David Reed has been talking about Open Spectrum for a while. This includes presentations and discussions with the FCC - lots of really deep material on how to make the capacity of wireless networks scale (increasing linearly) with the number of stations.

Bob Frankston chimes in on the FCC, spectrum, and open connectivity - "something went strangely right" with the Internet. "With connectivity anyone can create telephone connections. Anyone can create television with nothing but a PC, an imaging chip and a connection. That's it. Period. Game over."

To this I'll only add one observation: we're talking about microwave (gigahertz) spectrum, where range is effectively close to line-of-sight. Omnidirectional microwaves don't travel far, because they're absorbed by pretty much any material in the way (trees, people, even water vapour). This is dramatically different from megahertz RF, which shows very long-distance propragation (by surface wave, but also including reflection from the ionosphere). Of course, you can still create long-distance microwave links, but the really interesting area is very low power, locally-oriented networks.

The UK equivalent of the FCC is the Radiocommunications Agency. Here's an introduction to their work.

A quick scifi teaser. There's a background radiation in the universe. Common wisdom says this is leftover from the Big Bang. What if it's actually the cosmic industry standard for community networking, and we just haven't hooked up yet?