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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 cel

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

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.