Hi, Frank -
Following the dialogue, I see that my post could have been better expressed.
Re-allocating broadcast video to wired (optical) was a hypothetical decision made by imaginary policy.
The point being that spectrum allocation decisions made half a century ago have become questionable. At the time they may have been right, but technology has outpaced them. Which also reverts to the question of choosing quickly obsolescent technology in national policy, i.e., backing the wrong horse. My example was microwave towers; a better one might have been ISDN.
My bad for not distinguishing between the decisions of hypothetical policy, and the real world in which spectrum management and use exists. Policy decisions may turn out to be wrong, in retrospect. They may not be consistent with present realities, and neither ours nor those of others should be regarded as "right". They are all arbitrary, made in the context of their time and circumstance, and subject to change. There is no perfect, immutable solution.
But, suppose a country chose FTTH with IP-based networks, converting to RF networks (with frequency re-use) where wired penetration just wasn't optimal.
Disregarding international implications, you can imagine the benefits. The spectrum made available by such a decision could be used in many more efficient ways, as David Reed demonstrates.
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From your post to petere:
"And, I think it's only appropriate to add, because it weighs on the legitimacy of those rules in some ways, the arm twisting that powerful individuals and their industry associations exerted in getting those rules enacted. Let's face it. The manner in which RF spectrum is managed transcends science and technology, and very often bends to the whims of market forces, with time, despite its taking place at a glacial pace. And then there is also the matter of an embedded infrastructure and its underlying, and sometimes hidden (and not so hidden), forces that present formidable obstacles, as well."
Message 22870169
Yes. "The way it is". Inertia. Drag. Unscrambling the omelette.
The problem - with some exceptions - is that physical and analogue transmission of content doesn't make sense any more. Mailing movies. Billing. Payment. Books. News. Video. Radio. It's not energy-efficient, not cost-efficient.
What's more, the distribution channel often contains a lot of "litter" - from the CD that contains 9 songs that you don't want for the 10th that you do, or the cable bundle that forces you to pay for content you ignore in order to see content you want - and so on.
The crux of the problem is unrestrained access to content, and the hold on such access. It's not just incumbents; it's also infrastructure providers, content distributors, and more recently, silicon and software providers: viz. Intel and Microsoft cooperative efforts on DRM. (It's amusing to see Intel's efforts to promote WiFi as 'Silicon Valley vs. The Incumbents', while their other hand is deftly inserted into consumers' pockets).
(Note that here, it's corporations [not governments] that are enforcing IP rights and content restriction by virtue of their global reach. One might reasonably ask "How did they get to be gatekeepers?")
The garden and its walls are going global.
Everybody wants a slice of the content pie. Content is where the money is. That's "The Market".
Allowing freedom to choose content - being truly market-driven - would destroy many existing players. OTOH, we know for a certainty that it would enrich those who give the public what it wants.
And let's dismiss the idea that content distribution as it's being practised rewards the creators equitably. It doesn't. It enriches the distributors, while giving them a chokehold on content.
Unrestricted access at competitive cost: the public's dream, and the gatekeeper's nightmare.
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"The point is that decisions on how telecomms will run are a subset of content, access to."
Message 22867250
The Swedish used "access to information" as the keystone of their telecomms policy. By and large EU policy followed their lead. I'd like to see a scrupulous translation of the original language, because I believe "access to information" = "access to content ".
I'm not aware that the Koreans or Japanese (for instance) made such a statutory declaration, or that their telecomms policy was as democratically enabled as was the Swedes'. They just did it.
"... suppose a country chose FTTH with IP-based networks, converting to RF networks (with frequency re-use) where wired penetration just wasn't optimal."
Hypothetical, but not impossible. Others have gone much farther than we have. What's holding us back? Sloppy thinking. Competing commercial interests. Legacy constraints, including incumbency.
Bad policy.
The realization that "The Market" is content, and that providing unrestrained access to such content at competitive cost is truly being "market-driven".
JMO,
Jim |
