Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Limits Sought on Wireless Internet Access

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 13:13:59 -0500

Limits Sought on Wireless Internet Access
By JOHN MARKOFF
The New York Times

December 17, 2002

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 16 - The Defense Department, arguing that an
increasingly popular form of wireless Internet access could
interfere with military radar, is seeking new limits on the
technology, which is seen as a rare bright spot for the
communications industry.

Industry executives, including representatives from Microsoft and
Intel, met last week with Defense Department officials to try to
stave off that effort, which includes a government proposal now
before the global overseer of radio frequencies.

The military officials say the technical restrictions they are
seeking are necessary for national security. Industry executives,
however, say they would threaten expansion of technology like the
so-called WiFi systems being used for wireless Internet in
American airports, coffee shops, homes and offices.

WiFi use is increasingly heavy in major American metropolitan
areas, and similar systems are becoming popular in Europe and
Asia. As the technology is installed in millions of portable
computers and in antennas in many areas, industry executives
acknowledge that high-speed wireless Internet access will soon
crowd the radio frequencies used by the military. But industry
executives say new types of frequency spectrum sharing techniques
could keep civilian users from interfering with radar systems.

The debate, which involves low-power radio emissions that the
Defense Department says may jam as many as 10 types of radar
systems in use by United States military forces, presents a thorny
policy issue for the Bush administration.

Even as the armed forces monitor United States air space for signs
of military or terrorist attacks and gear up for a possible war
with Iraq, the nation's technology companies hope that the
popularity of wireless Internet access will help pull their
industry out of its two-year slump. New limits on that technology
could help undermine the economic recovery on which the
administration is also pinning its hopes.

"Nobody, including the Pentagon, doubts that this is important for
consumers and industry," said Steven Price, deputy assistant
secretary of defense for radio spectrum matters. "The problem
comes when it degrades our military capabilities."

So far, though, there have been no reports of civilian wireless
Internet use interfering with military radar, Edmond Thomas, chief
of the office of engineering and technology for the Federal
Communications Commission, said.

Industry executives say that military uses can coexist with the
millions of smart wireless Internet devices that can sense the
nearby use of military radar and automatically yield the right of
way. These devices are in use in Europe and will soon be used in
the United States.

But Pentagon officials say that the new digital technologies are
unproven and could interfere with various types of military radar
systems, whether ones used for tracking storms, monitoring
aircraft or guiding missiles and other weapons.

The Pentagon wants regulators to delay consideration of opening an
additional swath of radio frequencies in the 5-gigahertz band that
is eagerly sought by American technology companies and is already
in civilian use internationally.

In this country, industry executives and some members of Congress
see new spectrum-sharing technologies as a way to jump-start
innovation and commerce. Last month, for example, Senator Barbara
Boxer, a Democrat from California, and her Republican colleague
Senator George Allen of Virginia, said that they would introduce a
bill in the next session of Congress to expand the radio spectrum
available for wireless Internet use.

The military-industry debate also involves the merits of a
technical standard known as dynamic frequency selection, which is
being used by advanced wireless Internet radios overseas to avoid
interference.

Military officials are asking the American industry, and companies
in other countries, to create and install even more sensitive
versions of dynamic frequency selection - something that the
companies say may cause the technology to operate incorrectly.
American executives say that the military's demands may also
curtail the capacity of wireless Internet services and could even
force a complicated redesign of millions of computer
communications systems already in place or nearly ready for
shipment.

An estimated 16 million WiFi-enabled computers and other devices
are already in use in this country and overseas. And in the coming
year, Intel plans to put currently designed WiFi technology on all
of the microprocessor chips it ships for tens of millions of
desktop, laptop and hand-held computing devices.

"This is a hugely important issue to Intel," said Peter Pitsch,
Intel's communications policy director in Washington. "I'm hopeful
at the end of the day, the U. S. government will accept a
reasonable compromise."

The dispute may also foreshadow a coming battle over the airwaves
as traditional broadcasters and communications businesses like
cellular companies confront a dazzling array of new digital
communications technologies that can potentially use the spectrum
far more efficiently by permitting it to be shared by different
types of users.

The roots of the dispute lie in an effort that began during the
Clinton administration and which has continued at the Federal
Communications Commission under the current administration, to
permit civilian use of portions of the airwaves without licenses.

"The unlicensed spectrum is a hot-bed of entrepreneurial activity
and one of the few bright spots in our high-tech economy," said
Tom Kalil, the former deputy director of President Bill Clinton's
National Economic Council and an early advocate of unlicensed
spectrum of radio frequencies. The Bush administration, he said,
"should be trying to increase the amount of spectrum for
unlicensed devices, as opposed to imposing new, retroactive
restrictions right as the market is taking off."

Earlier this month, the United States presented the Pentagon
position at an international technical meeting in Geneva of the
World Administrative Radio Conference, the body that oversees
radio frequency allocations and standards.

European governments hotly disputed the United States position at
the meeting, but it was nonetheless included as a footnote in the
planning document that resulted. The issues will be confronted
directly, and perhaps decided, in June at the World Administrative
Radio Conference in Geneva.

Industry officials said that the Defense Department position had
little chance of gaining international support. As a consequence,
they said, the existing radio bands would probably become more
congested, and the Pentagon would face even more sources of
interference internationally.

There is a need for global coordination, executives acknowledge,
but they say the Defense Department is going about it the wrong
way.

"The idea is to get the world on a single page, and Europe is way
ahead of the U. S. in understanding these interference issues,"
said Rich Redelfs, president and chief executive of Atheros, a
Silicon Valley maker of chips used for WiFi systems.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/17/technology/17WIRE.html

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/