Spectrum of Greed

The Aussies will have wifi in cars way before us.

Dedicated Short Range Communications, or DSRC for those who like initials, is a wireless technology hybrid of WIFI and GPS.  This new technology, that will allow any car operating on Australia’s motorways (at least the ones that are not burning) to be a high speed wireless data node on a universal internet network.  This innovative development was the result of a University of Southern Australia think tank called the Institute for Telecommunications Research.  ReadWriteWeb has a great article on it, providing lots of links and detail on how the system will work not only for the sharing of high speed internet data, but also will allow real time communications between vehicles allowing more effective management of congestion, accident avoidance, and numerous other improvements over today’s ‘driving blind’ lack of communications.  When we look at what has been available for decades in the aviation industry, it is amazing that more technology has not made it’s way onto the streets of the US - well, on the other hand I guess you can understand why that technology has not arrived on our streets.  We don’t encourage it, we actually prevent it by not providing an innovative environment for wireless technology development.  Here we provide a legislative blockade that stops all new entrants that don’t have billions of dollars to plunk down to enter the market every decade or so when we make licenses available for sale.  Not only do the Aussie’s have a university doing this work, but they have a group of professors that have banded together and formed a company that will be commercializing this technology, which they deem  “dramatically outperforms all radios available in the world today.”  Don’t expect that to happen over here any time soon.  If there was a way to monetize it, the big 3 wireless guys and the big 3 car guys would have already tried something out, but they can’t figure out how to get customers to pay for it, so it doesn’t happen.  Many capitalistic purists would say that this is as it should be.  Those same purists still don’t understand the Google business model, or many of the other market phenomenon that are daily occurances on the internet today.  As long as we have gatekeepers that don’t ‘get it’, we are not going to have an innovative environment to boost our economy.  Those that really want to get involved with mobile wireless can move to Australia, where they have a chance of getting involved in a business focused on mobile internet.  Heck, in Australia they even use wireless for fixed point internet access - note a company called Unwired, that provides internet access without a contract and without wires.

Can the FCC talk to these people at the University of Southern Australia?  Can they ever get a clue?  Excuse me, I have to go cry or hit something now.