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Hard to even argue a devil's advocate position here. On one hand you have a 20-year-old allocation that has been entirely unused with no reason to believe that

Hard to even argue a devil's advocate position here. On one hand you have a 20-year-old allocation that has been entirely unused with no reason to believe that will change soon, and on the other hand you have an "unlicensed" redesignation which doesn't even block the supposed original purpose from using it in the future (since, it is unlicensed spectrum after all). The FCC were actually generous here. Instead of taking the whole wasted 75 megahertz, they only took 45 megahertz leaving 30 megahertz to continue to be wasted by this vaporware nonsense. I'm glad the court basically said: "What is even your argument here?" And then threw out the case. If they don't want to lose the remaining 30 megahertz then I suggest they develop something of value.

PaulHoule 4y ago
Originally the plan was to deploy a protocol similar to Wi-Fi in this spectrum with the major difference that there is no process of pairing to a base station. I think this died because it has no security story. People who put up "Drive like your kids live here!" (sorry... my kid likes NASCAR) would put up a beacon that makes you car think that everybody is slamming on their brakes. The story has evolved to "mediate the communication over cellular networks" which could be more secure in some respects (clients get authenticated even if the network doesn't) but it trades "no security" for "no coverage" because cellular companies have no interest in expanding their coverage enough that this works everywhere.