Quote:
Originally Posted by taichichuan
As to licensing a section of the radio spectrum, that's not likely to be economically feasible. Companies like Verizon, Google and others spend literally billions of dollars to lease bandwidth in big government auctions run by the FCC. Even with 3000 new teams from the Boys & Girls clubs paying $5K a pop for registration, it's highly unlikely that FIRST could afford to license a chunk of the bandwidth for use -- let alone convince a radio manufacturer to create radios cheap enough for such a small market.
Mike
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Ubiquiti Networks, for one, makes a 3.65GHz CPE unit that is in the $100-150 price point, intended for WiMAX use. These get installed at people's houses in remote areas for wireless internet. They have to get an FCC (US)/CRTC (Canada) license to transmit on those frequencies, but the fee is minimal (I think $50-100), and the license easy to get, because you're transmitting at < 1W.
If FIRST got the FIELDS licensed as 3.65GHz mobile transmitters (not unlike a TV News van), then the TEAMS wouldn't need to do anything special.
Lots of similar equipment exists in the mid 3GHz bands from a variety of manufacturers.
I actually had 2 Ubiquiti NanoStation2s some time ago, and was able to create a 2.4GHz 802.11g network bridging the two, some ~1.5km away, with a stronger signal than my laptop was picking up from a Linksys WRT-54G a few inches away.
I was ALSO able to use one Ubiquiti NanoStation to create a 2.4GHz 802.11g network I was able to pick up with my laptop's internal NIC from some ~2km away, given Line of Sight.
Ubiquiti's gear is built for outdoor use through all sorts of nasty weather, being mounted on masts hundreds of feet in the air. Its built strong enough for FRC's abusive environment.