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Comment by sthkr | Hacker News Reader

Sensationalized article with poor research. There's a real reason behind all this:

Read here: http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/xjads/something_you_wo...

Reducing interference is a fine theory, but who decides that one party's traffic is legitimate, and the other party's traffic is interference?

In most sane countries, there is a licensing authority to whom you pay licensing fees in exchange for exclusive use of spectrum, and the person who owns that license is the lawful spectrum user. And then you have deregulated bands that anyone can use without any license and it is on these bands that WiFi operates.

I think the outrage that people have about what is going on here is essentially Ofcom (UK's version of the FCC) is, for this event, regulating an "unlicensed" band that is supposed to be available for everyone's use.

And so not only are Ofcom granting a part of the spectrum to the IOC for free, they are also effectively withdrawing a "license" from the general public. And the people who make hardware and software are unwillingly subsidizing the IOC by creating and marketing and mass-producing cheap devices that utilize radio frequencies that they reasonably expected consumers to be able to control, not reserved for the use of a private entity.

If the IOC wants interference-free spectrum, it's easy enough to get. The outrage here is that they are exercising control over spectrum that is explicitly not to be controlled.

It's private property. Owner get to decide, who's allowed and who's not.

I can't tell whether your argument is that it should be that way or it is that way, but you're wrong on both counts:

Straight from the FCC:

> Today’s declaratory ruling reaffirms the Commission’s dedication to promoting the widespread deployment of unlicensed Wi-Fi devices. It clarifies that American consumers and businesses are free to install Wi-Fi antennas under our OTARD rules – meaning without seeking approval from their landlords – just as they are free to install antennas for video programming and other fixed wireless applications. - FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps [1]

As to whether it should be this way, consider a world in which individual landowners could actively jam police communications, or if every sliver of the spectrum chart [2] needed to negotiate with all the landowners in the United States. No radio communication would be possible. It is about as workable as letting landowners shoot down planes flying through "their" airspace.

[1] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-06-157... [2] http://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/spectrum_wal...

You realize that London is in the U.K., not the U.S. right?

Whether or not that reddit post is correct in this situation, they are banning regular wifi and 3g hotspots created by personal cell phones. Which IMHO isn't really draconian but pretty dumb. The olympics should be about athletics, communication, and celebration. Not brand recognition.

http://www.zdnet.com/london-bans-3g-wi-fi-hotspots-from-olym...

Seems bogus to me. Most of the important radios are in low the UHF band (<600MHz).

(I happen to know this, since I was involved in the frequency assignments for the stage management system of the main stadium, and the company I work for delivered all the base stations pre-programmed.)

Even with these rules in place, there must be millions of cellphones broadcasting packets in the wi-fi frequency, even if they are not sharing a 3G connection. I understand why you would want to avoid interference for all official event radio and data, but there are already at least 1500 wifi radios around. Not many people use hotspots, would it really matter?

> Those radio frequencies he lists are all in the FM band, way below wi-fi.

Sorry to be nitpicky, but you probably meant UHF instead of FM. Either way you're right, and a stronger argument is that hundreds of people operating wifi hotspots would cause interference for the millions of cellphones (ever try to make a call at a music festival? get wifi at a networking conference?).

Yes, I meant VHF/UHF. Deleted that, it's an argument I don't want to be in :)

Bad wi-fi at conferences seems to be mostly due to radios with too little processing power, misconfigured radios, positioning and software. There have been successful wi-fi deployments at confs in the thousands.

I'm curious about the cellphone, I never had that problem (never made any calls from a packed front-line crowd though). There doesn't seem to be any overlap in mobile frequencies and wi-fi, other than 4G starting at the very edge?

Try any sporting events in the UK such as horse racing at Cheltenham. It'll be impossible to make any mobile calls due to the number of devices and lack of coverage by the masts. Wireless space is limited too (too many wifi devices) so they can use things like a wireless lan controller (from Cisco, for example) to send disconnect packets to any rogue APs, forcing them to become useless.

So they are shutting down wifi hostspots because of FM band usage?

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