It never fails. The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. In the late 1800s, for instance, Oklahoma weathered Boomers, Sooners, and scoundrels in one of the biggest Federally-okayed land grabs in history. In the late 1900s, yesteryear's Boomers may become tomorrow's Tuners as the government once again gets knee-deep in deregulation dilemmas. This time around it's not grazing land or oil patches in the eye of the storm, but the crowded radio spectrum. In a bill before Congress, up to 200 MHz of the spectrum will eventually move from governmental control (the Pentagon, Energy Department, and the like) to private industry. At issue is the mechanics of how the Federal Communications Commission will make the move. One proposed method of reassignment -- backed by the FCC and White House -- is to auction off the spectrum to the highest bidder. Best guesses put the future market value of the available frequencies upwards of $200 billion.
It's not that paying off the national debt or unburdening the FCC of regulatory responsibilities is altogether bad. But I agree with radiophile Harry Helms (author of The Underground Frequency Guide and Shortwave Listening Guidebook) who compares auctioning the spectrum to that of selling off the national parks. Moreover, the auction provision means that available frequencies will likely go to large corporations at the exclusion of small innovative companies. The alternative is to assign frequencies by lottery or hearings, both presumably run by the FCC.
By now you're probably wondering if you mistakenly picked up Radio and Electronics instead of Dr. Dobb's, and questioning what the radio spectrum has to do with computer programming. The answer is, "everything." Over the coming years, data communications will increasingly be handled by wireless technologies -- RF, spread spectrum, infrared, and cellular. Terms such as PCN, SMR, WIN, CT3, and "10-4 Good Buddy" will be as common to programmers as to radio hams. At a recent conference, Bill Frezza of Ericsson GE Mobile Data summed up the relationship between PCs and radio communications: "We're not out to put a keyboard on every radio. We just want an antenna on every PC."
The infrastructure for the burgeoning data radio industry is already in place. Nationwide networks such as the IBM/Motorola-sponsored ARDIS (Advanced Radio Data Information Service) system and RAM Mobile Data's packet-switched mobile data service are now online (well, on the air), enabling you to send short blasts of data at 8 Kbps from one end of the country to the other for as little as 25 cents/Kbyte. Likewise, personal wireless networks will sprout inside buildings. (Ericsson Business Communications has an experimental system operating at 800-1000 MHz that converts analog PBX transmission and digital radio signals.) Of course, there's nothing new about radio/PC communications; Jim Warren proposed such a system in "The Digicast Project," DDJ, October 1978.
Software developers are already getting on the wireless wagon. Motorola's Mobile Communication group will soon release a DOS-based C toolkit for RF modem software to support its 400i portable RF modem (the one used with the NCR 3125 pen-based computer). Traveling Software will deliver a communications engine designed to accommodate drivers for RF, cellular, and other transports. NCR and Persoft are providing comm software to connect NCR wireless networks to Ethernet networks. And Apple is pushing hard for its proposed Data-PCS ("Personal Communications Service") for transmitting data wirelessly within a radius of 50 meters indoors.
Central to Data-PCS (endorsed by NCR, IBM, Tandy, and Grid) is the assumption that computer users have the same right to communicate wirelessly as with wires. To this end, Apple is asking that "a small part of airwaves be made available to computer manufacturers and users, without requiring radio licenses or having to pay for using the airwaves." The burr under the FCC saddle is that the frequencies Data-PCS requests -- 40 MHz in the 1850-1990 MHz band -- is currently allocated to others; hence the need for privatization and reassignment. Granted, digital communication without a license already exists, down around 49 MHz. But this area is reserved for low-power units (toy walkie-talkies, cordless phones, garage door openers, and so on) and is too noisy for PC use. What's needed is nothing less than an open access digital radio service for PC users.
Let's not forget that better ways to use scarce spectrum resources will evolve. Faster communication and advanced compression will make more efficient use of radio frequencies, not to mention freeing up those portions currently being used inefficiently. (The rapid move to cable TV, for instance, may free up some frequencies used by broadcast TV.) But as we know, technology is a two-edged butterknife. For example, the greater a signal's baud rate, the more frequency space it needs. Yet problems like this pave the way for new solutions -- and new opportunities. (RF Data Network Systems, for instance, is a small company I ran across that's addressing these emerging needs by developing data compression routines for radio communications.)
To learn more about such topics, attend the 10th ARRL Amateur Radio Computer Networking Conference (September 27-29) in San Jose, Calif. For details, contact the ARRL, 225 Main Street, Newington, CT 06111, 203-666-1541. Over and out.
Copyright © 1991, Dr. Dobb's Journal