Some Wireless History - Remember the NII?

In 1995, Dewayne Hendricks wrote a paper, Spread Spectrum and the Amateur Radio Service (1995), that was very forward looking. In it he reviews a good deal of early history, for example:

Since the Broscius article in 1989, there has been a lot of activity in the commercial sector regarding SS. As a result of the request and feedback of many manufacturer's of Part 15 devices, the FCC changed the rules in 1990 in order to make it possible to product devices under Part 15 which could operate at higher data rates and to close up some of the holes in the previous version of the regulation that had been issued in 1985.

In January, 1991, Apple Computer filed the now famous Data-PCS petition with the FCC which asked for the allocation of 40 MHz in the 1850-1990 MHz band for a new radio service to be used for high-speed, local area network services. Some important points of the petition include:

* be accessible to users of personal computers without imposition of licensing obligations, network connection fees, or air-time charges;

* be open to any computer manufacturer's products and any network access and usage scheme that complies with the regulatory requirements.

* be regulated in a manner that assures non-discriminatory access to assigned frequencies by compatible devices for like purposed; and

* Have flexibility built into the initial regulatory scheme to encourage innovation in and the evolution of Data-PCS technologies and services.

In 1993, the FCC allocated 20 MHz for this new service, in the 1910-1930 MHz band. In addition, ten additional MHz were allocated this year by the FCC for this service in the 2390-2400 MHz band. Lest you forget, this ten MHz of spectrum is part of the current ARS allocation which runs from 2390-2450 MHz. The ARS was made primary in this band by the FCC and the Data-PCS service now shares this band with the ARS on a secondary non-interference basis.

Finally, Apple Computer this May '95 petitioned the FCC for yet another new service called the NII Band (National Information Infrastructure). In this case, they are asking the FCC to:

* allocate for use as part of the NII Band the 5150-5300 MHz band, a shared private-government band that currently is not heavily used within the United States and has been allocated throughout most of Europe for unlicensed wireless local area networks;

* allocate for use as part of the NII Band the 5725-5875 MHz band, a shared private-government band that currently is used by unlicensed Part 15 technologies, industrial, scientific and medical ("ISM") devices, and Amateur radio operators;

Reading the whole paper today, 10 years latter, shows that the vision is there, but yet to be fully realized. Do you remember when we had an NII? It would be good to bring it back.

Posted by Jock Gill at October 26, 2005 8:39 AM | TrackBack