{"id":2657,"date":"2002-12-15T21:01:37","date_gmt":"2002-12-16T04:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2002\/12\/broadband-shenanigans\/"},"modified":"2002-12-15T21:01:37","modified_gmt":"2002-12-16T04:01:37","slug":"broadband-shenanigans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2002\/12\/15\/broadband-shenanigans\/","title":{"rendered":"Broadband shenanigans"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tSenators George Allen (R. AOL) and Barbara Boxer (D, Intel) have written a bill<\/a> that would require the FCC to set aside a large chunk of spectrum for unlicensed packet radio use, in the name of kick-starting broadband across the nation. Initial commentary ranges from neutral (Dan Gillmor<\/a>) to concerned (Glenn Fleischman<\/a>). (This reminds me: do you know what Barbara Boxer has in common with Trent Lott? They were both college cheerleaders. So it’s no wonder Boxer is co-sponsoring a bill by a football tycoon. But seriously…)<\/p>\n

I don’t have the inside dope on this bill – that will have to come from somebody with some time to do the research – but it wouldn’t surprise me if AOL is actually behind it. Their merger with Time-Warner’s been a colossal flop, but there are still people in the company who believe that convergence will validate the merger. But the trouble is, there’s not going to be any real convergence until there’s more broadband to the home, and broadband has been fairly well languishing these last few years as telecoms and cable companies reel with the after-effects of the bubble. Wireless broadband would take these companies out of the picture, or so the story goes, and that would be like all cool and stuff.<\/p>\n

It’s a desperation move, in other words. Wireless is a pretty horrible way to do networking for more than a few feet inside a building. If it were to be adapted to networking entire neighborhoods, we’d need a lot better mechanisms for sharing spectrum and ensuring security than we have now in WiFi, and we’d have to have network cops to enforce the rules better than we do now, which is to say, not at all. So it’s premature to allocate bandwidth for unknown services which may or may not be efficient, because they’re not currently defined.<\/p>\n

A better approach would be sense of the Congress resolution requesting the FCC to write a report on the feasibility of wireless broadband, highlighting the technical issues, the enforcement issues, and any licensing issues that might be relevant. This should lead to an FCC position endorsing a particular IEEE or ISO standard for use in the allocated spectrum, and rules that go beyond RF signal strength regulation to ensure it’s used properly.<\/p>\n

And while the FCC is working on this plan, some bright minds need to scheme up some ways to light up some of the dark fiber that’s been pulled already, probably with tax incentives for telcos in invest in Digital Loop Carrier equipment.<\/p>\n

Wireless is a last-resort technology, and we shouldn’t kid ourselves that it’s anything to use when there’s a wired alternative.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senators George Allen (R. AOL) and Barbara Boxer (D, Intel) have written a bill that would require the FCC to set aside a large chunk of spectrum for unlicensed packet radio use, in the name of kick-starting broadband across the nation. Initial commentary ranges from neutral (Dan Gillmor) to concerned (Glenn Fleischman). (This reminds me: … Continue reading “Broadband shenanigans”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comp"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-GR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}