Open the Wireless Spectrum

To make Canada a world leader in ICTs, the federal government should seriously consider opening up the wireless spectrum. With open spectrum, everyone in Canada can be connected to one another wherever there's a radio signal? Canadians could communicate whatever and whenever they want? This would be an environment in which innovation would flourish. The economy would grow.

Open spectrum could be used instead of wires for the "last mile" broadband to the home. There would be no need for big pipes. Wireless can be used instead. Our rural areas and isolated regions could be served. No costs, no permissions are needed when the spectrum is open.

Present day regulations divvying up the spectrum were created a century ago because of interference, which caused scarcity. With digital transmissions and intelligent computers at the ends, this is no longer a serious problem. "Buffer zones" around frequencies are redundant. Regulating the spectrum because of interference is no longer a reasonable justification.

Interference as an issue is irrelevant.

Scarcity is no longer a problem; bandwidth is abundant. However current government policies prevent us from benefiting from this abundance, Regulation has protected weak systems far too long from competition and innovation.

Comments

R — 2010–06–08 13:02:08 EDT wrote

With software radio and so called Cognitive radio

This has to be the way forward.
Regulate how interferences are managed, not frequency usage!

dsampson — 2010–06–21 08:39:23 EDT wrote

This could even be related to the Ameteur Radio movement in some contexts as well as the concept of CB's or Citizens Band radio. Having the equivalent type of communications through radio for general broadband use would help increase connectivity.

SimonRuggier — 2010–07–03 02:29:02 EDT wrote

This article is good reading for anyone seeking to understand this problem:
The End of Spectrum Scarcity

Basically, if we were to regulate interference handling directly instead of selling the right to transmit on specific frequencies to companies, we would collectively have much greater capacity to transmit information wirelessly.

atomnet — 2010–07–08 12:22:25 EDT wrote

Interesting. Unlicensed (or should that be licence–free) RF technology is already familiar to us in the form of WiFi and cordless phones, but these are limited to very narrow frequency bands that are subject to congestion.

Legacy applications really do need reserved frequency allocations, and they won't go away overnight.

There are companies that offer services already using unlicensed spectrum, but they're hobbled by power limits and the aforementioned congestion. Conventional wisdom is that licensed is better because that radio environment is more predictable.

An expansion of the unlicensed allocations might make services more viable, while still fitting within the existing regulatory framework (and so not breaking existing services!). And it could perhaps evolve into SimonRuggler's proposed interference regime over time. But this really requires deeper consultation with stakeholders than this little thread of ours allows.