Well, thank you for coming. Uh, it's
uh, it's my pleasure to introduce Michael Marcus
. Michael is adjunct faculty, here at Virginia Tech and
he will be teaching a class this coming semester on
regulatory aspects of communication systems. Michael is a graduate
of MIT, a fellow of the IEEE,
I would say perhaps one of the most significant accomplishments
that is that is that he's probably the guy most
responsible within the regulatory community for establishing the
bands that we have today to support such things as Bluetooth and WiFi.
That was his passion and his brainchild. Law spent
25 years of the FCC and now he works as
a consultant for the industry and also it was a
very active blogger. Wireless communication. Yes, we
are very fortunate. Yeah. Attack as Yeah.
Your region by the way, for the students.
He loves talking to students. So there's an there's
an email address. Yeah. Ideas that you want
to bounce off of him questions. And he's a
very, very friendly receptive. But if you take
the course, I'll even be more receptive. Really
cool. Ok, thank you. Is this working
? Working Okay, good. I'm glad to be
here again. One of the fellows I worked with
an FCC tom Darren's who probably none of, you
know, was I had never really heard of Virginia
Tech until I started working with Tom Darren's, whose
Annecy graduate of here and I was so impressed with
Tom's background. I asked him more about the school
and he made the first introduction of me to Virginia
Tech. So I have to that's how I first
started coming down here many years ago, but I
had tom tom uh was a great influence on that
, although I like to say that white wifi and
bluetooth is maybe the most significant thing I did in
25 years at FCC. The most fun thing I
did. We were just having a discussion of direction
finding was finding the guy who jammed Playboy playboy Satellite
channel in 1987. That was definitely the most fun
thing. Especially since everybody thought we'd never be able
to find the guy who jammed the Playboy channel.
Finding him was a hell of a lot more fun
than this. But uh, some night over beer
, I can explain to you how we not only
found them, we convicted him in a criminal trial
in a public criminal trial. Uh, and that
that was the most fun thing, but that's that's
something best talked over when you have a beer in
your hand or your favorite beverage. Okay, why
is this important? Uh, most of most of
you are probably electro engineering students and probably most of
you are wireless electro engineering students and you probably think
gee I wanted to develop this technology. Why do
I have to understand anything about the broader context?
The reason is in wireless regulation is an integral part
of the business, both in the U. S
. And worldwide, wireless is very regulated and particularly
of all the other things you can major in electrical
engineering, it is more regulated. So if you
don't want to deal with the regulation go design,
computers, go design integrated circuits. But if you
want to be in wireless you have to accept regulation
. Unfortunately as a fact of life you may read
the deregulation is a growing trend than it is but
that still doesn't means that unfortunately for implementing innovative wireless
devices as opposed to the next generation, iphone doesn't
have much to do with regulation. But if you
want to do something more original than the next generation
of iphone than it has a lot to do with
regulation and knowledge of this will help you get your
ideas into practical use. And while it's nice to
have your ideas published in Tripoli transactions on this or
that, let me tell you, it's a lot
more gratifying to go into radio shack and see your
ideas for sale and to see your neighbors when I
go somewhere and see wifi here. That's a lot
more gratifying than seeing your name and I Trip Republic
. My name is a nitric re publications but seeing
the wifi free wifi here is a lot more gratifying
to me and I think you may find that too
. Now, both regulations and standards play a large
role in wireless. There are some of the standards
organizations today. We will focus on regulations, but
this is not to minimize the role that standards play
, but regulations tend to be a little bit more
important because they're more mandatory than the Net. But
I will not go into the role of standards here
, but you will find as you go to implement
things that standards not always, but often play a
role in doing this. Um If you remember nothing
else, I say remember the slide. If you
design equipment for civil markets, regulation standards, issues
are just as real as Maxwell's equations, they're just
as real. Okay. You may not like them
, you may not agree with them, but they
are just as real. But Maxwell's equations are not
gonna change. You're not gonna be able to send
signals faster in the speed of light, no matter
how you try, you're not gonna be able to
send them faster than the speed of light. But
regulations can change and can be changed but changes neither
instant nor certain. You know, if you if
you study feedback theory and control theory, you can
control a car that has a delay in its steering
. If you understand what the delay is. But
if you don't know that delay is there, you're
really going to get in trouble. And similarly in
regulation, there are delays and you can live with
that. If you understand it and anticipated, you
have to know something about what, what is feasible
and what are the time constants associated with change?
Technology moves at Internet speed regulations are made by governments
and whether in the US or somewhere else, governments
move at government speak now, I've raised this question
class. Maybe in North Korea regulations move faster because
North Korea, one person decides all the regulations.
But the problem is even in North Korea, the
one person who decides things has so many things on
his plate that I suspected. And if a wireless
innovator, North Korea asked Dear brother, whatever he
calls himself, could you change this? He's got
a queue of so many other things in front of
him. So even in a political system as odd
as North Korea, things do not change instantly.
Okay. And you have to understand that, why
regulation spectrum is a shared resource now, in the
earliest days of radio, if you read the history
of it in my course, you'll find out about
this In the 1920s. There was sort of a
free for all for regulation in the United States.
And there was reported chaos. Was there chaos?
There's an interesting argument how much that chaos was,
but most authors say that things are pretty chaotic in
the US, as people just build transmitters when they
wanted to. Ah there was anti competitive behavior at
that time between the MArconi corporation, which was a
descendant of Mr. Marconi a TNT, and the
R. C. A. Which existed then,
which has no relationship to any recent RCs. It
raised concern about fair competition and and things came in
. Also the sinking of the titanic in what year
? To the titanic sink. Yeah, the sinking
of the titanic had a major effect on this because
one of the issues in the sinking of the titanic
was their inability to send distress signals. So These
are things that happened at that time. The safety
uses of radio was a major user user of radio
. Long distance radio was mainly used for long distances
in the 1920s. And at that time, propagation
wasn't well understood and ionosphere propagation played a key role
today. Probably a few of you have any have
any involvement on a day to day issue with the
honest fair propagation and MF and HF radio. But
those were big issues at the time. And the
reason why the HF band is called HF 32 33-30
MHz was considered high at that time. You know
, uh, and ban with was very limited.
Uh, through point you could get per megahertz was
fixed because there are very few modulations that existed at
that time. But now there are many non safety
services that, that serve all aspects of the economy
and they're really the major users of spectrum, not
just safety related services. There are major demands for
short radio links. Our cell phones, in effect
with the radio link on our cell phones is typically
a kilometer or less. So we're not talking about
hundreds of miles as then propagation is very understood.
Ted Rappaport, your former colleague here made a major
impact on, on, on uh producing tools that
analyze propagation over over distances of a few kilometers.
The highest frequency and commercial use now is 77 GHz
. So we're dealing with all sorts of bands that
have very, very different propagation depending on which band
that you're involved in. And throughput per megahertz.
Is, there are all sorts of available throughput per
megahertz because of different modulations and they're often cost related
. Other changes happen is, Uh, in the
old time, in 1910 at Simon's Titanic sinking technology
is moving slowly. There were a few modulations.
Most things were actually done with morse code at the
time of the Titanic, big government was a good
idea at the time of the titanic, you may
have read the newspaper, there are people who think
big government may not be a good idea. You've
seen something, the paper about this. Uh,
uh, at that time there was little trust in
marketplace forces. Some people think marketplace is much more
effective than government. You don't have to decide.
But these, the view of government is very different
than it was 100 years ago. And nationalization and
detailed regulation of private entities was not necessarily desirable in
the United States. But many countries of the world
. Communications was dominated by the national government as an
operator of communications. Uh, government use of spectrum
was regulated differently than private use of spectrum. Now
, technology is moving at internet speed, there's more
faith in the marketplace. D National is that in
most countries the communications system is no longer owned and
operated by the national government. It was 50 years
ago. It isn't now. Uh, and maybe
government use of spectrum should be regulated the same way
. Ah, Now we'll talk about where wifi and
bluetooth came from. Most wireless innovations come from someone
in industry having an idea and running to the regulators
. They do my idea. The problem with that
is that he faces uncertainty of when the government will
act and that inhibits capital formation, which is needed
. So you often get a chicken or egg problem
does the government moved first to this private guy move
first. Wifi and Bluetooth came from a root in
both technological and spectrum policy that converts that FCC.
In the 1980s, command and control refers to typical
in spectrum policy. The regulator says, you may
do A or B or C, but only for
application X or Y. And everything else you can't
do unless you ask me for permission. That's what's
meant by command and control. The FCC roots of
this was a self initiative. It was not focused
on responding to other people. And indeed when this
started in 1979 the the phrase W land wireless land
was non existent. So while wifi and bluetooth or
thought in terms of wireless lands, nobody thought of
wireless lands 1979. Indeed, I asked myself,
when was the first time did I ever see a
land other than R. And D. Environment?
And I mentioned the jamming of playboy. That was
in 87, we worked with the Justice Department 87
. And in 1987 the U. S. Justice
Department had networked Pcs in their office not connected the
internet because the internet didn't exist then but connected to
a pre internet system. That was the first time
I ever saw. Uh network lands other than an
R. And D. Lab in a commercial non
technical office space. So for those of you who
were born since 1987 to give you an idea as
Why Ethernet was around since the 70s. But Ethernet
in a non technical organization only dates from the late
80s. Uh huh. But so no one was
thinking about that Traditional spectrum policy said has its roots
in the 30s earlier everything. But after World War
Two everything changed. Why? Because of the military
use of electronics from World War Two there was an
explosion of available technology and particularly available wireless radio technology
. If you've never seen the M. I.
T. Radiation lab series, go to the library
and look at the set of 20 odd books they're
written at MIT to explain what had developed during World
War Two. On radar and on microwave technology as
a whole. It's just pick up the volumes.
You get an idea of what happened post World War
Two. Also though in 1946 new deal for those
of you americans during the depression, President Roosevelt came
up with the new deal to increase the role of
government. And there was an explosion in the role
of government, explosion in three letter agencies in 1946
. The war over Roosevelt did the Republican controlled Congress
just sound familiar, uh, decided to move backward
one step and adopted what's called the Administrative procedures Act
, which set up procedures for adopting new rules.
But in the process of doing that, the same
burdensome procedures also affect updating rules. So making or
changing rules became much more formalized in 1946 ironically,
at the same time, the new technology became available
and it's, in my opinion, sort of a
conflict between these two things that happened almost the same
year. The availability new technology and the reaction to
the new deal, the kind of revolution to the
new deal to slow things down created a conflict uh
, FCC and other national spectrum regulators traditionally dependent upon
petitioners spelling out requirements like you, I need spectrum
to do X, Y, and Z. And
then then say, okay, you can use this
band and that technology to meet your requirement and nothing
else. Uh and the problem is it's impossible to
keep up with technological change and the needs of a
changing society to be slightly political. Why did the
soviet union fall? Did the soviet union fall?
We live in Virginia. You live in Virginia least
. Is there a modern day thomas jefferson in the
former soviet union? I look at the Russian politicians
out there, I think none of them you would
confuse with thomas jefferson. The reason the soviet union
collapsed was not because of some thomas. Jefferson,
George Washington James Madison in Russia. The reason the
soviet union collapsed was the economy collapsed. And the
reason the economy of the soviet union collapsed was it
depended on central planning of all sorts of industrial commodities
, all sorts of products. The way we classically
manage spectrum. The closest analog I can think of
was the management of the soviet economy we predicted,
uses years in advance and allocated spectrum to meet those
demands. And sometimes you were right and sometimes you
were wrong. But the reason the soviet economy collapsed
was that type of central planning doesn't work in the
stain age. Perhaps you will find the thomas jefferson
. The soviet union. I hope so, but
I don't think this in Russia, I don't think
there's one there. The carter administration, let me
say this is not a boost for carter, I
will give Reagan some good words in a minute.
So this is, I give carter and Reagan both
credit for this brought if you read your history books
, there was economic stagnation uh during the carter administration
for various reasons and the carter administration brought a focus
on deregulation as a means to stimulate economic growth,
particularly carter broaden Alfred Kahn, who was a Cornell
economics professor and that in the lower right hand corner
is a book he wrote on the economics of regulation
with the theory that to stimulate the economy, you
need effect, you need more effective deregulation. The
government should have a smaller role in marketplace forces should
have a bigger role. This was all government regulation
, not focused on radio, but radio was a
subset of this. The then FCC chairman Charles fairest
embrace these concepts for both titled two entitled three,
which means the telephone and radio part of FCC Chairman
ferris, there's this picture, he's still alive,
seems to be mostly retired. Now challenged his spectrum
team identify promising technologies that are blocked by anachronistic regulations
. This is inevitable whenever you write regulations do the
best job you can for what's before you and then
new things develop and you're wrong within a year.
But he said, go back, look at today's
regulations, find the anachronisms and let's look at technologies
which are being Held back by outdated rules and instead
of waiting for petitions, see if we can get
we can liberate these technologies which are blocked because of
assumptions made. 10 2030 years ago, he recruited
to FCC the former head of DARPA steve Lukasik.
Now some of you may be aware the internets original
name was Arpa net. Okay, steve Lukasik was
head of Arpa at the time that project was started
. So I'd like to tell people he was the
one who signed the first check to pay for Internet
R and D. He wasn't, he didn't run
the internet project. But as director of DARPA,
he was the one that Larry roberts went to with
his proposal and signed the multimillion dollar check to do
that. So he was very interesting this and he
was the one given the challenge by the chairman to
remove barriers new technology and focus on marketplace forces,
not command and control. In May of 1979,
I ended up in Chicago for odd circumstances at a
Secret Army meeting on electronic warfare. And the military
being like most militaries around the world is very organized
, right? So no one here is in the
corps of Cadets, but you know, people in
the corps of cadets, They're very organized and very
systematic. So the military invited 20 people to this
meeting like sort of like an NSF meeting and they
said, you will sit here, you will sit
here and they did it in alphabetical order. Well
, if you think about it, his name began
with L you mind begins with a. We were
destined to sit next to each other because there aren't
many names between you and Emma. All right.
So we ended up sitting next to each other for
two days in the Chicago secret meeting. Uh and
we talked about electronic warfare. Electronic warfare is similar
. Spectrum management. The goal in spectrum management is
to avoid interference. The goal and electronic warfare is
to cause interference. The mathematics is very very similar
. The concepts are all the same. It's just
the goal is different. And so we got in
the various discussions there and Lukasik asked me the question
is what radio technologies might bloom if we got rid
of outdated regulations. And three days later I came
back to him with a list. I don't know
what I have been thinking or smoking at the time
, but it must have been very good if I
could only find whatever I had to drink that night
, I should drink more of it. The three
things I came back with were spread spectrum which is
now also known as CDMA adaptive antennas. Which memo
is an example of adaptive antennas and millimeter wave or
frequencies greater than 30 gigahertz. Um This, this
was my ticket out of the military industrial complex and
I have never worked in the military industrial complex full
time since then. Um because he came back within
two days and offered me a job at FCC,
which I never thought in the world I would ever
work at. Uh but I ended up there sort
of by this happenstance spread spectrum. Where did it
come from? Like the computer spread spectrum has one
inventor, I mean we all know that McCormick invented
the, the, the report, McCormack vented what
the harvester and as you drive down here you pass
the McCormick farm. You know, we know things
like that how and how invented the sewing machine or
you know the computer has no one inventor. Spread
spectrum has no one inventor, although there are interesting
stories in the newspaper which are, which have a
little bit of proof that Heady Lamar, that gorgeous
young woman who was an actress in the thirties and
forties uh is the inventor of spread spectrum. She
actually had a, has a patent on frequency hopping
. But I personally consider that an amusing anecdote.
That is what I think it's the first spread spectrum
system. Paul Green who later worked at IBM did
this for his doctoral thesis at M. I.
T. Or working at Lincoln lab, that's a
direct sequence pseudo noise system. But the first Real
influence on spread spectrum this book was published in 1975
. Most of spread spectrum had been secret till then
. There were pieces of spread spectrum technology in I
trip re publications, but there was no one description
of the technology until Dixon's book came out and it
probably was one of the most influential books ever published
. Even though it's not very mathematical because it gave
the big picture. I would urge you to read
it if you haven't read it. It's quick reading
because there's no question about it, what we did
at FCC was too give mitre corporation a contract to
say what might be civilian applications of spread spectrum.
Um, FCC has never done this since then.
I think that's a bad mistake. Um This is
available on my website. Is available in Miters website
now this was probably the best$60,000 the FCC has
ever spent. Um This is what comes from that
. More importantly, the idea of using the I
. S. M. Bands comes from that quote
on the bottom where miter out of the blue said
you might use sm bands for unlicensed spread spectrum mentioned
in passing in an 80 page report Ideas come from
a lot of places. Uh the first part wasn't
very useful that one paragraph was more than worth the
$60,000 FCC spent on that. So if you want
to see how much hair I had in 1981,
that's how much here I have 1981, there's FCC
video of these things and it's available on my website
. Um FCC proposed the chairman readily supported the idea
of let's make spread spectrum available and the reason why
spread spectrum was not available, there was an assumption
that the way you man, it's a spectrum everything
was by F. D. M. A.
You gave people specific slots like AM and FM radio
and every user had his own specific slot. The
eye and efficiency was to make the spectrum of each
user as narrow, narrow as possible. Okay,
that was the conventional wisdom at that time. Now
john Costas who may have, you know the name
from Costas Loop fame? The same, John Costas
wrote of proceedings of the Treasury article in 1956,
which is very mysterious because he was working on secret
things and he couldn't say what he was working on
. But he used amateur radio as a metaphor to
say, maybe minimizing occupied bandwidth is not the way
to go. Maybe you want to maximize occupied bandwidth
. But if you want to read an enigmatic paper
reads costas is 1956 paper in proceedings of the eye
trickery, where he goes against conventional wisdom, doesn't
explain it because you can't talk about the classified things
he was working on and says, maybe sometimes you
want to maximize bandwidth and not minimize bandwidth. Uh
and so these proposals said, let's allow spread spectrum
wide bandwidth and use the band with the interference immunity
to allow multiple people overlap. Um people hated the
idea. They absolutely hated it because everybody had grown
up as if moses came down from Mount Sinai saying
on those two tablets, F. D. M
. A was one of the commandments thou shalt use
F. D. M. A. A lot
of people in this business have old regulatory ideas and
don't want to think out of the box and people
hated the idea. Nimby, not in my backyard
was a major concern about these things too. I
Tripoli groups supported this and this was already the Reagan
administration. So Reagan appointee Mark Fowler said, I
was gonna say nice things about both carter and Reagan
to be nonpartisan here. He supported this. And
since then, Chairman Fowler has told me is in
retrospect, this was the most important thing done during
the seven years as FCC chairman at the time,
he supported it. He wasn't quite sure if he
was really behind it, but he now says it's
one of the most important things that was done.
So that is the birth certificate of what we now
call wifi and bluetooth. It was in May 9
1985. It's the FCC decision. Again, it
can be found on my website. Um, it
allowed the basic rules for wifi and Bluetooth. Uh
, they have been changed a little bit, they've
been extended a little bit but the same basic rules
in effect. One what originally either direct sequence or
frequency hopping. Now you're allowed a few more flexibility
. It's interesting. Qualcomm was incorporated two months later
. Why was Qualcomm incorporated? Two months later,
the two founders of Qualcomm now disagree about that.
The Jacobs family runs Qualcomm and they say there was
no connection. The Andy Viterbi was the co founder
of Qualcomm. Apparently they disagree on the early days
of Qualcomm and Andy Viterbi has told me through a
friend that while this document did not affect Qualcomm and
the C. D. M. A cellular product
, it sent a signal to Wall Street and the
Qualcomm founders that FCC was doing a major policy change
and that that enabled qualcomm to get the capital to
get going. Qualcomm employees will deny that. But
one of the two co founders believes that you can
believe what you want. Um, But particularly here
was here was an article I wrote uh, in
1987 and I trip re communications magazine, where they
asked me to write an article about how might you
build wireless lands. And I suggested in this article
that maybe these rules could be used for wireless lands
802, 11 didn't start to get start going for
two years after that. Did they do it in
direct response to this? Vic Hayes, who was
the original chairman of 8-11 sites, a talk I
gave the next year at Wooster Polytech as where he
learned this from. I don't know, but that's
what was going. This was the first commercial wireless
land. This is not wifi, this is wifi
like thing, that's, that's the size of it
. Without the power supply. That's about uh 10
inches long, five inches high. There's a separate
power supply, obviously a lot bigger than wifi.
This was a 900 megahertz product. This was a
company in Canada spontaneous generation. This company was formed
in direct response to the FCC decision. Yeah.
New policy things can create capital formation and the company
that made that was a direct response to uh the
things what his wife I done since then. These
are the estimated sales of wifi. Up to up
to now. Bluetooth in wifi and Zig B.
Our products that all use the same rules. There
are other products that use the rules, but wifi
and Bluetooth is the most famous Zig B has is
not generally sold as a consumer product under that name
, but there are industrial devices which use Digby to
this is just wifi only Now lest you say,
well, this was perfectly obvious. This is the
cover from a 1991 workshop held in Canada High Tripoli
workshop and the title, there is spread spectrum,
potential commercial applications, myth or reality. So six
years later in 1991, people weren't sure whether this
was real and 100 odd people, including by the
way, Viterbi and Jacobs came to this beautiful hotel
in the woods of Canada. I strongly recommend it
if you're, if you're uh, it's halfway between
Ottawa and uh, and Montreal. Um, and
I strongly recommend and said, oh, but we
gathered in the woods there for, for a couple
for a couple of days to discuss whether this was
commercially practical. And even six years later there was
a question whether this was commercially practical. It was
, but it's a technology moves faster than regulations.
So we often have anachronistic things to drop, drop
that, um, for those of you were economically
minded. Mr Coast oldest Nobel prize winner, died
a month or two ago. He introduced the phrase
transaction cost. If you don't know what that means
, you probably should take an economics course. Uh
, the transactions costs of changing regulations decreases interesting technologies
that are adversely affected. What that means is if
there's a technology you can't really implement because of regulations
, people tend not to invest in it and your
technology does not move from the pages of I triple
E journals to the marketplace without capital investment. You
know, you can think of something with an NSF
grant without an NSF grant that doesn't take much money
. It doesn't take much money to have an idea
and get it published in the journal. It does
take money to go from the pages of the journal
to the marketplace. And if the if because of
outdated regulations, that technology is discouraged, then people
don't invest in it. And that's a real problem
removing barriers new technology while maintaining a level playing field
can stimulate technology that is existing technologies have a right
not to get unexpected interference. One of the problems
in spectrum policy is balancing the rights of existing spectrum
users with the rights of innovators. There is no
simple answer. But that tension is very, very
important. Now you want to know no more about
this is you have an opportunity as a tuition paying
Virginia tech student to sign up for E 5984.
Woods will be taught, monday is at 4 to
6 45 PM. You are all free at that
time, aren't you? Right, right. I
will be physically teaching it in Falls Church, but
we will have a video link from Falls Church down
to here. Um The course will go into these
things to make sure the course is real. In
addition to explaining how spectrum is regulated with real examples
, we're gonna have to ongoing technical policy issues that
FCC that you can choose between. FCC is not
business this week. So it's hard to tell which
those two will do. And as part of the
effort is you will be asked to pick one of
the two spectrum policy issues that FCC and asked to
review the proposals that are being considered. Review the
comments that other people have already sent in and tell
me in a interim paper, who said what and
how do they disagree with each other? And your
final term project will be draft a letter to FCC
saying I have reviewed these issues and this is what
I recommend that you do and explain why you recommend
it. You do not have to submit it to
FCC. You're welcome to do that. But to
give you an idea of how to interact with FCC
on technique, these will be technical policy issues in
spectrum. So you will see the proposal, you'll
get to write a short paper on the proposal,
write a short paper on people's no equations. Okay
, we're going to have any equations. Business students
are welcome. Ah right. Where do other people
stand on this issue and why you agree with some
and not others? And then what do you recommend
the FCC deal with this? So this would be
hands on, learning how to deal with them on
that. So I thank you for coming as opposed
to the FCC. My website is working uh um
and feel free to surf over to my website to
uh to get more useful information in particular. This
is the last page of the website I know that's
not. I have a page on the website which
I call spectrum links which is literally a guided tour
of the web sites around the world to deal with
spectrum policy issues both in the U. S.
And other countries. So even if you don't want
anything to do with me, please make a note
of that that page because it's an easy way to
find information. Although at the moment with the U
. S. Government turned down many of the links
aren't working, but hopefully the U. S.
Government will be back in business and I am finished
with all I have to say no and I'd be
glad to stay here and answer questions from now to
doomsday, but I hope to see you all starting
in january in that class. Okay, questions Yeah
. In europe in the past, bring will be
focused strictly spectrum polls here you're asking talk that's part
of I consider that part of spectrum policy. So
you know, that's part of, I consider that
part of spectrum policy. So you know, when
everything you need to know from, when you have
an idea for a new radio technology to get into
the marketplace equipment, getting the equipment approved is one
step how to get an experimental license. Is one
step. There are many steps you have to go
through. You will learn how to do this or
at least learn how it gets done whether you want
to do it yourself or go to a third party
, you will learn what the questions are and what
the options are getting these things resolved. But going
from the pages of the Treasury to Radio Shack,
that's what that is part of wireless technology. Unless
all you want to do is do the next Go
from, you know, the develop iPhone six,
you don't need to know this three iPhone six.
But if you want to do something Which is a
new breakaway, another direction like I have a client
who is trying to build 105 GHz system. There
are a lot of issues there because FCC implicitly forbids
all technology above 95 gigahertz And he wants to build
105 GHz system. So there are some problems.
Wait, they haven't because the implication FCC rules is
you can do what's explicitly allowed In the explicit allowances
end at 95. It's just they never got higher
. They've classically, you know, those of,
you have studied American history, the frontier until the
1890 census, there was a frontier, okay.
And you know, the FCC has had a frontier
in the frontier at the moment is 95 gigahertz.
And there are all sorts of things you can do
under 95. But they've never addressed the issue of
what you can do above 95 therefore it's implicitly forbidden
. That's the same thing spread spectrum had In the
1980s. They never said you will never build spread
spectrum. It's forbidden. They just said you may
do A B and C. And there was an
underlying assumption. Yeah, that F D. N
. A. Was the only allowed system because classically
radio developed or an F. D. M.
A. Model. And so it was these things
or just implicit assumptions when technology changes, implicit assumptions
get challenged and that's what happens. They they is
only, well, no, okay, okay.
Let My client only once solved 105 problem. He
doesn't, you know, he's only paying me to
get his system allowed at 105. Independent of that
. One of the things Jeff didn't mention, I
am chair of I Tre usa s Committee on Communication
Policy, essentially the lobbying arm of of the U
. S. Membership of it. And we submitted
to F. C. C. In july petition
saying, hey, you have this implicit barry at
95 gigahertz. Let's get out of the way of
removing it in one way to remove it and stimulate
capital formation is for FCC. To Say, the
technology above 95 GHz is subject to another obscure law
that says new technology has to be resolved within 12
months. And the FCC should make a public declaration
not To allow everything above 95. But at the
very least to say is when you come in with
a proposal for above 95, you will get an
answer within 12 months and there's a precedent for that
because, uh, when corporations want to merge subject
FCC approval like NBC. Comcast board, NBC,
The law doesn't require, but FCC has agreed to
deal with corporate mergers in 12 months. So,
but there is a law that said new technology should
be resolved within 12 months. And I triple usa
has asked FCC to say that technology above 95 gigahertz
is new technology and will be subject to 12 month
limit. So that I personally have been doing that
. And there is, if you go to my
blog, you read about the trip to the U
. S. A petition on that issue. Yes
, sir. Stupid. All right. Yes.
Version of chicken. Oh, you know, Yes
. He made me come to me. Yeah.
So basically get the attention. What's the latest?
Yeah. The ball before. I'm just going to
get you for what? Okay. Yeah. Well
, I mean the jargon most people say is incumbents
in this context, but the general assumption is that
incumbents have all sorts of absolute rights. And while
in theory the FCC can kick out and incumbent,
I mean they're uses railroads have a lot of spectrum
assigned to them. You may have noticed that a
lot fewer railroads now than there were 50 years ago
and yet FCC has historically been unwilling takeaway spectrum from
any user even if they're not using it. Um
, that's a political problem. But generally incumbent's legacy
users are given sort of absolute preference unless someone gives
them money to not complain. And for example,
if the legacy user can use a more efficient technology
and by using a more efficient technology could make room
for somebody else in general. The government has the
authority to do that. Have been very unwilling to
do that. There are few cases where that's happened
, but generally the only way to get an incumbent
user to use new technology in most cases has been
used to pay him, um, and and let
the new guy pay the old guy. There are
, there are a few cases other than that,
but there are, this is a political issue and
incumbents tend to have political friends and whether this is
right or wrong, that's been the historic. You
know, if we had a revolution, maybe we
would do things differently. But you live in a
democracy. You know, we, for those of
you who weren't born in the US, you also
have to remember, we have a common law system
. Most non english speaking countries have a civil law
system. There are assumptions and civil law systems which
are very different than assumptions in common law systems.
So in going from a civil law system of common
law system, there are underlying basic assumptions of rights
and standards and stuff like that. We will go
into that in the course of how common law countries
differ from civil law countries. But generally, um
, countries that were once related to England generally have
common law systems. Countries there were not once related
. England generally have civil law systems of the type
napoleon Uh, presented to the world in the early
19th century. And that's the difference between the two
countries think. But we for better for worse.
We have a common law system in a common law
system, precedents matter and civil law systems. Presidents
don't matter. So we have to deal with presidents
that were set 10, 2050 100 years ago.
So for example, railroad presidents don't seem particularly jermaine's
too. To spectrum often have an implication because from
the lawyers point of view, they establish what words
mean Even though they deal with 19th Century railroad issues
system. Yeah. What? Yeah right. Young
like how they are the patient actually get all I
know example Canada see see I know yeah. Once
has assad wired company but it was was absolutely Comcast
broke people p after I want to oh oh Comcast
is a cable company. Okay, that's that's not
a spectrum issue. Thank God. But but okay
. Different different bands are regulated different ways. For
example, the satellite bands you build a satellite,
you have almost complete technical freedom of how you use
that satellite as long as you stay within the spectrum
allocated to that satellite. And for that orbit satellite
is one extreme Where the satellite industry, the satellite
rules on the other hand, were a new start
in the 1970s. They didn't take an old rule
and updated. They started with a clean sheet of
paper in the 1970s and created satellite rules. So
the satellite rules give the satellite people great freedom.
And indeed, the first commercial use of CDMA was
actually for satellites. Because the satellite rules were very
, very different than all the other. What I
just said about CDN May being forbidden. There was
one special case of satellites because satellites had almost no
regulation. On the other hand, there are all
sorts of things in between for different radio users.
The original cellular system, the first generation cellular system
in the United States was regulated in great detail.
They could only offer one specific modulation. One specific
system design. Cellular operators in the US now,
Starting in 1987, were given great technical freedom,
which explains why do we have, why did why
did we have to G c D M A in
the U. S. And europe only had GSM
? That's because the Europeans specified that cellular could only
be GSM nothing else was allowed other than the etc
. Approved GSM standard. Whereas in the US in
1987 we chose to use chinese expression, made 1000
flowers boom. And you know, that's why we
have C D M A. Here in the US
. Now, some of you who are european may
say that was the craziest decision you ever made to
? Which I would say all the three G systems
, there are several three D systems in the world
, including a quirky chinese system. All the 3G
systems are cdma based and I doubt if anyone would
have adopted CDMA For 3G, had there not been
the large scale implementation of C. D. M
. A. In the U. S. In
the early 19 nineties. Because if you read the
technical literature From the late 19, from 1980s,
C D M A was by many, many great
thinkers viewed as an absurd technology. Unless you think
this is crazy. Go back to the 1930s and
read about FM. Many of the great thinkers of
FM. Many of the great thinkers of electrical engineering
, the great academics of the 1930s thought Major Armstrong
was crazy with FM that it was smoke and mirrors
and he had made a mathematical mistake. The same
, the same controversy about the efficacy of FM That
took place in the 1930s took place in the 1980s
, oversee DNA. And only because the FCC decided
in 1987, let 1000 flowers bloom. Everyone could
pick their own modulation. If you talk to Europeans
, they will say that was the stupidest decision the
FCC ever made, that the european union was brilliant
in choosing GSM. But the reason why GSM got
in the marketplace in three G. And the why
bandwidth of CDMA while it's not technically the same as
L. T. E. Broke the mold of
FDA EMA thinking and I do not think we would
have gone from C. D. M A to
the O F. D. M A L.
T system had we not had widespread implementation of CDMA
. So while Europeans like to say we have the
best system, you americans are crazy. There is
no simple answer to that question and you don't have
to agree with me that the U. S.
System is better than european system, but if you
come to the course you'll at least be able to
be able to understand the different viewpoints of should the
national regulator in Country X behave like the old soviet
union in picking winners and losers? Or should it
behave like let 1000 flowers bloom? You can,
you know this is a free country, you can
decide for yourself whether the answer is one extreme,
the other extremist somewhere in the middle. I'm not
gonna tell you what the answer is, but I'll
present you with the options what the background is and
you can decide for yourself what the best approach is
to get. But the bottom line is we want
innovative technology to go from the labs to the market
place because that innovative technology makes the world better.
one of my favorite articles I read read a couple
years ago was how cellular technology has helped fishermen in
rural India improve their household income. Why? Because
of the each morning fishermen had to decide what type
of fish they wanted to catch. We're not talking
about high technology here. It given place sometime the
market price for fish varies. You know, what's
the market price in that village? What's the market
price for different prices of fish? When cellular technology
reached rural India, fishermen before they went out in
their boats had access to market information of the price
of different types of fish in different villages and they
could choose their fishing program for the day to maximize
their income and by the way then to give consumers
more what they wanted. And you know, we
think of communications as enabling highly industrialized countries to be
more efficient. But even in low industrialized countries like
rural India with subsistence fishermen getting communication technology to the
people with information has a great impact on human development
. It's not just the price of apple and the
price of google. It has to do getting technology
in the hands of real people. Makes real lives
better. If you want to focus on apple and
google stock, focus on that. But it real
if you're more idealistic the work we do makes people's
lives better. Yes sir wow. So you brought
up a lot of interesting topics with history. See
that how they were very for the bye. Sorry
. So the time when the highest yes at all
. Last order that was perceived popular policy. No
. No. And indeed one way I can tell
you that two months after that happened FCC tried to
fire me. Yeah it was it was it was
not very because the haves the important people, the
people benefit this with the have nots of people who
do not have market, the halves were very threatened
by it. You know, if you read history
books, you'll find an interesting phrase of that period
. No one ever got fired for buying IBM google
that phrase, you'll find it. IBM while was
not the legal monopolist in computer technology, it was
a de facto monopolists. IBM set the standard for
each generation of computer technologies up till 1970. And
in the radio business, there was another company that
set the de facto standard and one of the ways
that did that was by manipulating regulations, both in
the US around the world Consistent with its 10 year
plan. And this was inconsistent with a 10-year plan
. And that company was very, very threatened by
this was, I'm not sure sure this, but
sort of basically that company, by the way,
has slid downhill ever since. Not necessarily because of
this, but I think like the soviet union,
they had a warped view of how the world worked
and like the soviet union, they self destructive kids
. Your observations as you see that is for that
particular policy decision to go unpopular to this was great
. Yeah, basically, when when did Wifi really
hit the marketplace? Uh, I retired sec in
2004. Wifi was around, but wasn't totally a
household word and you know, if I was sort
of in the marketplace Around 2004, but it wasn't
like to 2005 2006, it really took off and
Bluetooth was around around that. It was, it
was in the early 2000s, the Wifi and Bluetooth
suddenly became huge markets. I mean there was equipment
That wireless land I showed you was sold in 87
, but these were sort of strange pieces of equipment
that were around. There was a market but interesting
. I have an award from my trip ary from
94 which Which thanks me for this and said creating
a market for millions of dollars a year. Well
, and probably in 1994, it was millions of
dollars a year. And it gave me an award
for that. But now it's billions of dollars a
year, but it didn't, you know, wifi
and bluetooth sort of came in after the millennium.
Does that seem it seems right to you? Yeah
. Yeah. Here. Yeah. Yeah. You
know, and and part of the problem is that
the it took a little bit for technology to catch
up because one of the concerns about spread spectrum and
C D M A is it was bulky, it
was expensive. And new component technology came in in
part because of another DARPA project that spent a lot
of money, not for this problem, but to
create Uh huh microwave, microwave integrated circuits. And
it was sort of several things happened at the same
time, but because the microwave integrated circuits became available
, you know the same reason why you can get
a cell phone in your pocket is the same reason
why why, you know When I first became available
, you bought a card for your computer for like
$200. And now you know, it just comes
free in every single computer because because they're the integrated
circuit implementation probably only has a marginal cost of the
dollar. Mhm. I think we can maybe take
one more question. What you pick the question you
think? Okay. Oh okay. What? Yeah
, there I mean there are a lot of things
that the FCC has done wrong. I mean,
I will tell you that the very same day in
the very same document that wifi and bluetooth were allowed
, there are few pages in there allowing spread spectrum
be used by Police department for hidden microphones. Now
I don't think anyone regrets that, but I will
tell you that that's had zero practical impact. I
don't think it was a bad idea but it had
zero practical impact. Part of the reason was the
people who sell electronics, the police department for that
type of use are very conservative companies and they didn't
like the idea. But I would tell you also
, if I was an informant going into a drug
purchase with a wireless microphone, hidden wireless microphone,
the hidden wireless microphones the police departments use today or
FM. I would never if some if the policeman
comes to you and says put this wireless microphone on
and go over that drug dealer and offer to buy
drugs from him, ask them if it's FM and
if it's FM walk the other way, because you
know, let's think about this guys. How do
you detect a transmitter? Okay. And but apparently
the people who police departments get his informants don't ask
the right question. But if the police department ever
asked you to put on a wireless microphone and and
try to buy drugs and that drug dealer asked that
question, and if the answer is FM tell them
to go to health and uh, and walk away
. But, you know, is that a regret
that was in the same document is several pages that
allow that. But the people who sell electronic police
departments tend to be very conservative in their suppliers or
conservative and that has never had any. It never
had any bad effects, but it never had that
mistakes. FCC is made. Sprint used to be
called Sprint Nextel. Okay. The Next Tell was
a company that merged with Sprint Nextel used to operate
a cell phone system, 800 megahertz which caused interference
all over creation. And it's a long story to
explain how that happened. But that's a classic FCC
screw up. I will admit I had nothing to
do with it. But you know, if you
want to see if you want to say where did
FCC's grew up and if you want a more recent
case, just google um Lightsquared. And if you
google the word lightsquared, you will find endless criticism
of FCC. I think most of it is wrong
. But you will find the controversy. If you
take the course, you'll you'll be able to find
out about and decide for yourself with lightsquared, right
or wrong. Yeah.