Communications Insights: Trends and Cool Stuff

My article Unlicensed to Kill: a Brief History of the FCC Part 15 Rules has just gone to press and will be published in the journal Info.  I originally gave the paper at The Genesis of Unlicensed Wireless Policy conference organized by Tom Hazlett at George Mason University Law School.  (Yes, dear reader, Tom Hazlett hosted a conference on unlicensed.  The Seventh Seal is broken and the End of Days is truly upon us.)

The conference looked at the origin and evolution of the FCC’s Part 15 rules.  There were several interesting takeaways.  Most of these are lessons which we already know, but all too often take for granted.  Keynote speaker Michael Marcus reminded the audience that people frequently act in their short term interest, in a way in which they foreclose long-term opportunities for themselves.  Dr. Marcus described the regulatory battles of the 1980s during the FCC’s rulemakings where cordless manufacturers fought fiercely, opposing certain rule changes.  These rules now enable most of the cordless phones these manufacturers now sell.  The closing keynote, Dewayne Hendrix pointed out how spectrum policy the cognitive dissidence spectrum policy faces in affording interference rights.  We allow licensees to “whine” about interference when they use decades old technologies which do not have the ability to reject unwanted signals which more modern gear does.

Insight: In the US, there is no such thing as unlicensed spectrum.  Rather, and this is an important distinction, the FCC allows low power operation on a sufferance basis, proved the devices cause no harmful interference and accept all received by them.  Operators have a right, but not a vested right to continued operation.  The FCC has historically viewed the radio energy emission from these devices as not rising to a level sufficient to call “spectrum”.  This has left me wondering if there is no such thing as spectrum at all.  Spectrum is a legal and engineering construct to control for an immutable fundamental physical property.  When multiple electromagnetic waves, used as carrier waves to transmit information are incident in time, harmonic in frequency, and alight on the same reception antenna, they degrade one another’s ability to transmit information.  Next generation radio policy will focus more on solving the coordination/congestion problem, and not on “spectrum” per se.  (I also gave a really cool PowerPoint.  (Click to start, click to advance each slide after the animation stops).

Google’s Larry Page spoke at a recent New American Foundation event, calling for “Wi-Fi on steroids” for the TV White Spaces.  Every time I hear this, I cannot help but think, “Oh great, a radio that is hyper-aggressive, muscle-bound, and impotent.  Why would I want such a technology?!” All joking aside, I approve the sentiment, but a little more careful analysis is need.There is here a unique window of opportunity to allow new uses of the TV spectrum which is currently inefficiently used.  For the past 9 decades, the FCC has regulated high power uses of the radio spectrum, such as broadcasting.  The FCC has also for the past 7 decades permitted low power uses, with increasing success.  The TV White Space presents the opportunity to permit medium power uses of the spectrum - something between Wi-Fi and TV.  However, neither the high-power of low-power paradigms seems to fit.  Licensed approaches typically allocate use to a single entity which makes decisions about use.  As a result, much remains unused at any given time.  The rules created are hard to change and do not afford much flexibility in terms of decisions regarding use by the licensee.  In contrast, unlicensed approaches strictly limit the radio energy which a device can radiate into the ether.  By controlling the emissions, the rules limit the possibility of harmful interference.  These rules create a much more flexible set of permission, but due to the stringent power limitations ranges of the radio devices can be extremely short.  What is needed is a new form of coordinating spectrum uses for medium power applications, which holds the benefits of both approaches while minimizing the potential downsides.

Insight:  Fortunately, some of the FCC’s best and brightest have been working this issue.  In a previous Cool Stuff, I wrote about my FCC Working Paper, which lays out ideas for the implementation of economic congestion etiquettes which would allocate spectrum use in real time to its highest monetary value uses.  This approach could significantly improve the value society receives from the use of the radio spectrum, without the need for dangerous pharmaceuticals.