Dominating the New Discourse
When President Obama “signed a memorandum to nearly double the amount of federal and commercial spectrum available for smartphones and wireless Internet devices,” as reported by the Wall Street Journal it was part of the FCC national broadband plan which aims to make an addition 500 MhZ of spectrum available to broadband over the next 10 years. The President’s action highlights the start of an the effort to reshape the new town square.
The FCC’s strategic goals are broader than a mere expansion of wireless broadband spectrum. They are intended to reshape the Internet access terrain. Among the FCC goals according to its plan are “competition policies”, efforts to efficiently assign spectrum, promoting broadband access in “high cost” areas and among low-income Americans and to assist in the functioning of public education, health care and government operation. The Atlantic Wire has a summary of the things it plans to change.
An official tells Politico’s Mike Allen the plan is meant to “foster investment, economic growth and help create hundreds of thousands of jobs by meeting the burgeoning demand for mobile and fixed broadband, other high-value uses and benefits for other industries …
Engadget’s Chris Ziegler writes, “It’s looking more and more like at least some privately-held spectrum is going to need to be reallocated involuntarily …
The New York Times’ Edward Wyatt notes, “some aspects could be opposed by television broadcast companies, which will be asked if they want to give up some of their spectrum for auction. Cable companies that have invested heavily in wired telecommunications networks could also lose from the new direction.” …
The New York Times’ Edward Wyatt notes, “some aspects could be opposed by television broadcast companies, which will be asked if they want to give up some of their spectrum for auction. Cable companies that have invested heavily in wired telecommunications networks could also lose from the new direction.” …
Politics Daily’s Alex Wagner writes, “The White House is seeking further seeking Congressional approval to use proceeds from the auction of federal spectrum to upgrade federal agencies’ communications systems and establish a new, ‘interoperable wireless broadband network for public safety.’ The aim of this network would be to ensure better coordination between emergency services across different jurisdictions, a problem identified in the wake of 9/11.”
The public policy which defines network access will probably be one of the most important subjects of the coming years.
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
Oh wow, big, ambitious, “visionary” initiatives in the age of brogdignagian, smothering government.. Gotta love ‘em and their unintended consequences.
will be no broadcast tv in twenty years, … but may still be free over the interwebs.
The TV broadcasters led by the NAB lobby of the FCC have been given a free ride for the last 90 years with no cost spectrum.Compare that to the billions spent on spectrum auctions over the last decade and all of that RF real estate (licensed to the broadcasters)looks mighty juicy. Smart radio or software defined radio (SDR) that can look for an open frequency and then establish a two-way link on that frequency only for the durantion of that “data burst”, means that spectrum is truly reusable and as the FCC 20 years ago called it “farmable”. Spread spectrum technology…so called stealth radio will force the replacement of the FCC’s “licensed frequency pairs” that are dedicated to 2-way license holders (which is often vacant and un-used half of the time). The FCC should have declared the entire 700 mHz band “open territory” and license free for SDR spread spectrum radios. Instead the government wants the billions generated by auctions so that they can piss it away on their propoganda machines PBS and NPR and other liberal pursuits.
Well, if you control access to the river, you control commerce on the river.
All this is is Control.
Relax this is Best For Us.
They know.
I actually have no problem with an open auction of bandwidth. But an honest auction is hard to come by.
Hah, local ABC news just did a piece on free/cheap Interweb teewee. Many new services starting up shortly. Amazed it took this long.
It will be interesting to see the Beautiful People from show-biz react to this.
I have spent a lot of time driving radio microphone systems for theatre, music and film production.
Back in the “old days”, systems were small and mostly operated around 36 and 37 MHz.
Then the mega-musicals came along and the demand for channels rapidly increased. Gear got smaller and we moved into the 200Mhz band. Why multiple transmitters, each on their own frequency? Simply put; once you hang a transmitter on the principal, everything is different. Thus all “voices” in that scene also need radio mics to achieve vocal balance. Lots of furious transmitter pack swapping side stage at each scene change; professional gear was, and still is, expensive stuff. The “front of house” sound mixer had an interesting job keeping track of who was who on the faders as the show went on.
200Mhz got crowded, so 500 and 900 MHz systems were swing in. These also had the advantage of smaller transmitter antennae. Remember, in a theatrical production, the idea is to make the technology invisible. Not like today when performers bounce around the stage wearing boom mics like Madonna.
Anyway, mobile phone companies “bought” the 900MHz band and suddenly a lot of gear became obsolete.The better stuff could be re-tuned into the 800Mhz band at some expense, but the rest got shunted off to faraway places without phone towers or used as landfill.
Now the 500 and 800 MHz bands are being auctioned off around the world. Individual production companies cannot compete with billion dollar telcos, so that is that.
Maybe performers will just have to sing louder. The lighting “fairies” used to bitch and moan about the slightest hiss or buzz from the speakers. Ironically however, many modern theatre lighting rigs are hideously noisy due to the huge number of cooling fans screaming away in banks of moving lights.
Production has costs. While the technical cost of capturing and distributing a collection of data might go down there is still a need for actors and costumers and writers. It may be possible to tell the story of Cleopatra with hand held cameras and a few friends Blair Witch style but it will still look like a good or even brilliant example of work on the cheap. We should be careful not to mix up two problems. One is that the established production companies, in film, television and journalism, have placed their emotional allegiances ahead of the interests of their audience. The second is that they have become lazy and failed to effectively deliver content. While I can decry the abuse and treason of those who control the legacy of the of the 20th century’s mass communications great industrial enterprises that does not mean that I shall cheer their passing. The creations of David Sarnoff, Samuel Goldfish, Adolph Ochs, and a host of other smart tough creative people vastly increased human knowledge and liberty and wealth. We were a fortunate people when we had thousands of hard working creative people making movies and thousands of had working creative people, often as was mentioned on another thread high school drop outs, competing to bring us the news. For myself I think that they kept us grounded and aware that perfumed princes in search of Wagyu beef were exotic objects of scorn.
Engadget’s Chris Ziegler writes, “It’s looking more and more like at least some privately-held spectrum is going to need to be reallocated involuntarily …
The New York Times’ Edward Wyatt notes, “some aspects could be opposed by television broadcast companies, which will be asked if they want to give up some of their spectrum for auction.
Both of these statements can’t be true.
great article, i just finished bookmarking it for later. i’d love to check on future posts. how do i configure the rss again? thanks so much!
This is something whose time has come. The iphone thirst for bandwidth will be relentless.
The real issue is control. Who will control this. The attack on 1st Amendment by the Obama FCC reaching for ‘fairness’ is the scary thing.
All your bendwidth are belong to Government.
With Mark Lloyd at the FCC what could go wrong?
We only need as much freedom as Venezuela anyway according to Lloyd, Obama appointee plus their friends in hollyweird: glover, penn, matt Damon and Stone and others. Except for them of course.