Standard interfaces

[Bruce Perens]

From: Andrew J Bromage <ajb at buzzword.cc.monash.edu.au>
> Look, for example, at digital mobile phone systems. When the US wanted
> to implement digital mobiles, basically every company got to design and
> implement their own.

No. The problem is that FCC changed its frequency allocation policy some
years back to one that would permit allocations of bands for redundant
services as long as someone was willing to pay lots of money for use of
the frequencies at auction. So, we have at least 5 different cellular
frequency bands, including our own GSM service.

800 MHz analog cellular and 800 MHz digital cellular are standards
mandated by FCC. The rest of them are "Personal Communication Services"
allocated later with the newer rules and they don't have government-mandated
standardization but they are also on different frequencies from each other
so it hardly matters.

	Thanks

	Bruce