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Technology
by tj on August 18, 2004
Source: www.nro.nao.ac.jp
Clay Shirky and The Economist have published essays this week about the opportunities opening up for low-frequency free spectrum. Honestly I hadn't spedn much before considering the use of free spectrum and found Wifi a nice technology but hadn't thought about the application of frequency sharing and smart radios to other parts of the spectrum. But as both essays suggest the argument for opening up the spectrum at different spots is very convincing.
"Though the details can be arcane, the physics of spectrum is relatively simple. Spectrum, in the aggregate, is just a collection of waves, and a wave is defined by its characteristic frequency, measured by counting the number of waves that pass a given point in a second -- the more waves, the higher the frequency. (Wavelength is a corollary measurement -- the more waves that pass a point in per second, the shorter the length of each wave; therefore, the greater the frequency, the shorter the wavelength. Wavelength and frequency are just alternate ways of expressing the same characteristic.)"
"The traditional mindsets were colourfully on display this week when full details were announced of a complicated spectrum swap arranged by America's telecom and media regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). First announced on July 8th, the swap gave Nextel, America's sixth-largest mobile-phone carrier, new slices of spectrum in return for vacating other bands where it was causing interference with the radios of firemen, police and hospital workers. If it wins final approval, the deal will cost Nextel $3.25 billion. It follows years of what Michael Powell, the FCC's chairman, called �ruthless lobbying�. Nextel's rivals threaten to contest the decision, screaming that Nextel got a windfall of public property. Verizon Wireless, America's largest carrier, recently bought another piece of spectrum, in New York, for $930m."
"But this is wrong, says Kevin Werbach at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school and founder of Supernova Group, a consultancy. He argues that the assumption that public sharing of spectrum would lead to chaos presumes that spectrum is scarce; but this reflects a flawed understanding of the physics of electromagnetism. A common myth about electromagnetic waves is that they bounce off one another if they meet. They do not. Instead, they travel onwards through other waves forever (even though they eventually attenuate to the point where they become undetectable). Radio interference, in other words, is not a physical phenomenon, but always and only a technological problem, the result of dumb radios and dumb antennae mixing the waves up after receiving them."
"Amazing things have been done with Wi-Fi in garbage spectrum,� says Tren Griffin, who is in charge of spectrum matters at Microsoft. �The pregnant question is: what if we took a tiny amount of good spectrum and repurposed it?� It might at last become feasible and economic to begin bridging the world's digital divide. If low-frequency spectrum became free for innovators, then business plans to bring connectivity to villages in India and China, as well as rural Montana, would soon follow. Lives in many places could one day be richer thanks to vibrations in the air."
Permalink: the new spectrum policy
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