[624] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Perhaps dismissal of packet radio in the classroom is unwarranted
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin Lee Schoffstall)
Wed Apr 24 17:11:35 1991
To: lws@capybara.comm.wang.com (Lyle Seaman)
Cc: bill@tuatara.uofs.edu, brian@napa.telebit.com, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 24 Apr 91 16:34:29 EDT."
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 91 17:06:13 -0400
From: "Martin Lee Schoffstall" <schoff@psi.com>
Time for some market/political reality.
Brian is absolutely correct about there being lots of unused broadcast
TV bandwidth out there. In fact between every channel there is an
unused channel hearkening back to worst case equipment tranmission scenarios
mapped out in the 50's (using 50's equipment). It doesn't matter.
One of the most successful lobbying groups in the US today is the broadcasting
lobby. The last successful campaign (that my poor memory remembers) that
carved some of this 50's era broadcasting "entitlement" was the carving
out for the cellular industry. That took the titans of the telephony
industry to win. There was a lot of blood on the floor for that one.
I (probably with Brian, and a lot of other people) really do hope that the
computer industry can wrestle the broadcasters into submission in this
area, but it is going to be a long hard struggle, and a matter or serious
public policy politics. In some sense the FCC has actually muddied the
water on all of this by introducing the concept of "innovative applications"
licensing which I predict will only lengthen the time.
Again from my frail memory, I believe there has been more historic success
in getting military frequency used for good things, then from the broadcasting
industry...
And finally, a personal note, I remember dealing with some GE engineers
about 7 years ago who wanted me to work with them on running ethernet
through a tv channel that GE owned (GE was a big TV researcher/supplier
once upon
a time, including pre WWII, so it appears to have some grandfather'ed
spectrum in the upstate NY area). As I remember, this all died on the
vine due to the FCC feeling that it would disrupt TV (a free good)
signals, the fact that some local broadcasters got wind of this didn't
help at all....
Of course this was 1985, the stoneage of networking.... :-)
Marty
----------------
Re: use of UHF channel as network transport
Bill mentions that there are many UHF channels unused in his area of the
country. This is, of course, going to be more likely in exactly those
areas where wires are prohibitively expensive: rural ones. In the
middle ground, all but the most rural areas are getting cable TV. It
would be far less expensive to piggyback on CATV than to use a leased
telephone line. Would it be cheaper to use existing CATV than free-space
transmission?
Furthermore, if use of (UHF/FM) is truly cost-effective, what are the
barriers to providing it as a commercial service, not limited to
educational sites? ( I keep dreaming about multi-cast newsfeeds... )
