Joseph Gwinn wrote:

In article ,
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[snip]
I always guessed that after the FCC came into existence, there had to be
adjustments, as there were lots of problems with cochannel
intereference, and also with adjacent-channel interference (because TV
receivers didn't have to be that good, for economic reasons). There was
not going to be a no-impact solution. When I got there all this was
managed using a stack of big paper maps with the theoretical coverage
areas drawn on the maps for the co- and adajecent channels. I was
involved in replacing these maps with computers, at least for land
mobile radio services.


That sounds like no fun, considering a lot of them had errors. Also,
during that time some 'so called' frequency coordinators really screwed
up and did things like allowing a fleet of school buses on frequencies
reserved for ambulance service. Not only did they refuse to correct the
mistake, the bus drivers intentionally interfered with the dispatch of
ambulances.

We (the staff of the FCC) knew that the maps and the then "licensee
database" (really a big print file) were riddled with errors, and so
made all licensees reapply for their licenses (at no cost). The biggest
problem was that the latitudes and longitudes were usually in error,
sometimes grossly so, and it mattered because we were going to use
propagation models running on these newfangled computers to predict
actual service areas and required spacings, all in an effort to pack
more users into a given geographic area. Crosschecking zipcodes (which
were also new then) with latitudes and longitudes helped a lot.

The founding articles on cell phone technology were published at the
same time. AT&T was going to implement the technology, but the rest of
industry (led by Motorola) appealed to the FCC to stop this, to instead
allow unregulated industry to do the job, and this is what happened.
Although nobody realized that cell phones would one day displace land
lines.


I remember when Motorola offered to give up all their old mobile
phone frequencies to get what they wanted for cellular service. Some
idiots thought that they could set up their own mobile phone service if
they could get the licenses. They were too stupid to realize that the
startup cost was huge, and that the manufacturers would stop making new
equipment after Motorola shut down that service. Not only were the
startup costs high, but you needed an operator on duty 24/7 and
customers couldn't 'roam' and still use their old car or briefcase
phones. BTW, I repaired one of those briefcase phones and had to
replace the 'Gates' lead acid batteries. They were over half the weight
of that crappy phone.

As far as an organized system, that is like when HBO had the
Videochiper II developed to scramble C-band TV signals. They wanted to
set up a single clearinghouse for everyone who used the scrambling, but
the sat TV dealers didn't like that. We ended up with a real mess.
Sometimes you had to change vendors to get a new channel. Others were
over billing, terminating service on paid accounts, or randomly dropping
channels from your package and claiming nothing was wrong.


--
Greed is the root of all eBay.