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Wednesday, 01 July 2009 03:02 |
 The New American Foundation proclaimed “The End to Spectrum Scarcity.” http://bit.ly/VBr5x Because this is an “obviously impossible” idea, almost everyone ignored what may be a watershed event. Not merely is it possible, but freeing spectrum is crucial to Obama's FCC policy and likely to be copied elsewhere. 95% of spectrum is unused at any given time. Michael Calabrese explains
"The reality is that it is only government permission to use spectrum (licenses) that is scarce. Spectrum capacity itself is abundant. Indeed, while actual spectrum measurement studies are difficult to find, those in the public domain have demonstrated that even in the so-called “beachfront” frequencies below 3 GHz, the vast majority of frequency bands are not being used in most locations and at most times.
The gross underutilization of the nation’s spectrum resource should be an urgent concern for national broadband policy. Spectrum is not only an immensely valuable and publicly-owned resource, but one that is infinitely renewable: every millisecond that a frequency band is not used for communication, that capacity is wasted forever. ...
Mark McHenry, a former manager of DARPA’s NeXt Generation spectrum program, found that even in Manhattan and in Washington D.C. near the White House, less than 20 percent of the frequency bands below 3 GHz were in use over the course of a business day. McHenry’s NSF study demonstrated in a mix of urban, suburban and exurban areas that the vast majority of the most valuable spectrum bands are vacant or unused for the majority of the time. The highest occupancy rate on the prime beachfront spectrum below 3 GHz was just 13 percent in New York City, while the average across locations studied was just 6 percent. Across the country, this underutilized spectrum represents an enormous untapped capacity for broadband; particularly in rural areas where average usage of “beachfront” spectrum is in the low single digits.”
NAF also provided suggestions for creating maps of spectrum that could be dynamically changed and checked in real time by devices wanting to transmit. Michael Calabrese and Sascha Meinrath are doing important work, joined at this session by Kevin Werbach and Michael Marcus. http://bit.ly/VBr5x
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