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It’s true. However there’s a question of what to do about this. You can’t sell a wireless device to someone in Ohio and expect it not to be used in New York Cit

It’s true. However there’s a question of what to do about this. You can’t sell a wireless device to someone in Ohio and expect it not to be used in New York City. And certain emergency frequencies might be rarely utilized but very important when used. That said, I’d like to see more allocation of spectrum for consumer use. It’s very frustrating that cellular companies get more and more spectrum but we can’t feasibly deploy public LTE for example. Perhaps if the wireless device has GPS and network connectivity we could give the government permission to enable and disable extra frequencies depending on location. Though of course this scheme invites suppression of dissent.

g_p 6y ago
The UK now has a "use it or share it" regime for operator spectrum. I can go and get prime operator spectrum if it isn't in use in my local area, and use it at certain agreed power levels. That license is just for one location. There's also dedicated "held back for sharing" spectrum in the N77 5G band (3.8 to 4.2 GHz), which is more widely usable without detailed coordination (but you still need a low cost license) With modern spectrum access systems (see CBRS for example), geolocation of the radio is used to determine via a coordination server what spectrum can be used in a given location. Whether that's at risk of suppressing dissent or not is another discussion however - most radios in cellular networks will have some kind of backhaul and coordination management plane for interference avoidance and management - the threat model in cellular technology is a bit different still, and the communications are there to enable spectrum requests to be made in real-time. Spectrum coordination wouldn't need to be done by government - there's conceivable ways to do sensing and avoidance, but at the risk of tragedy of the commons scenarios.
- PoachedSausage 6y ago
  What do Ofcom do to enforce it? They used to have a number of spectrum monitoring stations, however they were decommissioned, I know someone that bought bits of it at auction.
  - g_p 6y ago
    I believe any enforcement Ofcom do these days is reactive, and in response to reports from licensed operators. A lot of the new "shared" access licenses do not give guarantees of interference protection though, so I imagine Ofcom enforcement would be on a best-effort basis there.

g_p 6y ago

The UK now has a "use it or share it" regime for operator spectrum. I can go and get prime operator spectrum if it isn't in use in my local area, and use it at certain agreed power levels. That license is just for one location. There's also dedicated "held back for sharing" spectrum in the N77 5G band (3.8 to 4.2 GHz), which is more widely usable without detailed coordination (but you still need a low cost license) With modern spectrum access systems (see CBRS for example), geolocation of the radio is used to determine via a coordination server what spectrum can be used in a given location. Whether that's at risk of suppressing dissent or not is another discussion however - most radios in cellular networks will have some kind of backhaul and coordination management plane for interference avoidance and management - the threat model in cellular technology is a bit different still, and the communications are there to enable spectrum requests to be made in real-time. Spectrum coordination wouldn't need to be done by government - there's conceivable ways to do sensing and avoidance, but at the risk of tragedy of the commons scenarios.

PoachedSausage 6y ago
What do Ofcom do to enforce it? They used to have a number of spectrum monitoring stations, however they were decommissioned, I know someone that bought bits of it at auction.
- g_p 6y ago
  I believe any enforcement Ofcom do these days is reactive, and in response to reports from licensed operators. A lot of the new "shared" access licenses do not give guarantees of interference protection though, so I imagine Ofcom enforcement would be on a best-effort basis there.