From 2/15 issue of

It is often said these days that “technology moves at Internet speed”. One thing that differentiates wireless technology that is the subject of this publication from most other technologies in the field of interest of the IEEE global community is that it is regulated much more than other electrotechnologies. For example if one makes a breakthrough in semiconductor device technology or in computer display technology, one can develop the breakthrough in secrecy until it is time to market the technology. Such technologies need no a priori government approvals, except perhaps for routine approvals related to safety issues or unintentional RF emissions.

This point was made clear to the author in a 1981 article in IEEE Spectrum shortly after he started working on spectrum policy issues:

Pressed by a competitor who was selling (foreign) manufactured sewing machines for the home at lower cost, the Singer Sewing Products Group counter attacked. For four years, designers and development engineers worked in secret at the Singer headquarters in Elizabeth, NJ putting together a sewing machine that would, in one stroke, make existing machines on the market obsolete. What they were aiming for was the world's first electronic sewing machine. … The radical design would enable Singer to eliminate approximately 350 precision- made mechanical parts found in comparable machines on the market. … Success was instantaneous. The original marketing estimate of 300 machines per week jumped to 500 just prior … introduction. In less than a month after its introduction, the estimate was raised to 2000 machines per week.

The article even describes how Singer was able to ensure marketing surprise by using other divisions of the parent firm in the development and to purchase the needed parts to hide the interest of the sewing machine division. Is such market surprise possible in the wireless technology area?

The Apple iPhone is actually an example of “disruptive innovation” in wireless products that was able to achieve marketing surprise comparable to the Singer case. Apple was able to achieve this by an innovative combination of nonspectrum technology e.g. processing, display, and memory, with wireless physical layer technologies that were already approved and or the market. While the initial iPhone needed the routine approvals that Wi-Fi devices, Bluetooth devices, and ordinary cellphones require for inband powers, out-of-band emissions, and RF safety, these were routine approvals posing little risk and could be obtained at the last moment before marketing. No spectrum policy issues necessitated early disclosure of the iPhone’s innovative characteristics.

Unfortunately such marketing surprise is not possible for many wireless technology innovations. The basic pattern for spectrum policy was set after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. At that time the highest frequency possible for commercial use was less than 1 MHz and radiotelegraphy was the only practical modulation. By 1934 when the US FCC was created, the highest frequency in routine use in the US was 2.5 MHz and its first annual report mentioned “possibility” of VHF use “above 30 megacycles”. In the modulation area, amplitude modulation was then a new alternative to radiotelegraphy.

Given these beginnings and the slow pace of technical innovation in the early days it made sense for the international and national regulators to specific uses for bands and allowed modulations and powers to control potential interference. ITU also adopted a definition of “harmful interference” that made sense with the technologies of the era, although it has some ambiguities with the case of newer technologies and bands with propagation characteristics not anticipated when the definition was drafted .

The ITU has tried to become more reactive by having more frequent world radio conference, for example the 3½ year time gap between WRC-12 and WRC-15. National regulators have tried to minimize regulatory delays of new wireless technologies by increasing the focus of regulations from prescriptive use of specific technology to increasing the focus of regulations to preventing interference to other users. However, this is difficult to do with a regulatory legacy this is a century old as regulators are governmental bodies that do not move at “Internet speed”, but rather time constants that are associated with due process issues according to the form of government in each country. In addition, in some parts of the world there are regional bodies such as CEPT’s European Communications Committee and the European Commission’s Radio Spectrum Policy Group that have a supernational role in spectrum policy.

This is the 150th anniversary of the initial publication of James Clerk Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory that is summarized in the ubiquitous – at least among the readers of this publication – Maxwell’s Equations. It is important to remember that spectrum policy issues are just as important and just as real for new wireless technologies as Maxwell’s Equations are if you are interested in practical actual use of the technologies as opposed to just publishing a theoretical article in a prestigious IEEE publication. However, there is a key difference: Maxwell’s Equations present key physical limits, for example, information can not be transmitter faster than the speed of light. While the constraints of spectrum policy are just as real, they are not physical limits and they evolve just as all governmental policies around the world evolve with time. Thus it is important for wireless technology innovators to be familiar with both current spectrum regulations as well as the national and international processes involved with modifying them to deal with innovative technologies in both current bands and bands that are not presently used.

While many evolving technologies face regulatory dilemmas with respect to their timely implementation in practical use, early identification of such issues in the research and development cycle can lead to early engagement in the spectrum policy arena to minimize delays due to policies that were developed in a different era and which may have become anachronistic.

French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau famously said “war is too important to be left to generals”. For the wireless technology community, spectrum policy is too important to be left to regulatory specialists. Readers can help themselves and help the whole wireless technology community by understanding national and international spectrum policy issues related to their research and engaging in deliberations in their own country, including national inputs to ITU-R activities.

Tags: Wireless innovation, FCC Reform