Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Challenges in spectrum management

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 19:23:05 -0400

From: David Josephson <[email-masked]
Date: Sun Jul 27, 2003 10:32 am
Subject: Challenges in spectrum management

Our discussion of spectrum resources for public safety needs another
angle, I think. We have so far not talked very much about the 800 pound
gorilla in the corner, and I think we need to be very open about
learning its habits and preferences since it seems we must share this
zoo with him. In much of the world, the gorilla is the zookeeper's
sister (by that I mean that the Post and Telecomms office is part of the
same government concerned with public safety comms) but in the US, the
gorilla just donates to the zoo and has a big say in the zookeeper's
selection. (The major carriers and equipment manufacturers exercise a
lot of political clout.) There is a major economic twist to every
spectrum allocation decision that's made, and I think it would be a
mistake to continue leaving it in the shadows.

Equipment manufacturers have an interest in promoting new systems,
preferably systems that require a lot of new hardware. There are
instances where technological improvements can flow directly to the user
(narrowbanding for instance) but many others where the economic
imperative is used to promote entirely inappropriate technical choices
for the task at hand. This is where I think we can make a difference.

The main mistake that I see being made over and over again is the
force-feeding of centralized high-UHF trunking systems to agencies in
areas that cannot support the base station density needed to make it
work. In dense urban areas, it's great. It also sells tons of base
station equipment. Queueing theory developed for the telephone system
works when there is a surplus of talk paths that go everywhere, but when
the model is changed to more accurately reflect the needs of public
safety responders, it falls apart. In rural and wilderness areas, it's a
joke, often a dangerous one.

If we accomplish one thing, the priority should be that every public
safety system should be operable in a decentralized mode. Repeaters are
great, but we need talk-around channels. Trunking is great where it
works, but there must be a mode for responders to communicate, with
units from their own agency and in cross-agency and mutual aid
scenarios, where it doesn't.

Another area where economics override sound technical judgement is the
commoditization of spectrum. Once the FCC got the idea that its mandate
in holding spectrum in public trust was to sell it to the highest
bidder, all sorts of ludicrous things happened. Entire industries here
and in the UK have failed in the collapse of these bubbles. Gold-rush
bidders so inflated the cost of the resultant service to end-users that
no one would pay for it. I don't know what the solution is, but the
spectre of munipalities and public agencies being forced to compete with
private spectrum brokers when allocated "public safety" spectrum is
insufficient (for instance in the recent FCC auction 48) isn't it.

We have a good window in the next decade to right a lot of these wrongs.
Thankfully the development of 700 MHz is proceeding slowly enough that
there is still time for users to learn enough about spectrum management
and have enough input that it isn't decided for them. There's another
opportunity if the feds do in fact vacate some portion of 138-144 MHz.

Finally there is the issue of unlicensed spectrum. The total today is
not just 660 MHz as previously written here but more than 7 GHz. Don't
forget the millimeter-wave spectrum, which has the potential to extend
fiber-like connectivity anywhere. FCC has basically written off the ISM
and UNII bands. Shorter range and narrower antennas make 60 GHz less
subject to bully tactics, but can't we do better? The global internet
operates by consensus and stakeholder coordination of address space. It
would not be so difficult to do the same with 60 GHz, and in the end
achieve a lot more reliable and efficient use of the spectrum.

--
David Josephson / [email-masked]/ Josephson Engineering
Microphones/Audio/RF Engineering/Communications Sites
Santa Cruz, California

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