Chuck, all...
You raised an important point regarding 2.4 GHz wireless access
points. The 2.4 GHz satellite downlink band, where AO-40 dwells, has become
a
swamp, due to the sea of wireless phones and WiFi WLAN implementations.
As you observed, expanded wideband service is probably a good thing for
society...but even if that's debatable, it will come. And wideband
will undoubtedly continue to be discussed in the upcoming election.
It's a lot safer than war or unemployment, and lots cheaper than
health care.
I would recommend that interested amateurs spend some time googling
BPL and the power industry, and become familiar with the various
distribution systems which have been proposed. I did this very
superficially, learning that this is a multi-modal delivery system,
involving fiber and wirelss technologies, as well as power line.
They use wireless to get across the transformers..so a sea of WAP's
will have to be deployed.
Your wrote, "Yesterday, hams were developing technology
and advancing the state of the art. But today we're attempting to limit
technology and attempting to keep communication modes that are very
significantly less important than they were in their day." I think
this is the more important point.
"Can you hear me now?" (599, you're in the log)... will never trump
industrial investment, when it comes to public policy.
At last weekend's AMSAT-DC symposium, I listened to a paper from W3IWI,
proposing a 5GHz full duplex satellite system with wideband signal
capability. Using software defined radios and digital signals, it
enables mix-mode content voice, data, text, imaging, with freedom from
doppler. The link budgets were such that it could be accessed from
relatively small antennas, appropriate to covenant limited suburbia,
mobile stations, and photo tripods.
AMSAT's vision is to have dx-coverage, high earth orbit satellites
in place providing daily coverage by 2009 and continuous coverage by
2012. My question is...if they build it....what can the imagination
of amateurs come up with for multi-media content and social relevance?
The amateur satellite service, by the way, provides the largest terrestrial
footprint of frequency utilization, and by extension, is the greatest
protector of our allocations. Fortunately, in the 5GHz band, the satellite
UPLINK is in the wifi band, and the downlink lies 180 MHz above it. Our
receive noise should be minimal.
The larger question is social relevance of the amateur service. We can
build it...what will we DO with it?
Jim Jarvis N2EA
jimjarvis@ieee.org
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