Interesting thoughts, and I always thought it would be nice to have a more uniform arrangement for all the providers, but I don't quite think it's quite that si

Interesting thoughts, and I always thought it would be nice to have a more uniform arrangement for all the providers, but I don't quite think it's quite that simple. Spread Spectrum isn't some magic buzzword that you can throw in there and it instantly fixes all our technological woes. Yes, it works, up to a point, up to a fixed amount of traffic on any particular channel, but when you start getting into denser populations, you need to start getting more complex. general wi-fi tends to crap out if there are too many (around 13) operators in the vicinity, cell towers in urban areas need to handle hundreds, if not thousands of calls at any one time. (yes I realize that isn't the best analogy, as the technologies are quite different) And wi-fi sucks up a big chunk of the unlicensed 2.4Ghz spectrum. Then you start to get into the question of bandwidth, if you want more users, they are each going to have less bw, thus you can advertise your 100mbs bw for 4G, but if any more than one person is using it, you download speed is going drop fast. Now i do agree that it'd be nice to have one standard, and open up all these frequencies for common use. But it's more than just big brother out there holding fast to the status quo. Companies use very different technologies. (especially in the States) Companies like Qualcom (Verizon/Sprint CDMA technology) invest enormous sums of money into protecting their IP, and aren't about to share it, just so that AT&T customers can use their spectrum. Yes, there is a merge towards LTE, but by an large, there is still the CDMA/TDMA divide between companies, and the use of propriety chipsets means that two different technologies can't really share the same spectrum, as there really is so much traffic on each channel, SS isn't going guarantee there is no interference. Also, you better believe the current networks are utilizing SS technologies to their MAX already within the band they own.