[AnarchismIsCool]

It's always amazing to me how reluctant everyone is to grant ISM bandwidth. If you watch a spectrum analyzer you'll immediately notice that the ISM bands are packed and licensed space is entirely empty. At this point with devices being both much more dynamic and much more spatially multiplexed (and more directional) I have a hard time accepting arguments that really anything from DC to daylight should be licensed at this point outside of a few very small niches (GPS and airband mostly). We should be gradually deprecating equipment that requires absolute band exclusion to operate because just slicing up spectrum is by far the least efficient way of utilizing a finite resource.

It's also worth pointing out that we're about to lose about half of one of our ISM bands (915MHz, LoRa, Meshtastic, ELRS, various smart home protocols etc) due to the lovely folks at NextNav wanting dedicated bandwidth for a paywalled GPS alternative. It's by far the best ISM band in the US for long range unlicensed communications due to being in a sweet spot of path loss, penetration, and bandwidth.

[Y_Y]

In case you're confused like me, here ISM refers to Industrial, Scientific, Medical[0]. I was trying to figure out why it was relevant to transmit these signals in the interstellar medium.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISM_radio_band

[fellerts]

Related to your second point: "FCC seek comments on NextNav petition for rulemaking on lower 900MHz ISM band" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41226802). No, we are not about to lose the band, FCC is still deliberating. The rest of the industry is pushing back.

[rkangel]

I agree that there needs to be more ISM bands, but I don't agree that licencing bands is niche at all.

The bands owned by Cellular providers are not entirely empty at all, in fact they're very well utilised. It is much easier to make efficient use of spectrum when you can plan it properly, and when there is only one system making allocation decisions (e.g. TDMA/FDMA). Collision based systems (like Wifi) have an efficiency cost.

[AnarchismIsCool]

I was trying to keep the point simple, but realistically I'm not advocating for complete chaos, there will probably still have to be allocations, ie "Please don't key up your baofeng in the middle of a cell channel". Equipment will probably always be band specific to an extent, the bands are just widening with technological progress.

The issue is that spectrum auctions are probably the least efficient and equitable way of distributing allocations available. There isn't a standard unit conversion between utility in dollars and bandwidth in Hz. There are individuals with enough money that they could buy their own national spectrum allocations just for their personal use alone.

That said, there are ways to maintain efficiency. TDMA can still be implemented in a distributed fashion using GPS or device collaboration, we just didn't do it with wifi because it would have been cost prohibitive 20 years ago.

For the sake of argument, a naive approach would be to generate a UTM grid square based on a fraction of some maximum reasonable wifi footprint, then the system in that grid would get a frequency allocation, and everything within that grid would time sync and TDMA on that frequency. Neighboring cells would get a different frequency and devices 2-3 cells over could start reusing frequencies. Obviously this doesn't work in an apartment high-rise but that's fixable.

[eru]

> The issue is that spectrum auctions are probably the least efficient and equitable way of distributing allocations available. There isn't a standard unit conversion between utility in dollars and bandwidth in Hz. There are individuals with enough money that they could buy their own national spectrum allocations just for their personal use alone.

That's actually fairly efficient.

Pure bureaucratic allocation is much, much less efficient than auctions.

I agree that the auctions as implemented in practice can be improved. Eg you don't need to auction off all the spectrum nationwide. And you don't need to have so many restrictions on what people can do with the bands they won bids on. Eg we can let some hardware consortium bid on space to be used for wifi, even if it was previously allocated to TV.

[ggm]

You don't buy exclusivity for emergency services? What if a local congestion event degrades signal to the extent things stop working? This also demands all of the volunteer fire and emergency and rural fire and emergency recapitalise their radio investment. I would worry the exact thing that causes this is mass widespread "get online and check on aunty jennie" flash mob effects when emergency comms is most needful.

I am probably putting up some FUD argument here. But, I think this should be a contestable line of reasoning. I'd like to hear from some hams, or other spectrum users before I got with this. (I am neither, cell and wifi aside)

[CobrastanJorji]

I think that reserving bands for meteorology, Radio navigation, radio location, critical services (maritime mobile, time signal), science (space research), amateur radio, and microwaves is a very good idea. But if you were to redesign the allocations from scratch with modern technology, you could probably clear up a whole lot of spectrum.

[jychang]

On the other hand, how bad is congestion in practice anyways? Sure it's congested, but rarely to the point where it's unusable.

I don't think we need to clear out all of the spectrum from 100khz to 100ghz. If we doubled unlicensed spectrum around 2.4ghz, 5ghz, and 6ghz, we'd solve 90% of our congestion issues at the cost of barely any spectrum. Overhauling the entire electromagnetic spectrum allocations would cost millions of dollars of replacing devices; just throwing a bit more at wifi bands would cheaply solve most issues.

[lazide]

Define ‘unusable’?

If you assume it’s a smooth degradation where it goes from 50MB/s to 100kb/s, yeah, that’s rare. It is often ‘nothing at all’ for a second or two.

And that is unusable for a lot of things. Or at least infuriating.

[eru]

Why does amateur radio make the list?

It seems like a fun hobby, but they could probably have just as much fun without an exclusive band for them.

[fukawi2]

We just got a whole bunch of new radios for fire brigade in our state. Every radio has a SIM and fails over to the public cell network if the primary (licensed) network is unavailable.

Which ironically is one of the first networks to fail when we have widespread storms etc.

[deelowe]

Could the idea be to use satellite cellular as that becomes more commonplace?

[lazide]

The cell network is much more reliable than typical emergency comms, especially when you factor in ‘radio shadows’, etc.

Or at least will be out at different times/ways.

Oh, unless there is a major disaster, but those are rare.

A lot of money goes into building the cell network.

[deelowe]

I don't know. Seems like where I live the cell network is about as reliable as power. Its why I switched to starlink as at least that stays up/comes back quickly during storms.

[eru]

> Seems like where I live the cell network is about as reliable as power.

Power is extremely reliable in most places I've lived. But I guess you are in the middle of nowhere?

[aziaziazi]

> get online and check on aunty jennie

I wonder if it's still an issue: checking aunt Jennie with text or audio is nowhere comparable in terms of data to checking 2K video news or scrolling tiktok for FOMO. Yes there was cutoffs during mass events in 2010', our 2g/3g infra couldn't keep up with people calling each others, and sure the network is faster now. However the next WTC will be another level if we all live-video check aunty Jenny. It seems way too few people understand (as other said) the bandwidth is not an infinite ressource.

And don't start me with ads bloating most website rendering them unusable on a low speed network. I have the chance to live in Europe and the cookie banner is a neat warning of a cumbersome website.

We used to do check news with channels' cable TV and radio (grandpa' grumble) and there was no "network problem".

[fweimer]

I have some doubts about the efficacy of spectrum allocated per device class/manufacturer. This in itself is not a congestion management mechanism, although some vendors probably treat it as such. The majority of applications probably benefits from more available spectrum and cheaper devices based on COTS components.

Spectrum dedicated to individual users in specific areas is a different matter. I expect that there will always be use cases for this, for backhaul, backup links etc.

[AnarchismIsCool]

Was waiting for this response...

It's a long game. Yeah, we can't just say "fuck it, everyone go nuts" tomorrow. There are satellite downlinks that cant be readily changed, equipment capex that needs to depreciate etc. What we should be doing is adding and expanding ISM space as aggressively as we reasonably can and refusing to issue new exclusive licenses without an extremely good reason (and probably exclusively for public/civil purposes).

[danw1979]

Do we really need to allow Industrial use of RF across the whole spectrum though?

Maybe we need a new definition of public use at “reasonable EIRP” without the industrial heating and whatever other weird uses of RF are out there.

[AnarchismIsCool]

The caveat should be (as it's always been) only radiate as much as you actually need to, and not having/buying sufficient shielding is not an acceptable "need to" argument. Microwaves share spectrum with WiFi but unless something is horribly wrong turning on a microwave doesn't jam every wifi access point within a mile.

I agree though, reasonable EIRP is something we need to talk about. For instance, there should probably be more of a logarithmic equation for calculating an EIRP alternative that allows more effective power in beam forming systems but to a sane limit. In other words, don't handicap people trying to be responsible with where they send signals but that doesn't mean you can build an absolute laser of an antenna array and start screaming at satellites coming over the hill behind your receiver.

[ggm]

This I can get behind.

[pjc50]

> amazing to me how reluctant everyone is to grant ISM bandwidth

> dedicated bandwidth for a paywalled GPS alternative.

I think you've answered your own question here; especially if I look at the huge prices paid in spectrum auctions in the UK and Europe some years ago. Spectrum is an asset, so there's strong pressure to turn it into property that can be charged for rather than let the public use it.

[stefan_]

If only people wouldn't then turn around and tell us how amazing spectrum auctions are, what a novel great application of economics. In practice it has all the hallmarks of a failed market; most bits travel over WiFi, money ends up in slush funds, coverage is hopeless, large parts of spectrum are allocated to governmental incumbents who want to keep running 50s tech.

[eru]

Well, auctions are a great mechanism, but you can still screw them up by adding lots and lots of requirements.

Spectrum auction don't just give everything to the highest bidder, alas. Instead it's a beauty contest judged by bureaucrats.

[polishdude20]

I saw "ELRS" and panicked for a bit but remembered it also has a 2.4ghz option

[05]

There's also the 'fuck the FCC' option since you're going to be breaking FAA's line of sight regs with any long to medium range flights anyway..

[shizcakes]

No decision has been made in the NextNav case, and there’s a lot of significant opposition. What’s with the needless fearmongering?

[LastTrain]

Fear mongering? It’s not like this topic is going to cause a mass panic or anything.

[fellerts]

I develop products for the 915 MHz band and became very anxious that I missed FCC's decision (none has been made yet). I agree with GP.