Supercommons: Toward a Unified Theory of Wireless Communication

Spectrum policy is fundamental to traditional mass communications and to the emerging digital information infrastructure. All wireless communications devices, from analog television transmitters to Internet-enabled smart mobile handsets, transmit radio waves through the air. The federal government tightly constrains how those devices function based on its control of electromagnetic spectrum. Yet the assumptions underlying that control are under siege. The "commons" position holds that private property rights in spectrum are as unnecessary as government-issued licenses. Commons advocates claim that, thanks to advances in technology, collections of wireless devices can share spectrum effectively without exclusive rights. They therefore support expansion of "unlicensed" frequency bands and oppose calls to turn spectrum rapidly and exhaustively into private property. Commons advocates offer two lines of support for their claims: the theoretical benefits of unlicensed operation, and the empirical success of unlicensed spread-spectrum devices. There are many ways to communicate without disturbing other users of the same frequency band, in what is called the supercommons.