FCC To Expand Wireless Spectrum
Posted by Captain Shenanigan on Thursday November 13, 2003 @05:44PM
from the Never-Enough dept.
Captain Shenanigan writes: In a move that has suprised physicists and confounded engineers worldwide, the FCC has announced its plans to expand the wireless spectrum in order to extend the reach of broadband communications to rural and other connectivity-disadvantaged areas.
“While the current electromagnetic spectrum is large, and has been adequate for people’s communications needs up until now,” FCC Chairman Michael Powell said, it was originally specified and installed in 1909 and is increasingly showing its age.
When pressed for details about how the FCC would actually go about generating more spectrum, which the scientist Jorgen Hansensensen alleges is infinite although largely unusable (except for some choice bits in the neighborhood of light, radio, microwave, and toaster)the FCC Chairman grew vague.
“Wireless broadband is increasingly a reality in the marketplace,” he said, but I have heard reports that it has trouble getting through trees. What we need is a a stretched spectrum, one that is thinner and more flexible. And longer, able to reach all the way from the city out into the countryside.”