[pseudosavant]

I've been running a 1.1km 5Ghz 802.11ac wifi link between two highly directional antennas for three years now. They have line-of-sight, albeit just barely. The kit I got cost $100 at the time. It was quite easy to setup even and supposedly can go much further than I'm using them for.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083JRFQ24

[itopaloglu83]

With so much benefit we’re getting from wireless connectivity, one hopes that more frequency bands would be opened up, especially in the sub-1GHz range, to enable long distance connections.

And it should be open to public use. Not yet another carrier frequency they will charge us an arm and a leg to use, some of the cell phone connectivity charges are insane, hundreds of dollars for low bandwidth iot sims.

[neilalexander]

It is immensely frustrating that there is so little unlicensed spectrum available vs the massive amounts of spectrum available to militaries and very rich network operators.

Worse is that the unlicenced spectrum that is available is often so heavily encumbered with restrictions in many parts of the world. Wi-Fi HaLow for example, in ETSI regions, is limited to a paltry 14dBm EIRP in no wider than 2MHz channels and an unacceptably punishing duty cycle restriction in most cases that render it barely able to make a TCP connection (some mitigations exist that involve channel hopping on some products but nothing that works for things that require fixed channels, e.g. IBSS or 802.11s).

[inigyou]

The licensed spectrum is not empty. It is scarce because it is fully allocated! Chances are that most of the allocated users are not using it in a given geographical area, so there's space to argue about allocation policies, however.

You can also consider trying to get a license. Costs and probability of success vary widely, but you may as well find out what they are before complaining.

Some European hacker events get temporary licenses to run their walkie talkies and even their own 4/5G cellphone networks. I assume they are cheaper and easier to get than permanent licenses.

[ErroneousBosh]

> Worse is that the unlicenced spectrum that is available is often so heavily encumbered with restrictions in many parts of the world

It's one of the great things about the UK. As long as you're not causing interference to anyone that's actually paying for a licence, you can pretty much do what you like.

[inigyou]

Is it a practical thing as in they won't catch you, or does the law actually say that?

[ErroneousBosh]

It's not possible to investigate it, and there's no-one to report it to.

Ofcom have about two dozen engineers for the whole of the UK, none of whom are equipped to deal with it.

In general, though, in the UK if you're not making a nuisance of yourself the laws are pretty optional, and this is a pretty good example of it.

[ErroneousBosh]

In the UK it costs 75 quid for 5 years to licence a pair of 25kHz channels in 68-88MHz, how "sub-1GHz" would you like to go?

I suspect with modern modulation schemes you'd be able to squeeze quite a chunk of bandwidth out of that.