FCC To Review the Relative Value of Low, High, and Super-high Spectrum Licenses 58
MrSeb writes "The FCC is reviewing the rules it has for spectrum license ownership, particularly on how much spectrum any one company can hold. The FCC is considering this rework because the rules do not currently account for the properties of different frequencies of spectrum. There are three main classes of spectrum for cellular wireless networks: low band, high band, and super high band — but at the moment, they are all valued equally. Given that low band spectrum is valued favorably against high band and super high band spectrum in the market, and that AT&T and Verizon have by far the most low band spectrum, it makes sense for the FCC to adjust its rules in order to more accurately determine how much spectrum any one company needs."
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Higher frequencies also suffer from increased free air loss. Some higher frequencies are subject to rain fade. They drop off very quickly through foliage, and lose more through man-made structures.
Despite the worries about the extra power needed for 4G (only in terms of battery power, the LTE chips not being mature enough to make the digital processing layer basically not matter, as with 3G), my old office in Philadelphia was a good example. This is an old stone and brick building, which usually saw decent
Free market under government control. (Score:1)
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american system: think you are free
chinese system: accept that the government is the head of the household
your system: living in america knowing that the government is the head of the household
ergo you feel like america is china
ergo you feel like a chinese citizen
sidenote: yes the chinese system works too.
second sidenote: people like to be right when they feel like they are free. the international socio-econo-political system that we created together is more complicated than that.
Re:Free market under government control. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do I feel more and more like I'm a Chinese citizen and not an American citizen?
Hmmmm... yes... let's deregulate the use of spectrum and let the companies actually "compete" for it... freely, no rules, interference and jamming and, why not, hitmen and private armies should be allowed.
Does somehow the concept of commons [wikipedia.org] rings to you too close to communism?
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e: free market people are mad (missing in their defence...), socialists are happy (missing in their defence...)
Thanks.
Meanwhile I am going to go patent air, water, and boobies.
Sweet... I can patent the earth and the sea bottom, as well as other bottoms - no worries... cross-license and FRAND.
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I've yet to run across someone thumping on the socialism drum that doesn't drive on the interstates, send their kids to public school and plans to take social security and medicare. So apparently SOME socialism is a-okay.
One could use the same argument for multinational corporations (or any other large component of the modern global economy). We buy goods and services from them all the time, hence, by your inane logic, we're all closet neo-liberals and/or explicitly approve of everything that multinational does, be it selling cigarettes to teens or labor busting in the Third World.
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We've seen time and time again that deregulation and letting the markets decide in areas where many people are affected is not efficient or successful.
Perhaps you could name one such example? I wager I'll be able to show in turn either: a) that it wasn't a deregulated market, b) that it was efficient and successful contrary to your assertion, or c) some massive government-based distortion of the market existed.
I find it remarkable how people can make such claims without having decent support for their position or understanding of the subject. I feel confident making such predictions simply because poor outcome, in this case your statements above, impli
Super High spectrum (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah theres a lot of bandwidth available in gamma rays.
Just a few side effects though (like turning into superheroes or dying of cancer)
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ownership of the spectrum (Score:2, Insightful)
Privately allocating the radio spectrum is only marginally more stupid than privately allocating land. It's a shared resource and should really be allocated according to need rather than on the basis of bidding wars / trade / etc. In particular, it is absurd that individual private companies obtain exclusive access to invaluable ranges where either multiplexing could occur.
Re:ownership of the spectrum (Score:5, Insightful)
What is need? I need a haircut - in fact I need one every week, as long as someone else is paying.
In what sense is the cutting of your hair based on the allocation of licences to exploitation of natural resources?
The radio ranges are not invaluable.
Yes they are. They're not the product of man's mind. You can't create more frequencies by re-investing your profits.
In fact, lots of people have gotten rich by getting politicians to tip the rules in their favor, allowing them to get a license while excluding others.
There's the problem - exclusive access.
They have a particular value, which should be set by the highest bidder.
You only get to put stuff you own up for bidding. This is either something you create or something that has been freely traded after being created by something else. The spectrum comes under neither of those categories. A free market, at least, does not give an unfair advantage to people who happened to have some amount of money available when a government felt in the mood to give exclusive rights to something.
Let the market operate like it always has when people have let it.
Innovate; consolidate; stagnate; profiteer?
Yes, there's a limited amount of wave lengths. There's a limited amount of everything.
And you have the rights to the limited fruits of your limited labour. IOW, no-one should be able to tell you that they own what you make.
What part of, say, a 100kHz band at 14MHz was the result of anyone's work?
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Haircuts services are one commodity. Frequencies are another.
No, that's not how a "commodity" tends to be defined. A commodity is something which is produced or sourced. In the narrowest definition, it's what's produced, i.e. goods or services. In the "commodities market" sense, it encompasses raw materials, foods and even electricity. Availability of a natural resource cannot be treated like something which is produced or sourced.
Indeed if someone were to be sold a true range of frequency,
To sell something, you have to have a legitimate owner. Unless the government is the default owner of everything, there is no right in the
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I think you are confusing between particular radio waves or particular stones cut in a particular way, and the ability to produce a particular radio wave or create a particular cut.
Regulation is necessary because there is no alternative spectrum if your scheme doesn't work out. Meanwhile it doesn't matter if some group of dairy farmers don't want to provide milk to Seattle any more - someone new without the anti-Seattle thing can always step in and produce.
Military competition between governments is very di
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The problem with spectrum allocation is a technical one, too. You can't simply dial in the arbitrary frequencies you'd like to use in a place. Even with modern cognitive radio, this is limited, and leads to hardware that's much more expensive and less efficient than it would be otherwise. Your pocket cellphone, for example, would use on the order of 4x-5x more power if it had to cover arbitrary frequencies... and you'd have a big, ugly antenna to swap on/off, depending on the "wild west" assigned frequency
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Just consider amplifiers. There are now dozens of amplifier topologies, or "classes", in use. Some pretty clever ones, like class F, G, and H use techniques only really suited to the computer age -- modulated power supplies, digital pre-distortion to cancel out defects in the driver transistors, etc. Thanks to these, you can get in excess of 95% efficiency (particularly in the case of some of these more advanced digital techniques). The one problem: every one of these amplifier topologies is frequency speci
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I should point out (before I get smacked down on it) that, yes, there are variable tuning elements... mostly, electrically adjustable capacitors. There are the old school variactors (it's a diode with a bias voltage that varies it's parasitic capacitance based on the bias level), and more recently, some MEMS devices. They're not very good. You don't really get to re-tune an entire circuit in arbitrary ways. It's far more like bending, on a harmonica reed or guitar string. You have a fundamental tuned circui
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To sell something, you have to have a legitimate owner. Unless the government is the default owner of everything, there is no right in the first place to sell some range of frequencies.
We the People are the default owner of everything. That ownership is administered though our representative government. At least, that's the theory. And in these cases, the government does function as the best neutral party available. It would function better if our
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And you have the rights to the limited fruits of your limited labour. IOW, no-one should be able to tell you that they own what you make.
Up to a point. You need to put a certain portion of those fruits into a common kitty that pays for stuff that benefits everybody, like having a road to drive on or an army to protect you from other countries. And yes, pays for protection and allocation of natural resources so that nobody takes too much.
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You need to put a certain portion of those fruits into a common kitty that pays for stuff that benefits everybody, like having a road to drive on or an army to protect you from other countries.
And if that was all that governments funded, then we'd all be paying considerably less in taxes.
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Yes, it is the wrong approach.. and while rationing may or may not be justifiable at this time, the FCC should focus on more creative use of the spectrum. The only real limit is our knowledge. But, profit is king.
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I hope I don't seem to be stretching...
You're more than 'stretching'. That was a horrible analogy, made no sense at all. I am against rationing, but if they are, the frequencies should be licensed to those who can provide a best use scenario, apply a sort of 'community standards' if you will,, as opposed to simply the highest bidder, who will only try to extract maximum profit and restrict access. That's like giving the best beaches to the giant hotels, who then block all the access roads.
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How does a hotel make money off a closed beach?
Please, don't play dumb with me. Exclusive beaches bring in more guests. The locals are denied access without paying the hotel. Most civilized countries prohibit private ownership of the beach for exactly that reason. But a hotel can still make you walk miles around their property to get there. Granting exclusivity of the spectrum does the same thing. So we need a way to ensure that the exclusivity can be revoked where there is abuse.
The viable options for 'bes
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Dude, you're just trollin'... Have a good one.
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Why should property rights suddenly be suspended for beaches?
Property rights are the principles which result in the protections offered by society to allow you to enjoy your property. They do not imply the potential to own everything.
there has never been an instance observed of a central authority doing better than a free competition.
This one is pointless to argue against as-is because it inevitably ends up with a no true Scotsman fallacy whenever a counterexample is put forward ("ah, but that wasn't truly free competition!"). But it is productive to compare systems before and after significant state intervention, e.g. the National Health Service in the UK, or the In
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What keeps me from owning all the houses that wouldn't keep me from owning all the beaches?
Exactly the same thing which enables you to own your computer: society.
Surely there are more ISPs than there were before. What regulation changed?
Depends on the timescale. There are far fewer ISPs here now than there were in the mid-late '90s, despite deregulation, because firms have consolidated. But there were more in the late '90s than say the early '90s - before around 1993 there wasn't much web to fuel the demand for residential Internet (the average man cares little for Usenet ;'( ).
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It's not just firms consolidating, but technological evolution leading to different barriers to entry.
It was relatively simple to set up a POTS ISP. We had this great phone system, the product of the government-approved AT&T monopoly. So the infrastructure existed, all you needed was to set up your bridge network from the phone to the internet, and virtually everyone was already wired in. Back in the 90s, an old buddy of mine started an ISP... it didn't need a huge company.
To build a competitive ISP now
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Depends... you're basically describing the Jersey Shore. Most New Jersey beaches are not free. In the North, you have Sandy Hook, which is free, being a national recreation area, but you have to pay to park your car, if you're parking in the beach lots. Pretty much everywhere down the cost, the beaches are owned by the towns they're in, and you have to buy a beach tag. This is in part to pay for life guards, in part for beach cleanup, and in a big part for beach maintenance. Left alone, most o of the sand o
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Indeed, the argument must always be based on technical need - and, where there are competing providers, on the basis of equitable access.
In practice and to take a physical counterpart, Ofcom has been slowly but surely requiring BT (the ex-state and still vaguely regulated UK telecoms provider) to allow competing companies to make use of its ducts and poles. Where natural monopolies are otherwise inevitable, you require physical or technical sharing of resources. That certainly doesn't mean that other provid
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Privately allocating the radio spectrum is only marginally more stupid than privately allocating land
Assumes facts not in evidence. I think "privately allocating land", which most people call private property, is the most efficient and harmonious way to do it. Spectrum is probably the same.
better provisioning (Score:1)
Considering how much of the spectrum Verizon owns and the pretty decent size more of the spectrum that it has purchased from various other companies, I believe Verizon has by far the largest portion of the newly (relatively speaking) auctioned off wireless spectrum. But it hasn't done a hell of a lot with it, in fact most of the spectrum they've bought so far I'm pretty sure is still completely unused by them. WHY?
If they have all these hundreds of millions or billions of dollars laying around to buy up m
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If you're getting worse connections on a 4G phone than your 3G phone, in the same places, etc... it's not 4G, it's your phone. After all, if the 4G connection can't be kept, you'll drop back to the same 3G connection you had previously. In fact, there are Android apps that force 4G off, entirely.
Sure sounds like you just got a crappy Galaxy Nexus. I have a GN too, and it replaced an O.G. Droid. I'm certain the O.G. Droid did a slightly better job of pulling in the 3G signals... I get slightly less performan
Easy as figuring k of RAM (Score:2)
Determining how much spectrum anyone needs should be nearly as easy as figuring out how many Kilobytes of RAM anyone could possibly ever need in a personal computer. I'm confident the government should be trusted to make these kinds of decisions instead of doing something so unseemly and commercial as auctioning limited term-licenses.