportation" services. "

Comments

cliches galore

[zptdooda]

First was the information superhighway, now we'll be hearing about superhighway information.

Top 10 accidents of the future

[Enoch Root]

Now that wired cars are a mere technicality away...

10. Thunderstorm in California; traffic slows down in NYC.

9. Forgot to go to the garage to get that new Service Pack.

8. Windshield is overtaken by a slew of porn site ads.

7. Incompatibility between your car's OS and the highway's OS.

6. Got distracted by all the pretty iCars.

5. That's what you get for running a beta!

4. Instead of the fancy car with all the extra options, you should have chosen that reliable, Open Source car...

3. Your car is highjacked by a script kiddie and driven into a ditch.

2. "What are you talking about? There's no Ctrl-Alt-Del in my car!"

And the #1 accident of the future...

1. It was a bad idea to advertise your new car on Slashdot...

"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

cameras in cars

[PD]

This technology is really cool. With the right encryption, it would be workable for a lot of car devices. I look forward to the day when every automobile contains a camera mounted right behind the rearview mirror, looking out the front window of the car. Why? This is the best place to put a camera if you want universal (or nearly so) video coverage.

Yes, this is like 1984, but no it won't be an awful thing, because the cameras will be privately owned and controlled by the owners of the cars.

-owners will have complete control of the video
-owners will have the option of giving others access to their video
-if owners don't want anyone to use their camera, that's their right
-when you're in public, there are very few places where you're not in view of a car somewhere
-if you're being video taped all the time in public places, few will commit crimes.
-if the police hear about crimes, they can use the car cams that they have permission to use, and no others
-if you're at home in your living room, you're safe unless you park your car next to the TV.

Orwell wrote a good book, but the difference was that he wrote about cameras in a totalitarian society. We don't live in one of those, and cameras won't bring such a society about either. Take a look at who gets in trouble with cameras. When was the last time you saw your neighbor doing illegal things on film? Hardly ever. Instead, we've got plenty of examples of politicians getting in trouble with cameras. Think LAPD (Rodney King) or the Clinton aid caught with the hooker. Universal cameras be worse for politicians than for everyday people.

OK, and besides cameras in cars, I would like to have this technology used to provide web browser services in my car. On long drives my mind wanders a lot, and in the course of my thoughts I frequently come up with questions which the web certainly holds the answers to. It would be nice to have the luxury of instant gratification in those circumstances.

More bandwidth for privacy invasion.

[Tau Zero]

That's what this amounts to. It would be trivial to piggy-back traffic information and other useful data on existing services, such as FM radio broadcast subcarriers. (What car ships today without an AM/FM radio as standard equipment?) We already have digital cellular service for moving data on behalf of the occupants of the car. So what's there in the car itself which creates the need for this new spectrum?

It seems pretty simple to me: Tracking vehicles. Not just tens or hundreds, but millions simultaneously. Oh, it'll be dressed up with some noble language like "It can help the tow truck find you when you break down" or "It can direct you away from traffic jams", but none of these things require the vehicle to broadcast data (and with the mandatory cellular location features, its position) all the time.

If you travel by bus or airline, your movements are easily tracked. Now we're looking at this being true for personal automobile travel as well. Surveillance society, here we come.
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This is a step in the wrong direction

[upper]

My main worry about IVHS is always this: will these systems see me on my bicycle? Stoplight sensors -- the only automatic vehicle detection system which has been widely deployed -- have always had trouble seeing bikes. That's actually getting better because the electronics are getting more sensitive. But I worry about the future systems, especially those that will eventually be controling vehicles. I'm never going to carry much of a transmitter because of power and weight limitations, and I don't present a very large radar or sonar cross-section.

The real root of our car problem is cheap fuel and sprawl development. In the long run, IVHS won't reduce accident rates or congestion anywhere near as effectively as a $10/gallon hike to the gas tax.

Some technical details

[XNormal]

The frequency block allocated is 5.850 to 9.925 Gigahertz. That is 75MHz of spectrum. For comparison, the entire FM stereo block is just 20MHz. But at these high frequencies spectrum is cheaper. These frequencies also require more-or-less a clear line-of-sight for communication and the hardware to use it is more expensive. Such frequencies require GaAs RF components and are currently beyond the reach of cheap silicon MMIC (microwave monolithic ICs).
But this is going change with the ongoing improvements to silicon processes. Soon this band and the unlicensed NII band (National Information Infrastructure - 5.725-5.825 GHz) will be supported by cheap mass-produced high-integration silicon.

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