There is no such thing as "interference". Radio waves do not "interfere" with one another. There is, however, such as a thing as electronics that do a poor job of picking a specific signal out of the air. This is what lay people call interference. Interference is a design decision that electronics manufacturers make, not a law of physics. For negligible additional manufacturing cost you can make bands as arbitrarily narrow as you like, or even do away with bands altogether (e.g., http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=100112 or http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2003/10/02/werbach_there_.html. I think Techdirt and similar wesites should stop perpetuating the myth of interference.
"We all know, wireless communication can occur because governments parcel out access to the radio spectrum, a limited resource divided up into frequency bands. Without governments partitioning spectrum, there would be a cacophony in which no one could communicate effectively. Agencies like the Federal Communications Commission in the US must decide who can do what, in which frequencies. The alternative is chaos.
Don't be so sure.
Everything I've just said is a lie. Familiar lies. Lies which were probably worth telling eighty years ago, when the basic structures of wireless regulation were established. But lies nonetheless. It's time to tell the truth about wireless communication, and to change the fundamental framework of wireless policy.
Spectrum is an intellectual construct that helps us grasp a deeply alien phenomenon. We take wireless communication for granted because it is such a significant element of our lives, and has been for a century. But how many of us really understand how it works? Radio signals are electromagnetic radiation, governed by the mysterious laws of quantum mechanics. Even Albert Einstein could only explain radio by describing what it is not..."
"We all know, wireless communication can occur because governments parcel out access to the radio spectrum, a limited resource divided up into frequency bands. Without governments partitioning spectrum, there would be a cacophony in which no one could communicate effectively. Agencies like the Federal Communications Commission in the US must decide who can do what, in which frequencies. The alternative is chaos.
Don't be so sure.
Everything I've just said is a lie. Familiar lies. Lies which were probably worth telling eighty years ago, when the basic structures of wireless regulation were established. But lies nonetheless. It's time to tell the truth about wireless communication, and to change the fundamental framework of wireless policy.
Spectrum is an intellectual construct that helps us grasp a deeply alien phenomenon. We take wireless communication for granted because it is such a significant element of our lives, and has been for a century. But how many of us really understand how it works? Radio signals are electromagnetic radiation, governed by the mysterious laws of quantum mechanics. Even Albert Einstein could only explain radio by describing what it is not..."