Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Wireless wizardry spells out case for less-regulated airwaves

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 23:19:40 -0500

Wireless wizardry spells out case for less-regulated airwaves

By Brian Bergstein
The Associated Press
12/22/2002

NEW YORK - It almost sounds too "Star Trek" to be possible: a
multipurpose cell phone that also serves as an FM radio, a
walkie-talkie, a garage-door opener and a TV remote control.

And every time you make a call with the handset, it increases the
performance of other phones in use, instead of competing for
airwaves with them.

Though such wireless wizardry remains a few years off, these
futuristic days could be coming sooner because of a rare
confluence of technology breakthroughs and a rethinking of airwave
regulation by the federal government.

"It is kind of an interesting point in time when it comes to
wireless networks," said Dallas Nash, co-founder of
Mississippi-based SIGFX, a player poised for a wireless
revolution.

SIGFX figured out how to transmit cell-phone calls in a thin part
of the airwave spectrum used by television stations. By
dramatically reducing the cost and increasing the range of
wireless-phone networks, the invention could bring reliable
service to rural areas and developing countries.

Vanu Bose has big dreams, too: to create a new generation of
radios - that's all that cell phones and garage-door openers are -
that can move between various functions with an icon click. The
trick is to replace much of the circuitry found in radios with
flexible software.

Bose began working the task in a military-sponsored communications
project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After
graduating in 1998, he started a company, Vanu Inc., to develop
the technology further.

Now, the company has created an all-software base station that
relays calls from wireless phones on cellular networks. Vanu also
has built a prototype hand-held computer that can make calls on
different kinds of wireless networks and can work as a
walkie-talkie, a baby monitor, an FM radio - "whatever you want,"
Bose said.

The big challenge is that the device is limited to between 10 and
20 hours of battery life. Bose, the son of the stereo engineer who
founded Bose Corp., said that with more development and
improvements in low-power microprocessors, the device could be the
size of a cell phone and have a much longer battery life.

Meanwhile, other researchers are making progress in developing
smart radio receivers that can determine instantaneously when and
where a bit of spectrum is going unused and can switch their
communications accordingly to avoid interference. A method of
doing so is employed in cellular networks and cordless phones.

In fact, advocates of an open spectrum say new generations of
radio receivers routinely will handle their conversations and help
to relay others at the same time.

"If every radio is both a transmitter and a receiver, as you add
more, you add capacity to the network," said David P. Reed, a
former chief scientist at Lotus Development Corp. and a leader of
the open-spectrum movement.

"My gut feeling," Reed said, "is that in 10 or 20 years, this will
be as big as the Internet."

It might seem a wide-eyed prediction, but such ideas aren't simply
grassroots dreams.

Intel Corp. backs software-defined radio in hopes that it will
ignite an explosion of demand for wireless chips. The military's
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is working on
several ways to "increase spectrum usage by dynamically sensing
and adapting in frequency, time and space."

Researchers at Bell Laboratories, part of Lucent Technologies
Inc., recently announced a breakthrough in their BLAST technology,
which takes advantage of interference on a network to increase the
rates at which data can be sent.

Many technology experts say such breakthroughs should force a
revolution in how we treat the airwaves. Since the 1920s, the
electromagnetic spectrum has been handled like real estate. The
government licenses use of slices of spectrum and tightly
regulates what can be done in those bands.

Much of the spectrum is tied up, largely by the military. There's
only so much room for experimental and innovative new technologies
in unlicensed bands, such as those occupied by cordless phones and
the wireless networking system known as WiFi.

But in what appears to be the beginning of a historic policy
shift, the Federal Communications Commission has been listening
closely to technology advocates and to cellular carriers that
spent billions of dollars for spectrum licenses. They want more
freedom to use or to trade them as they see fit.

"We have perhaps the most interesting debate in spectrum
governance taking place in America since the 1930s," said Adam
Thierer, director of telecommunications studies at the Cato
Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Last month, a task force appointed by the FCC's chairman, Michael
Powell, offered a framework for a spectrum-policy overhaul,
expected to begin next year.

The group said the government should grant wireless carriers more
flexibility with their expensive spectrum licenses. That way, they
could lease portions of the airwaves that go unused at certain
times, for example.

It also endorsed the open-spectrum concept in some circumstances,
saying new technologies should have more freedom to operate in
regulated bands - as long as they don't interfere with cellular
conversations or radio broadcasts - and in unlicensed parts of the
spectrum, as well.

In essence, the FCC would treat spectrum like real estate in the
physical world, where the public has easements alongside private
property and airplanes fly overhead.

Such monumental changes probably will provoke some fights in
Washington.

"Certain ossified licensees will inherently be resistant to
change," said Bryan Tramont, the FCC chairman's senior legal
adviser.

Even parties who are clamoring for change are circumspect. For
example, wireless phone carriers praise the FCC's efforts to
modernize spectrum policy. But some say technologies such as
software-defined radio might be too unproven to form the basis of
policy changes.

They also worry that low-power transmissions by rival technologies
on or near licensed frequencies could interfere with wireless
phone conversations.

"It's hard to oppose looking at spectrum policy anew," said Doug
Brandon, vice president of federal affairs for AT&T Wireless. But
eventually, he said, "Someone will say, 'My ox just got gored.'"

http://www.insidevc.com/vcs/technology/article/0,1375,VCS_129_1581851,00.html

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