John Shutt wrote: > The problem in this country is a lack of broadband service to rural areas. > > Picocells and femtocells are best suited to urban and to a lesser degree > suburban areas. Those locations already have several choices in broadband > internet access. > > What exactly is going on at the FCC? Not quite that easy. The FCC's push is not just for broadband, but for wireless broadband. Having adequate spectrum for wireless broadband is much more difficult in dense urban areas than anywhere else. That's the main reason for wanting to grab spectrum from TV and other allocations. And yet, the lower frequencies that TV uses are not well suited for this at all. Seems to me that rural broadband can be deployed using any number of spectrum allocations that have already been okayed. For example, use large rural 3G or 4G cells for that. Or even use the TV white spaces. There should be plenty of TV white space available in rural locations. Deploy long range broadband links, e.g. even focused beams between fixed locations. The way I see it, there's no excuse for the spectrum grab. In rural locations, you have available spectrum. In urban and suburban areas, if you must deploy a lot more wireless broadband, you're better off, by far, reducing cell size. That's how you leverage off the potentially huge bandwidth available in the existing fiber optic cabled networks in densely populated areas, instead of going the brute force route of just adding more RF spectrum. I really think there's not enough drama doing it this way. The first reaction was to come in swinging, in a show of resolve. Bert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.