Bits are not Bites! Balkanizing spectrum creates scarcity
December 16, 2002
The speaker at the MIT Wireless Forum meeting on December 4, 2002 was David P. Reed. In his presentation titled “Bits are not Bites! Balkanizing spectrum creates scarcity” he argued that the use of adaptive radio architectures will eventually enable a massive increase in usable “spectrum capacity.” The current structure of U.S. and international radio spectrum regulation has enforced an architectural model of narrow band fixed power broadcasting and a market for spectrum. This made sense with the state of technology in 1912, however, given recent advances in information theory and radio communication techniques (e.g. Ultra Wide Band) it is no longer viable.
