Comment by maccam912
1 day ago
I tend to find myself thinking about the self policing coming from the fact that the radio spectrum is one dimension. We all have to share that space, it's not super plentiful. Plus, ham radio is the one license that doesn't require the hardware itself to be licensed, just the person using it. It's what lets us build our own little radio transmitters in our own band without needing to get it approved first by the fcc.
I've heard the argument that a lot of the 'scarcity' in RF spectrum comes from chicken-egg problems based on the original allocation strategies.
If you give out a dedicated fixed slice of the spectrum, and high power licenses are pretty limited, you end up treating it as a "circuit switched" resource. I have my narrow sliver at 144.4449MHz and I will use it as I see fit.
If you allocate capacity with the understanding it will be shared, it creates a system where you have to think more "packet switched" -- how do I detect congestion, retry, find less congested workspaces?
The "packet switched" philosophy usually supports a lot more users on the same physical infrastructure