The Feds Vacate Airwaves

dada21 writes to tell us UPI is reporting that the government is getting ready to spend $936 million to move its radio communication to an obscure segment of the spectrum to make room for next-generation mobile tech. From the article: "'With 90 megahertz of additional spectrum, today's cellular carriers will be tomorrow's next-generation broadband providers,' Michael D. Gallagher, assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information, said in a statement."

value

[User 956]

the government is getting ready to spend $936 million to move its radio communication to an obscure segment of the spectrum to make room for next-generation mobile tech.

Yeah, but how many billions is their currently-used chunk of spectrum worth on the open market?

Re:Why Sell It?

[dada21]

I agree with you. I blogged [blogspot.com] about it today, before I submitted the article to slashdot. I'd love to see a bigger experiment from the FCC on privatizing and anarchizing (sp?) airwaves to see how it works.

You'll likely see some responses here from people on how their neighbor's microwave screws with their WiFi, but I run and maintain 25 WiFi networks for friends and family and we don't have a problem with a single network. I even offer my WiFi connection free to all my neighbors and they don't even call with tech support questions.

Re:Why Sell It?

[Chris Burke]

Why does our government feel the need to auction off the spectrum?

Selling the spectrum will only accomplish two things: 1) Make some rich companies richer. 2) reduce innovation because only said companies can use the newly availble spectrum.


Question, meet Answer.

Great.

[Dharh]

How much more of the spectrum are they going to give away to proprietary companies? The least they could do is _sell_ it. Sick and tired of government mismanaging the spectrum.

Not with their greed

[Generic Guy]

today's cellular carriers will be tomorrow's next-generation broadband providers

No they won't. With the greed and unwillingness to give customers what they really want the cell carriers shown already that they'll overprice, meter, and "extra-cost" everything. No thanks.

Re:It's a good start.

[m50d]

And they think this will make the dollar more stable?

Yes. This will mean noone knows that they're stepping up production to keep the US on top because the value of the dollar is basically collapsing. As long as noone notices it's about to collapse, it doesn't collapse. That's how finance works.

Re:Why Sell It?

[timeOday]

You'll likely see some responses here from people on how their neighbor's microwave screws with their WiFi

I'd much rather use the spectrum with a chance of inteference than be banned from it entirely.

90 mhz ain't much

[baomike]

Can broadband really be put in 90 mhz?
Consider that a SD tv channel is 6 Mhz.
Now NTSC tv is not the most efficeint use of 6 MHz , but HD TV takes even more.
How many people each wanting 1-10 MHz of bandwidth can you fit in this space?

Power

[Sycraft-fu]

The problem with open spectrums like 2.4GHz is they have to be low power and either short range omni, or medium range but narrow direction. The reason is that if anyone can set it up, there has to be a reasonable expectation that your equipment will work and not be interfered with by others.

I mean suppose there was no limits on the 2.4GHz spectrum. So you go and buy a little, low power wireless device and hook it up. You get nothing, in fact, the device gets damaged. Why? Well turns out I live down the block, and I use that band for high power transmissions. I have a 10,000 watt transmitter that I use to get my data all over the city. What's more, I'm not using part of the spectrum, I'm using all of it. My signal just blocks out yours because it's so much more powerful.

So, when you want something that is going to be higher power, longer range, and deployed on a wider basis, there needs to be some licensing to keep people from stepping on each other's toes all the time. I want my communications providers sharing the spectrum, not playing a power game to see who can block who out.

Re:Non-standard uplink frequency! Grr!

[rabtech]

I think you mean the rest of the world refuses to use the same frequencies we use. We picked the vast majority of them first. We invented the technologies for and allocated the frequencies for AM, FM, TV (which is just FM), Radar, Cell, et al first almost without exception (in terms of commercial or public availability, not necessarily in terms of first invention/patent)

It is the rest of the world (Europe, Japan, China, etc) that refuses to use the standards we created.

Re:M0 is the money printed...

[AuMatar]

Actually, if you fear the dollar devaluing you should be taking out loans- as much as you can. By the time you have to pay them off, it'll be pocket change. Inflation and hyperinflation are good for people with massive debt.

Gold still doesn't make sense though. You need money in 3 forms:

1)Short term- money to spend at the movies or the market. This is still cash, I can't walk into 7-11 and give them gold. Basicly cash on hand.

2)Long term- this is investments, so the money grows. Whatever form that investment is (buisnesses like you said are investments. Fairly risky since half of new buisnesses fail in 5 years, but highly profitable if they pan out).

3)Medium term- a larger cash supply for emergencies, big ticket items, and monthly payments. Again, it needs to be cash, or easily convertible. It also shouldn't be too much, with overflows going to long term. You could use gold here, but its pointless to- the money shouldn't be here for long, and gold just adds to your risk. Someone can put a gun to your head and ask for your gold, he can't do that with your bank. Its such a small amount of money circulating so rapidly that worrying about inflation is pointless, unless that inflation is Weimar Republic levels.

In short, it still just makes no sense.