FCC WIRELESS APPROACH BASED ON FAULTY SCIENCE, CONFERENCE TOLD
BOSTON -- FCC notion of limits to spectrum capacity are outdated, network pioneer told telephony conference here Tues., arguing that in wireless network with smart end devices and multiple repeaters, spectrum capacity actually increased as more users were added. David Reed is creator of Reed’s Law, scaling law for group-forming network architectures, and used to work for Interval Research on consumer media technology. He admitted his argument was “counterintuitive,” but laid out for attendees at Connectivity 2002 by pulver.com that FCC was “wrong” in limiting spectrum allocations rather than encouraging spectrum users to coordinate their services to maximize spectrum use and minimize interference. He said Commission already was running into difficulties with its existing spectrum model in such challenging areas as spread spectrum, software-defined radio, ultra-wideband.
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When 2 pebbles are dropped into calm water their waves do not interfere with each other but rather pass through each other, Reed said. “Combining is not destruction,” he said, but with existing services “receivers can be confused” by multiple signals. In his scenario, one’s device “chooses to sense only part of what is in the ether.” That approach of intelligent receiving devices is similar to open spectrum approach advocated by N.Y.U. Prof. Yochai Benkler (CD May 21 p4), except that Benkler advocated removal of regulators from spectrum, step Reed wouldn’t endorse. “We still need a regulatory model,” he said, “just not a model based on property law.” Asked what model would work for shared spectrum, Reed said “we don’t know.” He did say, however, that users of spectrum would need to coordinate their devices, so federal regulators could help facilitate that coordination. Also, there still would be “hot spots” in densely populated areas where congestion could be difficult. Reed said with 802.11, broadband extension network that uses unlicensed spectrum, there already were “trouble spots in urban areas” and he anticipated significant interference issues in 2-3 years. He said change from current regulatory model would be difficult because “incumbents have a stake” in current system of licenses and rules: “Hopefully the United States doesn’t have a stake.”
Reed’s system is similar to Benkler’s in that both take Internet model of nodes, with nodes in wireless space performed by repeaters. In Reed’s scenario, repeater owned by party A also would be passing information from party B to party C, just as Internet nodes work. Reed said repeater owners would have incentive to do that because scaling down wireless communications to multiple repeaters (1) reduces energy consumption, (2) which leads to increased battery life for devices, and also (3) decreases latency and (4) increases capacity. It was that final notion that he admitted was opposite of what FCC used in its regulation of spectrum. He conceded scientists had been slow to address that issue because “the regulatory notion of interference [and capped capacity] is taught to engineers as fact.” (Technical details on how Reed maintains capacity increases with repeaters can be found at www.reed.com/OpenSpectrum).
Reed is advocate of so-called end-to-end networking, where intelligence is left to end-devices such as PCs or handheld devices and network is left simply to transmit data efficiently. Such approach would be necessary in open wireless network, he said, just as it is on Internet. He said one unlicensed wireless system, Bluetooth, failed to meet predicted potential because architects behind standard tried to anticipate potential uses of technology and set up intellectual property licenses for each one, discouraging adoption and keeping prices high. “They set up a walled garden” for everything from wireless earpieces for cellphones to home networking products, he said, and as result price for Bluetooth products never reached mass-market level. Better approach, he said, is to allow end users to determine best use for technology, particularly because “over the next 10 years we're going to have lots more devices talking to each other.”