Writes Lee Gomes (WSJ):
[Open Spectrum] argues that modern technology allows us to build “smart” transmitters that don’t interfere with each other. Such transmitters could listen to the airwaves and then change the way they transmit based on what they hear. If one part of the spectrum is busy, for example, they could use another.
With no interference problem, there would be no need to divide up the spectrum. And with no divided spectrum, the bandwidth-scarcity problem vanishes. That’s because the total usable spectrum is so vast it could accommodate everything anyone would want to do.
What could happen with more spectrum? The sky is the limit, backers say. They cite the many serendipitous things happening with “WiFi” wireless networks, which were designed to connect machines in a home or office but now link whole neighborhoods.Imagine a camcorder in an Open Spectrum world that not only recorded your kid’s school play but also sent DVD-quality video of it to the grandparents’ TV — live.
The children in this play are probably not yet born. An Open Spectrum world is still five or 10 years off. But children of that brave new world would surely regard their parents’ tales of the old days, when cellphones had sound but not video, as something simply too primitive to be believed.
