Hi Barry,
There are two truisms in the world of computing and communications -
a) Computers will never be fast enough to satisfy all requirements
and
b) You can never have enough bandwidth
In the days of old, valuable spices were carried half way around the world
by spice ships.
These days, if information is the currency of the 21st Century, then bandwidth
is its medium and the world is demonstrating an unquenchable thirst for it.
An anecdote that comes to mind that helps illustrate this point appeared in the
opening paragraphs of an article I read in the April 2011 edition of
the
Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineer's Spectrum magazine.
The article's opening paragraphs begin -
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by IEEE Spectrum April 2011, "Cognitive Radio and Game Theory" by K.J. Ray Liu
Steve Jobs was unveiling the iPhone 4 at Apple's worldwide developers conference in San Francisco last June when disaster seemed to strike. Jobs found he couldn't connect to the conference center's Wi-Fi network. Fortunately, his technical team rapidly pinpointed the problem. "We figured out why my demo crashed," Jobs announced to the audience. "Because there are 570 Wi-Fi base stations operating in this room. We can't deal with that."
Jobs then exhorted the crowd to free up the airwaves so that he could continue. "All you bloggers need to turn off your base stations. Turn off your Wi-Fi. Every notebook, I'd like them down on the floor." Most complied, but some refused to sever their wireless links, causing a sluggishness in connectivity that continued to dog Jobs during his presentation.
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So as we are starting to bump up against the Shannon Limit, that finite usable wireless
bandwidth spectrum is a valuable resource that we will want to free up as much
as possible so it can be used for what it is best used for, namely mobile applications.
Hertz for hertz, the prices the spectrum will be auctioned for in the future will
undoubtedly reach staggering values. An impressive trick for what is essentially
thin air.
