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> At some point it would be nice if we could get back to vendor-agnostic wireless protocols Cellular, WiFi, and Bluetooth are vendor-agnostic. The issue is the

> At some point it would be nice if we could get back to vendor-agnostic wireless protocols Cellular, WiFi, and Bluetooth are vendor-agnostic. The issue is there's finite radio bandwidth and because the radios are vendor-agnostic they all need to built to a specification. Interop between cellular basebands made by a variety of players and base stations made by yet more players is already a minor technological miracle. Old AMPS phones want to use the bands carriers moved to 4G/5G service. There's no affordance for backwards compatibility because the old technology was just shittier. The bandwidth of a single AMPS phone can now carry many dozens of 5G connections and provide them with full service.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
Like with the Internet being "decentralized", the lower-level parts may be vendor-agnostic, but they're not the parts that matter. Being able to build devices talking over cellular protocols does little for me if I'm not able to actually use them with a cellular network.
- giantrobot 2y ago
  The world where every rando builds a cellular radio and decides emission limits, guard bands, and filtering just aren't interesting to them is a world where cellular doesn't work for anyone. If you want to goof with electronics in your garage the only person you're going to affect is yourself. When you start messing with radios, the emissions are invisible. You don't necessarily realize you just raised the noise floor for your whole neighborhood. It's pretty easy to build a device that barely functions as a radio but works really well as a jamming device.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    Sure, and I by no means advocate for every rando to be able to freely build RF devices. My point was that protocols being open means little, when to actually use them you have to negotiate with large commercial entities that actively don't want to deal with you. It's a different pair of shoes than just dealing with (your national equivalent of) FCC and the local community of practice, as is the case e.g. for HAM. The analogy to the Internet I'm making is this: yes, the protocols are open and you can theoretically participate with "the Internet" using even a potato, as long as it speaks TCP/IP. This is the decentralized, packet-switching, "routing around censorship" part. It's also not the part that matters - the actual Internet is the application layer, and it's in large part centralized in entities like Meta, Google (and on a different dimension, Cloudflare). Packet switching won't help your Facebook page to "route around censorship" when Meta itself is the censor.
    - giantrobot 2y ago
      Neither of your examples make sense. To do anything on cellular bands requires a license. Consumer equipment is locked down to get type licenses. Carriers need their own separate licenses from the FCC or local equivalent. You can build your own basebands but you can't do anything without a license. No carrier, paying for licenses and operating the network, is going to freely connect you to their infrastructure. People have collectively decided cellular networks is more valuable/useful to modern society than being able to goof around with scratch built cellular radios. There's other bands open to experimentation (ISM). Complaining about Google and Meta is likewise confusing. Meta and Google can censor whatever they like. They don't owe you a bullhorn. But they do not control the whole Internet. If you can get packets routing to you, you can still publish whatever content you want. You can build your own application layer completely ignoring Google and Meta. There's dozens of overlay networks built on top of base Internet routing that work just fine.

TeMPOraL 2y ago

Like with the Internet being "decentralized", the lower-level parts may be vendor-agnostic, but they're not the parts that matter. Being able to build devices talking over cellular protocols does little for me if I'm not able to actually use them with a cellular network.

giantrobot 2y ago
The world where every rando builds a cellular radio and decides emission limits, guard bands, and filtering just aren't interesting to them is a world where cellular doesn't work for anyone. If you want to goof with electronics in your garage the only person you're going to affect is yourself. When you start messing with radios, the emissions are invisible. You don't necessarily realize you just raised the noise floor for your whole neighborhood. It's pretty easy to build a device that barely functions as a radio but works really well as a jamming device.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Sure, and I by no means advocate for every rando to be able to freely build RF devices. My point was that protocols being open means little, when to actually use them you have to negotiate with large commercial entities that actively don't want to deal with you. It's a different pair of shoes than just dealing with (your national equivalent of) FCC and the local community of practice, as is the case e.g. for HAM. The analogy to the Internet I'm making is this: yes, the protocols are open and you can theoretically participate with "the Internet" using even a potato, as long as it speaks TCP/IP. This is the decentralized, packet-switching, "routing around censorship" part. It's also not the part that matters - the actual Internet is the application layer, and it's in large part centralized in entities like Meta, Google (and on a different dimension, Cloudflare). Packet switching won't help your Facebook page to "route around censorship" when Meta itself is the censor.
  - giantrobot 2y ago
    Neither of your examples make sense. To do anything on cellular bands requires a license. Consumer equipment is locked down to get type licenses. Carriers need their own separate licenses from the FCC or local equivalent. You can build your own basebands but you can't do anything without a license. No carrier, paying for licenses and operating the network, is going to freely connect you to their infrastructure. People have collectively decided cellular networks is more valuable/useful to modern society than being able to goof around with scratch built cellular radios. There's other bands open to experimentation (ISM). Complaining about Google and Meta is likewise confusing. Meta and Google can censor whatever they like. They don't owe you a bullhorn. But they do not control the whole Internet. If you can get packets routing to you, you can still publish whatever content you want. You can build your own application layer completely ignoring Google and Meta. There's dozens of overlay networks built on top of base Internet routing that work just fine.