[Bloat] RE : Save WiFi from the FCC - DEADLINE is in 3 days *September* 8

[Dave Taht]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 1:22 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike at swm.pp.se> wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Sep 2015, Dave Taht wrote:
>
>> wifi, and the carriers... which bugs me. 5.x ghz is the people's
>> spectrum, that we should be free to use any way we want... and to make

Please note that the LTE-U debate is separate from the lockdown
debate, which only has a day to run. Can we get more letters into the
FCC for the lockdown problem?

>
>
> Well, in the US at least, corporations are people, so...

Corporations are people now, with an indefinite lifespan -  with the
rights of an adult, and the morals of a child. If it were up to me,
the lifetime of a corporation would be inversely proportional to the
number of employees.

Lest you think this is crazy, corporations were formed only for
limited times and purposes all the way up to the late 1800s.

I try really hard not to let my politics not interfere with
engineering truths - I'm always quoting feynman's last comments on the
shuttle commission on that.

> But that aside, I don't know if there is anything that can be done really,
> unlicensed is unlicensed and if it's not free for everybody to use, what is
> it?

Yes, a core difference in outlook is that - after two decades of "the
public"'s use -
what people insist on calling "unlicensed" spectrum is really "the
people's" spectrum - and if more people thought about it that way,
they would be reluctant to hand over even a tiny bit of it to the
carriers.

And jeeze, what makes sense - on the "licensed" spectrum - is the
government auctions it off for big bucks one year, and then the public
pays rents on it for all eternity. Far saner to have more openly
available spectrum

One failed concept in america, at least, is the idea of a commons - as
in a tragedy of the commons - elsewhere, for example, "public lands"
are actually "the queen's" lands and people tend to treat them with
more respect.

Still... a meme to propigate and redefine the debate with is that 2.4
and 5.x ghz is now - by common usage - the "public's" spectrum, and
not "unlicenced" spectrum.

There are other precedents - at least in europe - for defining things
this way - squatters rights, etc. - but jeeze, really, anyone with a
wifi AP of their own should have a visceral reaction to anyone else
encroaching on it....

> Also, isn't it pretty much the same players in wifi and LTE space, Qualcomm,
> Broadcom and the others, they're in both spaces and I don't see what they
> have to gain to make wifi worse?

I don't see them doing a whole lot to make wifi better, either.

> And 802.11 isn't really open either, and the unlicensed spectrum still
> requires that devices are approved to be operated there, right, so if FCC
> and the likes do their job properly then these technologies should work
> together at least on the RF level?

I appreciate the optimism, but honestly, given the low level of
analysis so far, my vote would be to boot the whole idea back to the
beginning for a couple years to bake some more. And to go back to
improving wifi dramatically, in ways everyone can use. For free.

> --
> Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se



-- 
Dave Täht
endo is a terrible disease: http://www.gofundme.com/SummerVsEndo