Wireless Communications and Computing at a Crossroads: New Paradigms and Their Impact on Theories Governing the Public's Right to Spectrum Access

Abstract

Over the past few decades, many paradigm shifts have changed our view of the interrelationship of science and law. Future developments promise that wireless devices will continue to become simultaneously less expensive and more powerful. As distributed and mesh theories are being applied to wireless communications, we should endeavor to develop policy proposals that endow users of the new wireless devices with technology-neutral rights and obligations. The Wireless Device Bill of Rights - an initiative advanced by Bran Ferren, Kalle Konsten and others (and which borrows from the principles of Paul Baran's research) - is one early model to address the rights and obligations of spectrum users by delineating simple rules for what users of the wireless spectrum (in an open spectrum environment) can do rather than what they cannot do. In addition to describing the Wireless Device Bill of Rights, this article questions whether Ronald Coase's scholarship on wireless technologies - which was made prior to the widespread use of digital signaling - may be valuable today's all-digital world.

Keywords: Wireless device bill of rights, wireless bill of rights, open spectrum, Bran Ferren, Paul Baran, Kalle Konsten, Ronald Coase, mesh networking

JEL Classification: K00, K12, K39