Really seems like an omnibus of all things terrible type of bill. The fact that they got >50% to vote for what is so obviously rotten is wild
stuaxo · 3h ago
What companies were the lobbies who asked for this working for, they should named and the companies vilified.
mike_hearn · 2h ago
I rarely flag stories but made an exception for this one. The whole article is clearly designed to trigger the left, not lead to useful debate on spectrum allocations. Anything that opens with a statement like "It’s just the wireless industry’s latest reward for being utterly feckless, sniveling boot lickers in the face of historic authoritarian corruption" has zero interest in presenting a topic fairly. Like this paragraph:
> Senator Ted Cruz recently killed a program to provide free Wi-Fi to poor, rural school kids because the plan upset large carriers like AT&T.
It was actually a programme that subsidized off-campus mobile hotspots. It's the sort of free money carriers love, so the bit about AT&T is nonsense, it's invented to whip people up. The press release gives the actual stated reasons, all of which are plausible, the most basic being that the original decision was illegal. Also there was no spending cap and no means testing (so not for "poor rural kids").
Getting back to technical topics:
> [reallocating 200Mhz of spectrum] would likely be particularly harmful for efforts to provide major connectivity at places where a lot of people gather, including schools and libraries. The move also has the potential to harm Internet of Things (IOT) development, given 6GHz’s particular benefits for indoor wireless use [...] Neither will wind up being as useful, fast, and robust if Congress just dumps a massive trove of that spectrum into the lap of AT&T.
The best thing governments can do to help people in these places is allocate as much spectrum as possible to the carriers. WiFi is obsolete tech. Even 5Ghz WiFi often barely works, let alone 6GHz (which no Apple device supports), and the 5G protocols are technically far superior. For the same amount of spectrum they are faster, more reliable, have better privacy and don't require site-specific registration procedures. It's especially superior when handling sudden surges in device density, something that often causes WiFi networks to just fall over. So from a technical perspective the last claim is the opposite of reality.
As for IoT, unless you define it in a very restricted way most such devices are connected via mobile protocols. They don't use WiFi. It's one reason it's so hard to shut down GSM.
There's an ambient assumption in this article that WiFi and CBR is "publicly beneficial" and mobile traffic isn't, but very few people care about the radio interface they're using and even fewer care about CBR. They just want internet access. Setting this up as if licensing spectrum to mobile carriers hurts internet access is silly.
neilalexander · 2h ago
> WiFi is obsolete tech. Even 5Ghz WiFi often barely works, let alone 6GHz (which no Apple device supports)
Sorry, _what_? This is an absurdly ludicrous take. Wi-Fi is one of the most successful and ubiquitous wireless technologies of all time. 5GHz has been working fine for people (especially in locations where 2.4GHz is crowded) for I don't know how many years—at least over a decade, or even two if you count 802.11a. Most Apple devices from the last 2 years support 6GHz too.
justinphelps · 2h ago
"The best thing governments can do to help people in these places is allocate as much spectrum as possible to the carriers. WiFi is obsolete tech. Even 5Ghz WiFi often barely works, let alone 6GHz"
I think that the billions of people that use WiFi every day for free would disagree.
soganess · 1h ago
> no means testing (so not for "poor rural kids")
I pay ~70$ for symmetric gigabit. But, honestly, I would gladly have a kid, move, and then send my kid to underfunded public school in rural Texas... just to be able to con the government out of ~5$ worth of super slow public wifi. Totally worth it!
Means testing is a joke in cases like this. It's just a way for state and local governments to embezzle money from programs meant to help kids.
> Senator Ted Cruz recently killed a program to provide free Wi-Fi to poor, rural school kids because the plan upset large carriers like AT&T.
It was actually a programme that subsidized off-campus mobile hotspots. It's the sort of free money carriers love, so the bit about AT&T is nonsense, it's invented to whip people up. The press release gives the actual stated reasons, all of which are plausible, the most basic being that the original decision was illegal. Also there was no spending cap and no means testing (so not for "poor rural kids").
Getting back to technical topics:
> [reallocating 200Mhz of spectrum] would likely be particularly harmful for efforts to provide major connectivity at places where a lot of people gather, including schools and libraries. The move also has the potential to harm Internet of Things (IOT) development, given 6GHz’s particular benefits for indoor wireless use [...] Neither will wind up being as useful, fast, and robust if Congress just dumps a massive trove of that spectrum into the lap of AT&T.
The best thing governments can do to help people in these places is allocate as much spectrum as possible to the carriers. WiFi is obsolete tech. Even 5Ghz WiFi often barely works, let alone 6GHz (which no Apple device supports), and the 5G protocols are technically far superior. For the same amount of spectrum they are faster, more reliable, have better privacy and don't require site-specific registration procedures. It's especially superior when handling sudden surges in device density, something that often causes WiFi networks to just fall over. So from a technical perspective the last claim is the opposite of reality.
As for IoT, unless you define it in a very restricted way most such devices are connected via mobile protocols. They don't use WiFi. It's one reason it's so hard to shut down GSM.
There's an ambient assumption in this article that WiFi and CBR is "publicly beneficial" and mobile traffic isn't, but very few people care about the radio interface they're using and even fewer care about CBR. They just want internet access. Setting this up as if licensing spectrum to mobile carriers hurts internet access is silly.
Sorry, _what_? This is an absurdly ludicrous take. Wi-Fi is one of the most successful and ubiquitous wireless technologies of all time. 5GHz has been working fine for people (especially in locations where 2.4GHz is crowded) for I don't know how many years—at least over a decade, or even two if you count 802.11a. Most Apple devices from the last 2 years support 6GHz too.
I think that the billions of people that use WiFi every day for free would disagree.
Means testing is a joke in cases like this. It's just a way for state and local governments to embezzle money from programs meant to help kids.