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News from openspectrum.info
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World news related to license-free access to the radio spectrum
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"Don't Let Google Freeze the Airwaves"
by Thomas W. Hazlett and Vernon L. Smith, Wall Street Journal, 3 October 2008: "...Google's proposal would actually freeze the airwaves allocated to television prior to World War II. Innovative services would be lost for yet another generation. The TV band is pathetically under-utilized. The problem is historical, but is increasingly exacerbated by the emergence of valuable new wireless technologies that are blocked due to artificial spectrum scarcity... If Google believed that TV frequencies were productively used via the spectrum sharing approach they ask the FCC to impose, they could have purchased TV 'white spaces' [at auction] and imposed just such a plan. Revenues could have been extracted from the sales of devices, advertising, or other means. Yet, they rejected this play, outbid by rivals seeking to deploy alternative models..."
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"Big Apple Takes Bite of White Spaces"
by John Eggerton, Broadcasting and Cable, 30 September 2008: "The New York City Council got an earful Monday on the issue of white spaces. The council is considering a resolution opposing the Federal Communications Commission's authorization of mobile unlicensed devices in the so-called white spaces between digital-TV channels. The resolution would not carry the force of law, but would simply let the FCC know how the council felt about the issue. No action was taken on the resolution at the meeting, although none had been planned, one opponent of the measure said..."
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"Wireless at Fiber Speeds"
by Kate Greene, MIT Technology Review, 3 October 2008: "...Much of the millimeter region is unlicensed and open for use; it has only been neglected because of the difficulty and expense involved in generating a millimeter-wave signal, encoding information on it, and then decoding at the other end. Usually, data is encoded by first generating a low-frequency wave of around 10 gigahertz, then converting it into a higher-frequency signal. The drawback is that encoding data on a 10-gigahertz signal limits the data rate to about one gigabit per second. The Battelle team was able to better this by more than a factor of 10 using off-the-shelf optical telecommunication components. The researchers modulated data on two low-frequency laser beams, then combined the two. When these two beams combine, they create a pattern of interference that acts as a 100-gigahertz signal. 'It looks as though we have a laser beam that has a 100-gigahertz frequency,' Ridgway says..."
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"Electronic passports have fatal RFID security flaw"
by Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service (via ComputerWorld UK), 2 October 2008: "...Some 50 countries are rolling out passports with embedded RFID (radio frequency identification) chips containing biometric and personal data. The move is intended to cut down on fraudulent passports and strengthen border screenings, but security experts say the systems have several weaknesses. Dutch researcher Jeroen van Beek has released a software toolkit that can be used to encode RFID chips with false information. In a demonstration video, van Beek shows how a scanner at Amsterdam's airport reads a passport chip he encoded with Elvis Presley's information and photograph. It means that a fraudster could potentially create a fake passport with an RFID chip that would appear legitimate..."
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"The Wireless Home Office (Finally) Approaches"
From a news release from ABI Research, 2 October 2008: "After a long wait, the first stage of what will become the 'wireless home office' is arriving. Some home office UWB (ultra-wideband) products are now hitting retailers' shelves, and more are expected by the end of the year... 'The wireless USB docking station seems to be hitting a sweet spot,' says ABI Research senior analyst Douglas McEuen. 'A number of the more capable laptop models now include native wireless USB. This represents an important step towards creation of the true wireless home office.'..."
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