| No limits to spectrum | 2002-12-01 19:41 0 comments |
 by Flemming FunchDavid Reed says in The Sky's No Longer the Limit that there is essentially no longer any reason to regard radio spectrum as limited. Lots of policies and procedures around the use of radio waves are based on the fundamental assumption that it is a very limited resource, and that governments need to assign different frequencies for specific different purposes. Or, worse, they sell part of the spectrum for huge sums to private enterprises. Anyway, the result is that most of it is unused, and that a few very popular uses of it (cellphones and wireless networking) have too little to work with. There are technologies, such as software-defined radio or UltraWideBand, that could use the spectrum in much more flexible ways. Reeds is very optimistic, and he is somebody worth listening to. |