threats to educational uses of wireless networks (fwd)

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date: Wed, 7 Dec 1994 14:24:12 -0800
From: Phil Agre <pagre () weber ucsd edu>
Message-Id: <199412072224.OAA02174 () weber ucsd edu>
To: rre () weber ucsd edu
Subject: threats to educational uses of wireless networks


The enclosed message comes from my friend Steven Hodas, who is a consultant
with the NASA K-12 Internet Initiative but is writing purely as an individual
citizen.  The issue concerns industry-driven US regulatory threats the use
of low-power radio communications for local community networking.  Regular
readers of RRE will recall this technique being promoted at length by Dave
Hughes in a message called "Wireless and American Dreams", which web-crawlers
can get from the following URL:


http://www.utopia.com/mailings/rre/Wireless.and.American.Dreams.html


This is an issue you can act on by getting in touch with the FCC.  You may
recall that the technology that's causing the trouble here, namely wireless
tracking of road vehicles, is part of the Intelligent Transportation Systems
program whose privacy aspects are an ongoing matter of very serious concern.
This issue would provide a good occasion to let the public know about these
technologies and their potential costs.  Letters to the editor can accomplish
remarkable things in this regard, as can brief articles for publications for
educators and other relevant professionals.


Phil


Encl:


Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 21:34:42 -0500 (EST)
From: Steven Hodas <hodas () lupine nsi nasa gov>
To: pagre () ucsd edu
Subject: Another facet of Vehicle tracking


Hi Phil-


Today I attended a briefing on a typically internecine Washington squabble,
but one that might be of interest to you, as it bears (obliquely) on the
policy decisons being made that relate to intelligent highway systems and
directly on the dispersal of educational technology to underserved areas.


As you might guess, wireless networks (wide and local area) have an important
role to play in helping to connect schools where hard-wiring is impractical,
either because the age and/or condition of the building precludes it (too
expensive, stirs up asbestos, etc.) or where the schools are geographically
dispersed or far from a POP, as in rural areas. There are a bunch of companies
that offer wireless networking products and services that are resonably
affordable, even by schools and, of course, the market is growing. A number
of the proposals I looked at for NSF and NTIA grants empahsized wireless, and
many of them were good.


All these wireless spread-spectrum connections operate in the 900mhz spectrum
courtesy of Part 15, an FCC regulation which exempts the devices an users
from licensing reqwuirements provided the boxes met two conditions: they must
create no interference, and they must tolerate any interference that happens
to come along. Such is the price of license freedom. Consequently, Part 15
devices are exceptionally good neighbors: necessarily, they must all get
along.


Well, it seems that the suppliers of transceivers used for Vehicle Location
Systems and Automatic Vehicle Monitoring want to occupy the same portion of
the spectrum. It also seems that, despite being up to one hundred times as
powerful as the dinky little wireless modems they can brook not the slightest
bit of interference. Further, these VLS boxes are licensed, albeit at the
lowest level possible, and hence do have the right to kick the wireless modems
off the spectrum at the first sign of trouble. So, for instance, you might
be invest in a wireless modem setup for your district, and run it with no
problems. suddenly, a VLS box is mounted on a roof somewhere,and receives
interference from your fifth graders' wireless Web server. The VLS system
owner can have the FCC shut your network down (That'll play well on the local
news, don't you think?)


But the VLS system owners don't want to worry about that possibility.
Instead, they've asked the FCC to open a rule-making (a fast-track process
with very minimal public participation) to close the spectrum to Part 15
devices right now. The FCC is amenable to this for two reasons: license-free
spectrum means no license revenues (although it's not clear how valuable
these licenses would be, since they're non-exclusive); and traditionally
license holders have been able to have their way against unlicensed
users/providers. The decsion will be made in the very near future, perhaps
just a few weeks. BTW, the company instigating this action is Airtouch, nee
PacTel. Speculation is that the real reson they want the spectrum cleared is
to use it as a cheap way of building a PCS network.


The upshot, though, is that the decisions made on spectrum allocation which
favor VLS systems will cripple the wireless access model for education.


Regards,


Steven