[ACAVJW4H]

I think the worst outcome of this yet one more avenue gobbled up by a large tech conglomerate. My understanding is that ISM bands are supposed to be free for personal use and are the last fronts for small scale connectivity innovation

[ac29]

> My understanding is that ISM bands are supposed to be free for personal use

They are also free for use by businesses and governments. The rules make no distinction (other bands do have eligibility restrictions).

> last fronts for small scale connectivity innovation

Amateur radio operators would beg to to differ. You can do a lot with a relatively easy to get amateur radio license, and it is restricted from commercial use.

[decker]

There's FCC rules on how the space can be used to prevent what you are describing. Sure, this will increase the noise floor, but Amazon can't show up and start acting like they are the only ones allowed to use it.

[sneak]

You're still allowed to use them free for personal use, as are the personal users who bought Amazon-branded hardware.

Nothing is being gobbled.

[matthewdgreen]

>Nothing is being gobbled.

I mean, I disagree with your opinion here. It's entirely possible that we end up in a world where corporations use all of the unlicensed spectrum to operate their corporate networks (on "user-owned hardware" that is centrally coordinated and controlled), leaving very little of it to alternative uses. There is only so much unlicensed spectrum so this is very much a realistic outcome, especially if the "user-owned devices" are coordinated and designed to maximize the company's use of the spectrum. I think "gobbling" is a pretty accurate description of this.

What you are saying is that our current legislation around these bands permits that use, in the same way that it might be legal for Amazon to house all of its workers on public land in some states. The question to ask is whether this is actually good.

[giantrobot]

I'm not intending to defend Amazon but as a general statement about ISM bands: there are regulatory limits (output power, duty cycle, etc) on these bands. The output power limits are meant to limit the propagation distances from isotropic radiators.

So for Amazon's (or any) system to swamp the ISM band(s) they would need to absolutely saturate an area with their radios. That would end up running at cross purposes with their network since their own base stations and user devices would end up interfering with each other.

While I don't trust Amazon to do the "right" thing I do trust them not to step on their own toes.

[gruez]

>It's entirely possible that we end up in a world where corporations use all of the unlicensed spectrum to operate their corporate networks (on "user-owned hardware" that is centrally coordinated and controlled), leaving very little of it to alternative uses.

Why does there need to be a distinction? What's the difference between amazon's sidewalk network compared to an at&t wifi router?

[matthewdgreen]

The answer to this question depends entirely on what the hardware does and how much it prevents other uses.

[sokoloff]

Have the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz unlicensed bands become unusable by device proliferation? What makes you fear the 900 MHz band will be meaningfully different?

[matthewdgreen]

> Have the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz unlicensed bands become unusable by device proliferation? What makes you fear the 900 MHz band will be meaningfully different?

We are both commenting on an article that describes how a massive corporation (Amazon) might be deploying large-scale mesh networks on this band, and using this to drive huge numbers of devices at near the maximum feasible bitrate. This is obviously a speculative article and maybe none of this will come to pass. But within the bounds of speculation, this seems qualitatively different than what's happened (as of today) on the 2.4 and 5.8 GHz bands.