I'm all for a bandwidth co-op. But the starting bids for parts of the spectrum that the FCC will be "selling" in 2005 start at $100,000,000+, so I don't think it's feasible. In the interests of fair competition it would be nice if we were allowed to equal the power output of every other telecommunications company instead of our measley 4 watt limit. We all know that when Nextel buys it's part of the spectrum for $500,000,000 they'll be blasting at 1500 watts.
What's more realistic, I think, is for you to get a group together to partition the City of Berkeley. Get them to stand behind you where they can say to the Feds something like, "we realize that interference could be a problem, but we want to sort that out in our own courts in our own local jurisdiction and we, the people of Berkeley want to decide, at the polls and through our elected leaders, how we want to slice up part of EM spectrum in our neighborhood." If you could do that I think you might have a chance. This is exactly what the City of Santa Cruz did for Radio Free Santa Cruz and, to my knowledge the station is still operating without FCC license. Good luck. Michael M <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I agree with you there. I work for one of those smaller ISPs in > Berkeley without deep pockets, LMi.net. There is no way we could ever > buy the spectrum in this area to roll out a wireless network. > Something which could be interesting is some sort of bandwidth co-op. > Group buy the spectrum, and share it based on uplink antenna location > with informed users and ISPs. > > > At 8:58 AM -0700 6/23/04, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >On Tue, Jun 22, 2004 at 03:39:12PM -0700, Michael M wrote: > >> > >> Clean spectrum costs about $150,000 for a 50km range. Fairly cheap if > >> you need it. That is what the canopy system uses. No problems. but > >> when there is a sieman's phone blasting at a full watt 24/7 wether it > >> is in use or not, your range suffers. > >> > >It shouldn't cost anything. This is, after all, a zero cost medium. > >Whoever gives money to the government to buy part of the spectrum > >will have to make that money back by by charging consumers. > >This is in a sense a tax on EM waves. > > > >If you look at all the small Wi-Fi networks that are springing up all over > >the country, it seems pretty obvious that many of us are providing a great > >public service at very low cost. > > > >IMHO the FCC should consider who can provide the best service at the lowest > >cost, not who can come up with most money. > _______________________________________________ BAWUG's general wireless chat mailing list [unsubscribe] http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
