Wi-Fi历史的教训（英）-2份

Richard BennettOCTOBER 2024LESSONS FROM THE HISTORY OF Wi-Fi Introduction On April 3, 1973, Marty Cooper made the world's first public cellphone call outside the Midtown Hilton in New York. After this dramatic beginning – he called a rival to declare victory – the cellular network became the predominant form of worldwide electronic communication. While the wired telecom network supported 11 million subscribers after its first 110 years of operation,1 cellular went from zero to nine billion in 40 years.2 While cellular was taking off, regulators created a novel unlicensed spectrum regime,3 chiefly suited for limited-distance networks such as Wi-Fi,4 Bluetooth, and small IoT networks Zigbee and Z-Wave.5 Wi-Fi alone connects to nearly 20 billion devices6 in the homes and offices of the world’s 1.4 billion fixed broadband subscribers.7 Unlike the mobile networks that descended from Cooper’s first call, Wi-Fi is quite limited in terms of coverage, capability, mobility, and security, even for public Wi-Fi applications. Wireless networks chiefly depend on radio frequency (RF) spectrum; hence, the demand for this resource has increased as the numbers of users and devices have grown. The regulatory response to spectrum demand in the US has been peculiar. Our FCC has granted four to seven times as much mid-band to unlicensed Wi-Fi as to our extremely efficient licensed networks.8 In contrast, Japan allocates equal amounts of mid-band to licensed and unlicensed. Nation-by-nation, allocation strategies and usage patterns are quite diverse. 1 OECD, OECD Communications Outlook 1999, (OECD Publishing, 1999), http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/oecd-communications-outlook-1999_comms_outlook-1999-en. 2 “Mobile Phone Subscriptions Worldwide 2023,” Statista, accessed May 5, 2024, https://www.statista.com/statistics/262950/global-mobile-subscriptions-since-1993/. 3 “Authorization of Spread Spectrum Systems Under Parts 15 and 90 of the FCC Rules and Regulations” (Federal Communications Commission, June 18, 1985), https://web.archive.org/web/20070928054826/http://www.marcus-spectrum.com/documents/81413RO.txt. 4 In this paper, the term “Wi-Fi” is used in the common way, as a synonym for IEEE 802.11 wireless networks. The term is a registered trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance, which organization excludes the original IEEE 802.11-1997 standard from the term’s scope. 5 “Comparing IoT Mesh Network Protocols: What’s the Difference? | TechTarget,” IoT Agenda, accessed May 5, 2024, https://www.techtarget.com/iotagenda/feature/Comparing-IoT-mesh-network-protocols-Whats-the-difference. 6 “Wi-Fi® by the Numbers: Technology Momentum in 2023 | Wi-Fi Alliance,” accessed May 5, 2024, https://www.wi-fi.org/beacon/the-beacon/wi-fi-by-the-numbers-technology-momentum-in-2023. 7 Point Topic, “Global Broadband Subscriptions in Q1 2023: Fibre Glides Past Two Thirds,” Point Topic, July 17, 2023, https://www.point-topic.com/post/global-broadband-subscriptions-q1-2023.